I love cover songs.  Ask my wife, she usually hates them.  Especially if they're covers of songs she knows and likes.  But I love them anyway, and I often listen to CD's filled with covers when I'm driving with my kid or by myself.  One thing I especially love is the rather difficult art of the cross-genre or off-genre cover.  This is, as you may have guessed, where an artist takes a song from one genre (often rap) and covers it in a completely different style (often folk or piano-pop).  And so, after the break, you will find fourteen off-genre covers I find entertaining.  Enjoy!

This past Sunday (November 15th, for those of you keeping count), Nintendo released a new Mario game. New Super Mario Bros. Wii is a blast. It is the first straight up Mario game that is playable by up to four people simultaneously. Sure, most of the old school 2D Mario games were two player, but you had to take turns. The new one is a side-scroller that you actually play with your friends.

It turns it into a bit of a free for all. Your characters all physically interact with each other, meaning you can be nice or not so nice to your fellow players. If you want, you can carry your less gaming-inclined friends through a particularly difficult level. Or if you want to, you can toss a shell at them or pop the bubble in which they return to play after dieing while they float over a pit. If you read any of the dozens of reviews of the game out there, you'll be told numerous times that it will ruin friendships. I can totally see it, even though I've only played it with my wife so far, and she hasn't left me over it...yet.

OK. First off, I want to apologize to all the thousands upon thousands of you that I'm sure have been trying to comment since I put up the new template but were unable. I'm always logged in when I check these things, and as such, did not have to attempt the word verification when I was testing comments. Thanks to those of you that were kind enough to mention that you were unable to perform the word verification due to the layout acting funny. Rather than monkey with my HTML, I opted to remove the word verification and require comments to be approved by me. This may chance, as I just realized while visiting Junket Juice that I can have commenting happen in a popup, which might be a better choice. Either way, however, it should work now.


So, sometimes things irritate me. They aren't big enough for me to write an entire post about, but I'd like to put them out there anyway. So here goes:

I don't remember hearing anything about a GI Joe movie until a good bit after the first Transformers film came out. Which means, and I could be entirely wrong, that it took them far less than two years to create. If true, I can't say I'm surprised. I'm forty-six minutes into a one hundred seventeen minute movie about toys I grew up playing with (hell it's even got a fancy Hasbro logo at the beginning), and I have never wanted to turn it off more.

What better place to start than the beginning. The cold open, if you can call it that in a movie, comes up and what do you see? A horse and buggy outside a castle. The date pops up on the bottom of the screen: 1641. What? Wait, is this the right movie? It said Hasbro earlier. I wonder how many people got up to check that they hadn't taken a wrong turn somewhere...

In 1641 James McCullen, the seriously-elder, was caught by someone or other selling weapons to both sides of a war. That's usually a bad idea, and so they put a red-hot iron mask on his head. And, as an image of torture is exactly the kind of thing we want associated with a "Real American Hero", now seems the most appropriate time to roll the logo. Of course, we're not looking at "Real American Heroes" anymore, as the unit was put together by a group of ten countries. WTF? You don't need to instill a sense of multi-culturalism into my childhood!

Got a letter in the mail the other day.  An actual letter.  Printed on paper, sent in an envelope with paid postage and everything.  The letter in question was from the Ford Motor Company.  They sent me this letter because they wanted to explain to me that, despite what one might expect, they had, in fact, made a mistake in the design of my 2002 Explorer.  They wanted me to know that they couldn't be 100% confident that after "many years of service" my Explorer wouldn't just start on fire and kill anyone within twenty feet.

Well, Ford Motor Company, just how long is "many years of service"?  Is it eight years?  Do years of only accumulate while I own the vehicle, and reset if I sell it?  I mean, I've only owned it for two years, but prior to that someone else did.  How long will it be until the death-mobile that you've created for me is ignited as if by the flames of hell and begins burning people alive?

Aidan turned two years old today.  It seems like he's been around a good deal longer than that.  Both for all the lovey-dovey feelingsy sentimental reasons and because he just seems like he's a tiny little person walking around.

He has opinions.  I didn't know you could have opinions about stuff when you were 2.  Just the other day, at nap time, we had the following conversation:

"Daddy, I don't like napping in my crib."
"Ok, buddy, would you like to try napping on Mommy and Daddy's bed instead then?"
"Yes."
So, I carry him to our bed, which is downstairs, and turn off the TV, grab his "pullow" and his "bing" and lie down on the bed.  Both of us. I lie there on my own "pullow".  I close my eyes, and he follows suit.  Everything seems to be going smoothly, until about thirty seconds later, when Daddy, who is feeling rather tired, gets a headbutt to the belly.
"Aidan...it's nap time.  Lay down, please, and go to sleep."
"Daddy wake up."

Yep, I've only been around for about 2 weeks, and I'm changing domains already.  I figure I'll work on a custom theme here soon, too.  Sticking with Blogger for hosting for the time being.  Figure I'll wait until I learn how to setup Wordpress on a different host and get that all working before I bother getting one.

Anyway, take a look at your address bar.  With any amount of luck, it says http://www.boxcarinc.com.  Do me a favor and let me know if it doesn't. :P

Update: New theme!  Let me know if you like it!

This is Aidan.  You may recognize him from my profile pic.  I have no words to describe how awesome it is that my wife was able to snap this, the most perfect of shots, with our shoddy little point and shoot.

Ok, while I'm not yet out of ideas, I'd like to throw this out there before that happens.  I generally browse around teh intarwebs looking for things that I'm happy to not be a part of.  As it turns out, there seems to be a lot of those things.  What's important is that I find things I can actually write a post about.  For a counter example, well, at least I'm not dead.  Sure, I'm glad I'm not dead, but I can't really fill up a whole post about not being dead. 

So I figure there's probably a number of things you guys are happy to not be a part of that I've not yet thought of.  If there is, leave me a post here and maybe I'll use it (with credit to you, of course :).  Hell, if I use your idea and you have a blog of your own, I'll even be sure to link to it from my post.  So lets get those think machines goin'. 

Another thought I had was if there would be any interest in hearing (reading) my thoughts as they happen while I watch certain movies.  I figured I'll give it a shot later today or tomorrow with GI Joe, which I've heard is pretty horrible.  We'll see how that one goes.  If you can think of any movies that are either really good or pretty horrible that you'd like to hear my thoughts on while I watch it, you can post those, too. 

Look forward to hearing your ideas!  Now I'm gonna go watch last night's series premier of V.  It looks pretty good, and it stars Elizabeth Mitchell, who you may remember as Juliet from LOST.  Juliet has quickly become one of my favorite characters on LOST, mainly due to her stellar performances in the last two seasons. 

Anyway, off to watch some fancy moving pictures.

Oh no.  People are actually gonna buy this.  This makes my brain hurt a little bit... Ok Mike, pull it together.  You can do this.  It's not THAT stupid.  Somebody might have an actual reason to buy it.  Just give it a shot; you're just talking about the thing, after all.

Ok, so a company called Peek has released the Twitter Peek.  "What's the Twitter Peek?" you ask.  Well, if you must know, it's a phone.  That doesn't do anything but Twitter.

So, I read a lot of other blogs, since posting here, while fun, doesn't really take up that much of my time. And, among all those other blogs, there are a few that I frequent because I am either so engrossed in the subject matter or they are simply that good. Here's a few of each:

I'm sure most everybody knows about it, but Joystiq is the place I go for anything video game related.

Some people hear "mashups" and think mixing the Google Maps and Facebook API's. I hear "mashups" and I think mixing Nirvana and Rick Astley. Now, if you liked that, head over here. If you didn't like it, I might have to hit you. In the face.

Do you flinch every time an almond nears your mouth? Do you find it difficult to be in a bar where they serve peanuts? Do you have nightmares about Mr. Peanut? You could be suffering the effects of Post-Traumatic Nut Disorder. See your physician immediately. Then read the rest of Junket's blog, cause it's just as good.

Like food? I do! Here's a blog full of spicy recipes. Make them! Eat them! Tasty!

I think that's all for now. Get a move on, there's good reading to be had!

Just a little list of ten songs that make me think of my wife. :)

My brain is feeling a bit off today.  So, rather than try to come up with something to post about, here's some more links that I thought you should see.

Star Wars Remake (Well, kind of...)
If you haven't heard of dooce.com, I'm sorry.  Best blog I've read.
He's not laid off any more, but he's still funny.
Gonna see this every time now...

Couple of videos after the break.