On the television, there was an ad for "Beaches" resort (which is just foolishness. We all know that Sandals is the only resort approved by Michael Scott of Dunder Mifflin) that used a cover of Weezer's "Island in the Sun". Now, "Island in the Sun" isn't my favorite Weezer song (That would be "Across The Sea"), but that doesn't mean that I want Rivers and company to whore it out. I mean, if they needed money that badly, I would have bought the overpriced 2 disc version of the Blue Album, or a third copy of Pinkerton. (I bought one regular version of the album, and then a twenty dollar copy at their concert that had been signed by the band. I think I've bought the Green album twice too, actually- one American version, and one import version with an extra track.) This is not as bad as when "London Calling" was used by a British car company (Jaguar, maybe?) or when Dylan makes a bizarre appearance in an ad. And it's not as bad as I'll feel when Courtney Love goes ahead and sells the rights to "Lithium" to Pfizer (or whoever makes the drug lithium.) But still. I've put up with three straight albums from Weezer that were ultimately disappointing. I put up with two of the shittiest opening acts I've ever seen when I saw them tour (Ozma and Saves The Day, but James was subjected to the Get Up Kids when he saw them, so maybe I'm ahead on that count.) When Rivers publishes the book of largely terrible short stories that I think we all secretly know is coming, I'll probably buy it and pretend I care about stories set in Japan as much as he does. But I think I'm reaching the point that most Weezer fans probably reached six or seven years ago.
Oh, and this game is as addictive as Dane Cook is annoying:
Learn exactly how little you know about African geography, then feel slightly racist.
2 comments:
I mostly found out that my knowledge of the geography of South America and Oceania is even worse than I thought it was. In South America if it's not Brazil, I'm kind of lost. My African geography knowledge seemed slightly better than I thought, although still not very good. I thought it was very odd when I got asked to find Venice or something in Venice three times in two rounds. I also thought that it was very strange that they asked me to find Myrtle Beach one time. That was in the medium category, which suggests that it must be geared towards Americans, since I can't imagine anyone from outside of this country even having heard of it.
I was jazzed that they asked me to find both Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and Guadalajara, Mexico in two different rounds, though, since I happened to look them up on a map last week. I was curious where Puerto Vallarta is, so I checked it with Google maps, but the first time, I entered just Vallarta, Mexico, which turns out to be a suburb of Guadalajara and about a 100 miles from Puerto Vallarta. I did pretty well on those two questions.
The whole thing is sort of interesting because the size of the countries in an area really changes how important it is to be able to recognize the country. For instance, clicking on somewhere in Peru when you really wanted somewhere in Chile costs a lot points. Clicking on Croatia when it asks for Serbia doesn't really hardly matter. Part of what saved me in Africa was having a good idea of what countries are part of the big bunch which runs east-west on the central west coast. I don't know which is which, but I tend to be able to say "that's one of those ones" and then I could click nearby. On the other hand most anything I got in Russia killed me since although finding the country on a map is trivial, I don't have a good feel for where things are in the country. I know some of the regions decently, but not what cities are where.
I also felt like I could've done better with a more detailed map. I mean, even when I had some idea where one of these small islands was, I was just making a random stab in the South Pacific or Carribean because I couldn't see the actual islands on the map. Likewise the times they asked me to find Lichtenstein and Qatar. They weren't visible on the map, so I wound up just being sort of near.
Did you try the US one? The last round is nearly impossible to win. One time, I got Cary. Cary, North Carolina. How could anyone not from around here have ever heard of Cary? I guess if someone's a big fan of Epic Games or SAS, they might have looked it up, but that doesn't seem all that likely. I guess if I did the last level a few dozen times, I would probably see enough repeated questions to finally beat it, but even I'm not that obsessive. (I might turn out to be that obsessive).
I agree that the map is too small. The one that stuck out to me was when I was asked to find the Galapagos Islands, and I could only point to off of the coast of Ecuador.
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