Eye of the Duck

Felt sort of like a motorbike had been grinding its tire on my face when I woke up to-day. I just caught the cold that's been going around. I remember in War and Peace when Napoleon had a cold Tolstoy had him say at one point, "I'm sick of this cold." So this is one of those eternal laments, persisting in spite of the obvious reply, "So you were enjoying it at first?"

I'm sick of this cold.

I'd been making hot toddies for myself for a couple days, but yesterday I decided to try it without whisky. I also made a version with chai tea which was quite nice--I tried substituting it for my morning coffee to-day, but I finally had to make some coffee as the tea just doesn't have enough caffeine.

The sky was finally clear to-day so I went out and fed the ducks. Most of the ducks milled around me chaotically as usual, but this one just fixed me with a stare like he was trying to hypnotise me into giving him all the bread.



The cold seems to have gotten me in an odd Internet meander mood. I was looking at this article about a shakeup of staff at The Daily Show and I saw that Pam DePace, wife of Scott DePace, the politically conservative television director for The Howard Stern Show, has been promoted. I wonder what political discussions are like in that household.

I checked Scott DePace on Wikipedia to make sure my memory was right, and I saw that the guy used to work at Showbiz Pizza. I'm trying to remember if I ever ate at a Showbiz Pizza. I think what I'm remembering is talking about it with other kids one night at Chuck E. Cheese and thinking how glad I was to be in a restaurant with a vaguely cabaret influenced animatronic mouse rather than a restaurant with an animatronic hillbilly bear. I think Showbiz Pizza may have been a last gasp of the mainstream fondness for the redneck aesthetic of the 70s, and Chuck E. Cheese's milieu was considerably more versatile. I would say this is why Chuck E. Cheese succeeded where Showbiz failed.

Cheese for thought. Though I am but a naive babe in the woods of novelty pizza joint punditry.

I really do like my memories of Chuck E. Cheese, though. This dark, enclosed world of noise and neon light and, somewhere lurking, those freak shows--the giant walking grey mice, one a guy in a suit, and the dim awareness that at the same time there was a dormant robotic one waiting silently behind a curtain. I think I remember playing a Superman game in the arcade a lot.

Which reminds me, I forgot to mention watching the trailer for DC Universe Online. Though the trailer itself doesn't contain gameplay footage and is mostly one of DC's lame tangents into the Justice League at War with Batman in his RoboCop outfit, looking sort of like his costume from the end of The Dark Knight Returns, ordering troop movements.

But Tim also showed me some footage by one of the YouTube mmorpg commentators he likes to watch, the Cynical Brit, who's been playing the beta, and the videos show a rather impressive looking free-roaming Gotham City;



Seems like DC's cashing in on what City of Heroes/Villains started (like all mmorpgs, Tim's played that one and tells me he had a character modelled after the Action Man from Venture Brothers), but looks a bit more polished. And the presence of Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill as Batman and the Joker, respectively, is definitely a big plus. I kind of like that these guys have become the voices of Batman and the Joker for just about every animated incarnation. I'm not sure why I like that, I just do. Traditional, I guess.