News You Can Bruise for 2004 June 4

Apropos my longstanding quest for games in which you can play a mola mola, I have it on good authority that Parodius 2 lets you play a mola, and that a mola is a recurring character in the annoying Kirby series of Nintendo games for various platforms. I welcome this development, and hope that molas will infiltrate more games in the future. Now, stay tuned, as we bring you a Special Report You Can Bruise:

Parodius 2: An Unlikely Champion. Tonight, we'll trace this mild-mannered Gradius parody from its obscure origins, through development, to its current height of fake fame caused by its exploitation of the cheap button-pushing trick of letting you play as a mola mola. And whose idea was it to create a hagiographic documentary for a video game? Not even one anyone's ever heard of?! We pull no punches as we investigate our own sorry selves!

Coming up next: Kirby Kirby Kirby: An Unlikely Runner-Up.

Ok, back to fixing that NewsBruiser comment bug.

If you go to a place where they have a lot of old paintings, like the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, notice that no one in the portraits shows their teeth. Because their teeth were all rotten! Man, that must have sucked. That reminds me, I have to go brush my teeth.

Incidentally, the Rijksmuseum is under renovation and has a sort of "greatest hits" exhibition going in two big rooms, so you can get a discount and a much quicker tour that gets all the famous stuff, at the expense of not being able to see the non-famous stuff that's often more interesting.