Games & Gadgets

Heath Ledger is on my wall. Sometimes, I think he talks to me.

But I thought the same thing about Kurt Cobain.

I bought the poster of Heath Ledger menacing in his joker makeup a week before The Dark Knight came out in theaters. At the time I didn't know if it would be a decent movie.

I sort of knew.

I knew, for instance, that Heath Ledger is a fine actor, perhaps one of the best in his generation. I know he had a lousy choice in company — Mary Kate Olsen, she of Full House fame who was a friend of the late Ledger, won't speak to the feds about his death unless she is granted immunity from prosecution.

When I go I'll try not to leave any uncooperative witnesses behind.

I'll also try to do something as phenomenal as Ledger's Joker before I go.

I've watched The Dark Knight three times, once in IMAX. (rip-off, don't do it.)

With each subsequent viewing, I've come to appreciate the finer points of his performance. It scared the bejeezus out of me.

The movie holds up pretty well, too. I couldn't understand what Christian Bale was saying half the time, but being a Pearl Jam fan helps me to overlook that.

People have criticized The Dark Knight for being too long. This reminds me of a scene from Amadeus, where Mozart's patron tells him his music has "too many notes."

Mozart asks him which notes he'd like cut.

This is by no means a perfect movie, but it meets expectations like a ding on a bell.

"Tell them about the Ledger death cult," Heath reminds me.

I'm getting to that.

When I was in high school and Nirvana's lead singer Kurt Cobain committed suicide, people put up his posters and wore tee shirts with his image. My parents worried about the attraction — I had his poster up in my room then, too.

"Do you think that's cool?" my mom would ask of his suicide.

I'd shrug and go back to playing "Street Fighter."

The night of the movie I saw several people — quite a few young ladies — dressed in Joker makeup and wearing black. Haven't seen any dressed up like that since, but they have lots of those Joker posters at Spencer's in the mall.

Metal Gear Solid 4

I spent some time playing this one on loan from my brother-in-law. The acting and cinematic elements are not too shabby.

I never got around to the online play. For reasons I can't explain, it took a few hours to download the things I needed and I eventually lost interest.

Fans of the "Metal Gear" series will be happy, but non-fans will kind of be left in the dark.

Overall, a solid addition to the series — four buttons out of five.

Level grinding in "WoW."

When my PlayStation 3 crapped out on me a month ago, I decided to do some level grinding on a new character in "World of Warcraft."

I made a blood elf warlock (which is tremendously overpowered, by the way. I'm up to level 30 now and, thanks to a new patch from Blizzard, have a mount that's a horse with fire around his hooves.)

So far so good.