Cap’n Ken’s Homespun Wisdom

Ever since diving into the GTA world sometime back with Vice City and now San Andreas, I”ve had to fight the urge to shoot pedestrians, run over motorcycles and generally raise havoc on the streets.

But now I have to resist the temptation to roll objects on the street into a giant mash of ever-growing junk.

A couple of weeks ago, the wife and I had drinks with Brown, and he was telling us about this bizarre PS2 game called Katamari Damacy that had fallen into the hands of That Yellow Bastard. Brown said something about an evil King, stars being taken from the sky and a little Prince who had to roll junk up on Earth to replace the aforementioned stars. And he suggested having TYB bring the game over to The Cap”n & Wife”s Post-Holiday Holiday Party (held this past Saturday).

I didn”t ask TYB to bring it, fearing its introduction would turn our outwardly civil shindig into a Katamari tournament.

But the Bastard did one better. He bought us a copy as a party gift.

We managed to hold off until around 2 a.m., when the sensible people had left, before busting out Katamari. I was just drunk enough to really enjoy TYB”s demo session (the wife”s sister”s boyfriend was far too drunk to enjoy it, but not quite drunk enough to hurl while trying to follow the action).

It”s truly a bizarre game, but amazingly fun and addictive. As Brown and I were discussing, the Japanese have always injected some bizarre stuff into their video games, but technology is just now catching up to allow them to really develop these insane environments. I imagine Pac Man has some really strange backstory, but the technology of the time allowed only for a game showing a little yellow dude chomping dots and being chased by four ghosts of various personalities.

Not so Katamari. Roll up bits of sushi into your ball? Sure. Cats? Why not? Get a little bigger, pick yourself up a child … then an adult … maybe a guy in a Mexican wrestling mask.

The wife and I played Katamari a good bit yesterday and last night (we may have sold another unit for Namco after introducing it to Robin and her man when they came over for some PS2 action last night - remind me to call Mr. Robin at 6:29 tonight …) and I got my Katamari up to 4 m, 71 cm.

I believe this is just the beginning.

[editor"s note: If you want to buy Katamari Damacy for yourself, click the link below to get it at Amazon, and The Cap"n will get paid a buck!]

• Katamari Damacy at Amazon

Did I mention how much this thing rocks? Flawless performance (It did require a little tweaking to get two to work at the same time - and the user “manual” is worthless) and freedom to play NCAA Football 2005 from the kitchen.

And did I mention that if you buy it from Amazon using the link below, I get paid $1.50?

[editor"s note: Cap"n Ken is obviously playing around with different ways to try to generate a few pennies here and there from The Wisdom.]

Incidentally, if you”d like to go ahead and pre-order that Sony KDE-50XS955 50″ Plasma HDTV I know you”ve had your eye on, you can use the link below and Cap”n Ken will get paid $300.

This week finds The Cap”n pondering a choice - one which could have profound implications for the future of my life in general.

Last weekend, the wife and I visited Robin and her man to give them some inside tips on playing San Andreas. After poppin” some caps in the arses of homies and getting them quickly addicted to SSX Tricky, Mr. Robin decided to introduce me to online play for NCAA Football 2005.

And now I want in.

I love NCAA Football on the PS2. But I play almost exclusively by myself against the computer. This is due in part to my anti-social nature, but it also serves as a nice self-limiter of time spent with the game. There”s only so many times Cap”n Ken”s LSU Tigers can beat up on PS2 USC before I put the controller down.

And every time I think about getting social with PS2 football, I”m reminded of my last year in college, when I lived with my buddy Dave and Madden “92 was released for Sega Genesis. That game was the first thing to displace free half-scrambled porn as our favorite pastime, and we racked up hundreds upon hundreds of hours on the Genesis.

With the free PS2 online system, I”d be opened up to a world of thousands of Daves just waiting for a game. “Think of your wife”, I keep telling myself. “Your job, your dogs, the big mortgage payments, all the stuff that will build up on the TiFaux …”

I fear they”d all get second-fiddle status if I open this door and unleash the online PS2 monster.

What”s holding me back at the moment is my philosophical opposition to paying $90 to get a wireless hub to connect the PS2 to my home network. Without that barrier of entry, I fear I”d already be on the path to hell.

[editor"s note: Cap"n Ken has a birthday coming up in two months, and a Linksys Wireless-G Game Adapter would make an excellent present.]

[editor"s sensible side note: Please do not give one of those to The Cap"n.]

After reading the cover story in L.A. Weekly entitled Hollywood Country and realizing that a monthly jam session referenced in the piece was happening this week, I decided to drive down to Hollywood last night to see what all the fuss is about.

“It Came From Nashville” is the brainchild of a singer-songwriter named Tonya Watts.

Watts - and bear with me here - is a transplanted Alabamian who has done modeling/acting work (bikini.com, The Beautician and The Beast, Married … With Children), used to be a body/stunt double for Pamela Anderson and is married to soap opera beauhunk Brian Gaskill* of The Bold and The Beautiful. Seriously.

She bills herself as an “Alabama outlaw” and goes out of her way to build her outlaw cred. On her website, she refers to herself as “a quirky country girl” and says she “has more lip than any conservative format has room for.”

That last statement may actually - and literally - be true, in a rather ironic way.

At first glance, Watts seems like a perfect fit for Bigtime Country - she”s good looking, she can sing and she has a nice Southern accent (although to me it seems more Tennessee than Alabama. Acting?)

But upon closer inspection, Watts looks like just another surgically-enhanced Hollywood plaything. She”s either had a lot of work done (most notably the big lips) or she”s the woman every other gal in Hollywood is trying to look like:

(check out her site for more images. Stupid Flash site.)

She”s cut a record produced by Dusty Wakeman (co-producer of Anne McCue) but can”t seem to get it released. One of the tunes is called “Right Road Now” and talks about making bad choices in the past but doing better now. Unfortunately, it”s hard to become a sculpted bikini model / Pam Anderson stand-in and then get on the road back to “Alabama outlaw.” Even her friends call her Barbie.

One of the other “It Came From Nashville” regulars is a kid named Waylon Payne. OK, “Waylon Payne” sounds completely contrived, right? The worst possible fake Hollywood name for a country wannabe … trading on Waylon Jennings and creating the “wailing pain” homonym. And he”s good looking, too. Must be the product of some Hollywood star factory.

Or not. Turns out Waylon is the son of Grammy-winning country belle Sammie Smith and Jody Payne, longtime guitarist for Waylon”s godfather (and the man he”s named for) - Waylon Jennings.

That kid is talented, comes from a proper country music background, is good looking and has a great name. He put out a record last year that the L.A. Weekly writer refers to as “intensely murky self-indulgence”, but if I had to bet on a breakout star of “It Came From Nashville”, it would be Waylon.

So the show was entertaining, just a few folks up there playing acoustics and jamming on each other”s material. I get the feeling Tonya thinks the “It Came From Nashville” will do for her what the “Tuesday Night Music Club” did for Sheryl Crow. But I wouldn”t bank on it.

And for all the “buzz” Hollywood Country is starting to get, the first “It Came From Nashville” in about four months that happened the week of the L.A. Weekly cover story drew about 45 people. Of course, the weird venue - Genghis Cohen - only holds about 50 (one corner is for music, another area is a tiny bar, and the rest of the place is a respectable-looking restaurant), so I guess that”s a good turnout.

If you read the L.A. Weekly piece, it talks about how Nashville doesn”t care about honest, simple country. As bad as that may be, I think it beats Hollywood, which doesn”t seem to care about country at all.

*[editor"s note: Mr. Gaskill was at the show last night, sporting a nice David Soul/Hutch leather jacket and looking very much like a Vitalis model from the 1970s. The depth of his soul is revealed on his web site, which sports this opening quote: "Bury me with Valentino when he dies and we will rise as one heart beating for one moment that will last forever in one dream that dances the waltz in a mosh-pit?�no matter how much we bleed or get punched in the gut, we keep on keepin?? on how we wanna keep on, forever kissing her tears away in a broken hearted fantasy where there??s no such thing as wasted dreamers and love is as simple as penny candy".]

Circumstances in the world today require an update to my “list of chicks I can do”:

a) Jennifer Aniston is available
b) I”ll be in L.A. all this week

I figure being able to honestly use the line “I”ve dug you since that Ferris Bueller TV show” gives me a bit of a leg up. I”ll try not so say “of course, you were hotter with a little more meat on your bones” or “you”re still pretty hot to be 35.”

Jennifer was on the original List I presented to The Wife at our wedding, but was removed because she and Brad seemed so happy together.

But now she”s back! And, sadly, that means somebody”s gotta go. Currently on The List:

• Katie Holmes
• Lauren Graham
• Ali Landry
• Sarah Bernard (of CNN”s American Morning / 90 Second Pop)
• Anne McCue

Katie, Lauren and Anne are must-keeps, as they in very different ways represent the finest of womanhood. So, then, do I kick off Ali or Sarah?

Sarah - cute as can be; smart, funny. But married and lives in New York.
Ali - hot, single, from Louisiana and lives in L.A.

So as much as it pains me, I”m taking Sarah off. But welcome back to The List, Jen!

Wish me luck in L.A. this week.

The wife and I robbed a Kenneth Cole store yesterday.

Well, not literally, but we feel like we did. Mr. Cole had sent us a card for a weekend sale at their outlet, so we headed up to Discover Mills.

And we came away with:

For The Cap”n
• Reaction wool bomber-cut coat (retail $200)
• Kenneth Cole Italian leather shoes (retail $160)
• Kenneth Cole leather belt (retail $29)

For The Wife
• Kenneth Cole black leather (girly) biker jacket - the coup de gras, as the wife has been hunting just such a jacket for months and really didn”t figure to find such a fly one at an affordable price (retail $350)

So we”re talking $739 worth of merch at full retail - not that we ever pay full retail. The breakdown:

• Wool bomber-cut coat - just reduced at winter clearance to $89.98, plus take 40% for the weekend sale. New cost: $53.99
• Italian leather shoes - in the clearance bin, marked down to $59.98, plus take 50% off (standard for clearance shoes). New cost: $29.99
• Belt - marked down to $19.98, plus take 50% off. New cost: $9.99
• And the wife”s jacket - marked down to $139.98 previously, just reduced to $99.98 at winter clearance, plus take 40% for the weekend sale. New cost $59.99

And thus $739 worth of stuff becomes $153.96.

But wait, there”s more!

The sale card mailed to us read “Bring this postcard in from January 6-9, 2005 and receive an additional 20% off your total purchase.” And we did.

It should be noticed that the ambiguously ethnic sales girl tried to tell us that the extra 20% didn”t apply to the 40% off stuff. Silly girl.

Once we let the manager know (very politely) what “receive an additional 20% off your total purchase” means, another $30.79 was knocked off our tab, bringing our pre-tax cost down to a still-hard-t0-believe $123.17.

My math says that”s 83% off the original retail price.

Sure, we bought the coats in the “off season” (although 90% of Atlanta”s cold weather is still to come, and we tend to keep outerwear for many seasons), and maybe some snotass Ken Cole fan could potentially see me in my new shoes and realize my fine Italian kicks were from last season, but I really don”t care.

Life at 83% off retail. I dig it.