I'm listening to Metallica's Master of Puppets at the moment, and just got done listening to a few tracks from ... And Justice For All, and i still don't get it ... is there even a bass guitar in there? Let's put it this way ... if Jason Newsted or Cliff Burton f@$#ed up a note, would James Hetfield or Lars Ulrich even notice? To my ear, they could be playing a bass version of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on endless repeat and the Metallica powers-that-be would remain blissfully ignorant.

It's not that the bass is way distorted, is it? Does Metallica's bass work as basically another rhythm guitar? Hrm.

Speaking of Herr Newsted, Rock Star: Supernova got arguably worse last night (if that's possible). First up was Lukas's appallingly bad rendition of the Verve's anthemic "Bittersweet Symphony". He already had a strike against him taking on a song that is my greatest single of all time, but to make matters worse he gave a pathetic growling, emo performance of it. Oh f@$#ing hell. Then to my amazement, the panel of judges all raved. WTF?!?! Poorly-disguised porn refugee Storm Large did her usual creepy strip-tease/pole dance number, this time of the Dramarama classic "Anything, Anything". I think my favorite moment was after the judges gave a negative review of one contestant, and resident host/block of wood Brooke Burke offered a meak "I liked your performance" before the show went to commercial.

The new Amusement Parks on Fire album Out of the Angeles is in my grubby little hands (or more precisely, in my grubby little hard drive), and it does not disappoint. It won't win over anyone not sold on their self-titled debut's swirl of neo-shoegazing noise, but to a fan it's a worthy sophomore effort.

Prey is still tweakin' my melon ("daaa weeeaasssselll!" ... *shudder*). I just tangled with my first boss of sorts, a giant alien beast with two huge machine guns mounted on his arms. I somehow emerged victorious by hiding in a side room and knocking off one of his guns by activating a force field as he reached in to do bad things to me. My favorite weapon so far ... big alien gatling gun. The plot is slowly unfolding, although i still haven't found out exactly why demonic ghost children are chasing me around. The puzzles are at just the difficulty level i like ... challenging without being frustrating, and taking advantage of the game's special features, namely spirit walking and changing gravity.

My exploration of Prey has however been limited as V and i started playing Rockstar's Table Tennis. Very fun, surprisingly deep game mechanics but still relatively easy to pick up and play. I haven't quite figured out all the various ways you can charge up your shots though, as every now and then i see Veronica's score meter flash and without fail, she then unloads a vicious slam on me. It seems she is my better in this (lone) video endeavor. I do reasonably well when i use the Swedish giant Jesper, who forgoes spin and serve for raw power.

While Sean was here last week i also tried playing a few things on Xbox Live, something i haven't delved into with the 360 other than to download a few miscellaneous mini-games from the Xbox Live Marketplace. First the two of us tried Call of Duty 2, which unfortunately doesn't allow split-screen games online, unlike Halo 2 (unless i'm just not seeing that option). So i went online against 5 or 6 opponents, and was surprised that i held my own. The next day we tried FIFA World Cup 2006, which lagged something awful. I played as the Dutch against an opponent using England. They were no world-beaters, but i stunk something terrible. I gave up an early goal, then equalized when my opponent tried to clear a ball in his penalty area, and had it ricochet off my lingering striker straight into the goal. I almost got another in exactly the same fashion, but later gave up a lousy winner on a breakaway. Doh. I'll have to get online more in the future. I've heard lackluster reports on Prey's multiplayer, but maybe i'll give it a go.

I started watching a Tivo'ed copy of the National Geographic Channel documentary Lockdown! Gangland last night, before Veronica came in the room and expressed her displeasure at watching vicious prison stories. I found it fascinating though. Something about prison ... i wouldn't last ten seconds in there, but i have a perverse obsession with fiction and nonfiction centering around jail. I used to be horrified by the HBO show Oz, but somehow could never change the channel. And managed to turn on the TV every week when a new episode was aired. This documentary is amazing however in that it's all true. The guards described how prisoners smuggle in drugs by having friends send them cards that have been soaked in methamphetamine, or by inserting thin layers of heroin between two identical postcards.