Just wanted to drop a quick line that I’m gearing up on several big projects, so my blog posts will slow down for a little while as I focus on some other things.

But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to neglect Restaurant Fuel. The next few months I’ll be working on Alberic Heresies #3 - 4, as well as another comic book project I can’t really talk much about until I get some of it finished.

Following that, I’m going to return to Restaurant Fuel in a big way as I begin writing something that’s been simmering in the back of my head for nearly a year now.

More later.

The prequel short to “The Alberic Heresies” by artist Jacob Warrenfeltz and myself is now available. You can download it for free at:

http://www.albericheresies.com

Please drop me an email to let me know what you think!

The XBOX 360 has a cool new feature called “XBOX Live Arcade” that let’s you download “small” games for about $5 each. My two favorites are Geometry Wars — a game where you play as a geometric shape dedicated to destroying other geometric shapes before they destroy you — and Bejeweled, which is everyone’s mothers favorite game.

Geometry Wars looks like one of those music player visualizations, or more accurately, like what it must be like to be trapped up in the sky as part of an amazing fireworks display. The game is insanely simple, but more fun in a lot of ways than the glossy, big budget “next-gen” titles you have to pay $60 for.

Bejeweled, as you probably already know, is addicting in the Tetris sense of the world. Two days ago, one of my old Halo 2 friends sent me a message asking me why I was playing such an old game.

Seeing that he was still playing Halo 2, I had to reply with the same question.

(Huhm, anyone notice how this has sort of become a gaming blog? Never thought that would happen — remember back when I just wrote about politics?)

Here are my picks for the top five TV shows of the year:

5. Rome - HBO’s excellent period drama about the rise and fall of Julius Caeser. Ostensibly through the point of view of two average Roman army soldiers, the series turns out to be anything but. Still, an enjoyable series nonetheless, though I would have preferred more of the “average Roman” perspective. The climactic battle with Vorenus and Pullo in the arena is the most violent and awesome action sequence I ever saw on television.

4. Lost - Oh Lost. So much potential, so many great moments and ideas, so little direction. Lost has the frustrating distinction of offering great questions, but the lack of answers is incredibly unsatisfying. Usually Lost’s answers just lead to more frustrating questions. Still, the addition of the survivors of the tail section of the plan was a stroke of genius, and the character work is always great. Here’s hoping we get more answers as the series progresses.

3. Veronica Mars - Yeah, I was slow to pick up on this series, too, but the recent DVD release of season one has made me a true believer. Veronica Mars, the daughter of Neptune, CA’s disgraced former sheriff and resident Private Investigator solves crimes and tries to survive high school. Sounds like Nancy Drew, but the show is actually a clever look at class conflict and offers perhaps the best female heroine on television. Buffy was defined by the men in her life, but Veronica is defined by her smarts and her wits. I hope my girls grow up to be just like her.

2. Doctor Who - The world’s longest running scifi show and smartest kids’ show returns after over a decade away and it’s brilliant. Full of excitement, great ideas, humor and heart, Russell T. Davies’ take on Doctor Who is even better than the classic series. Christopher Eccleston established himself as one of the best Doctors’ ever and then he died! Rose manages to be the series most resourceful and feminist companion, while still being a working class London shopgirl. And let’s not even get into David Tennant’s 9th Doctor, whose Christmas day debut is one of my favorite hours of the series ever. Hopefully someday this series will get an American outlet and fans won’t have to resort to quasi-legal outlets to see it.

1. Battlestar Galactica - Ronald Moore took the best elements of Glen Larson’s cheesy Star Wars ripoff and turned it into the smartest, most political and contemporary show on television. The conflict between Adama and Caine over Boomer’s rape may as well be the debate between John McCain and George W. Bush on torture. Almost everything with the show deals with the issues we as a society grapple with — how much executive power should a leader take during wartime, how do you deal with a hidden enemy within your ranks, when does interrogation become torture, and how many of our civil liberties are we willing to sacrifice in the name of “security.” It’s all stuff we read about every day in the paper, and it’s the heart and soul of what Battlestar Galactica is all about.

Beyond that, Galactica is the best written show on television. Every second of screen time is important — there’s not a moment wasted. Each episode is so densely packed with plot, characters and ideas that it’s hard to go back to other shows where nothing happens. Throw in some amazing space combat sequences, compelling and flawed characters, and Bear McCreary’s incredble score (easily the best on televison since Twin Peaks) and you have something truly special. If you haven’t seen it yet, Netflix the DVD’s — I think you’ll find that they’reworth it.

I have to say it — the reviewers and fans must all be insane. Almost everything I’ve heard about Perfect Dark Zero has been refuted by the experience of actually playing it.

• The storyline, often lambasted, is a fun, campy scifi spy story that has been influenced more than a little bit by the television show, “Alias” — look at how Joanna’s dressed, how she has an HQ operative giving her instructions over an ear piece, or how similar her relationship with her father Jack Dark is to Sydney Bristow’s relationship with her father, Jack Bristow. It’s a camp send-up of “Alias.”
• The graphics, which fans have been bashing since day one, look phenomenal on my HDTV set — maybe they don’t translate to standard definition, but I think they look amazing.
• The AI, said to be dumb, seems pretty smart on medium difficulty — it frequently flanks, takes cover, and does all the things Halo’s AI is often praised for.
• The weapons feel great (the assault rifles feel a lot better and are more fun to shoot than Halo 2’s sluggish assault rifle), the impact of the shotgun in particular is very satisfying — even the pistols are fun to shoot.
• The music is exactly what one would expect from a British-developed spy story — and I like the mix of dance music on some levels.
• The online play definitely offers the best multiplayer FPS experience on the 360 currently (although I found the demo of Quake 4 to be slightly better and the matchmaking setup more to my liking, there’s hardly anyone playing that game).

Now, there are some issues with the game:

• You can’t jump — although you can roll, the fact that your feet are glued to the ground is a serious problem; I feel like Joanna is physically handicapped and jumping is standard in all but the most sim-oriented shooters.
• The stealth elements aren’t implemented very well — on the first mission you’re asked to sneak, but unlike Splinter Cell, you’re always spotted, even in shadow.
• The in-game physics find that the death animations for your enemy are a little slow — people taken out by a shotgun blast, for instance, fly backwards, albeit in extremely slow motion.

The only reason I can think of for the incredible amount of negativity directed at a game which is, I think, the XBOX 360’s current HD killer app, is that the lead character is female. The legions of young men who have the XBOX 360 are uncomfortable playing a first person shooter whose protagonist is a woman — they’d much prefer a man’s man like Master Chief or Sam Fisher. But, being that they’re at least partially acclimated to modern times, they don’t want to admit it, so they make up superfluous criticisms of the game’s mechanics. No, this isn’t Halo 2, but it’s still a damn good game.

When last we left Bill Adama and his ragtag fugitive fleet, Galactica was gearing up for a major battle with the other surviving Battlestar, Pegasus. As I’ve written before, this was in my estimation the greatest cliffhanger in a scifi show since Jean Luc Picard was turned into Locutus of Borg in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Tonight we’ll be getting the resolution to the cliffhanger, amongst other things. Galactica airs at 10pm ET on the Scifi Channel. Time magazine says it’s the best show on television — and I have to say that I’m in complete agreement.

Yes, I got my XBOX 360. Here’s the proof:

Add me to your friends’ list if you want.

Early impressions: an insanely cool device. I spent about two hours just messing around with the media center functionality — streaming video, music and photos from my PC to my television is a snap. I suspect Mac users are shit out of luck, which is why I’m glad I bought that Media Center PC last year.

The level of customization is pretty impressive, and the XBOX Live Marketplace that lets you download trailers, demos and classic arcade games has the potential to be awesome, it’s just that there’s very little content on it right now.

Perfect Dark Zero and Call of Duty 2 are both cool games, but nothing too groundbreaking. It’s awesome to be playing in HD, but this system desperately needs a Halo-level killer app to bring in the casual players.

And yeah, the people on XBOX Live are still assholes. But the system makes it easier to ignore them, also giving “player reviews” to let other people know what you think of them. I’m sure this has a tremendous potential for abuse — one of the jerks I gave low sportsmanship points to last night had a very positive reputation, so clearly people are getting their friends to pad their reps. Sigh.

All and all, I’d say my XBOX 360 is at least as cool and essential as my iPod. And that’s saying something.

Sofia Coppola returns with another beautiful film. Check out the trailer here:

http://movies.aol.com/movie_exclusive_marie_antoinette_trailer

Yes, it looks like an 80’s music video. But wow, what an amazing juxtoposition — 18th Century images combined with New Order. Kirsten Dunst as the eponymous heroine and Jason Schwartzman as Louis XVI, and a 70’s punk rock logo. I can’t wait. This will have to be one where Tina and I take off work and leave the girls at daycare — and it will be worth it.