From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V16 #501 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Wednesday, February 13 2008 Volume 16 : Number 501 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: My name is "Jeb", and up from my ass come a bubblin' crude! [2fs ] Okay! The Big Moment... ["Stacked Crooked" ] Re: robyn with nick lowe USA dates (RH.COM) [Tom Clark ] Re: Video games [Rex ] Re: Okay! The Big Moment... [Rex ] DVD Of The Moment ["Stacked Crooked" ] Re: Bring Me The Head Of Dan Pastorini! ["Stacked Crooked" ] Bizarre same-car bumper sticker juxtaposition of, thus far, the year [Rex] Re: Bizarre same-car bumper sticker juxtaposition of, thus far, the year [Caroline Smith ] Re: videogames [Tom Clark ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 12:08:02 -0600 From: 2fs Subject: Re: My name is "Jeb", and up from my ass come a bubblin' crude! On 2/13/08, Stacked Crooked wrote: > > > <"Celebrity's Lives Are Important To Me"> > > don't mention this to be a dick, but only because it's kind of humorous: > as > written, this means that there's *one* celebrity, with *many* lives. Was it written by a Shirley MacLaine fan? - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:12:29 -0800 From: Rex Subject: Re: why do they hate Hillary? On Feb 13, 2008 10:06 AM, 2fs wrote: > On 2/13/08, Rex wrote: That's great! Quite a > compliment, too - even your cussin' is art. > > Sometimes I think Thurston *wants* to be beloved by "the kids"...and might > even have encouraged the presence of the warning label. "See? I'm still > relevant if I can be controversial." > Thurston and the band certainly did that during their moment in the sun, post-grunge, and it was grating. They would talk about what "the kids" expected from their records. I was, I guess, really only in my mid-twenties at the time, but I still felt kind of jilted... I'd been a longtime fan of theirs and they seemed to be talking about appealing to teenagers who were into skate music. Didn't really affect the records much, at least, and they seemed to grow out of it and start obsessing on Pavement instead. - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:58:30 -0800 From: "Stacked Crooked" Subject: Okay! The Big Moment... somebody uploaded *Tusk* to usenet, so i went ahead and downloaded it, and am about to listen to it for the first time. i've heard the camper van beethoven version (and hated it), but never the original. for frame of reference: i like *Rumours* well enough, and quite dig about half of *Tango*, and enjoy the singles just fine...but have always been just a little bit too lazy to check out *Tusk*. until now. wish me luck! ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 11:10:09 -0800 From: Tom Clark Subject: Re: robyn with nick lowe USA dates (RH.COM) On Feb 13, 2008, at 9:08 AM, hwycdrrev@aol.com wrote: > April > Robyn is thrilled to be the special guest of Nick Lowe at these 3 > shows > 9 The Grand Ballroom New York City > 11The El Rey Los Angeles > 12The Fillmore San Francisco Cool!! Looks like Scott McCaughey will be participating in the Jesus of Cool Resurrection shows by firing up "The Lowe Beats" in Seattle and Portland on 2/22-2/23. http://www.myspace.com/jesusofcoolsresurrection - -tc ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 11:16:23 -0800 From: Rex Subject: Re: Video games > On Feb 13, 2008 8:53 AM, The Great Quail wrote: > > They are different, actually, for two important but related reasons. > > One, games that play on consoles, such as the Xbox 360, PS3, or Wii, must > be > certified by the companies that *produce* those consoles. > Okay, this just leaps out at me for starters-- how and why the fuck did this happen? From time immemorial, all entertainment and art media have been what I suppose you'd now call "open source"... anyone could create just about anything on any of those media if they had the tools and means of distribution (up to and including formats *invented by some of the same companies behind those consoles*). So how does it come to be that while Yep Roc can safely manufacture and sell copies of the lewd and obscene "Ole Tarantula" that will play in any old CD player (maybe even in those consoles, too), they would not be able to create and distribute "Ole Tarantula: Teh Game" without the permission of Sony, Nintendo et. al. for their respective consoles? 'Cuz that is wack, damn. No, really... is there no such thing as an independently produced game that's not signed off on by the console maufacturer? Not even in a bootleg sense? That's downright bizarre to my mindset. > And as it stands, > no game that is rated Adults Only (Ao) is allowed to pass certification. > Now, granted, that's a decision made by the capitalist entities that > manufacture those consoles, but it undeniably limits what we as adult > consumers may choose from. Now, why do these companies make such decisions > in the first place? Because it's politically necessary to do so. And I follow you from there. But what strikes me is that the games would not be (as) vulnerable to political interference if not for the fact that the companies producing the consoles have put themselves between the game creators and any chance of a game's production/distribution. And I assume that's for reasons of a capitalist nature (they license the proprietary tech of their consoles to the game makers or some such thing, right?) So it's really the capitalist greed of those companies that institutes self censorship, meaning that all potential content gets has to pass through their corporate gates, which makes it a LOT easier for the government to get involved in a way that's not possible in any other media that I can think of (Sony or Phillips or whomever sure as hell aren't going to vet the content of all the CD's and DVD's put out by all the independent manufacturers in the world). I think that's where your heartache begins-- in the supposedly self-correcting "market". > > And yes, you are right -- video games carry ratings, just like movies. But > if you want to make a video game that has too much sex, or the kind of > violence that seems perfectly acceptable in films like "Saw," it's judged > differently than other forms of entertainment media. And because video > games > must be played in a piece of hardware, saying "No" to "Ao" is essentially > a > death sentence. All other media need a piece of hardware, too, but they don't have this problem. I could have another browser window open right now placing orders for adult-content books, DVD's, graphic novels, CD's, LP's, and oven-mits, probably without having to leave Amazon. (To be fair, in all likelihood, if there had been a way to make, say, the VHS tape "proprietary" (or if anyone had thought of it) they probably would have.) Or more to the point, the PS3 is a Blu-Ray player. You think Sony will > declare that the PS3 will be programmed *not* to play Blu-Ray movies that > feature sex scenes? And yet, they won't certify a video game that has a > PG-13 level sex scene. This is because video games are treated > differently, > by a set of double standards designed not to upset politicians and attract > potential wrath. That is indeed a double standard. But... The situation is very analogous to comic books and cartoons, two other media > associated with children that can certainly carry mature narratives that > appeal to adults. Thankfully, we have grown out of this mind-set, but I > remember a lot of controversy in the 80s over comic books, and some good > books actually went under. I remember that (although I always associate the comics scare with the '50's and EC Comics). But I didn't have much trouble at age 15 getting ahold of comic with some damned adult content, personally. But primarily they bubbled up from the underground, as is usual for any emerging artform. In film, in comics, in television, barriers are broken outside the mainstream and then trickle into it. Thus we had, in that '80's comic scare, the big two comics companies eventually creating "boutique" labels for their more "adult" fare in response to the freedoms offered by the real independent companies... and we now have network TV trying to creat shows in the mold of pay-cable shows, studios finally finally finally beginning to distribute NC17 films, and so forth. The problem seems to be that the (console) gaming world doesn't allow for an "independent" sector in which these breakthroughs can occur. Does that seem correct? > Well, the company that made the game eventually cut that part out. > However, > inventive hackers discovered a way to re-connect to those excised parts > using the so-called "Hot Coffee" mod. Now, Hot Coffee could be used only > by > PC owners; if you had the game on PS2 or Xbox, you could not use Hot > Coffee. That seems to indicate that, as I'd expect, there's a parallel gaming world on PC's (as opposed to consoles) that's a lot more freewheeling and less proprietary. It seems to me that, as a consumer, I'd just vote "with my dollars" eschew the consoles, since it seems like their greed is really at the root of the fascism here. I've seen enough screenshots from Second Life to know that the online gaming world is pretty no-holds-barred, content-wis Was there any reasonable discussion about this? No. Did the average person > understand that the majority of users couldn't even access the > controversial > content, and those who had PC had to download a patch and do it > deliberately? No. Was there any real awareness that this was already a > rated-Mature game? No. Was there any public discussion about how this > content was hardly controversial anyway to anyone who'd seen an R-rated > movie? There's rarely reasonable discussion about anything, though. A particular problem with getting a real dialogue going on this topic is that most onlookers wouldn't be able to make heads or tails of the tech. A billion dollar industry is always important to many people. Maybe not to > you, but it is certainly important to millions of others. And surely you > don't think porn is "marginal?" Hopefully I've explained the ways in which I believe it is-- basically, that it doesn't enter the public dialogue in any kind of meaningful or significant way. It makes tons of money, but you won't see public discussion of a particular work of porn in the way that you will any given TV show, or even a particular video game. Again, many of the sources to which I turn for entertainment and arts news review games; none of them weigh in on the week's new porn releases. > Well, I doubt that I can do much to turn you into a gamer, but I hope that > you see that the issue is not as simple as, "Hillary Clinton wants to put > a > warning sticker on my copy of Grand Theft Auto." Sure. I knew that already. I never doubted that the issue was complex... just not massively important. And I'd certainly hope that converting a father three young kids to a time-consuming hobby, whatever it may be, isn't a goal. I have a stack of novels I'm itching to crack into, but I've had to slow that pursuit down just a bit... I'm only now learning how to manage it, seven years after I started the dad-gig (and that's on top of abandoning TV). Interesting stuff, though. - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 11:20:56 -0800 From: Rex Subject: Re: Okay! The Big Moment... On Feb 13, 2008 10:58 AM, Stacked Crooked wrote: > somebody uploaded *Tusk* to usenet, so i went ahead and downloaded it, and > am about to listen to it for the first time. i've heard the camper van > beethoven version (and hated it), but never the original. > > for frame of reference: i like *Rumours* well enough, and quite dig about > half of *Tango*, and enjoy the singles just fine...but have always been > just a little bit too lazy to check out *Tusk*. until now. > Oooh... can you hold off on posting a review until I've had a chance to do the same? I have EXACTLY the same frame of reference as you*, which I would expect is rather unusual. - -Rex *except that I don't hate the CVB version... don't love it either, though. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 11:40:56 -0800 From: "Stacked Crooked" Subject: DVD Of The Moment i've just begun seeding *The Gleaners And I*, an absoutely fascinating documentary about french detrital culture (i guess you'd call it), at . ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 12:17:48 -0800 From: "Stacked Crooked" Subject: Re: Bring Me The Head Of Dan Pastorini! interesting. ran prieur said something quite similar recently on his blog. will check it out! [...] i had no idea! as you say, this isn't censorship. but it most certainly *is* (to my way of thinking) discrimination. have lawsuits been brought? i would imagine the bootleg market is fairly thriving? ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:19:37 EST From: HwyCDRrev@aol.com Subject: BBC Ban _http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/banned.html_ (http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/banned.html) **************The year's hottest artists on the red carpet at the Grammy Awards. Go to AOL Music. (http://music.aol.com/grammys?NCID=aolcmp00300000002565) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 23:21:51 +0100 From: Sebastian Hagedorn Subject: Re: Okay! The Big Moment... - -- Stacked Crooked is rumored to have mumbled on 13. Februar 2008 10:58:30 -0800 regarding Okay! The Big Moment...: > somebody uploaded *Tusk* to usenet, so i went ahead and downloaded it, and > am about to listen to it for the first time. Since you turned me to usenet, I'm in the same boat :-) I actually finished a few minutes ago. > i've heard the camper van > beethoven version (and hated it), but never the original. I onle knew the title track. > for frame of reference: i like *Rumours* well enough, and quite dig about > half of *Tango*, and enjoy the singles just fine...but have always been > just a little bit too lazy to check out *Tusk*. until now. Rumour is the only other record I know. That and "Gypsy". Anyway, I liked it and was surprised to find veritable psychedelic elements! Not sure how much I'm going to like it in the long run. - -- Sebastian Hagedorn Am alten Stellwerk 22, 50733 Kvln, Germany http://www.uni-koeln.de/~a0620/ "Being just contaminates the void" - Robyn Hitchcock ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2008 12:04:01 +1300 From: grutness@slingshot.co.nz Subject: Re: [none] >http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=513855&in_page_id=1811 There was a lovely weird 9and long since deleted) article on Wikipedia, which - as an admin there - I can still access: "'Crust the Redeemer' is a large monument on top of a mountain overlooking the city of Rio de Janeiro. It features a giant loaf of bread, and was erected as a giant advertisement for a local bakery and as a pun on Sugarloaf, which sits in Rio's harbour. "Unfortunately, through mistranslation, many people think that the name is actually 'Christ of the Andes', and, in order to cover up their embarrassment, the Brazilian Tourist Board have created many doctored photographs replacing the loaf with the image of a large statue of Christ overlooking the city. During the tourist season, a cardboard cut-out of Christ is erected around the bread statue to further fool people. "The real statue of Christ that was used for these photos is only eight inches high, and was bought in a gift shop in Sao Paulo for 20 cruzeiros." James - -- James Dignan, Dunedin, New Zealand -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.- =-.-=-.-=-.- You talk to me as if from a distance .-=-.-=-.-=-. -=-. And I reply with impressions chosen from another time .-=- .-=-.-=-.-=-.-=- (Brian Eno - "By this River") -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-= ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 23:29:03 +0000 From: Michael Sweeney Subject: Why do they like porn? (was: Re: why do they hate Hillary?) Rex wrote: >On Feb 13, 2008 12:37 AM, Michael Sweeney wrote:>> Rex wrote:>>> >>I'm told that there's hells of money in porn and scrapbooking, but they> >remain fairly marginal nonetheless.>>>>>>...Don't kid yerself -- porn is, to quote Hyman Roth in "Godfather, Part II,">> "bigger than U.S. Steel..." ...HUGE business that has, over the past 30 years,>> driven the penetration (no pun...) and uptake of nearly every technological>> advance in the world (VHS, discs, Internet, downloading vids, etc.)...> > >I don't doubt it, but for a couple of reasons doesn't have that muchcultural... erm... traction, I guess. One is the nature of the businessitself... people just aren't going to admit to consuming it. But the otherthing is that it's just so very fragmented and divided into specializedniches that I don't think anyone can agree to any great, epochal, or (waitfor it) seminal works of porn. So Porn as a big monilithic thing is huge, but by its nature it doesn't seemcapable of producing any great, major, universally acknowledged significant"works". < ...Yeah, but I think it IS pretty universally consumed (within reason, within tolerances), even considering different tastes AND the "Who, me?" reaction that even (especially?) heavy users often have about it. (To me, it's almost like the underpinning of the Bill Clinton witch-hunt -- yes, he cheated, which is reprehensible and perhaps a reflection of judgment and character, but...ultimately, it's up to him and his wife to decide what it means to them and their relationship...HOWEVER, the moralizers seemed to equally weigh the "but he lied about it!" charge...which, to me, seemed like the only natural human reaction...cheating = bad; at that point, lying about cheating = duh...kinda the same with porn -- many people consume; not as many talk about it...) ...And, besides, to me it doesn't seem analogous with, say "regular" movies, books, etc. -- the more some producers have strived to create grander, more artful porn, the (mostly) more stupid it seems (i.e., "Caligula" -- which I will always recall late '70s FM radio ads for in which even Bob Guccione himself could not correctly pronounce the title: "My new film, Cal-UH-goola," he'd say). It's more work-aday and goal-oriented than striving for deathless art. Seems closer to a computer theme or wallpaper picture (which you select for comfort or familiarity or because it says something to you or about you) than to significant works (or even attempts thereat)...and, of course, nobody ever says "Oh, you HAVE to see my laptop wallpaper pic" -- unless, of course, it's some totally awesome porn pic! (and...that's closure!) Michael "Oh, man, you shoulda seen the HUGE, monolithic, uh, pieces* of art this chick** had in this movie I saw last night!" Sweeney *insert "piece" for "pieces" **insert "dude" for "chick" ...see, equal opportunity bad jokes! _________________________________________________________________ Need to know the score, the latest news, or you need your Hotmail.-get your "fix". http://www.msnmobilefix.com/Default.aspx ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 15:35:41 -0800 From: Carrie Galbraith Subject: Re: videogames On Feb 13, 2008, at 8:53 AM, The Great Quail wrote: > One, games that play on consoles, such as the Xbox 360, PS3, or > Wii, must be > certified by the companies that *produce* those consoles. And as it > stands, > no game that is rated Adults Only (Ao) is allowed to pass > certification. > Now, granted, that's a decision made by the capitalist entities that > manufacture those consoles, but it undeniably limits what we as adult > consumers may choose from. In several of the companies I worked for we made games for consoles and Nintendo were the worst at censoring content. We had to submit the games at various stages to get "approval" to go forward. One of our games changed considerably because they felt there was too much blood. Now I'm not a horror film fan but I can tell you - we came nowhere NEAR any horror film level of blood. Hell, the violence was tame by "24" standards. But Nintendo made us cut a lot of it and then we ended up having to make the rest green, not red. We did it, probably because we were already invested financially, with the size of the development team and the amount of time it takes to make a game. Yeah, we were being censored. But this also can happen with PC games. Not for original titles but anything that is licensed has very tight reins on it. Take for instance all the Star Trek games I worked on. Paramount kept us on very short leashes. We had to submit each version of the game for approval. They rejected areas in the games for being "un-Star Trek Universe like." Of course they were strict about the rendering of anything about the ship or the tools or the uniforms or the insignias, I'd expect that. But even the worlds we created were carefully scrutinized, and then sanitized, by them. I noticed the Producers were starting to self-censor after a while, saying that certain things would never get approval from Paramount so we just shouldn't do them. My point? The games industry has been living with this for a long time. It's very much a consideration when a game is begun. Is it good or bad? It's strange, and I don't think it's good, but unless game companies stop making games in protest, or gamers stop buying games in protest, it's not going to change. On Feb 13, 2008, at 4:44 AM, Marcy Tanter wrote: > > The upshot is that I am amazed by how video games are so much more > than what I assumed they were. Many of them have real stories that > unfold as puzzles are solved; many of them have incredible graphics > that are extremely artful and beautiful. The most amazing part is > the music. I never realized how music is so integral to many > games! There's a wonderful web site, ocremix.org, where you can > hear remixes of video game music, many of which will captivate you. I have several store-bought cds of game music. One of the best is from one of my favorite games of all time - Riven. I love that soundtrack. - - c ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 15:39:45 -0800 From: Rex Subject: Bizarre same-car bumper sticker juxtaposition of, thus far, the year Dateline: Burbank, CA, noon-ish: "QUESTION AUTHORITY" "I'M ADDICTED TO JIM CARREY!" Yours, Rex ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 18:55:04 -0500 From: Caroline Smith Subject: Re: Bizarre same-car bumper sticker juxtaposition of, thus far, the year It wasn't Jenny McCarthy's car, was it? ; ) On 13-Feb-08, at 6:39 PM, Rex wrote: > Dateline: Burbank, CA, noon-ish: > > "QUESTION AUTHORITY" > "I'M ADDICTED TO JIM CARREY!" > > Yours, > Rex ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:12:03 -0800 From: Rex Subject: Re: Why do they like porn? (was: Re: why do they hate Hillary?) On Feb 13, 2008 3:29 PM, Michael Sweeney wrote: > > (To me, it's almost > like the underpinning of the Bill Clinton witch-hunt -- yes, he cheated, > which > is reprehensible and perhaps a reflection of judgment and character, > but...ultimately, it's up to him and his wife to decide what it means to > them > and their relationship...HOWEVER, the moralizers seemed to equally weigh > the > "but he lied about it!" charge...which, to me, seemed like the only > natural > human reaction...cheating = bad; at that point, lying about cheating = > duh... Well, don't forget what the actual VRWC was trying to pin on Clinton: any fucking thing they could. So the witch hunt was about Whitewater (which must have been selected for sounding like a good scandal name because it had "water" in it); they get the guy under oath to talk about that and throw out the totally unrelated name of Intern McBlowjob, and he reacts as one would, and there you have it: the President lied under oath. Anyway... ...And, besides, to me it doesn't seem analogous with, say "regular" movies, > books, etc. -- the more some producers have strived to create grander, > more > artful porn, the (mostly) more stupid it seems (i.e., "Caligula" -- which > I > will always recall late '70s FM radio ads for in which even Bob Guccione > himself could not correctly pronounce the title: "My new film, > Cal-UH-goola," > he'd say). It's more work-aday and goal-oriented than striving for > deathless > art. Seems closer to a computer theme or wallpaper picture Almost more like cigarettes or junk food. But in all its particulars, it's the same as a regular old picture, or piece of video or film footage or magazine, but the way in which it's consumed is so very, very different that it's almost impossible to classify them together. That, combined with the taboo on public discussion about it, is what makes it seem to be outside the arena of public discussion-- I hope I've been clear in using the term "marginal" to signify that. On the off-chance I'm wrong, what recent porn recommendations does the feg community have? (smiley emoticon here if I used them) - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:22:56 -0800 From: Rex Subject: Re: videogames On Feb 13, 2008 3:35 PM, Carrie Galbraith wrote: > On Feb 13, 2008, at 8:53 AM, The Great Quail wrote: > > One, games that play on consoles, such as the Xbox 360, PS3, or > > Wii, must be > > certified by the companies that *produce* those consoles. And as it > > stands, > > no game that is rated Adults Only (Ao) is allowed to pass > > certification. > > Now, granted, that's a decision made by the capitalist entities that > > manufacture those consoles, but it undeniably limits what we as adult > > consumers may choose from. > > In several of the companies I worked for we made games for consoles > and Nintendo were the worst at censoring content. We had to submit > the games at various stages to get "approval" to go forward. One of > our games changed considerably because they felt there was too much > blood. Now I'm not a horror film fan but I can tell you - we came > nowhere NEAR any horror film level of blood. Hell, the violence was > tame by "24" standards. But Nintendo made us cut a lot of it and then > we ended up having to make the rest green, not red. We did it, > probably because we were already invested financially, with the size > of the development team and the amount of time it takes to make a > game. Yeah, we were being censored. > Censored at the corporate level, though, not by the state. For what that's worth. With the lincensing stuff, the studios are protecting their brands, which is what happens in exchange for the game company getting to use the brand to begin with, right? Why is this possible? Why can you not create a game for a console without going through the console manufacturer? This hasn't happened with any other media. It's news to me, and a surprise, because back in the day it seemed like anyone could make a game for anyone else's console. There were even a few-- and doubtless hilarious-- "X-rated" titles for the Atari 2600. Atari made games for Colecovision; Colecovision had a module that let you play 2600 games, etc. I guess that's all different this time around, huh? > > My point? The games industry has been living with this for a long > time. It's very much a consideration when a game is begun. Is it good > or bad? It's strange, and I don't think it's good, but unless game > companies stop making games in protest, or gamers stop buying games > in protest, it's not going to change. > So it all does seem like market forces. The console people institute the censorship not due to political pressure, but from the fear that some kid's mom will see something alarming in the game and *then* make a stink about it that reaches the ears of moralist politicians, or something like that. - -Rex Broome, not admitting to ever having played "Custer's Revenge" or anything ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:50:37 -0800 From: Tom Clark Subject: Re: videogames On Feb 13, 2008, at 4:22 PM, Rex wrote: > Why can you not create a game for a console without > going through the console manufacturer? I believe the answer to that is because game developers are specifically licensed to create games for specific platforms, i.e., the development environment and manufacturing are tightly controlled by the platform maker. On a related note, my whole family has recently become hopelessly addicted to "Crash of The Titans" on our Wii. Not much of a "story" per se, but gobs of fun and funny characters. - -tc ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V16 #501 ********************************