For whatever reason I wasn’t all that impressed with the original Tap Tap Revenge when I tried it last summer while the App Store was still in its infancy, but this new iteration adds a killer component that makes it far more interesting: an entire catalog of downloadable “real†music to play to!
If you’ve never played Tap Tap Revenge before, it’s a little like Guitar Hero in that you try to match the beat of the music by tapping and occasionally shaking, and you get to do it to the tune of over 150 songs from mostly-indie artists with a few from bigger names like Weezer, Nine Inch Nails, and Death Cab for Cutie. Naturally, if you like what you hear you can tap your way over to iTunes and buy the music for your iPod collection.
Tap Tap Revenge 2 comes with lots of bells & whistles including online play, two-player, and challenge modes, but for me it’s all about tapping to some new music from a lot of up & coming artists. Radio is dead to me and it’s been years since I had the patience to watch MTV, so I’ll find new stuff to listen to any way I can.
The graphics are awesome and it’s a pretty fun game, especially if you like the music you’re tapping to, so you should probably get Tap Tap Revenge 2 before Tapulous figures out they could charge a buck for it and become instant billionaires.
Tap Tap Revenge 2 is available on iTunes for FREE
Contributed by iPhone app connoisseur Michael McCauley. Read more of Michael’s reviews at iphoneappreviews.net.
This hilarious piece of propaganda was distributed during the recent counter-protest against members of the Westboro Baptist Church at the University of Chicago last week.
Similar to the genius behind Pixy Sticks, which provided children with a schtick full of sugar straight to the dome, Starbucks has managed to reduce coffee beans to a powder and sell as their new line of Via Ready Brew instant coffee.
In lieu of brewing coffee in the most domestic way, allowing water to drip through and leaving grounds behind, with Via you are essentially consuming the beans whole.
And in the spirit of the Fighting Irish, this stuff hits hard. It’s instant as in readily available, and instant in the fact that it is more potent than regular, brewed coffee. Shortly after taking a few sips of my concoction of powdered coffee beans, water, sugar and cream, I was as stimulated as Richard Simmons shopping at Dress Barn.
There is also no lingering after taste of say, stale acorns. What you are left with is enough energy to finish that report you should have worked on instead of drowning yourself in green beer, that is if your heart doesn’t explode first.
Starbucks Via is available at Starbucks locations through out the city. Find out more here.
The city of Chicago was painted green this past weekend in celebration and anticipation of St. Patrick’s day. Growing up on the City’s South Side, I was used to attending the Annual South Side Irish parade on Western Avenue. Sick of the norm, I decided to celebrate in a different way this year by attending the Swap-O-Rama Flea Market in lovely (eh) Alsip, Illinois.
I had always assumed that the only way to show your Irish pride on St. Patrick’s day was to wear green and drink your way into an Irish stereotype. Upon my arrival, I found that the attendees at Swap-O-Rama celebrated the day in an entirely different way. Who would have thought that a knock-off Ed Hardy t-shirt and faux Nikes would ever replace the omnipresent green sweatshirt with an Irish flag on it. Or, who could forget the ever popular plastic green derby hat with Irish product placement prominently displayed on it?
I’m sure I could have seen local firefighters, police and unions proudly marching down Western Avenue this past Sunday. The citizens of Alsip choose not to have a parade with floats and firetrucks. Instead, 1994 Cadillacs emblazoned with stickers purchased for 50 cents at the local restaurant are displayed in a parking lot while their owners obtain hot deals on the latest in Chinese cutlery.
Taking the place of the Irish queen of the parade who is usually seen marching down Western Ave, presumably because her father is owed a political favor, was the woman who referred to my fiance as a ‘bitch.’ I could only assume this is an Alsip term of endearment. Similar to “Erin go Brah”, right? Moreover, what better way to show your Irish pride than to drive your ‘86 Monte Carlo with rims the same diameter as your girlfriend’s waistline up and down the aisles of the parking lot while staring creepily at every passerby. Top o’ the morning to YOU, good sir!
I am quite happy to see racial barriers breaking down even further due to the presence of a non-white president. As you could imagine, I was excited to see a green hooded sweatshirt for sale with the Obama family silkscreened on the back.
In all seriousness, you have to experience this place at least once. I would write more but the authentic cockfighting dvd I purchased for 5 dollars is calling my name (see above photo).
The juices and smoothies run from $6.99-8.99 which is a little steep, but they are dang good and well worth the splurge, if you can afford it. The wheat grass was a pretty standard price of $1.95 for 1 oz. Rather than getting my usual feeling of “I just drank liquid lawn mower clippings and now I have to barf”, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it actually tasted good… Fresh and a little bit sweet. They also sell bags of wheat grass that you can juice at home in the small produce section. I will be back for you, grass… yes I will.
Horror movie remakes have the tendency to more often stomp all over the corpses of their predecessors rather than enrich them. So, it is a bit of a surprise that the 2009 remake of The Last House on the Left actually does the original one better by remaining true to the story while being more technically adept.
The Collingwoods, John (Tony Goldwyn), Emma (Monica Potter) and their daughter Mari (Sara Paxton) decide to go for a vacation at their lake house. When Mari takes the car to visit her friend Paige (a glowing Martha MacIsaac from Superbad), their decision to buy some weed from cute stoner Justin (Spencer Treat Clark) goes awry when his criminal family shows up. Krug (Garret Dillahunt), along with his brother Frank (Aaron Paul) and psychopathic girlfriend Sadie (Riki Lindhome) take the two girls to the woods to savagely attack and rape them. As a storm sets in, the criminal group arrive at the Collingwoods’ house for shelter, and it isn’t long before John and Emma realize what has happened to their daughter. The only question is what should they do about it?
Although early scenes are cinematographically somewhere in the American Eagle/Abercrombie and Fitch range of pretty teens shot prettily, because the story does not shy away from depicting some of the most brutal moments of the original, the clean camerawork makes it all the more disturbing. Director Dennis Iliadis creates drawn-out, tense sequences that take advantage of the space between calm and chaos. Crosscut scenes build slowly, ebbing from moment of quiet to moment of quiet until both scenes explode in violence. The ending is the only sequence that feels out of place because of how it is depicted, but the action there highlights the theme of the film: What separates the good people from the bad people if they both commit similarly brutal acts?
This theme is developed through sparse dialogue and another welcome difference from most horror offspring: phenomenal acting. Everyone is very committed to his or her roles, and because the horror is coming from living, breathing human beings, this commitment is even more important. As in the original, the naturalistic responses characters have saves many shortcomings in the film. The characters have very distinct class differences; the Collingwoods are affluent (John is a doctor, which comes in handy on more than one occasion) and can afford a lake home. Sadie even asks Emma at one point “How many houses do you have?†Krug’s brood live as fugitives and take what they can get. We are asked to root for the rich people, and we do at first, but as the violence escalates, we start to understand a more complex conflict. Who should we identify with, and how often do we cast ourselves as better than others in everyday life?
The Last House on the Left is in theaters tonight. Find locations/showtimes here.
We know there’s like a foot of snow on the ground, but we can’t wait until bike riding season. With all this green talk going on, wouldn’t it be rad if the City of Chicago put these bad boys around the city?
Each PlantLock accommodates 2 bicycles and is constructed of heavy boron steel and is suitable for growing a wide range of flowering plants, hardy shrubs, fragrant herbs, and alternatively, low maintenance, drought tolerant planting. Visit Front Yard Company for more info.
The date and location of the Snuggie Pub Crawl have been set so mark your calendars for April 18th!
From the SPC people:
We’re excited to announce the official location of the 2009 Chicago Snuggie Pub Crawl. The Snuggie Pub Crawl will be held on Lincoln Ave. in Lincoln Park. We have quite a few bars interested, including:
John Barleycorn, Lincoln Park
The Lion’s Head Pub
The Apartment
IMPORTANT: Snuggies take up to 6 weeks to arrive. We want to make sure you have your Snuggie before the event.
Yeah, it’s in Lincoln Park and possibly at John Barleycorn of all places… but just to entice you, Nerdy by Nature will be there handing out stickers, buttons and other NbN paraphernalia to anyone in a blanket with sleeeves!
If you haven’t heard already, Mayor Daley has a YouTube account. If you were hoping for something more entertaining, we apologize… Click on his YouTube channel for some mildy humorous interviews, conferences and appearances that are intended as “an opportunity to talk to residents directly†and to “promote the City of Chicago”.
Head over to IHOP today and eat some pancakes, foo! If you visit between 7am and 10pm and make a donation to the Children’s Miracle Network, you can get a shortstack (three pancakes for the breakfast-illiterate) free!
IHOP began its National Pancake Day celebration in 2006, and has since raised nearly two million dollars to support charities in the communities in which it operates. With pancake-lovers’ help, they hope to raise $1,000,000 for Children’s Miracle Network in 2009.
