One of the things that I like the most about flash games is that they have brought back to prominence the sort of platform/puzzle game thing that I liked so much and that I think worked so well on systems like the original Nintendo, Sega, Super Nintendo, etc. Skywire is no different. It’s nice to see games like this being made again.

In Skywire, you control a sort of ski lift thing, moving it up and around various obstacles by pressing the up key to accelerate upwards, and the down key to accelerate down. The object is to try to get the lift’s passengers, small bouncing occupants that remind me of Fisher Price Little People, to safety. Give it a try. I thought it was really fun.

Play Skywire

Today I’d like to announce a new feature to Brain Pan: Catching Up! It’s sort of a “where are they now” game where we pick a notable and overlooked person and learn a little bit about where they came from and where they are going.

Today’s Obscure Celebrity Who Is Still More Famous Than You Are:

Donald Gibb

You may remember Donald Gibb as Ray Jackson, the lovable-yet-incredibly-deadly comic foil to ass kicker Jean-Claude Van Damme in the 1988 arena fighting classic Bloodsport. Gibb also played the much beloved character of Ogre in the movies Revenge of the Nerds and Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise, as well as the made for TV movie Revenge of the Nerds IV: Nerds in Love. Before acting, he was a basketball player, and even enjoyed a brief career with the San Diego Chargers.

But is that all there is to Don “Best Part of Bloodsport” Gibb? Lord no. Let’s start CATCHING UP!

What I discovered is that Donald Gibb WORKS HIS ASS OFF. He has guest starred on dozens of TV shows, and has been in over 25 movies. He is also the spokesman for and co-owner of a Chicago brewery, Trader Todd’s Adventure Bar. They are renowned for Karaoke and are home to Gibb’s own beer, called Ogre Beer Lyte.

Visit Donald Gibb’s Myspace site here.

The best part of his myspace site are these three lines from his profile:

I was Ray Jackson in Bloodsport. Jean-Claude Van Damme is a douchebag. Just so you know.

Nice. Sounds like a funny guy, and everybody here at Brain Pan is happy that he’s done so well for himself. Go check out his site, buy his beer, and watch his moves.

Joke theft has been in the news a great deal lately, due in no small part to Joe Rogan’s noble-yet-self-serving attack on Carlos Mencia’s apparently notorious plageristic proclivities. Carlos has been allegedly stealing jokes for years, and Joe called him out on it, very publicly, taped it, produced a video of the encounter complete with cross-referenced evidence of said joke stealing, and posted the video on the internet where it was promptly viewed by millions of people all across the world, ruining Carlos Mencia’s reputation forever and causing Joe Rogan no small amount of trouble in the process. His agency dropped him, he was banned by The Comedy Store, threatened, and so on. For more on that story, I encourage you to go check out Joe Rogan’s blog at joerogan.net as he explains the debacle better than I ever could.

In researching the incident I came across a guy who pointed me to an incredibly interesting article about comedy plagiarism. Find it here:

Take the Funny and Run

Very interesting stuff, and some surprising names show up.

This is a surprisingly fascinating article about passwords:

How I’d Hack Your Weak Passwords

This guy makes a convincing argument. I was just talking about weak passwords with somebody and between that and this I have decided to change mine to something a bit more stalwart. Just too scary to contemplate, once you really sit and think about how potentially bad a massive security breach would be.

Anna Nicole Smith’s autopsy report was released today. No big surprises. Lots of pills, tiny little brain. Nine prescription drugs altogether. Could have happened to anyone, provided they were careless, prone to bad decision making and surrounded by sycophantic blood sucking parasites, (yes, you, Howard K. Stern.)

Here are the underwhelming details to a story that has had legs far longer than I gave it credit for. I expected her death to last three days in the headlines, tops, and now we are working on close to two months. Shows you what I know.

The once popular but now largely forgotten game series You Don’t Know Jack has released three full online games, aptly titled Episodes I, II, and III. It’s like a fun little game show that you don’t have to give a crap about. Find them here.

Calvert DeForest, better known as Larry “Bud” Melman, has died. He was a regular of the old Letterman show, the NBC version, and was the first in a long line of Letterman’s off-beat day players, individuals like Rupert Gee, Regis Philbin, Dave’s mom, Chris Elliot (who is great by the way), and those two middle eastern guys whose names I can’t remember. These people can pop up anywhere, doing anything (both DeForest and Dave’s mom have been Letterman’s correspondents to the Olympics), and their entertainment value is due more to their mere presence on screen, rather than to their participation in any specific joke. No one played this role better than DeForest.

Dave discovered Calvert DeForest from his staring role in a NYU student film and arranged for him to appear on the first episode of Late Night with David Letterman on February 1st, 1982. DeForest became a fixture of the program during it’s early days, appearing countless times and in a variety of roles. He was once tapped to fill in for Dave as host for a night back in 1982, and in a running segment was sent on a good will mission, attempting to drive from New York to Tierra del Fuego in South America. He got as far as Guatemala.

Once Dave moved to CBS, NBC claimed that the character Larry “Bud” Melman was their intellectual property, and so DeForest’s appearances on the NBC program were under his own name. However, he opened the first CBS show, popping out of the CBS eye and declaring, “This is CBS!”

Here is an article about Melman.

The article, a sort of light hearted obituary/rehash of DeForest’s time on Letterman, ends on a strangely tragic note. DeForest Left no survivors and will have no funeral. Makes me wonder what his life was like.

Calvert DeForest
AKA Larry “Bud” Melman
1921-2007

I love Andy Richter. I do. But these repeated attempts to front a sitcom? Yeah. It’s not gonna happen. Andy Barker, PI, which borrowed the time slot held by one of NBC’s only successes from the 2006 season, 30 Rock, managed to pull fewer than 6 Million viewers. While that is a shame, as I said, GO ANDY, it’s not entirely surprising. This is his third shot at sitcom glory, and it doesn’t look very promising. Who knows what NBC will do with the program, cancellation seems likely, though they might want to give the show a few more spins just to make sure it’s dead.

The issue I’d like to raise is this: What is the world to do with Andy Richter? As i said, Andy Richter is great. Great guy, talented, smart, funny, but honestly, where does he fit in? He should be wildly successful, but at what? He is valuable. People like him. There is a venue for him somewhere. I’m sure of it. Want proof? Andy left The Conan O’Brien show in 2000, seven years ago, and hasn’t really had that much success since then. Anybody else in the same position would have simply dried up and would be on reality TV by now, sharing a ranch style home on VH1 with Dave Coulier or dancing in prime time, but not Andy. Andy remains. People are rooting for Andy Richter. They seem willing to give him all the time he needs to find his niche, but I for one would like him to go ahead and find it. Not because I can’t wait, because I can. There will always be a place in my heart for Andy Richter. It’s just that I’m worried about the good faith of the American Entertained. They don’t like to wait forever, and as they say, nothing fails like failure.

Everybody supports the rights of the satirist, unless they are the ones being satirized. It’s an unfortunate fact. Nobody likes to be raked over the coals, but it’s vitally important that everybody gets their turn. The real test of a national movement or of any prominent public figure is in how they respond to such satire. When the time comes to have your values challenged, your name poked at, everything you stand for lambasted and attacked, the details of your personal life lampooned, your good name sullied, you can stand up, accept the joke, roll with the punches, the public will almost always reward you for it. There is a reason that people remember Nixon on Laugh In. People that can have their moment under the hammer and can face the satirist with dignity. It is a moment that tests the true integrity and character of a person.

Carol Burnett has failed that test.

Let me fill in the details for any of you who are not aware. I guess the people behind the Fox Animated Series The Family Guy, wanted to use some of the music from The Carol Burnett Show. She refused to allow them the rights. The show, supposedly angry over the rejection and apparently taking a page from the South Park school of conflict managment, rewrote the scene. The version that aired took a few personal shots, admittedly filthy and sophomoric ones, at Carol Burnett, and so she got pissed off and filed a TWO MILLION DOLLAR LAWSUIT against fox.

The thing that really gets me about this is that HER show took all sorts of shots a celebrities, was renowned for its satire of various entertainment conventions. What if the people from “As The World Turns” had gotten all huffy and sued her for their “As The Stomach Turns” sketch? It’s the same principle. The problem here is that Carol Burnett can’t take the shot, and doesn’t get the jokes. It doesn’t even really matter if the jokes are even funny, it only matters that they ARE jokes. It’s not like some reporter called her a filth porn booth custodian in the New York Times. It’s THE FAMILY GUY. It’s not meant to be taken seriously. I find Carol Burnett’s hypocritical response and defensive legal temper tantrum disturbing and sad. It says nothing about The Family Guy, which does this kind of crap all the time, and speaks volumes about Burnett. The style of humor may have changed since her day, but the fact that she doesn’t understand the comedy doesn’t change the rules applying to the people that make the jokes.

She of all people should know how to lighten up.

This is possibly the greatest thing ever:

Kid Creatures

This site takes the drawings of young children and has various artists interpret them. Very, very cool. Totally worth checking out.