Maybe Han Solo likes to dance, you don't know

And now, Spring Break is over. Today I have to grade papers and do lesson plans, and next week our yearbook is due so I'm going to be wrapped up in that. But this week was great for screenwriting. I got a ton of work done - work I can't talk about, which is awesome.

I also got and played Kinect Star Wars. Overall, pretty fun. It's not a perfect game, but I'm enjoying it. The weird thing is, the constant clenching of my fist is actually making my bad hand hurt. I have to start playing with an open hand or something. And my shoulders hurt. This game is an excellent substitution for an upper body workout if you're like me and can't really pick up weights.

I know people have been complaining about the whole Han Solo dancing thing, but I don't think it's that big a deal. In case you don't know, there's a side game that involves dancing in the Star Wars universe, structured like the game Dance Central. The first level is dancing with Princess Leia in Jabba's palace. Later in the game you dance with Han Solo.

And everyone's losing their shit about Han Solo and how undignified his dancing is.

Hey, people, Leia is undoing her chains and dancing for Jabba, and then gets all pissy when she doesn't win the contest, as she walks back to put her slave chains back one. How is this more dignified than Han getting his swerve on in Cloud City? But nobody's talking about Leia.

But whatever. It's just a game. The game is meant to be fun. It doesn't even have a good plot.

Sure, I miss Knights of the Old Republic. I miss that brilliantly constructed plot with the love story and the side missions and the characters that had more depth than any of the Star Wars prequels. But this isn't that game.

It probably would have been cool to have a story like KOTOR where it's in the same universe but without any of the same characters. Then you don't have to worry about offending people with Han Solo's dance moves or that rockin' tune about how glad he is to be free from the carbonite.

I don't mind the Han Solo dance or the Leia dance. I don't think you needed that, but it's not like I'm offended. A game should get a little more leeway than a film. It would be nice if every game could be KOTOR, but it's not. This is about throwing lizard guys through the air and waving your light saber around. And then dancing and raging around as a Rancor and podracing, at which I am fucking terrible.

Anyway, whether it's right or wrong, I'm gonna go play it until I can't fake grip a light saber anymore.

Stuff from this week

I was wondering where the week went when I remembered where the week went: yearbooks and Fable.

Yearbooks came out this week, and the senior class has been a real asshole about it. This is the coolest book we've ever done and it looks great even though we had extra work to do this year and less time in which to do it. I had no seniors on my yearbook staff. Actually, scratch that - I had one senior who was responsible for the senior section who just disappeared along with the pictures halfway through the year. So the senior section is thin. I begged and pleaded with the senior class to give me some photos and they shrugged their shoulders. So now they're all pissy and spreading bad press about the book, which is making it difficult to sell.

So get ready. Class of 2011 seems to want a whole lot for nothing.

Anyhow, I also got a new XBox. Ours was stolen over a year ago, but we finally got a new one last weekend so I could start over with my character on Fable 2. This time I'm doing all the side shit and dyeing my hair and stuff, and I'm taking the relationship shit seriously. Like, sure, I could go buy a shitty house and marry the first villager who demands a ring, but fuck that. I want a guy who's going places like Sam the alchemist or Greg the bookseller: upstanding citizens of Albion. And I will buy a nice house in a nice part of town with my earnings. No sleeping in the Gypsy caravan for me.

I love games like Fable because you control the story. The first time through this game I married a nerdy dude, but he seemed unhappy, so I took him to his favorite place to try to cheer him up with a picnic. We were attacked by bandits, and while I ran off to kill them all he was stabbed to death. That was really sad. Like for a minute I was really broken up about that. I just wanted him to be happy, and I got him killed instead.

So I'm waiting a while before I get married this time. I want to be a responsible ass kicking wife and homeowner. Sure I like to raise the dead to slaughter my enemies, but that doesn't mean I don't have love to give.

I still can't be a bad guy, though. No matter how many of these role playing games I get into, I still can't be bad.

Dead Island

In case you haven't already seen what many have deemed the best game trailer ever, check out the trailer for Dead Island. The movie rights to the game have already sold,. Doesn't take a genius to figure out why.

Just when you think you know all there is about zombies and zombie fighting games, somebody does something beautiful. I've watched this trailer three times already and am still completely moved. Everybody I've shown it to is blown away.

If only we could all make our screenplays have this kind of emotional impact.

Oregon Trail is the shit, yo

It's been a much busier day than I anticipated. I had absolutely no time to play Oregon Trail.

You played Oregon Trail, right? RIGHT?

I ask because at a fancy Hollywood party Saturday night I brought up Oregon Trail and nobody knew what the hell I was talking about.

It was mostly people from Cartoon Network, too, so it's not like I was at a party full of people who never touched a computer before. These people live inside computers.

So I guess "fancy" Hollywood party is not entirely accurate. Just Hollywood party, then. And actually it was a Glendale party. But there was a sundae bar so it was still awesome.

At any rate, nobody knew about Oregon Trail so I started polling people and this one guy played it. Then this other really drunk guy claimed to have played it but I think he was lying because he said it sucked and NOBODY who ever played it would say that. Also he was an asshole in general. The Beefcake kept waiting for me to give the signal to beat the guy up, but I did not know he was waiting for such a signal so I didn't give it. We need to work on our signaling because he totally forgot our "I want to leave now please" signal.

This whole conversation reignited my love for Oregon Trail, although it is very difficult to find the game in its original form. I found a website where you can play it online but it's blocked at work. The only one I could buy is version 5, which I got for $6 from some Amazon dealer.

I played the online version. Still awesome.

In the game you and four of your closest friends or family members hop in a covered wagon with your purchased supplies and head west on the trail. You ford rivers, you get typhoid, a thief comes in the night and steals a wagon axle, you hunt buffalo but can only carry 100 pounds back to the wagon so you leave most of it rotting in the sun, setting off a war between Indians and whites that will last until the whites finally wipe out all brown skinned men who are then replaced in larger numbers by their Mexican cousins.

If somebody in your wagon dies you get to write whatever you want on their tombstone and then you see this tombstone from then on when you play the game.

The real fun in the game is when somebody in your wagon has cholera and you can see the fort 40 miles ahead and you only have like 3 pounds of food left. You wouldn't think a game that simple would get so heated, but it does.

So this brings me to my question. Am I delusional? I thought everybody played Oregon Trail, but I learned at this party that apparently people didn't care to learn about the trials of our pioneers. Did you play Oregon Trail? What computer games do you remember fondly? And if you're too old, tell us about the time you rolled a hoop downhill with a stick.

My tragic fake love life

Lately, instead of watching Bridezillas marathons to procrastinate on writing, I have started playing video games. The Beefcake got me a Wii for Christmas and was impatient to play it so I already got it and bought Zelda and Mariokart and Mortal Kombat.

But today's game was Fable 2 because Beefcake also has an XBox. Let me tell you about my day on Fable.

On Fable you become a hero - in my case a sexy lady in an awesome coat - who travels around saving people and/or killing people and solving a mystery from your childhood. And along the way you can change your clothes and hair and get tattoos and get married and make babies and buy a house and put furniture in it.

I married my first husband when I was still very poor. He was a traveler and I passed him on the street and he said I was hot so we got hitched. Then I took him home to my Gypsy caravan and left him there with $20 a day and a sleeping bag on the floor.

And then three months later when I came home he left me in an angry huff.

So I decided I'd treat my second husband right. Howard was a bookseller who was shy about telling me he thought I was hot with my crossbow and my iron mace and my body tattoo. Yeah, we were different, but I like a man with smarts. He helped me find some dog training books and the attraction was clear. I bought a two story house in town and put a nice new bed in it and we tied the knot.

But even though I bought two condoms from the general store he still wouldn't have sex with me. I bought him flowers and whistled at him and even bought a lute so I could play him some music, but he still wouldn't put out even though he kept giving me health potions and saying he loved me.

So I decided to take him to his favorite place - some lake just outside of town - and see if that got his libido going, because a woman who kills as many wasps as I do needs a little nookie and I gave that man a house and a ring already.

We warp to the lake and he's all excited and he finally opens up, and it turns out old Howie really wants to buy the shop one day and start a family. Where I had been eager for a little shy guy sex, I now thought maybe I should come home to this guy more than I was planning to. Maybe I'd even buy him a nice bookcase for the house.

Then we rounded a corner and ran into some bandits, so I whipped out my mace and mowed them down. And just when I declared victory and collected my magical experience points I turned around and Howie was dead.

If that was a movie I'd be all crying and shit. But that was a video game - a VIDEO GAME. I've seen films that don't have plots that good.

I just thought that was cool and wanted to tell you guys.