Strike Back the video game?

As I see commercials for all sorts of 1st-person fighting video games, how long will it be before someone makes a “Strike Back” Wii game?As I see commercials for all sorts of 1st-person fighting video games, how long will it be before someone makes a “Strike Back” Wii game?

– Jeremy, via email.

Wait, is it possible that there isn’t a “Strike Back” video game yet? I guess I just assumed the entire series was based on a video game, perhaps because its plot shares a hell of a lot with Double Dragon and Contra and countless other video games in which two nearly invincible badass dudes run around kicking an outrageous amount of ass and blowing stuff up.

Actually, the episodes of the show feel a bit like levels in video games, since there are always individual goals accomplished in pursuit of the larger one stringing them all together — catching Latif (in the second season, at least), a terrorist mastermind (standing in for Bowser).

That might sell the show a little bit short, though: It’s pretty awesome. I didn’t see the first season, but the second one aired this summer on Cinemax and hooked me pretty good. It’s over-the-top violent and the action is obviously exaggerated — sometimes dudes make full-extension diving catches of falling bombs to prevent them from exploding. But even despite that Strike Back somehow does a pretty good job selling its accuracy in depicting the most intense moments of contemporary guerrilla warfare — thankfully I have no real-life basis for comparison — so it seems like a good take on the action genre for this era.

Also, the main characters, Stonebridge and Scott, are obscenely badass. And everyone in the show is incredibly hot and has lots of sex. Even the characters that probably aren’t supposed to be hot are still pretty hot. I don’t think war is really like that. Video games, though, yeah.

You can’t text ‘flatulence’ in Pakistan

Pakistan’s telecoms regulator has released a list of over 1000 words and phrases to be banned from usage in text messaging, most of which are pretty hilarious. Not particularly hilarious but nonetheless banned: “Deposit.”

Of course, this will just lead to a bunch of creative new slang phrases. Expect Pakistan to be at the cutting edge of euphemism within the next few years.

My bitterness

It would be hard to recap the Jets’ loss to the Broncos last night in the manner in which I’d like while maintaining anything close to the totally reasonable standards of decency set forth by this network of websites.

Picture all of the worst and nastiest and most grotesque things you ever saw on the Internet in its earliest days — when you still had the capacity to be shocked by things on the Internet — put into words. That’s what I’d like to say about the Jets’ loss to the Broncos last night.

It sucked. A couple of things, though: First, let’s not all destroy Mark Sanchez for that one. He didn’t have a great game, for sure. He made a few awful passes — notably the bad decision that led to the pick-six, and the overthrow to the open Dustin Keller in the endzone. And Sanchez rarely has great games in the regular season, which is troubling.

But he also got crushed on nearly every single pass play. Wayne Hunter looked like roadkill under Von Miller’s tires, and the more heralded members of the Jets’ line did Sanchez few favors against the Broncos’ pass rush. And it didn’t help the pass game that the Jets, behind that line, didn’t muster much on the ground.

To the Jets’ credit, they were playing on three days’ rest at Mile High altitude — a fact that will get overlooked in discussions of the way the Gang Green defense folded up on the Broncos’ final drive after dominating most of the game, while pundits instead euphemize the various ways they’d like to shotgun Tim Tebow’s magical wishbone.

Many already seem to be writing requiems for the Jets’ playoff hopes, which seems premature. Certainly they appear somewhere between long and unlikely now, with the team sitting at 5-5 and playing an uninspiring brand of impotent football, but don’t forget that the team has been written off before. Like, you know, last year.

I’m certainly not going to bet on a playoff run now, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t spend time after last night’s game plugging Georgetown basketball games into my DVR and preparing a shift in mental focus. But I’ll write these Jets off for good when these Jets are officially written off for good.

The other thing — and the main thing I meant to write about this morning — is how frustrating it has become to watch NFL football in any sort of large group setting, be it at the stadium, at a bar, or even just following along on Twitter. Maybe these are the sad pleas of a pathetic former high-school player or just an embittered Jets fan lashing out, but I can’t help but think — as I’ve noted before — our nationwide fixation with fantasy football has oozed too far into our sport-fan consciousness, to the extent that you watch the game half-expecting the color commentators to start comparing the teams’ flex guys and RB2s.

Which is to say that no matter what Twitter or the guy at the bar or the dude in Row 23 in Section 336 has to say, I never find a close but low-scoring football game boring, no matter how sloppily the offenses appear to be playing. It’s football — there are 22 guys on the field all the time, nearly all of whom factor into the outcomes of every single play. Even if no one on the field is helping your fantasy team rack up points, it’s a safe bet a lot of them are playing damned well.

Whatever. Whatever, whatever. I write this also as the owner of a miserable fantasy team full of chumps and suckers and injured chump-suckers, and one that had a verbal agreement on a Darren McFadden for Aaron Rodgers deal at precisely the right moment before the other guy backed out and McFadden got hurt and left the Inevitable Victors in shambles.

Everything sucks right now, is all. The troll in me almost wants to like Tim Tebow just to be different. Reason wins out though.

How ’bout them Hoyas?

You play to win the game, etc.

These results jive with just about every study ever done on the effects of what drive attendance to Major League ballparks. Fans come to see winning teams, not individual players. If the Mariners want to get fans back in Safeco Field, the formula is easy – put a winning team on the field. Trying to buy yourself out of declining attendance by throwing money at one big name free agent just doesn’t work.

Dave Cameron, U.S.S. Mariner.

Cameron examines the impact of big-name free-agents on ticket sales and determines that it’s small, and that nothing bolsters ticket sales more than — surprise, surprise — winning baseball. I think I lose sight of that sometimes.

And for the Mets’ case, I can extrapolate: You know what’s going to stop Mets fans from whining about every uniform change, every team PR announcement, every promotion? Wins. What’ll end the LOLMets columns in the newspapers? Wins. Every piece of news from being spun negatively? Wins. Bedbugs? Wins.

It’s all that matters. And if you’re finding the rest of it difficult to stomach, I recommend a sense of confident detachment. The people in charge now seem committed to operating the team the right way, and that means the wins will come. Then, eventually, so much of the insufferable nonsense will subside.

The Sexiest Man Alive distinction is a sham

Actor Bradley Cooper was named People magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive,” which serves as proof that the distinction is a complete flavor-of-the-month sham never meant to reward the real sexiest man alive.

Because Bradley Cooper? C’mon. I could probably argue he wasn’t even the sexiest man in The Hangover 2 if only I were willing to watch The Hangover 2. He’s weasel-y looking, and he doesn’t even have a strong jawline. Unless he’s got some Gerard Depardieu thing about him that defies all objective standards of handsomeness and randomly appeals to women/the editors of People magazine, I fail to see how there’s any way he’s anywhere close to the Sexiest Man Alive.

Hell, I could name you fifteen men right now off the top of my head that are decidedly better looking than Bradley Cooper. First, Christian Bale. Then there’s a big gap, then, I don’t know, George Clooney, Hugh Jackman, Mark Sanchez, the guy from the Old Spice commercials, Brad Pitt, Josh Brolin, almost the entire male cast of X-Men First Class besides Oliver Platt, Idris Elba, and… how many is that? Hell, I can practically guarantee there’s a shirtless dude outside Hollister on 5th Avenue right now making passersby feel uncomfortable that’s better looking than Bradley Cooper.

And people will be like, “well you should be proud of Bradley Cooper, as a fellow Georgetown man.” Incorrect. It’s called “Sexiest Man Alive,” not “Vaguely Attractive Man Who’s Currently En Vogue” or, in this case, “Smarmy-Looking Fella You Should Endorse as Handsome Because He Went to Your College.” Plus it’s not like Bradley Cooper and I would’ve hung out if we overlapped at college.

People Magazine needs to either end the charade and change the name or just be honest about it and give the distinction to Bale every single year. Enough is enough with this.

Excuse me?

We are not like the Basketball Wives; we are classy…. [The Mets] were scared of my big fun bags. They were afraid they were too big, and they were going to obstruct the view of the fans seeing the game. Plus they were intimidated by them themselves. So they had to trade him, I guess. I don’t know why you would trade a stud pitcher. I don’t know why it became about me. But it kind of makes me feel good that they were intimidated by me.

Anna Benson.

Wait a minute: Who’s the “stud pitcher” in question?