The Little Game That Could

The fact that I own a Nintendo Wii tells the gaming industry something about the man that is Luke. First, I am willing to sacrifice power, adult-themed titles, a vast online community, and my beloved sports games. What do I value instead? Why, anything starring slightly obese, pornstache-eqipped Italian plumbers, of course!

But in all seriousness, I own a Wii because Nintendo can flat-out produce fun games to play. And counterintuitively, although its online community is lagging far behind Microsoft and even Sony, having a Wii is the best way to get a group of people under one roof suddenly fired up about gaming. There's something to be said for that Wii Remote and its ability to track three dimensional movement. It sucks the casual observer in quite well.

But there's another side to that motion tracking. When one is by oneself and twirling the Wiimote this way and that just to get Link to freaking jab somebody, one starts to feel a bit too bibbidi-bobbidi-boo, if you catch my drift. My stance is that if you're going to implement the motion tracker into a game, then make it creative. I don't want to accomplish mundane tasks over and over again just because developers had to somehow implement the motion tracker. Take Super Mario Galaxy, for example. Great game; probably even the best Mario game ever. But a crucial aspect of progressing is to collect star bits, which is accomplished by aiming the remote at the screen. So here I am, pointing the Wiimote at my TV like I'm Harry effing Potter summoning a Patronus.

Star bits don't collect themselves! Point that remote, Nancy!

The point is, I don't play video games to get a nice buildup of lactic acid in my triceps. If I wanted that, I'd do some Perfect Pushups. I don't need motion tracking in every game that I play. I'd be fine with a good, old-fashioned gaming experience, son. Especially in a sports game. Man, I love sports games. Ever since my 360 tanked and my subsequent hatred of all things Microsoft, I've gone without a sports title to play.

Enter MLB Power Pros 2008! Don't let the kiddish look fool you. This game is a blast to play. The hitting interface is a thing of beauty, simple yet satisfying. There are enough modes to keep busy for months at a time. And there is absolutely no motion tracking! All these features make Power Pros feel like a throwback to games of old. I feel it paying homage to RBI Baseball every time I load it up. It is just fantastic. Take a look at this video from IGN.com. You cannot tell me that you don't want to play this game.

Don't get me wrong, the game has its issues. Most of the problems I have are with the AI. For example, any time there is a runner on 2nd, he will take off on contact regardless of the situation. Ground ball to short with one out? There he goes! Out at 3rd, and I die a little inside. Also, I was recently leading 1-0 in the bottom of the 9th against the Astros. There was a runner on first with one out. Brandon Backe(Houston's starting pitcher) is at the plate. The computer puts in a pinch runner...and then leaves Backe up there to hit. Huh??? Finally, the announcer is a fast-talking psychopath who sacrifices correct pronunciation to keep pace with the action. I have yet to figure out how to silence him.

It definitely isn't perfect, but I don't care. I'm so happy to have a legitimate sports game to play on the Wii that I will gladly overlook the issues. I was ready to sit and wait for Griffey Baseball to hit the Virtual Console. No longer, friends! No longer.

The Poker Diary

My previous post may have been a bit inflammatory toward PokerStars. I really didn't have much documentation on how frequently I've been bent over and violated by the world's largest poker room, so I figure they deserve another chance. A documented chance. So here we go!

I, Nose Knows, am entering an 11 dollar, 180 person turbo no limit texas hold 'em tournament. The top 18 players will be paid, and the winner takes home almost six hundred smackeroos. The "turbo" lingo has a huge effect on how the game is played...blinds go up every 5 minutes, so play is hectic, insane, and idiotic. Let's see how this goes.

6:28 pm I have successfully registered for the tournament. So far, so good.

6:32 Let's shuffle up and laugh at L Tray!

6:32 Seated at my table of 9 include a guy from Argentina, Italy, and two other unrecognizeable, foreign hometowns. How does the internet even work, anyway? What is "the internet?" Can anyone explain it? Ok, I will now put down the bong.

6:34 Each player has an option to choose an image to go along with his or her screen name. Here's mine:

I make it a point to block the image of anyone socially awkward and/or European enough to actually put a picture of themselves as the avatar. I have already blocked 3 images. Humans are infuriating.

6:36 After 4 minutes, there are already 7 people eliminated from the field of 180. 5 of them had either AA or KK cracked.

6:37 I don't like Michael Wilbon outside of PTI.

6:37 And I really don't like Stuart Scott. Ever.

6:37 Apparently I'm a racist.

6:38 AK suited! I raise. Ooooo nice flop, lots of outs.

6:39 Rivered a straight! Winner winner chicken dinner! I started with 1,500 and now I have 2,950. Solid.

6:40 And by the way, some of you might think that because I rivered a straight, I sucked out. The flop had a Q and a T in it along with two diamonds, which meant that a Jack or another diamond would virtually guarantee a victory in the hand. 12 outs with two cards to go is over a 45% chance to hit. I took it and ran with it, son.

6:42 AK again, just knocked a guy out and won 500 more chips. We're at 3,500 now. Already 31 people are out of the tourney.

6:43 Jeff Van Gundy, while ugly, is actually a fantastic basketball commentator. I find his voice pleasing and his analysis of the ins and outs of the game downright scintillating. And strangely, a lot of my peers disagree with me. I haven't talked with one other person who overly enjoys his commentary. The lesson of course, is that you're all idiots.

6:47 My pocket sixes just faced a big raise, and I called.

6:48 That was stupid. Completely my fault. He had 88, and I got mowed down. The chip count is down to 2,400. Meanwhile, blinds are already at 50/100. Gotta make some moves.

6:49 125 people left. 17 minutes and the third of the field is now doing something else. Told you this was nutty.

6:50 Can you believe that the Bulls got the #1 pick in the draft? Unreal. Here's the thing about the #1 pick. If it's not used to take Derrick Rose, I will refuse to acknowledge John Paxson and the 1993 Chicago Bulls. I still have 5 other titles to remember. I don't need that one. Hopefully Johnny Pax knows the importance of drafting a hometown superstar whenever the opportunity arises.

6:53 I have a Nintendo Wii. I bought Wii Fit the other day because I've really been craving some yoga. I loaded it up, gave my height (6'4) and age (24), and the game told me that my BMI is 26% and, at 214 pounds, I am overweight. If this isn't shocking, nothing is. It really speaks to the innovation of the whole "exercise video game" concept. If there were one aspect of society that I would have thought to have been safe from calling me a slob, it would have been the video game industry. Instead, that's the only aspect of society that calls me fat. Also, gas is $4.20 and I love Jeff Van Gundy. What a world.

6:57 In poker news, I'm out of the tournament. With 2,000 chips and AK once again, I raised to 600. I was reraised all in by a guy with 4,000 in chips. He had AQ, and naturally, hit his queen on the flop. So there we have it. It's rigged, and as I suspected, my account is jinxed by a faraway shaman. What a fun half hour.

7:00 Dammit.

Why My Blood Pressure Is High

This just about sums it up. Welcome to PokerStars, where the best hand really has to sweat it out. No, check that.

Welcome to PokerStars, where the best hand gets shit on. Much better.

PS is one of the world's largest poker sites, with nearly 100,000 players logged on every night. With that many hands being dealt, bad beats are going to happen. They just are. But strangely enough, they find Nose Knows (that would be my screen name) more often than other people.

Today, oddly enough, this happened to me again. Like Phil Hellmuth, I went in with the superior hand (80% chance to win every time) and I went out nearly breaking my hand on the arm of my couch due to my Holyfield impression. So, even more like Phil Hellmuth, I complained. Here's a word-for-word email that I wrote to PokerStars support. I have yet to receive a response.

Dear PokerStars servers,

Kindly remove whatever hex you have on my account so I can see some winning hands for once. Up yours. AA rocked by JJ preflop followed by AJ losing to A9 preflop. He had quad nines on that hand, by the way. Yeah, that's realistic. I'm not sure if there's a shaman or some other kind of magic practitioner chanting endlessly whenever I'm logged on, but whatever the case may be, I am done seeing my 80% preflop advantages shit on. THANKS.

Luke Norman Trayser
Crystal Lake, IL

The infuriating thing about these beats in online poker (other than the massive chip hemorrhage) is the balls that are displayed by the people who sucked out on you. Here are some things that have been typed to me after morons have unfairly taken my chips. Insult to injury, you might say.

1. "Nice hand, douchebag!!"
2. "lolololol"
3. "Go kill yourself"
4. "HAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHA"
5. "Thanks for the chips"

I'm amazed I haven't broken my computer screen yet. I reeeeeeeeally hate #5. As if it were my decision to hand my precious intangible chips to a player from Scandinavia. This hobby will give me a heart attack sooner rather than later.

Man, I need to start investing.

Just To Make Sure We Don't Take Entertainment For Granted...

...Sex and the City is back! Yayyyyy! For those of you who wondered what it would take to get me to get out of my month-long slump and finally compose something new, all it took was dumbass Sarah Jessica Parker. Way to go, Sarah! I mean Sarah Jessica!

Look at that smile. It could launch a thousand ships...whose intention would be to get as far away from her as possible. If we could be channeled into her brain at the time that this photograph was taken, I'm sure her inner monologue would read something like "BWAHAHAHAHA, I am relevant again! Watch me wear a tree on my head! American girls will instantly crave arboreal hats! I'm married to Matthew Broderick! Look at my shoes! Look at them! Aren't they spectacular? Aren't they just stinky? Oh, by the way, stinky now means 'craveable/awesome.' That's how much power I have! Hopefully all this power doesn't go to my head!"

Zing.

After initially ridiculing her, I started to think that maybe this picture was Photoshopped. No one is this stupid. Right?

What an idiot.

Thanks go to Mary for sending me this picture. I'll be back soon to talk about poker, video games, male superiority, the San Antonio Spurs, and the 2008 World Series Champion Chicago Cubs(whose stadium I still can't stand).

Waterlogged Phones: Who's To Blame?

I was recently informed that yet another broad that I know drunkenly dropped her phone into a toilet, killing it immediately. This makes roughly 150 young ladies that I know who have done this exact same thing in a drunken stupor. I'm not alone here, either. Everyone in the nation knows approximately 150 drunk chicks that have broken their phones by waterlogging them. On a related note, there are roughly 300 million people in the United States. If we do the math, this means that 45 billion drunk chicks have toileted their cell phones in the United States alone. And if that math doesn't make sense to you, then ask yourself: did you represent your middle school in the Math Olympics? Well, L Tray did. Now shut up.

This post was originally intended blast women, but upon further review, I was forced to reconsider. I initially thought that the inferior brainpower of the weaker sex was to blame for so many toileted phones. But perhaps the explanation is a bit more tangible than that. To explain, let's try some role playing.

You're a college girl, out for the night. You are with your friends, determined to have a good time despite the plate of nachos you had before bed last night, which you're convinced added about 8 pounds to your frame. To make up for this lapse in self-control, you punished yourself at the rec center with 6 "Look at my love handles" miles on the treadmill and 400 angry "I'm a fatass whore" crunches. Thus cleansed, you are ready to get your drink on. And I've gotta say, you're looking good. Have you been working out?

Countless guys feed you identical lines, followed by identical drinks. With all those calories you burned from earlier today, the alcohol is hitting you quickly. You need to go to the ladies'. There's a line, but you put the urge to pee out of your head by comparing your legs and boobs to the other girls in line, following the grading sheet that states that big boobs are good, small boobs are bad. Small legs are good, big legs are bad. You realize you are one of the best looking women in line. You decide to reward yourself with a plate of nachos when you get home.

You finally find a stall, and you quickly lock the door and build a nest. You drop your pants, and all of a sudden, you hear a small sploosh. It was tough to hear over the blaring techno and cookie-cutter hip hop that you love oh so dearly, but you definitely heard something solid hit the water. You immediately think that you pooped your pants. Here come the tears. In between spasming, gut-busting sobs, you reach for your phone to call one of your friends for help. The phone is not in your back pocket. But that's where you always put it! Having a rare moment of drunk chick clarity, you look into the toilet bowl, and you see your precious celly, drowned and alone. You cry harder, for every drunk chick knows that pooping herself is small potatoes compared to losing a cell phone.

Now, at first glance, it's easy to blame the drunk lady for this mistake. But look closer. The phone was in the back pocket. This is where the phone needs to go for a young woman who doesn't feel like lugging that annoying clutch around all night(and yes, I know what a clutch is. Someone kill me). The front pockets of womens' pants are not conducive to holding anything bulky, because, come on, it'd look really stupid. And if we also consider the urgency of a drunken piss, a phone in the toilet seems downright expected. Upon eye contact with your stall, it suddenly feels as if an explosion is imminent. Now imagine building a nest beforehand! Wow! I have to take a bathroom break just typing it! So combine the momentum of aggressively yanking down tight jeans with that of sitting down, and bang! Phone in the toilet. As much as I hate to admit it, it makes sense.

So who's to blame? Why, it's those bastards over at the clothing companies! You, sirs, are destroying the phones of America! Not to mention the self-confidence and self-images of our beautiful women! How dare you tell us what does and what doesn't look good on our legs? Who are you to judge? You are all fatasses! How was your Chicken Tendercrisp today, Jiggles? Did you king size it? You most certainly did! It is YOUR fault that our women drop their phones into toilets, and it's YOUR fault that we dress ourselves because of the ideals that you put into our heads!

I'm kidding, of course.

Hey drunk chicks, your fathers called. Stop being idiots. Hang on to your phones.

What Nike and Jordan Have In Common With L Tray and Halo 3

There are a couple commercials that I've seen recently that really hit home. First is a Nike commercial that has athletes such as LT and Matt Holliday telling me that their better's better than my better. Although this slogan really doesn't make a whole lot of sense, I assume that what they're saying is that when they need to push to an extra gear, they leave us normies in the dust.

Before I connect this commercial to my Halo 3 superiority, I must say that I have some problems with it. Let's take a look at its stars. All of them, at best, have taken home prestigious individual awards and forgotten to take championships with them. Oops.





1. Matt Holliday-Josh Beckett's better is better than your better.
2. Steve Nash-Tony Parker's better is better than your better.
3. LaDainian Tomlinson-Manning and Brady's better is better than your better.
4. Hope Solo-You ride pine. Everyone's better is better than your better.
5. Kevin Durant-Every small forward in the NBA's better is better than your better.
6. Numerous Little Kids, Insects, and Women: L Tray's better is better than your better. You are inferior.

Moving on, we also have a new Jordan commercial. This one is kickass.

Past champions coupled with shots of current teams and stars working hard late into the night. This is how you make a commercial. You don't win titles with talent alone. You also need to practice more and to want it more than anyone else. Now, with that being said, behold L Tray in all his Halo 3 glory. The map is Construct, by far the best in the game. Here's Picture #1:

See that crumpled blue body parallel to the floor? That's my corpse. That's TrukeLayser. I can hear all you fools now. "L Tray, you said you were good at Halo!!1 You are obviously garbage! You are a liar!!!!111 lmfao" Shhh. It's okay. Calm down. Go flog your dolphin. Take a closer look at the picture. It says I was killed by Kleeno008. See that red body above mine? See that explosion in the background? That's Kleeno, getting his shit blown up by my posthumous grenade. Halo 3 calls that a "Death From the Grave."

You see, it's always a good idea to fire grenades wildly when you know you're about to bite it. As SNL cast member Jason Sudeikis recently observed on Conan, what the teenagers like to do when they play Halo is to annihilate you, then crouch/stand/crouch/stand over the corpse. They kill you, then hump you. It's really quite degrading. That said, a well-placed grenade effectively obliterates someone who is mid-hump. Very satisfying. And it doesn't seem like much, but that one kill can be the difference between a win and a loss. It's a game of inches. Al Pacino would agree. Here's Picture #2.

Pretty easy to see what's going on here. I have a sword, and I have completely wrecked an unidentified noob. There's not too many feelings greater than the one that comes when idiots turn a corner armed with an assault rifle and a prayer. You can almost hear them poop their pants when they see the sword coming at them. Beautiful. Picture #3:

Here I am smoking Kleeno again. Poor fella. He probably had no right thumb, forcing him to use the right analog stick with his teeth. I lit him up like a suburban front yard during Christmas. Notice the Double Kill medal on the left. My better was better. I practiced more. I wanted it more. The end result was 22 kills out of my team's 50, and only 9 deaths. +13 for the game. And yes, the final score was 50-49. Looks like that grenade early in the game was worth it after all. It's the little things, friends. Happy hunting.

Boy, Was I Misinformed!

So I was at my local music store the other day, looking to make a purchase or three(I always try to support the talentless, greedy hacks that run America's record companies) when I came across an intriguing album cover: Mass Romantic by the New Pornographers. For those of you unfamiliar with the record, here's a photo of it:

Is it hot in here?

I am always very thoughtful before I make a purchase. I'm not an "impulse shopper" by any means. That being said, here's the conversation I had with the store manager. And no, I am not very proud of what transpired.

L Tray: So you're telling me that I can get this obviously fantastic piece of pornography for only $7.99?

Manager, staring at me, horribly confused: If that's what the sticker says, then yes, you absoultely can.

L Tray: That is fantastic! I mean, I'm a huge fan of phone sex, and that can sometimes cost me a couple of dollars a minute, which really adds up. I mean, my stamina is through the roof. Know what I'm saying? I hold my hand up here, asking for a high five.

Manager, still staring at me, now absolutely horrified: No sir, I surely don't.

L Tray: Well, no matter. I can't believe that I'll be getting this for roughly 15 cents a minute! I cannot WAIT to get home and go to town on myself! What about you? Are you familiar with the work of these "New Pornographers?"

Manager: Yes, I am. I think you'll be very surprised.

L Tray: Oh, I don't know about that. I've been around the block, my friend. This is gonna do it for me. Wrap it up, my good sir!

I feel so stupid. Turns out The New Pornographers aren't actually a group of people that have an innovative take on audio pornography, but they're a group of people that play rock music together. And the cd? Yeah, it's good, I guess. "Mass Romantic" is one catchy song, that's for sure. But that isn't what I thought I was buying.

I know I'm embarrassing myself by writing this, but I'm sure that I'm not the first one to be fooled by the band name and album cover. I mean, what would you think? Look at those people! They are most assuredly bumpin' uglies! And that wild herbivore in the background is obviously thinking about joining in. That's some kinky shit! And then the cd starts playing.

Mass romantic fool wears Foster Grants/

His books on tape ring true/

Like everyone wants to say "I love you" to someone on the radio (radio)

How am I supposed to "relieve" my "stress" with lyrics like that? Huh?

Oh, well. At least I still have the album cover.