Update tomorrow

I will have a band review up tomorrow on Bring Me the Horizon...nifty little band from Britain. Also I should be getting the podcast started up this week with hopefully a trial run towards the end of the week and hopefully try and get some other blogs written up time willing. Thanks as always guys and hang in there while I get my schedule fixed up...almost on track.

Stephanie Holmes Hometown Comedy Show

I have a little side note before I get into this blog. At this show last night I ran into a lot of high school friends and such and 1 in particular I would like to thank. As I was leaving she told me she keeps up with the blog but she doesn't much get into games but she likes it and this made me feel so great about the blog and it makes me want to keep up a bit more. So you know who you are and thank you.

So I have been spamming that I went to this since last night so I figured I should elaborate on the experience. Background info - Stephanie and I went to high school together and I have known her for years. She was always the funny theater girl who had big ambitions. I hadn't seen her in years due to her moving to New York out of high school. I got an invite on Facebook a few weeks ago letting me know she would be back in our hometown to do a free comedy show. I had no idea what she had been up to for all this time and it was great to see she was doing what she wanted to after all these years.

She was described to me as such; classier than Sarah Silverman and she gets paid to write dick jokes. All right I thought...high school. In all honesty though I was very impressed. She has amazing timing on all her jokes and she has the ability to take the joke down to the point that everyone has become uncomfortable except 3 people in the room. This to me is the ability of a great comedian. To be able to go from a full room  of laughter down to a joke so extreme that the audience knows it's funny but is uncomfortable about laughing. George Carlin was able to do this and lately I have seen Daniel Tosh do this.

She was very versatile in her material making everyone in the room feel a part of the joke. Ranging from jokes about poop to funny stories of high school. A few political jokes sprinkled in for good measure and I have to say it would fit on any Comedy Central Presents. I came home after the show and went to Youtube to see if she had any videos and I was surprised to see a couple music videos and some live stand up. I am not going to just say support her because I went to school with her...I'm going to say support her because she deserves it. It is obvious she takes a lot of time to work on her material and she cares very much about her craft. If she comes near you support her. I will link her Youtube at the bottom of this page and if you have some extra time check her videos out. Forewarning they do contain adult material.

SHolmesComedy - Youtube

Monster Rancher DS Review

So I picked up Monster Rancher DS not too long ago in an attempt to relive some of my childhood gaming habits. The basic setup has not changed over the years and only a few things have actually been updated for the newer system. In the original for the Playstation you had to swap out different CDs to obtain monsters and it was a very unique idea and had me scrambling for every CD in the house. This time around they are playing to the strengths of the DS and allow you to either say a word or phrase or you can draw a picture onto a grid to obtain a monster. I really enjoy this and spent a good amount of time trying to figure out what monsters I could get.

You can store up to 30 monsters in a "cryo" chamber and for the first part of playing I did nothing but draw pictures and store the monsters I wanted. After creating your monster you can take it back to your ranch. The ranch is made up of a stable for your creature and a house. You can upgrade 1 of these every year. The larger the stable you have determines the size of monsters you can have. The larger the house you have determines how many items you can have. From there you can train your monster through different tasks that will raise it's stats. You also later on in the game can take your monster to a location and train it's stats up much more than usual. This will cost a good chunk of money but also will save you lots of time. These area's are set up like a board game and can raise stats, lower stats, generate a random wild monster, and raise and lower the amount of rolls you have. There are also areas that you can search with your monster but I never got into these so I don't have much to say on them.

Once you train up your monsters you can take it to battle. You can only battle in the level you are in starting at D and working your way up. I prefer to train my monster up a lot before I enter these so that I can have the monster make it's own moves and I can just watch the battle. I have yet to finish the game and I don't think I have ever finished a Monster Rancher game. I like to just do the everyday training and see what all monsters I can get. I like to look at these games as a less in depth Pokemon. You get your monster, raise it's stats, and battle in tournaments. There are no RPG elements beyond that. You don't have to walk around and there aren't any random battles. In this way I think it is more accessible.

Based on what I have played so far and the amount of enjoyment and nostalgia I can honestly say the games hasn't needed to change much to still be fun. I'm giving this one a...

9 out of 10