The Corner Penthouse

This has been a very bad week for two of my closest friends as both of their fathers passed away. Jaclyn Anthony lost her father, James Simon, on Sunday March 13th. Doreen Mulman lost her father, Herman Mulman, on Friday March 18th.

My prayers and condolences go out to Jaclyn, Doreen, and their families.

The first Backyard Wrestling game (subtitled "Don't Try This At Home") received poor reviews from just about everyone who played it, so you'd expect for Eidos to learn and make a better sequel. Of course, you'd be wrong. Backyard Wrestling 2: There Goes the Neighborhood (BYW2) is pretty much the same as BYW1, for good and for bad.

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I have a lot to tell you in this review. Let's start briefly with why I bought this set, which was only released in Canada. I own one of the Hitchhiker VHS tapes, but two of the three episodes are missing the beginning credits. I wanted the complete episodes, especially on DVD. I live in the United States, but the DVD released here (titled "The Hitchhiker Vol. 1") only contains 10 episodes, only one of which was on the videotape. This Canada-only "Season 1" set contains the first 26 episodes of the series, although in a different order from how they were released in the United States (it's the first three seasons here).

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The PNY Attaché 64MB USB 1.1 Flash Drive (Mfr#P-FD064U11-RF) is the only drive that I have successfully gotten to work with the CodeBreaker v8.0 cheat device for the PlayStation 2 (buy version 9.3 here). I plug it into my PC, download code and game save files from the internet onto the drive, remove it from my PC (after going through Window's "Unplug or Eject hardware" routine, of course), plug it into one of my PS2's USB slots, boot up the CodeBreaker CD, and transfer the files from the drive to my PS2 memory card. Of course it works the other way around too (so I can transfer my game saves from my PS2 memory card to my PC). As a bonus, I can also use it to transfer files from my PC to someone elses. A very reliable little device.

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First, here's the track listing for the Alvin And The Chipmunks - Here's Looking at Me! audio CD.

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The Lilo & Stitch's Island of Adventures DVD/Board Game is interesting, but even playing it with my family, I found parts of it to be rather embarrassing. If you don't have a problem getting up in front of people and doing goofy things, then this probably won't be much of a problem for you.

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I have mixed feelings about this series. On one hand I really like The Wizard Of Oz (1939) movie and I fondly remember watching this series Saturday mornings back when ABC actually showed GOOD cartoons (The Real Ghostbusters, Beetlejuice, etc.). On the other hand, this series is a slap in the face to all fans of the original 1939 movie. For starters, it's damn near impossible to make a decent series based on the movie featuring ALL of the memorable characters since the movie ended with the hero (Dorothy) back home in Kansas, the villain (the Wicked Witch of the West) melted to oblivion, the Wizard floating off to parts unknown (presumably back to his homeland), and the three friends (Scarecrow, Tin Man, Lion) being left to take care of Oz and the Emerald City.

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The Hitchhiker was a Twilight Zone-esque show that aired on HBO in the early 1980s. It was somewhat of a precursor to HBO's later Tales from the Crypt series. Four volumes of episodes were released on VHS back in the 1980s by Lorimar Home Video. Each tape contains three episodes, the first of which is complete, while the other two are missing the beginning title sequence. All episodes end after the "Markowitz/Chesler Producing" logo (the "This Has Been An HBO Presentation" screen is omitted). Each tape was duplicated in the SP speed. An interesting bit of trivia: the tapes in this series originally sold for a suggested retail price of $39.95 (according to the commercial on the Vol. 4 tape).

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It shouldn't pose much of a problem to put together a DVD containing a collection of music videos. So how come the makers of the Weird Al Yankovic: The Ultimate Video Collection DVD got so much wrong?

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Overall, the UHF DVD (MGM) is excellent, however I can't give it a perfect 5 star rating because of what's on side B: deleted scenes and the Pan & Scan version of the film (not the full frame unmatted version from the original VHS release). Al mentions that there are hours of deleted scenes, so why didn't they use the entire side B for them? Nobody asked for the crappy Pan & Scan version of the film. To add insult to injury, two of the deleted scenes are fast forwarded through. Sorry Al, but even if you don't think those two scenes are of any value, your fans think otherwise.

2017 UPDATE - Although my mini-review was about the original 2002 MGM DVD release, it can also apply (mostly) to the 25th Anniversary Edition DVD and Blu-ray released in 2014 by Shout Factory because all DVD extras (minus the Easter Eggs) were ported over "as is" with no new deleted scenes added.