The Kickoff: A gigantic jam session between Paul McCartney, Eddie Vedder, and Bono goes on for half an hour before Snoop Dogg comes on stage, rolls out something that is presumably a joint and is significantly larger than his head, and proceeds to smoke it until everyone in the audience can taste colors.
American Northeast: Hunt Rivers Cuomo in a baptismal of blood, the least dangerous and least talented prey. Weezer is a terrible band. They’re just awful. Just complete goddamn dog leavings. Holy heck is Weezer awful. I want to throw the entire band down a well. After the third album there was no reason to let them go this long or stay this terrible.
American Southeast: Bruce Springsteen takes on an army of country music fans with kung fu, wins, then plays “Born in the USA” on a melodica and it rules.
American West: Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson go into the west with Gandalf while Orville Peck looks on, a single tear rolling down his mask.
American Midwest: John Cage’s 4’33” plays in every mall and drones with tasers ensure the appropriate sonic environment.
American West Coast: GRANDADDY REUNION TOUR LET’S GO
Canada Central: Avril Lavigne throws up in one fan’s open mouth.
Canada East: Celine Dion leads the Quebecois Legion to crush all resistance before joining a forked trans-continental union to ensure that the Red Hot Chili Peppers never record another album. True art must transcend all boundaries.
Ireland: Enya boops a cat on its nose and invents fifteen new languages.
South Korea: Honestly I can’t keep track of these bands any more, just answer the What Are You Playing or something.
Bonus question: What was your favorite toy when you were a kid? Specific toy, not a category of toys. (No LEGO-brand construction bricks, for example.)
​Andrew Ross (@dengarsw): Another mini sampler of gaming again I think: some Pokemon Go, some Mario Kart World, a bit of Splatoon 3, and some Monster Hunter Wilds. I may push a little more in Orna, as I’m so close to leveling again after about a month or so. I’m so close to the next tier/class choice!
No joke, when I was a kid, I had literally one Batman Returns toy. I wasn’t allowed to see the movie and had no idea why his suit was bronze instead of black or blue, but it was the only toy that wasn’t homemade, a hand-me-down, or from the thrift or drug store, and it remained that way for years, so I loved that thing.
Brianna Royce (@nbrianna.bsky.social, blog): I’m not too sure what I’ll be doing this weekend because of the power outage – I might be limited to Steam Deck and phone games, but we’ll see. Not very sure I’ll be able to Palia on a hotspot! Justin showed me pics of the new Lord of the Rings Online event, and I can’t wait to get in there too.
Eliot discounted it (for reasons?), but LEGO really was our big toy; we built cities on our ping pong table in our basement, daily. I didn’t have a lot of memorable toys beyond that. Books and some action figures and dolls and junk, but nothing that stands out as being The Big One. Do bikes count? I absolutely lived on my bike.
Chris Neal (@wolfyseyes.bsky.social, blog): I’m continuing the long, slow grind towards getting my robopupper in Palia right now as well as clearing other personal hurdles; I recently achieved blueberry technology (those who play know what that is) and lucked into apples so things are going well on that front. Otherwise it’s likely some more Elite: Dangerous for funsies and more hunting for a main class in Guild Wars 2; next up on that front is either the Revenant or Thief.
Bonus: I think one of my favorite toys that I owned was a Yak Bak. I appreciate that’s probably dating myself super hard, so to explain to the young’uns, it was a little handheld recording and playback device that you could goof around with and use a button to warp the recorded sound. It was a very dumb little fidget toy and I adored it.
Eliot Lefebvre (@Eliot_Lefebvre, blog): Next week is a big update in Warframe so I need to be ready for that, but a lot of my games are currently in “next big update very soon” mode, so it’s going to be kind of furtive aside from that and Final Fantasy XIV.
It won’t surprise anyone to know that I really did enjoy Transformers when I was younger, but my favorite by far was my very aged and actually consistently damaged Jetfire toy that was missing all of his armor, snapped an arm ratchet, had a wing snap off, his rear engine broke… the list goes on. But I really loved that toy as long as I could keep him around.
Justin Olivetti (@Sypster, blog): I’ve got company this weekend, so available gaming time will be lower, but I’m hoping to get some LOTRO Midsummer Festival activities done, pursue some of the many (many) activities of World of Warcraft’s 11.1.7, and tend to my Palia garden.
Sam Kash (@samkash@mastodon.social): I imagine I’ll find some more time to play Dune Awakening. Overall I think it’s pretty solid if not very a solo experience. In offline world I’m making my way through Nine Sols. I had apparently gone off the wrong way at some point and did a whole bunch of stuff out of order. Well last weekend I got back on track so it should be good again.
Bonus: It’s really tough remembering a time I played with toys. I had the Ghostbusters head quarters building and the four characters. I imagine I played with that a ton.
Every Saturday, join the Massively OP community and staff for What Are You Playing, our roundup of what MMORPGs and other games we’re hoping to play this weekend (with a bonus question or two for our amusement). Tell us what you’re up to! Go off-topic! And don’t forget to have fun!
