Infinite Lives » Not Games

Playing the odds

Jenn Frank — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 15:17:46 +0000

OK. I am not antagonizing the “Wee for Wii” program—most STIs are treatable, and young adults should feel responsible for their own health—but the odds of winning a free Nintendo Wii are comparatively bleak. Ouch.

Rachel’s Whatever Blog

In spite of myself, looking forward to ‘Web Soup’

Jenn Frank — Fri, 15 May 2009 09:51:12 +0000

I try not to make it a secret that I’m hopelessly addicted to celebrity gossip. No, I know: it’s a horrible way to spend my time, and it’s embarrassing that I blow my cigarette money on US Weekly, OK! Magazine, and People at the local CVS. I know, I know.

But one thing I like about E!’s reality TV weekly roundup, The Soup—you may have known it as Talk Soup in the 90s—is that it’s just a little smarter about everything, just a little more impish. Oh, sure, it helps that its gangly-hot host, Joel McHale, is twinkly-eyed and snappily dressed. Plus, he totally has it out for Tyra Banks, Miley Cyrus, and Kathy Lee Gifford.

Now, the minds behind The Soup embark on their greatest challenge yet: making the inanity of eBaumsworld funny. They’re producing a new show satirizing the worst of the Internet, Web Soup, premiering on the please-air-something-besides-Cops nerdery channel, G4tv. Hosted by Chris Hardwick, the spin-off promises to bring The Soup’s trademark snark to the awful car wreck that is Internet Video. LOL!

On the one hand, I have my doubts: the type of audience that watches web videos is exactly the sort that always catches it a week ahead of you. Like great celeb gossip, Caturday videos go viral well before they get reprinted on the newsstands several days too late—er, I mean, retweeted.

Still, The Soup’s own success defies all odds. Reality TV is dull, piddling, and the brain’s ultimate muscle relaxant—what possible commentary can a host add to something so stupid? And yet it works! If Web Soup reproduces even a third of The Soup’s charm, it will be well worth watching.

But can it compare to Current TV’s Viral Video Film School? Only time will crown the victor.

Web Soup premieres on G4tv June 7 at… 9PM… PST? Or sometime? Anytime?

Nerdist – G4 Picks Up “Web Soup” sort of via Perez Hilton

D20 necklace

Jenn Frank — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 07:46:37 +0000

I realize it must seem as though I sent Infinite Lives to the cornfields during GDC, but in reality, I have been planning my BIG MOVE to Chicago! Ahhhh: It seems like only yesterday I was complaining about Chicago, and then moving out of it. (Well, and also, planning a bridal shower, doing some web-work, doing gory makeup for a film shoot, and having the flu—there’s no telling when Infinite Lives will normalize again, frankly.)

I haven’t entirely abandoned the site, of course! In fact, in the interest of supporting it, I have been toying with a banner ad slash affiliate program called Project Wonderful. And while Project Wonderful doesn’t generate enough revenue for me to wholeheartedly recommend it, I do think it’s cool that I (yes! Me!) am able to basically pick and choose whose ads cycle through the little square on the right.

And I can’t wait to run this one ad for D20 necklaces.

Apparently, she has twenty-sided dice available in most every color of the rainbow, to be strung onto silver-plated ball chains, satin cords, or keyrings. And don’t get me started on the 42 earrings.

Etsy – Paw & Claw Designs

Be back in a bit!

Jenn Frank — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 10:23:42 +0000

Sincere apologies for the protracted absence! (Inexplicably, though: now more spam comments than ever before. What the…?)

In the short interim before resumption, here is a video, embedded below, that popped up in my YouTube subscriptions the day before yesterday. It heralds what is sure to be the winter season’s hottest fad, the PES Fireplace Screensaver.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

P.S. Still here? Perhaps you are wondering how PES correlates with videogames? This is how.

Waiter, waiter, there’s a Jawa in my lunch

Jenn Frank — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 09:09:25 +0000

OK, OK. The photo itself is from a few months ago, apparently, and this really doesn’t have anything to do with video games, I know. But I figure Star Wars devotees and video game players might have overlapping cultural interests, and anyway, I liked this. Ready?

The entire Bento Challenge flickrpool is well worth checking out, but Rena’s contributions to the group are just astonishing:

Flickr – 20080530 :: bento diary :: tatooine (via)

Children of Men not a big hit among local book club members

Jenn Frank — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 12:05:01 +0000

My e-friend Nathaniel Payne lives in a small town in America’s heartland. Recently, his town’s local book club agreed to read The Children of Men, a science fiction novel that takes place in the near future (2021, if you’re curious). The Children of Men is generally acknowledged as a pretty good book: it was adapted into a blockbuster feature film, which I own on DVD but have never watched.

Apparently the novel garnered unfavorable reviews from the book club’s members, which resulted the following news item in the town’s local newspaper:

Nerdflood – “We all agreed that we really don’t know what will happen in the future”

Blown glass rayguns

Jenn Frank — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 20:35:49 +0000

In my five years of collecting rayguns, I’ve learned to never buy or display anything too pricy… or priceless. Anytime a guest drops by, his instinct is to immediately swipe the raygun from the shelf, wield the gun in his right hand, and roughly depress the trigger several times, eliciting that satisfying rat-a-rat-a-whir from the gun’s bellows—it sounds like, if nothing else, a hard drive crashing.

But as of right now, I am willing to make an exception to my No Delicate Rayguns policy.

Blogger Michael Pinto located these gorgeous blown-glass rayguns, which are crafted by Joe Blow Glassworks’ Jeff Burnette.