Momentous Happenings!

Well, the Bengals are 3-0! They went into Pittsburgh and came away with a win, despite not really playing very well, except in brief spurts. Maybe that's what it looks like when two good teams rip into each other, but both teams turned the ball over and looked pretty bad at times. But Pittsburgh turned the ball over more and looked worse, so the Bengals get the win! Now we play the Patriots in Cincy, coming off a pretty horrific loss to Denver. If they play like that again, they are going to get embarassed. Even if they play considerably better I still think we'll get another victory. These aren't the Patriots everyone's used to. The constant personnel turnover finally seems to be catching up to them and a lot of these new guys seem out of sync with Brady. And the defense has looked downright ordinary or worse.

Pittsburgh has the week off, so the major thorn in our side will be Baltimore, also in our division and also 3-0. But they're playing the Chargers, so chances are good Cincy will win and Baltimore will lose. Since the Chargers have looked frightening against inferior competition. Baltimore's been winning against inferior competition too, but they haven't been exactly scaring anybody doing it. Hopefully, by Sunday night the Bengals will have 4 wins, Baltimore will have their first loss, and everyone in the division will be looking up at Cinncinnati, the way it should be.

More big news, the latest pokemon games, Pokemon Diamond and Pokemon Pearl have been released in Japan, and the Intarweb is positively bursting with information from canny sources across the Pacific. On the whole what I've seen is encouraging. There aren't as many new pokemon as people were hoping, but that's always the case. It almost doesn't matter how many new pokemon there are, people will always wish there were more. Like always some of the new pokemon look really cool and some look... less cool. I'm excited about the new starting pokemon (three pokemon you choose among to get your first pokemon at the beginning of each game). Specifically, the water type starter (I usually favor either the water or fire type starter). Finally we have a penguin pokemon! And what a penguin! It's final evolution is a dual type Water-Steel pokemon! The first ever Water-Steel type. And that's not the only new type combination. We also have Fighting-Poison and Dark-Poison, Grass-Ice (which is a weird one) and Fire-Steel. One of the other starters evolves into a Grass-Ground type which I can't recall happening before, though it's possible there's another one. A bunch of new Ghost types, which is interesting.

I think one reason people are a little disappointed at the number of "new" pokemon is that some of them are just evolutions of old pokemon, which is cool, but still... not quite as thilling. Anyway, the main things I'm excited about, apart from the Steel Penguin of Doom, are the new moves that will be available to teach your pokemon and the changes to the battle system. They've doubled the number of moves that can be learned via technical machine and introduced loads of new moves, including a bunch of Bug type moves that look like they'll finally be useful. Before these games, Bug types weren't too useful because there were really only about 2 or 3 good bug moves. 4 at the most, and most Bug types couldn't even learn the good bug moves. Some Bug types couldn't learn any goddamn bug moves at all. Pinsir was probably about the second or third best Bug pokemon out there... except that he can't learn any Bug type moves so there's nothing he can do that another type of pokemon can't do better. Seriously, there were only four Bug moves that did more than 20 damage and they were pretty restricted as to who could learn them. None of them were technical machine moves. The best Bug move of all could only be learned by one Bug pokemon, Heracross, admittedly the very best Bug type, but you would hope that they'd toss the other Bug pokemon a bone at least. And now they finally have. But the new Bug moves are only the tip of the new moves iceberg. Tons of new fighting and psychic moves, a bunch of new Steel type moves (hello Steel Penguin of Doom!), I honestly think every type got at least one new, really useful and awesome, move. So that's nice.

As far as the changes to the battle system go, there's been some whining, but I think that this is a no-brainer improvement that they probably wish they'd thought of sooner. In the past, each pokemon type was either Physical or Special. That is, their attacks did either physical damage, governed by the Attack statistic (high Attack equals higher damage), or special damage, governed by the Special Attack statistic (high Special Attack equals higher damage). For example, Normal type attacks did physical damage and Electric type attacks did special damage. So, if you were a Normal type pokemon you wanted a high Attack stat and if you were an Electric type you wanted a high Special Attack stat, (ideally you actually wanted both, but if you had to choose...). The problem is that this system royally screwed quite a few pokemon. The most obvious example I can think of right now being Sneasel. Sneasel is a Dark-Ice type pokemon with fantastic Speed, great Attack, ordinary Defenses and pitiful Special Attack. Unfortunately, Dark and Ice are both Special types. So, if you really wanted to use Sneasel to his fullest... you couldn't. You could either teach him typed moves (which get a bonus) and put up with the low Special stat, or teach him cross-type moves and put up with the fact that another pokemon would be able to use those moves much better.Now, however, each individual move will be either physical or special (depending I think on whether the attack involves actual physical contact or not) rather than each type. For instance, Ice Punch used to be a Special attack because it was an Ice type move. Now, it's a Physical attack because it's a punch. Ice Beam, another Ice type move, remains a Special Attack because it doesn't involve actually striking the other pokemon, your pokemon fires a bolt of ice energy at the other pokemon. Perhaps that's the best way to think of the change: matter and energy... Oh well. Nobody actually wants to read about this anyway. Next!

Dave and I went to see Erin McKeown last night, and WOW! She is a performer, pure and simple. Gifted singer, songwriter and guitar player, yes, all true; but, plain and simple her greatest asset is just old-fashioned showmanship. She just has it, and you can really appreciate it when the opening act (let me just apologize to Annie McCue now, since she really wasn't bad and I'm picking on her) is as essentially competent as Erin's was. Good songs, good musicians, good singing, Annie McCue (sorry!) just doesn't have it. Nothing you can complain about really, and it's a shame and I feel bad but Erin just blew her out of the sky from the first note she played onward. I mean, Erin played the guitar and she had a drummer and that was it (plus some kind of effects pedal) but somehow when they played they had more sound somehow than Annie's whole band managed. I'm just going to stop comparing the two and confine myself to saying that the show was awesome, Erin was awesome and I'm really looking forward to her new album, which she said will be out in January. I can't believe I'm looking forward to an album of jazz standards, but I am.

This weekend looks to be a lot of fun. Matt and Dave want to see that Jesus Camp movie, which looks much scarier than anything that Rob or Monica ever watch. And on Saturday Toys R Us is going to be trading Mew to people's Pokemon games, I've never had a Mew before as the only way to get him was either at a Nintendo event or else to cheat. So, that'll be exciting. On Sunday, the Tribe is meeting for breakfast at the Original Pancake House and then the Bengals will be playing at 4 so I'll be conducting a fact-finding mission over at Mills' to see if his new HD service and extra channels are really up to snuff. Afterward, Rob just told me that the Roughriders replay will on, on Sunday and that he might tape it and watch it later that night, so that would be fun too. Wow, I'm not sure I can fit all this in. And didn't I want to go to Mongolian Barbecue? And Rob and Monica's wedding is in, like, two weeks! Wow, okay, I'm just going to pace myself. Starting now.

Operation TIPS, away!