If you're an idiot, don't vote

You know, anything that manages to piss off Sean Penn is cool by me. The brilliant, recently released "America: The Book," from the folks behind the Daily Show, features a great note dedicated to him that I would advise you check out. I don't know if Penn saw it or has opened his mouth regarding it, but I'm sure it pissed him off. What doesn't?

But even more recently, I had the great pleasure of seeing the movie "Team America: World Police." We'll get into that in a second.

Team America creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, better known for South Park, have obviously been making the rounds in support of their outrageous Jerry Bruckheimer-esque political satire starring marionettes, and Matt Stone said something that pissed off Mr. Penn.

"Stay home," Stone said in an interview to undecided voters. "It doesn't matter who you're gonna vote for. If you really don't know who you're gonna vote for, or are uninformed, or haven't really thought about it. Just stay home. If you really don't know or you're just going to vote for George Bush because he's already in office, or you're gonna vote for John Kerry because he's on the cover of Rolling Stone, don't do that. That's lame."

Penn, as a result, wrote in a letter to the Los Angeles Times, which, of course, published it. Penn then invited the South Park creators to take a trip with him to the Sunni Triangle. Because, apparently, that's enough to convince someone that dumb people should vote.

I mean seriously. If you haven't made up your mind by now, don't fucking vote. Please. You're obviously retarded.

In fact, anyone who was swayed by the debates or the Democratic or Republican conventions is a moron. If you have any idea of what you stand for, you couldn't have two candidates with their differences more clearly defined in respect to the issues that are the most important to a majority of voters.

In short, if you haven't figured out where you stand by now, don't bother. Give it another four years, at least.

And you give it a rest, Penn. You're an asshole.

But back to Team America, because it shows a puppet version of Penn meeting a grizzly demise. The film will undoubtedly offend anyone who is sensitive to the issues on any side of the political spectrum, as, in the South Park style, the film takes no prisoners.

Me? I loved it.

Parker and Stone explicitly shared my previously shared hatred of Michael Bay in a brilliant ballad called "Pearl Harbor Sucked and I Miss You." They parodied the plotline of every action movie you've ever seen pefectly. There's not one, but two Star Wars references. There's a montage that features a hilarious song describing the science behind movie montages. What more can you ask for?

In fact, I keep mentioning the songs, because really, the songs steal the show here, much like in Stone and Parker's previous effort, "South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut." You'll find yourself humming the tune to "America, Fuck Yeah!" long after you leave the theater.

Equally impressive, though, are the extravagant sets built for the film. A ridiculously detailed Times Square makes a 30 second appearance in the movie. The amount of work that must have gone into it is really quite amazing, as some people who saw the movie asked if the Times Square scene was a model.

But hey, none of it matters. I won't ruin the jokes. All you have to know is this: It's funny, it'll piss a lot of people off, and Sean Penn is ticked. Works for me.

Combat (Re)Evolved

So let me tell you a story... about Halo. I've been a fanatic of the game for a long time. I remember reading about the game when I was a freshman in high school in videogame magazines, back when it was only going to be on Macintosh systems. After seeing the first videos of the game in action at some Mac conference years ago, I was damn near ready to buy a Mac.

Then I had the pleasure of seeing the game in action at E3 my sophomore year. I had to wait in line for like two hours to get into a dark room to watch some guy play the game on a huge screen in front of myself and a bunch of other nerds. He showed off all kinds of cool stuff, all while I sat there and drooled.

A year later on my second trip to E3, Microsoft had bought Bungie and made Halo an Xbox-only title. A long way from being a Mac-only game, for sure. Being the Halo fanatic I was, I just had to get my picture taken with a giant Master Chief statue. What a glorious day that was.

The original Halo did quite a number on my free time when it came out a few months later. My friends and I spent plenty of time lugging around Xboxes and TVs to get massive LAN games going on. I fondly remember the days with some CTF on Bloodgulch, or pistols and shotguns playing Slayer on Hang 'Em High.

Things only got worse when the XBConnect software came out, making it so that you could play Halo online. It tricked your Xbox into thinking it was playing a LAN game when, in fact, it was over the Internet. Sure, it was laggy, but it was Halo online. Can't beat that.

So I subscribed to Xbox Live last year expecting Halo 2 to come out around Christmas time... but no luck. I invested in a few Xbox Live games to warrant my purchase, but never really got into the whole Xbox Live community thing. I was just more of a casual Xbox online gamer.

So here we are a year later, and the news has just broken that the much anticipated Halo 2 has gone gold and will meet its launch date of November 9th. Now I know I'm not the only Halo fanatic around here, as I'm sure many people reading this will spend a majority of their free time post-November 9th playing it. I also know that the Xbox Live community will undoubtedly grow exponentially as a result of the game's release.

As a result, I've made my gamertag publicly available, in anticipation of Halo 2, as you can see on the right side of the page. It also sports a link to a list of Live-compatible games that I own and currently play online. I've decided it's time to get the most out of my investment into Xbox Live, so for anyone reading who's got Live and wants to play some games, feel free to send a friend request to me.

My latest Xbox Live obsession has been Star Wars Battlefront, which came out a few weeks ago. While not as polished as other similar titles (like UT2K4), it does offer massive online combat in the Star Wars universe, which is enough to get a nerd like me all excited. I tell ya, there's nothing like trapping an AT-AT in the tow cables of a snowspeeder, all online.

And it will suffice in the meantime, at least until the glory of Halo 2 graces all of us with its presence.