Westsidewill – Wild Off The Air

So it’s almost October, which means it’s almost, almost the Holiday season. For me that means one thing, game makers come out with some of their heavy hitters for the season…but not this year.

Nope it seems like game makers are surrounding the Holiday season with games but no one seems to want to be put right in the holiday season with fear they won’t be able to perform. So, with that in mind, I’m giving you the list of games I’m most excited about regardless of the release date (before or after) the Holidays!

(Keep in mind this list will most be xbox 360…because that’s what I play)

1) Dragon Age: Origins
Release Date (For Xbox 360): November 3, 2009
The Story (by the Nooge): Think Mass Effect – then add some swords and armor and you got Dragon Age. Considering Dragon Age came after Mass Effect you can be sure that they have improved on quite a bit that probably drove you crazy with Mass Effect. I’m thinking Dragon Age is the “Fantasy” RPG’s answer to the “Sci Fi” Mass Effect. If you ask me this is just EA being smart with their buddies BioWare and covering all their bases. We’ll talk about Mass Effect 2 in a bit, but what I want to point out is that this game is out a few months before Mass Effect 2…giving fans of the RPG a chance to buy both.

Trailer:

Why? I have to tell you when Boomer and I were younger we used to love to play games like this from BioWare (Bauldurs Gate) and I think that is probably what has me most excited about this game. And the trailer looks really cool right?

2) MechWarrior
Release Date: TBD (And probably a long way off. There is a legal battle between the Robotech people and the rights holders to the Battle Tech games (which MechWarrior is based off).)
The Story: Well if you haven’t played a MechWarrior game before let me say you were missing out on something in the 90’s. These were the best games for the PC, and this is of course before internet gaming came out, you could sit down a play a campaign by yourself and enjoy it! The story goes like this; you pilot a Mech. You fight for a clan or for a non clan type army. The point? Blow up other Mechs. Sure it’s a whole lot deeper than that, but if you don’t want to think and just want to have some fun blowing things up this is for you.

Trailer:

Why? It’s going to be badass, I mean just look at the trailer. And when I was a kid this was by far one of my favorite PC games (behind front page sports: Football Pro of course)

3) Dead Rising 2
Release Date: Early 2010
The Story: If you played Dead Rising you know the story, you kill zombies. In the first one you killed them to save people in a Mall. In the 2nd edition you are in some sort of gambling paradise and have to Kill zombies for fun! It would appear as if this one is more of a game show type (Check the 2nd video I posted below) – whereas the last one was done to save people. Either way, you want to kill zombies this is your game.

Trailer:

And the Gameshowy trailer:

Why? Are you kidding? Who doesn’t want to smash up some zombies? Pshhhh, no one.

4)Mass Effect 2
Release Date: Early 2010
The Story: If you played Mass Effect you know what Commander Shepard is all about, if you haven’t let me tell you what he’s about: Banging blue chicks. That’s right – blue. How many blue chicks have you banged? Zero. How many times did you save the galaxy? Zero. So you are wayyyyyy behind Commander Shepard – but the good news is that in Mass Effect 2 you have another chance to play the game like he lives every day of his life.

Trailer:

Why? I played Mass Effect…didn’t bang the blue chick…and I’ve been regretting it ever since! Seriously, Mass Effect was in my top 3 games ever for the xbox 360. You can play through it a lot like Dragon Age will let you play through – you can pick how you do it. You don’t have to be Mr. Nice Guy world saver, you can be Mr. Screw You…but I’ll save you any way world saver – and that’s more my style.

5) Modern Warfare 2
Release Date: November 10, 2009
The Story: If you played the first Call of Duty: Modern Warfare then you know that this game is about 1 thing – the multiplayer. I’m going to have to take a step back for a second and say that the single player campaign mode was probably one of the most fun games that I have ever player, but the multiplayer is intense. I traded in my Modern Warfare for Fable 2…biggest mistake of my life…

Trailer:

Why? While the trailer doesn’t show much, the original was awesome. And you can find a whole ton of better game play videos on youtube. It’s an awesome game.

Anywhoooooooo…that’s my list of games I’m excited about pre and post holiday season!

Someone actually wrote me asking me if I knew how to do those “cool” chipmunk remixes that you find on youtube using Audacity…yes. But they aren’t cool.

However, this will be a nice exercise for all of us to learn some editing effects that could be used in the future if you have some sort of project you want to do this for. And we aren’t going to be doing this some easy way either…we’re going to do it the way so we learn something!

What You Need For This Tutorial
- Audacity (Do I really need to say that?)
- A .mp3 of a song you want to “chipmunk”

The Lesson

This may seem like a fairly useless exercise, but I think we will be able to learn and get comfortable with some simple editing techniques that could come in handy later on in our adventure with Audacity.

Step 1
- Select what song you want to “Chipmunk”…
- Open audacity

Step 2
- Import the .mp3 you want to chipmunk (Remember that’s File>import…)

Step 3
- Make sure you have the entire audio file that you have imported “selected”

Step 4
- Go to Effect>Change Speed

- That box should pop up. Select From 33 1/3 to 45.
- Click OK

Step 5
- That move should have shortened your whole track and managed to speed things up. Listen to it now.
- It sounds kinda like the chipmunks but it’s WAY too fast right?

Step 6
- We have to fix that tempo and make it roughly the same length as the original track.
- Import the ORIGINAL .mp3 again – it should now appear under your new track.

Step 7
- You should now see just how much shorter your new version is than the original. We want to fix that.
- Be sure you still have your version selected – you don’t want to edit the original that you just imported.
- Go to Effects>Change Tempo…
- You are going to want to change the tempo roughly -35.0% (do that and click OK)

Step 8
- Compare the lengths.
- You should see that they are almost identical, remember that you can do more tempo changes if you want to get them exactly correct.
- Hit play.
- You should now hear that while they sound like chipmunks, the tempo is the same.

Step 9
- Pat yourself on the back. You just “chipmunk’d” a track.

Step 10
- You don’t need to export this, unless you really want to. I don’t know why you’d want a track like that, but whatever you can do what you want. Just remember the steps that we did here today, it should help us with editing in the future.

Review

While chimpumking a track may seem like a stupid waste of time, and a good way to ruin a track, it wasn’t for us today. We learned how to change the pitch of a track and make it sound “chipmunky” without using the easy “Change Pitch” effect that sometimes doesn’t work like it should. There is nothing wrong with learning alternate ways to do things today, am I right? The more ways you know how to do something the better off you are.

In what can only be described as news that I don’t think anyone who has a life of their own really cares about, Khloe Kardashian married Lamar Odom.

If you are scoring at home the 3rd hottest Kardashian sister, out of 3, married the 3rd best Laker, out of 5 (behind Kobe and Gasol) after 1 month of dating.

A lot of people are saying this sort of marriage won’t last, I’m saying there is no way it doesn’t last. Let’s look at the facts – Lamar Odom is getting up there in age and he was going to make a play for attention he had to do it soon, because goodness knows 90% of the country ignored him on the basketball court. Not me however. Nope. When I was a kid one of the first really good trading cards I ever pulled out of a pack was a Lamar Odom SPx Rookie. It was an awesome card!

Awesome is a relative term however. Lamar Odom was awesome compared to most of the crumbums in his draft class who either got hurt or went crazy…or both…but not so awesome in the grand scheme of card collecting…And look at this pic of Khloe and Lamar…she looks pretty “awesome” right:

So…yeah I think that’s her? I can’t really tell to be honest, it looks like a clown/stripper maybe. So let’s go with that’s her, but we’ll put the MAYBE on that it’s a clown stripper (cause look at the size of those hands she’s sporting…HUGE.)

But honestly Khloe Kardashian looks good in the grand scheme of things:

Seriously she isn’t bad looking at all. But I think what hurts her, like what hurts Odom, is when you compare them to other people. Like Lamar being overshadowed on the court, Khloe is overshawdowed by her hot sisters:

But that my friends is why this marriage will work! We have 2 overshadowed “stars” who needed to get their own form of populartiy quick, or their time was going to pass them by…and guess what? They were able to do it!

Time to bust out that Lamar Odom SPx rookie and put it back in a place of honor!

For those of you who have an Xbox 360 like I do, I’m sure you know that Halo 3: ODST came out today.

What is Halo 3: ODST for those who aren’t in the know? It’s a halo game that started off as a short expansion pack that built itself into a full game. Yeah…it’s like the dudes at Bungie just said to each other, “We could release this as an expansion and make a few million bucks…OR make it a full game and make LOTS of millions!” They went with the “Make lots of millions” option.

That isn’t what this blog is about, you can check out reviews of this game on any one of a number of websites out there – what I wanted to talk about was some of the “release” parties that are out there.

That’s right folks that is an actual sign telling those who brought “prop” weapons that they are going to have to check in. How many parties have you been to that actually had the foresight to have a sign made warning those with prop weapons that they need to check in? Personally I’ve been to zero.

But what does that say about those that brought a prop weapon? I love video games as much as the next guy, but I don’t think I’ve ever thought it was a good idea to dress up as my favorite character at some game launch event!

Or how bout this…

Someone brought their kid to this event. I think it’s a fairly violent game – it’s not super violent so I can see kids playing it – but I can’t see an adult bringing a kid and dressing like a halo ODST guy…am I right?

Maybe it’s just me but that’s fairly strange. But I think this last one takes the cake:

See More Halo 3: ODST Various at IGN.com

Can you imagine how many babes you are going to have to fight off once they see you rolling in that bad boy?!?!?

Pshhhhhhhhh…like a million. Good thing you’ll have your power armor in the back…you’ll need it.

Anywhooooooooo if you have xbox 360 enjoy the game! I heard it’s awesome, not dress up for it and roll in a suv painted like it awesome…but still awesome.

But remember kids, enjoy games responsibly, or you could be one of those dudes in the pics one day…

Wednesday is hump day, and if you are like me you’d think something with the word “Hump” in the name would be awesome!

No not because of it’s reference to something dirty, but because of all the great songs that are out there with “Hump” in the title. What songs you ask?

I present to you my top 3 Hump Day “Hump” songs!

3) MC Hammer “Bumps and a Pump”…Ok this one didn’t say “hump” in the title at all, HOWEVER in my defense I always thought it was the song title.

The craziest thing about this video is how Hammer decided the world wanted to see him in a speedo…no. That’s incorrect. I’d also like to point out he has the biggest cell phone of all time…but when you were a player in the 90’s you had to rock the Zack Morris cellphone.

After watching that video again…it really really creeps me out. This is not a top 3 video for anything…this is just weird…Oh hammer why did you drop the MC from your name.

Ok…let’s shake that first one off, let’s go to an artist who I think we can all agree is sane.

2) Bobby Brown “Humpin Around”

It’s actually a fairly catchy hook am I right? If you know this song you know what I’m talking about. Here is Bobby performing the song “live”

Wow…Ok…so far our list is full of kind of creepy dudes – we got damn Hammer walking around with just a speedo on…What in the damn was that? And then we have bobby brown with just suspenders and no shirt. Why? I have no idea. This is a terrible list so far…but wait!

1) Digital Underground “The Humpty Dance”

Let me preface this, any song where you can say that you got busy in a burger king bathroom and make it make sense you did something right. And while getting busy in a burger king bathroom sounds fairly gross, you have to consider it came from a guy who wears a fake nose. Enjoy the greatest song of my youth (actually, the song was kind of old when I got the “sex packets” CD.) I can’t hear this song and not think of Mario Kart 64.

Judging by the above image, I gotta tell ya Shock G made a good choice in becoming Humpty Hump.

I just don’t know that he would have made it in the gangsta world.

Have a great Wednesday.

I bet some of you have probably seen those P90X infomercials on TV and know what it’s all about, and for those of you who haven’t let me give you a quick run down.

The P90X is a workout/diet/crazy person plan that is supposed to get you super duper ripped up in 90 days. Personally I like going to the gym and lifting weights and never really thought about doing some sort of program until now. The thing is that my younger brother bought the DVDs and some of the other things that you could buy the the P90X and I was like, screw it, I’ll do it.

So here I am, Day 1 of the P90X program.

And I know what you’re thinking, “Nooge…why blog about it?” Well I just don’t think we talk enough anymore! I mean, when’s the last time you have asked “Nooge…what’s new with you?” …Jerks.

Anywhooo…yeah it’s me vs. the p90x, but I needed motivation, so here is what I look to for motivation.

Jason Giambi…was on steroids like crazy, but he didn’t let that be the only thing that defined him. Nope as he was getting jakked up he grew one of the greatest mustaches in recent baseball memory. That’s what I’m looking to for motivation…I’m doing the P90x and I’m gonna be super duper ripped up, but it won’t define me. Nope…I’m also going to grow a mustache! (maybe)

Facebook announced Tuesday that they have around 300 million users, there are about 307 million people in the United States. That’s really crazy if you think about it, and not so crazy if you think about it.

Facebook has around 300 million users, yes, but not 100% of their user base is in the United States. So, it’s not really AS impressive as it looked at first, but it’s still impressive.

Also Facebook announced that they turned a profit! FOR THE FIRST TIME! To me that’s huge. They have over 300 million users AND just turned a profit? It’s kind of not the best news in the world for those who are internet ONLY businesses. If you have to have 300 million users to turn a profit on advertising what does that say for those who don’t have 300 million users?

Also, what does it say about the leadership at Facebook? Myspace actually was turning a profit WAY before the 300 million mark.

I just think it’s all very interesting – but the important thing to point out here is that as a musician you have to look at the trends, if you don’t have a Facebook page what are you doing?

Everyone is jumping on Kanye West today for his crazy as all get out outburst at the VMA’s.

Let’s “enjoy” it together:

Now, if you read the comments on that video you’ll see there are some fairly strong opinions about what happened last night, what the cause of it is, and what’s to blame. Some (read: a lot) of people are saying it’s a race thing, Kanye did that because he was black. NO. That has exactly zero to do with anything.

What I’d like to point out is that we’ve all failed Kanye West. This isn’t the first time he’s done this sort of thing and his fans never really seem to punish him for what he does.

But I don’t think that’s the point either. I think Kanye has some sort of retardation that his fans have simply ignored. Those of us who aren’t fans probably also ignored it because we don’t care for, or about, Kanye West. But the writing was on the Wall!!!! And we are all to blame.

Let’s take a look at some facts:

- Start with his official Website: “KanyeUniversecity.com” the poor guy tried his best to spell university…and just failed. We all let it slide…that’s on us!!

- How about the “apology” he posted on the a fore mentioned site: “I’M SOOOOO SORRY TO TAYLOR SWIFT AND HER FANS AND HER MOM,” Kanye wrote on his site, AP reported. “I SPOKE TO HER MOTHER RIGHT AFTER AND SHE SAID THE SAME THING MY MOTHER WOULD’VE SAID. SHE IS VERY TALENTED!” – What is with the all caps Kanye? He probably doesn’t even know that he was typing in caps…or what caps look like. Poor fella.

- What about those sunglasses he wears…that you can’t see out of:

He tried to DRIVE with those on. Why didn’t we stop him! You can’t see through plastic Kanye…you can’t see through plastic.

- What about the fact he seemed genuinely surprised the fans didn’t care for what he was doing last night:

Poor fella. He can’t seem to understand what’s right and wrong.

- And finally from Mentalhelp.net when trying to diagnose mental retardation:

Deficits in social skills also come into play in a school setting. Individuals who have mental retardation struggle with understanding social rules like taking turns and waiting until someone else finishes speaking before talking. Some social concepts are beyond the grasp of those who are mentally retarded. The concept of money is a good example; mentally retarded individuals tend to have difficulty understanding how money works. Mentally retarded individuals also tend to have difficulty understanding cause and effect relationships, for example, recognizing that there are consequences for actions.

If that doesn’t describe Kanye West what does? Seriously – that’s 100% him.

Before we all rush to judge Kanye, let’s try to help him out. Clearly he is mentally retarded and needs all the help that he can get.

By the way, Taylor Swift handled that thing as well as any 19 year old could. She probably deserves to be the big story of the night with the way she handled it, not some mentally retarded guy running on stage.

9/9/9 … that’s today.

What is so cool about 9/9/9 and the number 9? Well I have some cool facts for you about 9/9/9

- 9/9/9 is going to be the last time, in our lifetimes, well most of our lifetimes some of us may still be alive, that we will be able to write the date with ALL SINGLE DIGITS! Jan 1, 2101 will be the next date in this progression. So in theory some kids now will be around on that date. They’ll be old. But alive.

- Has anything rad happened on 9/9/9? Ummmmm…Kind of? On the FIRST 9/9/9 9 – Arminius’ alliance of six Germanic tribes ambushed and annihilated three Roman legions of Publius Quinctilius Varus in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. So…I mean there was a battle…that went poorly for the Romans. But after the whole Jesus thing the Roman empire started to go downhill…

- However, 9/9 has one huge event in my life, 1999 – The Dreamcast, the last video game console to be produced by SEGA, is released. That’s right 9/9/99. I remember I was just a kid, and couldn’t drive, and my mom took me to some local video game store where they had like 20 of them just sitting around. News stories were coming out about how hard it was to get a system and some random dude just had 20 at his shop. This was before Gamestop/EB took over the local video game store. That’s what made it fun. The system as a whole was pretty cool, I remember the first game I got was Ready2Rumble along with Crazy Taxi. Of course followed closely by my purchase of House of the Dead…the best voice acted game ever:

Darn that Goldman!!!!!!!!

- How about the #9 in terms of Athletes? Yeah I got my favorite #9 ever…Lindsey Vecchione…of the Chicago Bliss of course!

Another #9 I like is Joey Davenport of the LA Temptation…yep…

I’ll stop now.

- For those of you who are down numerology think that the #9 has special powers. Does it have special powers? No. But it has some neat math tricks about it:

Any number times 9 will have it’s solution able to add up to equal 9. Example. 9×9 = 81 … 8+1=9 (Try it for any number times 9…I’ll wait…) It even works with up to a 4 digit number 9×5001 = 45009 …. 4+5+0+0+9 = 18….1+8 = 9…. And it works like that with every number up to 4 digits times 9. It can be broken down a bunch.

9 is kind of a weird number. 1/9 = .1111 repeating. .1111 repeating times 9 technically + .9999 repeating.

- September 9 is the 252 day of the year. Not really anything neat about that number unless we add up the sum of 252 and we get 9…that doesn’t really have anything to do with 9/9/9….but I guess neither did those athletes I posted…

I guess the moral of this story is that 9/9/9 has never really had anything cool happen. There was kind of a battle where the Romans got rolled…but they kind of made a habit of getting rolled by tribes and barbarians towards the end there. So while it may just be another day, it still looks cool to write!

Since the dawn of man there has been an epic struggle between good and evil, and every once in awhile these forces lock horns for an epic battle that will decide the fate of the world.

This battle is upon us my friends.

The Battle: Dave vs. The Nooge

What is it?
A series of challenges pitting your 2 favorite radio DJs against each other, with each challenge being posted in video form on YouTube AND WestSideWill.com . When this starts up Dave and I will be doing one challenge a week and posting the videos. We will be asking for volunteers AND participation from our fans and listeners.

How to get involved
There are many ways to get involved but at this point in the planning process we are just looking for ideas for challenges. They can be as wacky and wild as you can dream of, and if we use your idea we would be honored if your would introduce the challenge for us via video that week! We assume that our videos are going to be getting Millions…or zero…watchers EACH WEEK! So you could be a star. You don’t have to introduce the idea if you don’t want to, Dave and I could do it, but we were just thinking you could!

Remember when presenting an idea explain EXACTLY what you want us to do. Don’t just say, “Play basketball.” Or “Drink beer.” Give us the ground rules of what you want your contest to be. So using the basketball example you would say ‘Play a best of 3 1 on 1 series with each game being up to 21, you have to win by 2. No 3 pointers, each basket is worth 1, 3 pointers are worth 2.’ See that’s not a TON of writing it’s just enough to explain to us what to do!

Deadlines: Ummmmm…we are starting this in October, so we’d love some ideas right now, but you can submit them any time you want. We hope this is gonna be a rad weekly contest!

Competitors:

The Good Guys:

Team Nooge

Team Nooge…which is lead by me…the Nooge. I know what you’re thinking, the fact my mascot wears size 36 x 32 pants is kind of weird for a penguin. Well he thinks you’re weird.

The Bad Guys

Team Dave

Look at the evil in his eyes!!! How can team Dave NOT be the bad guys?!?!?!

So if you have any ideas for us we would love to have them! Either leave them in comment below or email us at Media@WestSideWill.com RE: Versus IDEA!