Monday. Night. Football.

Forget Tirico and Kornheiser. Those guys are going to be mailing it in by 8 p.m.

I can personally guarantee that myself, Rich, and Alex are going to bring it, playoff-style.

Just one of the reasons I love Dead Rising: People die, even if you aren't there to help them.

Take Natalie Meyer for example, whom you meet early in the game after reuniting her with her husband Jeff. I'm not certain if it happens every time you play the game but, in my case, after the two reunited and I continued on with Jeff down into the mall proper, it wasn't long before the news flashed on my screen: NATALIE MEYER IS DEAD.

Was it my fault? I thought. Should I have done something differently? Did I unwittingly leave some door open that left her exposed to the horde of famished undead? Could I have saved her life?

In the end, of course, none of those questions matter, as it wasn't long after that I was trading gunfire with Carlito and hacking my way through walls of zombie flesh with a chainsaw. But it's nice touch, one that makes you think about your choices in the game and consider what your actions (or inactions) will reap down the line.

My other favorite early moment in the game: entering the Al Fresca Plaza buildling only to be attacked by a panicked Burt Thompson and then caving his head in with a sledgehammer. It packs a nasty, chunky crunch, that sledgehammer. It just might be my favorite videogame weapon in recent memory.

Fans of ESPN's Page 2 have long marveled at Bill Simmons' Herculean ability to bang out 5,000 words-per-column on practically any topic (assuming said topic has something to do with David Ortiz, Larry Bird, or poker). Now we know he does it. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the "Sports Guy Column" generator.

Just a few snips from the example I whipped up this morning:

So I'm sitting there the other day watching ESPN2 and I see that Alex Rodriguez had a great game. There is nobody, with the possible exception of Eddie Popowski, that I dislike more than Alex Rodriguez. In the pantheon of people that 'Make the Sports Guy enraged,' these two are a tight race.

The phone rings. It's my friend Bish. Awestacular! Bish is always willing to discuss our mutual distaste for Alex Rodriguez. Don't get me wrong--we respect his abilities. But he's the Marge Simpson of sports. Totally annoying, yet on TV all the time. Bish mentions that it would be nice if Alex Rodriguez caught a case of shingles at the beginning of September, opening a Moran Norris on creatine-sized hole for the Red Sox to cruise to the playoffs.

Bish points out that the chances that Alex Rodriguez will come down with shingles in September are minimal, but that if we expanded the possibilities, there would be a greater chance for debilitation of some sort. As usual, Bish is a crazy genius.

Here is what we came up with:

4. Alex Rodriguez receives a vicious DDT from Mark Loretta in front of 40,000 fans jammed into Fenway Park.

(On a side note, has there ever been a greater moment in sports than when when Hulk slammed Andre the Giant? That and when when Danny Noonan sank the putt in Caddyshack are the winners of the 'Most Awestacular Non-Real-Life Sports Moment Competition 2006.')

3. Alex Rodriguez is informed by his wife that their child was not fathered by him but rather by either Mike Wood or David Littlefield.

2. Alex Rodriguez hangs a homemade collage featuring scrabook-style clippings of Brandon Walsh and John Kreese (aka Cobra Kai Sensei) in his locker. He is immediately placed on the DL with 'flu-like symptoms.'

1. Alex Rodriguez meets Santino Rice from Project Runway, falls in love, and leaves team to begin filming 'My Fair Yankee.'

--

Ordinarily, I'm never an advocate of partnering up to own a fantasy baseball team. That's like getting picked up by Alyssa Milano and going back to her place, only to find out that Evander Holyfield is already there. If the best you get is to share, sometimes it's not worth it at all, right?

However, this league only had one slot open, so Bish and I agreed to partner up, in the hope that one of us could switch over and manage the next vacancy. After much debate, and eliminating the excellent possibilities of 'Naked Monopoly with tablecloths' and 'David Wells's Shiny sequin as potential team names, we settle on 'Boston Larry Birds.'

Spied this over on Kotaku; Superman Returns' Brandon Routh on his "love" for World of Warcraft:

I just like that world. I love medieval time and swords and horses and that kind of thing. It's fun to live that out, and I can play with some friends who also enjoy the game. It's challenging and mentally engaging. It's just fun.

Boy, talk about ebullient praise. The nice thing is, Routh can apply this exact same quote--with only the slightest of tweaks--to practically any activity, including animal husbandry, push-up contests, off-track betting, baking, speed reading, interior decorating, cobbling, brand management, wine tasting, voting reform, industrial espionage, journaling, iPod repair, nature photography, chemical sales, consumer advocacy, cartography, network troubleshooting, calligraphy, shark hunting, dolphin hunting, haberdashery, the German language, archiving Golden State Warriors memorabilia, keyboard cleaning, coin collecting, snow skiing, business card criticism, white balancing, pie charting, guitar tablature, ticket scalping, paper mill architecture, home foreclosures, gaffing, armed uprising, bird watching, the poetry of Gord Downie, conservative talk radio, server farm administration, music video choreography, a good shave with a straight razor, glass blowing, penning hymnals, smelting, high diving, subscribing to Atlantic Monthly, learning Eskrima, faxing, and font design.

Did I miss any?

I was in New York City over the weekend and, while flipping through the latest issue of Time Out! (a local entertainment rag), I noticed that I had missed a performance by Steven Seagal and his blues band, Thunderbox by a single day. Which sucks. But not for the reasons I initially thought.

You see, I'm a big fan of Seagal's movies--I've probably seen Hard to Kill more than any other person west of the Mississippi--but I recognize that there is a certain level of cheese to his filmography. Okay a massive level of cheese. Except in Hard to Kill, because that movie kicks ass. In fact, that movie kicks so much ass that it kicks the ass off the back of your legs, scoops it up off the ground and brings it to your local FedEx office, mails your ass back to you in via overnight delivery, shows up at your house the moment is delivered, performs a surgical reattachment of your ass, only to proceed to immediately kick it off again to start the whole cycle over again.

Now, I had read somewhere that Seagal was a part-time musician and a collector of vintage guitars, but I had no idea he was taking his act on tour. Or that his band's name was "Thunderbox" which is just sublime.

Having missed Seagal and Thunderbox's performance at B.B. King's, when I got home yesterday I proceeded to look up Seagal and his band's Web presence. I found out that Seagal has released a couple of CDs, the most recent of which is called Mojo Priest. Imagine my surprise when I read a bunch of positive reviews for the CD--what's more, the praise sounded completely irony-free. So I checked out a few tracks for myself and, you know what, they're not too bad.

Seagal jumps all over the blues map on Mojo Priest, from the drowsy blues pop tunes like the opener "Somewhere in Between" to shuffle numbers like "Love Doctor", and bluesy swings such as one of the three cover songs on the CD, "Hoochie Koochie Man". Plus, there's two songs with the words "ass" in the title: "Alligator Ass" and "Talk To My Ass", which are both perfect titles for blues songs. If they ever re-release Hard to Kill, they need to include both these songs in the soundtrack--that way the movie would kick two more asses.

Seagal's voice isn't great, but it's certainly not bad--his straining, half-spoken, half-sung vocals remind me a bit of Albert Collins, especially in the shuffle numbers. And while I didn't get to hear much in the way of his guitar work, if it's anything like the rest of the CD, I expect that it might surprise me as well. About the only thing I didn't like while previewing the CD was the incessant presence of the back-up singers--they're too loud in the mix and didn't really work for me at all.

So yeah, I'm sorry I missed Seagal last week. I would have been curious to see if he could pull off his sound in a live setting. Maybe he'll come to the Bay Area on his tour. If he does, you know I'll be there, requesting "Alligator Ass" all night long.

The next in a series of interesting things found buried in GameSpot, offered without comment or explanation.

Welcome to Blur Lines, a periodic column I'll be writing here in my GameSpot journal devoted entirely to the world of racing games. Anyone who knows me knows that racers--specifically those of a more sim-like nature--are my weapon of choice when it comes to my gaming free time and, here, I'm aiming to share not only my anecdotes and insight into the world of racing games, but my passion for the entire genre as a whole.

--

For the past few months I've been waiting and waiting (and waiting) for MotoGP 06 to come out. Even though I played the living crap out of the game while previewing it, I'm glad to be starting all over, now that I am an official owner. And no, I'm not just doing it for the points--I'm doing it because it's the latest entry in one of my all-time favorite racing series. I actually skipped MotoGP 3, if for no other reason than my Xbox went kaput on me, and I knew the 360 game was coming along sooner or later. And even though there's plenty to like about the last game in the series, I'm pleased as punch to be playing the next gen version of the game.

Yesterday was my first full day to spend with the game, and I spent it going through the first season in rookie mode. I know I can win consistently at a higher difficulty level, but I wanted to ease my way back into the game; re-acclimate myself to the controls and, of course, earn some attribute points for my created rider. The best part about starting out in rookie level is that you can make all the mistakes you want in the game, including learning the racing lines and braking points for the new tracks like Shanghai, Laguna Seca, and Istanbul, without ever being out of contention in the race itself. I even found myself experimenting a bit with some of my time-tested control setups--moving the rear brake to the X button, then the B button to see which setup felt better. It's been a long time since I played a MotoGP game intensely, why not change things up a bit before I get set in my ways...

Winning races and completing challenges in the game earns you attribute points for your created rider along four different characteristics--braking, cornering, acceleration, and top speed. The least useful attribute in the game is top speed; it means next to nothing in a game like this. After all, only select portions of a track give you a chance to open things up that far. Instead, speed is found by maximizing your bike through the corners, braking as little as possible and maintaining as much speed as you can in the exit of corners. Consequently, acceleration can be mostly ignored as well--the only time it's really useful is when trying to get back up to speed after mistakes. The best way to be fast on any track in MotoGP 06 (or practically any racing sim) is by getting your braking and cornering together. Personally, I put the majority of my points in braking, followed by cornering, then acceleration, and top speed. It's a formula that seems to have worked so far but, then again, I haven't put my bike up against any real competition yet.

With my attribute points plan in place and an established comfort level with the game's controls to boot, the next stage is to get back into shifting gears manually. In my experience, you simply can't win online races at the upper echelons without it. The setup I prefer in the game assigns the up and down gear shifts to the X and A buttons, respectively, though ideally I'd use the left and right triggers for that.  But, no, I can't do that because I use the right trigger for gas, and left trigger for the front brake. If I had the guts to make a big switch in my control setup, I'd move the gear shifts to the left and right trigger buttons and keep the throttle and front brake on the regular triggers, but that's just a bit too much change for my tastes.

Of course all of this racing line and control setup naval gazing has its purpose: online racing. Back in the MotoGP 2 days on Xbox, I was a pretty fine racer, and could hold my own with practically anyone I went up against. Of course, back then, the game didn't use the seeding system the last two games have employed (which supposedly pairs you with racers who are closer to your skill level). I'm fairly certain I could go online tonight and have a great race agianst players of comparable skill. But there's some egotistical part of me that doesn't want to take my game back online until I've got my skills back to where they used to be, or at least as close as possible. So until I've got my bike's attributes maxed, until I've got my paint job and rider's leathers customized to a fine-tuned cool, until I've got the manual gear shifts back under my fingers, I'm holding off on online races. When I re-enter the world of MotoGP online, I want to make sure it's at full strength. Until then, it's the rookie series, and experimentation, and plenty of spills to go along with it.

One more amusing aside from yesterday. While watching me play the game yesterday, my wife casually asked me, "Why don't you play from the first-person view?" I switched over to the dizzying perspective, turned deep into the curve and said, "It's confusing to me. Plus, it's scary." She waited a few seconds and watched the bike takes its deep turns left and right before finally agreeing, "You're right. It's scary."

--

Racing Game You Should Play: Colin McRae Rally 2.0

Song That Should Be in a Racing Game: Out Here All Night, Damone

Miscellaneous Racing Thing: Pinks

For the last few mornings, I've been getting up early to log some time with Top Spin 2--mostly to unlock a few single player achievements that I haven't gotten to, but also because I think it's a really great game. I've really warmed to it in the weeks since its release; I suppose I didn't take to it at first because it played substantially different from the Virtua Tennis: World Tour, which was holding steady as my previous tennis fix. The controls, the slower pace, and those pain-in-the-butt risk shots were all obstacles after enjoying World Tour's easy grace. However, the more I play the game, the more I'm puzzled by it.

See, I think I see a pattern emerge in the single player game. It goes like this: In the first set, I'm unstoppable--letting loose with a virtual barrage of aces and cross-court volleys that leaves my opponent--be it Roger Federer or James Blake--a quivering mass of tennis defeat. Then the second set rolls around and, all of a sudden, that same puddle of failure reforms into the second coming of Pete Sampras, Martina Navratilova, and Björn Borg all wrapped up in one tightly wound shot-making tennis mage. They're deadly accurate at the line, aggressive at the net, and don't seem to make a mistake for the rest of the game. At this point, I've got to up my game considerably just to finish it out, sweating through break points, and multiple deuces in the hopes of getting a lucky shot past my opponent.

What's going on here? Is this some extremely frustrating form of catch-up AI, designed to keep the game close? Or is this actually some really sly AI programming by the folks at Indie Built and Pam, recreating the inevitable changes of fortune that seem to always crop up in pro tennis. We've all watched as pros like Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Maria Sharapova completely blow it in one set, only to storm back in the second and take the fight right back to their opponent. Could Top Spin 2's AI actually be emulating the sort of never-say-die spirit that is seemingly ingrained in the DNA of pro tennis players? And if this extremely focused AI was by design and developed--and not just me reading into things that aren't there--then how does this phenomenon differentiate from the so-called "cheap" catch-up AI tactics on display in so many bargain bin-bound racing games?

Certainly there are other possible explanations for why I inevitably blow it in the second set: Lack of concentration, my inability to play effective tennis when playing from the far court position, or just me getting cocky and thinking I've got the game wrapped up after a single set. Still, there seems to be something else going on in that game and, even if I can't exactly put my finger on it, I can't wait to get back to my 360 and see it on display some more.

You know, in hindsight, that's probably an ill-advised title for this journal post. But seriously, when my baby is born (and no, I'm not announcing anything) he or she is going to be getting a steady diet of this. Learning can come later, right after the Tigers.

Okay, I'm kidding.

But it does remind me of something my buddy Brad once said: "My kid can to school anywhere he wants to. But I'm only paying for Auburn."

He wasn't kidding.

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While in Tokyo last year, I filmed this girl going straight up ninja on a Pop'N Music arcade machine. Just before I recorded this, I had seen some guy in a suit and tie absolutely tear up a Beatmania machine. Interestingly, the guy in the suit was moving around like crazy, jumping up and down during his game. By contrast, I had to admire the Zen-like tranquility this girl demonstrated while deftly putting on a master show.