Thoughts About Primaries...

Last night, CNN hosted the final debate to take place before the Florida Republican Primary, which is on Tuesday 1/31.  The debate featured the four remaining candidates: Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum - a pool that has been significantly narrowed over the previous three contests in the primary process.  By all accounts Romney, the once and future frontrunner, stood his ground against Newt Gingrich, who is generally considered the better debater.  Each candidate's performance in the debate says a lot about their chances of winning the Republican nomination for President, and about their chances of challenging incumbent Barack Obama.  But rather than picking apart their responses to questions about the hot-button issues or analyzing their speech patterns and facial expressions for insight into such crucial intangibles as confidence and leadership qualities, let's take a look at how they all got here.

Mitt Romney and Ron Paul are the only two holdover candidates from the 2008 Republican primaries.  Last election cycle, Romney had some epic clashes with eventual nominee John McCain during the debates, and eventually dropped out of the race in early February.  The former Massachusetts Governor can be recognized by his decidedly Mormon family (an endless stream of smiling, healthy-looking offspring, all dressed in white) and his eerily Manchurian Candidate-esque appearance and mannerisms.  Ron Paul resembles your friend's hip grandpa: he's the oldest candidate on the ballot (even a year older than McCain, although he doesn't look it), he wears a lot of sweaters, and he's never shy about rambling on about his crazy ideas.  The former gynecologist's politics lean more towards Libertarian than Republican, but the GOP has been kind to him during his 20+ years serving in the House of Representatives for Texas, so he remains on the party's ticket.

In his first ever presidential campaign, Newt Gingrich was surging after his double digit victory in last weekend's South Carolina primary, but after last night's debate, pundits are quick to announce that his momentum is waning.  Gingrich served as speaker of the House during the Clinton administration, and is quick to take a bunch of credit for the period of peacetime and economic expansion that Clinton presided over during that time, the longest in the country's history.  Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum is still hanging in this race, refusing to throw in the towel mostly based on his win in Iowa.  He won by just 34 votes over Romney, and the contest would have instantly been headed to recount-town were it anything but a non-binding caucus.

The most talked-about candidate who didn't even make it to the primaries has to be Herman Cain, he of the questionable sexual history and policy plans taken straight out of a videogame.  Michele Bachmann took her haunting stare out of the race after Iowa, and Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman followed suit after New Hampshire (despite the latter candidate garnering a strong 3rd place finish with 17% of the vote).  Huntsman - who was a member of a band called The Wizards while growing up in Palo Alto, CA - endorsed fellow Mormon Mitt Romney, while Texas Governor Perry endorsed Gingrich, setting the stage for their all-out battle in South Carolina.

Pundits claimed that South Carolina primary voters pride themselves on voting for the eventual nominee.  With Romney looking like the clear favorite leaving New Hampshire, it's interesting that they didn't jump on the bandwagon and effectively wrap this thing up before Florida.  The fact that they picked Gingrich says a lot about the importance of debates and drives home the point that a poor or effective performance can make or break an election - as if Nixon didn't teach us that lesson effectively enough back in 1960.  But with Romney leading in delegates and in the polls, coupled with his triumph at last night's debates, puts him in a pretty darn good position going forward.  That is, unless the Ron Paul Revolution spreads across the nation (as we all know is inevitable, even if it takes a different name).  If you live in Florida, make sure to vote this coming Tuesday.  And if you hail from anywhere else, just clap your hands if you believe...

Thoughts About Football...

Let's Try to Understand some of the Football that happened Last Weekend

I have, in my hands, a copy of the Sports Illustrated 2011 NFL Preview. It's got Atlanta Linebacker Curtis Lofton on the cover, because Peter King had picked the Falcons to win the Super Bowl. As it happens, they were eliminated one week ago by the New York Giants in the Wild Card round, who (after yesterday's win against the defending champion Green Bay Packers) are now slated to go up against the San Francisco 49ers - with a trip to the Super Bowl in the balance.

In the NFL Preview, each team has a 2-page spread - a pattern I hope to see the Sports Illustrated Baseball Preview return to in the future. There's an article about each team, a profile on the coach, a "Spotlight" on a particular player, and of course the Projected Lineup. Some might say it's useless to look at pre-season rankings this late in the year, since various changes throughout the year will cause most of them to be out-of-date or inaccurate. But they are useful to see how the teams and the players got to where they are now (the playoffs) from where they were then (potential teams, only existing within the pages of a magazine).

I have the pages marked for 4 teams: the Baltimore Ravens, the New England Patriots, and the aforementioned Giants and Niners. These 4 teams will all play next week, and 2 of those 4 will go to the Super Bowl, or so I'm led to believe. This is a pretty important cultural event, the Super Bowl, if for no other reason than the commercials. And Sports Illustrated is a magazine whose predictions are fun to make a story out of. So let's take a look at the men who SI's writers think were likely to factor into the teams that could play in the big game.


New England Patriots
Projected Finish: 1st in AFC EAST
Actual Finish: Same
Spotlight on: Chad Ochocinco, one of the team's three starting Wide Recievers. Now he sat out most of last game, after compiling just 276 yards the whole season. The top-performing player on Tom Brady's offense last week was TE Rob Gronkowski with 145 yards - SI describes him as "highly skilled". The article mostly features the new defense surrounding powerhouse NT Vince Wilfork (who incidentally had 1.5 sacks in their trouncing of the Denver Broncos).

Baltimore Ravens
Projected Finish: 2nd in AFC NORTH
Actual Finish: T-1st in AFC NORTH
Spotlight on: Anquan Boldin. The team's top Wide Receiver was expected to gel better with QB Joe Flacco (pictured (in the magazine, as well as above)) after spending a year playing together. Well, he earned 887 yards this year... after 839 the year before. Not sure if it's working out how they planned, but he's still the team's #1 WR - he had a team-high 79 yards in last week's win over the Houston Texans. I have no idea what stats to use to judge Quarterbacks, but pro-football-reference has him at an 80.9 Passer Rating, a drop from 93.6 the previous year...

New York Giants
Projected Finish: 3rd in NFC EAST
Actual Finish: 1st in NFC EAST
Spotlight on: Jonathan Goff, the would-have-been-4th year Linebacker, had he not missed the whole season with a knee injury.
WR Hackeem Nicks gets the picture in the article. He's supposed to "hold together New York's untested receiving corps" - all signs point to success, as he trailed rookie Victor Cruz in total yards, but still hit the 1,000 mark himself. However it has been Nicks's turn to shine in the playoffs, combining for 280 yards and 4 touchdowns in the Giants' two postseason games.

San Francisco 49ers
Projected Finish: 4th in NFC WEST
Actual Finish: 1st in NFC WEST
Spotlight on: Aldon Smith, a Linebacker who in 2011 somehow ended up with 14.0 sacks in just 16 games... The clear focus of the article was on Jim Harbaugh, their new Coach, recently departed from Stanford (and the brother of Ravens coach, John Harbaugh. There's a chance for the brothers to meet in the Superbowl, if things turn out right.

I'll certainly be pulling for that eventuality as I watch the games next week. Maybe at that point I will also know enough about the teams in question to actually make some meaningful observations about the Big Game.

Top Players: AL & NL 2011

While the analysis of Box Office numbers is fun and insightful and economically significant, let's not forget the original focus of this blog: Baseball statistics. Using my patented Baseball Database, I have calculated the Top Players in each position in each league, which I now present in lineup form.

Some pretty impressive players all around. A good mix of young players and veterans, expected performers and breakout stars. Let's break them down further, not by position or by team, but by how they were expected to do from a fantasy standpoint. Granted, my system is going to be a little incongruous, cuz I'm using mlb.com's rankings and a form of calculating fantasy points (swp) that has been outdated for many years. But I believe that in combining the two, I'll arrive at a sort of Hegelian synthesis of fantasy evaluation methods.


Four (4) of our players ranked within the Top 10 according to MLB: 1B Miguel Cabrera (who anchored my fantasy team btw), SS Troy Tulowitzki, LF Ryan Braun (who won this year's NL MVP, prior to a positive PED test), and 1B Joey Votto. By contrast, there were four (4) total batters who ranked out of the top 100: CF Curtis Granderson (who surpassed all expectations by destroying his career-highs in HR, RBIs, runs and walks), C Miguel Montero (high-ranked catchers are very hard to come by, since catchers as a position don't produce a lot of points), SS Asdrubal Cabrera (a legitimate breakout All-Star season), and LF Alex Gordon. Gordon, a former 3B prospect [see also Ryan Braun] who everyone had just about given up on, was by far the lowest-ranked starter among all others on the team (458).


The highest-ranked pitcher was Roy Halladay (16). The two hurlers who accomplished the near-superhuman feat of breaking 3,000 points were ranked 32 (Kershaw) and 50 (Verlander). One starting pitcher from each league had surprising and unexpected seasons: Ian Kennedy (232) and James Shields (240). Non-Closer Relief Pitchers rarely contribute enough points to warrant a roster spot (unless your league measures Holds, in which case you'll need a couple of the best). Craig Kimbrel was this year's Rookie of the Year, so it's understandable why he was ranked 213 - just 9 slots higher than teammate Jonny Venters, who had a shot to win the closer role right up until opening day. Valverde, who performed significantly worse than Kimbrel in terms of both stats and ability to control his emotions, ranked 117.



This is all part of an ongoing process to use these numbers to hone in on different players' fantasy value, but updates on that project will have to wait, as there is a whole real world out there to see and experience.

New Year, New Lists!

Well, we're back from a glorious 2011 Holiday Season, one that wrapped up the last year before the coming consciousness shift of 2012. With the baseball season over, action shifts to offseason trades, new contracts for free agents, and exchange of arbitration figures. Very little is happening in my Batman world since beating Arkham City - I'm going to remain spoiler-free and skip the 6-minute preview of Dark Knight Rises, and I hardly think the New Years Eve marathon of the 1960s Adam West TV series should garner much coverage on the blagosphere. To occupy this dark cold time of the year, I have been engaging in the creation of two sortable databases that cover the two new subjects of this blog.

The first is a comprehensive look at the 2011 baseball season, with a wealth of information for each qualifying player, including position, swp (for each team in the case of a trade or other mid-season acquisition), birthday, hometown, draft position, and school history. The other is a list of the biggest movies that came out in 2011, listed by release date, distributor, North American opening weekend gross (so we can compare movies from the beginning of the year to later releases), and production company (pending).

As is the case with most database work, there is a lot of number crunching that has to go into play before any interesting or publishable findings can come out, but here are some preliminary findings about how the major distributors did at the box office this year, in terms of opening weekend ticket sales:


1. Warmer Bros. Pictures
$623.7 million

The leader in market share for 2010 continued its dominance last year, grossing the most opening weekend ticket sales out of all the major distributors. Of course, it never hurts when your slate includes the biggest release in movie history (let alone of 2011): Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 ($169.2m). The company also boasted the film with the 6th highest opening weekend sales: comedy sequel The Hangover Part II ($85.9m). (The next biggest comedy on their slate was Horrible Bosses, which missed the $30m mark by less than $2m.) Green Lantern, a movie inspired by a property from Time Warner-owned DC Entertainment (formerly DC Comics), grossed $53.2m in its opening weekend, a figure sure to be dwarfed by next year's fellow DC behemoth The Dark Knight Rises. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows was good for $39.6m - who knows how many sequels that franchise will churn out. It's no wonder the film unit accounts for about 40% of parent company Time Warner's bottom line.

2. Paramount Pictures
$535.8 million

With 16 notable releases in 2011, the film distribution arm of media conglomerate Viacom (see also MTV Networks, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, and the BET family) took home the silver medal. Its top-opening film - Michael Bay's Transformers: Dark of the Moon - made $97.9m in its debut weekend, good for the third-highest opening of the year. A pair of Marvel Comics movies - Thor and Captain America, both foreshadowing next year's ensemble epic The Avengers - were basically locked up in a tie for second: $65.7m and $65.1m respectively. Next on their list is another three-quel, this one in the horror genre rather than an effects-driven event film (Paranormal Activity 3: $52.6m). Three animated movies featuring high profile celeb voices (Kung Fu Panda 2, Rango, and Puss in Boots) each grossed over $30m in their opening frames. Rounding out their $30m+ releases is Super 8, Paramount's second collaboration with director J.J. Abrams in the last three years.

3. Universal Pictures
$330.7 million

The studio's biggest tentpole, Fast Five, had just the 5th highest-grossing opening of the year (just edging out Hangover II with $86.2m). The only other movies on its slate that broke the $30m mark were animated Easter comedy Hop ($37.5m) and disappointing period/sci-fi actioner Cowboys & Aliens ($36.4). Bridesmaids, like Horrible Bosses before it, also missed out on the $30m milestone, but what it lacked in B.O. it made up for in breakout performances. If we consider Focus Features (also owned by Universal's parent company NBCUniversal, which is itself owned by Comcast and GE), the grand total goes up by about $36m (the imprint's biggest release of 2011 was Hanna with a mere $12.4m)... but it's not enough to move it up in the rankings, and I consciously didn't want to get too much into the corporate game on this post.

4. 20th Century Fox
$301.2 million

News Corp's film unit didn't make any real big splashes, with their two biggest releases (X-Men: First Class and Rise of the Planet of the Apes) languishing in the mid $50m range. Rio once again proved the lucrativity of animated features with $39.2m in its opening weekend. Specialty division Fox Searchlight contributed barely $3m to the till, but it's hoping to bank big in awards season with Oscar contender The Descendants and pretentious-favorite The Tree of Life.

5. Columbia Pictures
$282.5 million

Here's where the corporate ownership game really comes into play: if we combine Columbia's take with the other banners that operate under Sony Pictures Entertainment (TriStar Pictures, Screen Gems, and Sony Pictures Classics) the total goes up to $382.9m, and the conglomerate as a whole rockets up to third place on the year. Combined or not, the company's biggest grosses were Battle: Los Angeles and The Smurfs (tied with $35.6m) followed closely by old TV show remake The Green Hornet and comedy Bad Teacher. A pair of Adam Sandler comedies round out the slate (Just Go With It and Jack and Jill).

6. Walt Disney Pictures

$205 million

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides ($90.2m) and Cars 2 ($66.1) led the way for the Mouse House, while throwback The Muppets missed the $30m mark by less than $1m. A corporate note: if we add the $107.5 million grossed by Disney-owned Touchstone (led by Real Steel, Gnomeo & Juliet, and The Help) the Disney machine eclipses the News Corp machine.

7. Summit Entertainment
$178.5 million

Summit made basically all its income from The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 ($138.1m). Its next highest release, Source Code, garnished just over 1/10th of the haul made by the vampire/werewolf tween drama. The final corporate note of this post: if this week's deal that will see Lions Gate buy Summit for $400m had occurred last year, the combined moviemaker would have grossed $244.1m between them.

Batman walks into an Apple Store on Black Friday

INT Apple Store: DAY


[The crowd is pushing and shoving and shouting, all trying to get the attention of the sales associates. There's even a crowd at the Genius Bar and Lecture Classroom area, filled with people who know it's the craziest shopping day of the year, but can't stay away, because they need their sweet fix of the Apple Store.


[We are looking out at the front door from the inside of the store, just skimming the tops of the customers' heads. Suddenly a black caped form drops from the sky, straightens up, and is revealed to be Batman. A hush briefly falls over the crowd, as the customers' attention turns to the dark figure, shades of irritation in their faces for having their deals interrupted. Batman's eyes narrow.


[The business and hubbub breaks out immediately afterwards, twice as loud and rambunctious as before. No one even notices Batman is there anymore. Our hero confidently wades into the fray. He walks up to the nearest blue-shirt, who is explaining the features on a new iPad to a customer. His name tag says Deron.


[Two shot of Deron talking to the Customer.]


DERON
Now if you touch the screen with three and a half fingers, and drag them in a triple-zig-zag pattern, you can open…


[As Deron turns away from the customer to demonstrate the screen gesture, the camera follows him to look at the appliance. A muffled yell is heard, faintly distinguishable from the general clatter. When the two-shot returns, Batman is standing in the Customer's place.]


DERON
Holy sh…


BATMAN
I need a pair of in-ear headphones with a built-in microphone. NOW!


DERON
Um… well, sir, if you'll just give your name to Stacy here…


[Stacy pops up beside him.]


STACY
I can just put you in our system and the next available…


BATMAN
You don't understand, this is an emergency.


DERON
That may be, sir, but it is Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year. We have a lot of customers expecting the biggest deals we have to offer. You can't just…


[Batman grabs Deron by the lapels, swings him around, and smashes him up against a display of 27" monitors. Customers are startled. Stacy screams.]


BATMAN
You listen to me, you pimply little punk. You get me a set of headphones, or people will die.


DERON
Die…? What could you possibly need…


BATMAN
Joker fried my previous set of headphones in our last encounter at the chemical plant, and remotely disabled the Blu-Tooth connectivity in the Batmobile. I need to be able to interface with the voice activated Batcomputer while I'm driving around the city trying to solve the Riddler's clues. It's part of their nefarious plot to force me to venture out into the mall on the busiest shopping day of the year.


DERON
And you couldn't go to a Best Buy…?


[Batman punches the display next to Deron's' head, and sparks fly.]


BATMAN
Your store was closer. Now…


[He draws up close to Deron's face.]


BATMAN
…are you going to be part of the problem, or are you going to help me find a solution?


[Deron is about to pass out from fear, when Stacy comes up behind Batman and tentatively holds out a set of headphones. Batman grabs it without even turning to face her.]


STACY
Free… of charge, sir…


BATMAN
Thanks.


[He drops Deron to the floor and turns on Stacy, towering over her.]


BATMAN
And also one of those carrying cases for a 17" laptop.


STACY
Sir…?


[Batman glowers at her. He doesn't want to shout "Now!" again, or bad things will happen. Stacy knows this and hurries off, through the crowd of people that has gathered.]


STACY
Excuse me, pardon me…


[Batman now stands there silently, next to Deron's limp form, amid a pile of smashed monitors and computers, the unopened set of headphones in his hand. A crowd of people stares, snaps pictures, and takes video footage. Employees do the same with the display iPhone models. It gets a little awkward.]


BATMAN
I mean, might as well pick up a case for my new… portable Batcomputer… as long as I'm here…




END

Arkham City Post #18: Showdown with Joker at Monarch Theater

WARNING: SPOILER ALERT!

Part 17: Protocol 10 In Effect

Before I even had time to process the deaths of Hugo Strange and Ra's al Ghul, my principal antagonist and arch-enemy appeared on a screen in front of me, holding Talia hostage at gunpoint.  He revealed that he was keeping her at the Monarch Theater - who knows if it was just a coincidence, or if he somehow found out my chilling secret and chose that location because of its connection to that fateful night...?  But either way, my objective was clear, and it was a simple matter of dispatching the snipers Joker had placed on various rooftops to cover the theater entrance.

Joker and Talia were on the stage in front of the screen: Talia on her knees, and Joker standing with a gun behind her.  I knew the bastard's trigger finger was too quick to try a Reverse Batarang, so I resolved to calmly listen to what he had to say - which shocked me more than an electrified floor at Arkham Asylum's penitentiary wing: he demanded that I hand over Mr. Freeze's cure!  Why would he need the cure?  He had already taken it and was long on the road to recovery.  When I explained that I didn't have it, that I had gone through all this nonsense to retrieve it from him, Joker looked as shocked as I was... which gave Talia the opportunity to deftly escape and stab him through the back with her sword.

Now in addition to the trauma of seeing three of my most iconic foes die right before my eyes and my confusion about what was going on with the cure, I was puzzled by the question of why Joker didn't even bother to restrain or disarm his hostage before making demands... but then, to my immense relief, Talia produced the cure!  Apparently she had stolen it from Harley Quinn, which explains why I found her tied up in the steel mill.  But did she steal it after Joker had a chance to use it on himself?  Otherwise, how did he look and sound and act so healthy?  Unless...

Then it hit me.  It was something Joker said when we first met at the steel mill, when I was distracted by the decoy in the wheelchair without a pulse: "You fell for the old fake Joker gag..."  This whole business with Joker being cured was just a ruse, a double-blind set up both to confuse me and to flush out the real cure.  And now that the real, still sick Joker knew where the cure was, he had no need for the messenger... so before I had time to adequately warn Talia of the situation, he pulled the trigger from his hiding place in the second deck.  I seethed with rage and sadness as Talia's lifeless form slunk to the ground.  I wanted to ask her why she didn't suspect something when she saw a fully-healthy Joker parading around, since she had stolen the cure before he had a chance to use it... but I decided that wouldn't have been right for the situation.

Before I had time to get into it with the real Joker, the fake Joker suddenly came back to life (I'm sorry to say, but I took something like that in stride, at this point) and grabbed the cure, which had slipped gently from Talia's hand when she fell... but he grabbed it in the most peculiar way: his hand became a mass of fluid matter, and he absorbed it into himself!  That was when I began to realize: the impostor Joker was none other than Basil Karlo, Clayface, who had snuck IN to Arkham City just for the purpose of impersonating the world's greatest crime boss.  But now that the ruse was over, he unleashed the fury of his full power on me, turning the gutted theater into a battleground.

Luckily I had plenty of Freeze grenades on hand, which I could use to temporarily harden Clayface's outer shell, all while dodging his swinging blades, crushing hammers, masses of projectile clay, and his patented rolling-ball attacks.  When I had adequately frozen him, I grabbed Talia's sword, which was still embedded in his clayish mass, and hacked the sucker to bits.  Just as I was about to expose the precious precious cure, Joker pulled his final card from up his sleeve: he detonated explosives placed on the floor, which led us straight into Wonder City and the Lazarus Pit where I originally battled Ra's al Ghul.  Clayface was too injured to re-form himself, so he sent an army of man-sized clay soldiers after me, which I was easily able to keep at bay with Talia's sword while also using grenades to freeze Clayface's main mass until he was subdued enough to grab the cure from his tainted insides.

But Joker wasn't done yet: I don't know what he was planning on doing with the control panel high atop the Lazarus Pit, but I stopped him from doing whatever it was by hurling my sword directly at him, piercing the control box, and causing a massive explosion that at once sent Clayface into a boiling pit of lava and separated Joker from my line of sight.  The first order of business was to drink about half the cure, finally putting that saga to rest... but then Joker hit me with some hardcore philosophy.  As we all know, my one rule is that Batman must never take a life, EVER, not even Joker's, even after all the people of Gotham he's killed and all the drama and heartache he's put me through personally.  Would it be on the same level if I were to simply deny Joker the cure and let him die of Titan poisoning, the result of his own twisted scheme?  Surely the circumstances would allow me to bend the rules this one time.  Plus, nobody would have to know...

Just then, Joker jumped out of the shadows and jammed an icepick into my right shoulder.  Normally this type of thing wouldn't even cause me to bat an eye... but it had been a long night and I was in the middle of some deep conjecturing... so the shock caused me to lose my grip on the cure.  As the vial shattered on the ground, Joker tried to frantically lap up the remains - while I was thankful that my enemies are usually reckless enough to prevent me from having to make any of the real hard character-redefining choices.  But truth be told, I had already decided on a course of action, and told the Joker so before he took his final breath: even after all he's done, I would have saved him...

Arkham City Post #17: Protocol 10 In Effect

WARNING: SPOILER ALERT!

Part 16: Confronting Joker in the Steel Mill

I didn't know it at the time (what with the being unconscious and all), but the collapsing train was actually caused by a missile fired by one of Hugo Strange's TYGER helicopters.  It seems he had put Protocol 10 into effect, which consisted of using heavy firepower to level everything in sight within the borders of Arkham City.  And here I was expecting some brilliant strategic masterstroke.  It's always the smartest of my enemies who disappoint me the most...

But before I found all this out, there was the little matter of being trapped under a huge mass of debris.  Joker had somehow avoided being crushed and was crouching over my incapacitated form, ready to cut my throat with a knife, when who should appear to save the day but Talia!  She offered herself up in a trade: if Joker would let me go, she would bestow upon Joker the secret of immortality!  I was obviously in no position to object, being helplessly pinned to the floor, so I only watched in horror as Talia surrendered her sword to Joker and led him out.  But my spirits were lifted slightly when she alerted my attention to a homing beacon she had attached to herself, allowing me to pick up her trail.

Before I could start out, I received a little help from Catwoman, who showed up in the nick of time and helped me escape from under the rubble.  She ran off to avoid the deadly air strikes while I immediately set out in search of Talia.  However, Alfred and Oracle had the NERVE to hinder my quest and provide me with a new main objective: they wanted me to apprehend Strange before they would help me rescue Talia.  After some harsh words regarding chain of command in this operation, I agreed to help save the inmates - although most deserved to be condemned by society, Batman couldn't let hundreds be slaughtered by Strange's attacks*.

*Never mind the many thousands more that would die if Joker was allowed to become immortal... not that I would ever kill him anyway...  But I knew in my heart that Talia would never deliver on this promise.  Which was one of the reasons I needed to get to her quickly: since Joker would clearly kill her the moment she refused his promised prize.

Before I could get into Strange's command center at the top of Wonder Tower, I had to search and scan a number of TYGER helicopters to find the control codes, which I could then input into my Cryptographic Sequencer.  After that, I had to make my way to the foundations of Wonder Tower (which were heavily guarded by TYGER guards), input the codes into the elevator, then scale the tower to access the control terminal.  Once at the top, more TYGER guards, heavily armed and equipped, were protecting Strange himself.  I felt bad about beating up on these operatives, many of whom started out as good cops who were influenced by Strange's hypnotic mind control techniques - and perhaps those of his mysterious "master" who he referenced over the radio during my trip through the TYGER processing center.  But it wasn't like I was planning on delivering any permanent damage to any of them.

Even after breaking through Strange's defenses and taking out some of my long built-up frustrations on his face, he remained optimistic about his long-term success.  He was going on and on about his view of himself as Gotham's savior, when his gloating was abruptly cut short as a razor-sharp blade passed through his chest from behind.  As the villain lay dying, his "master" was revealed - the only man in my rogue's gallery with enough power and resources to back such a nefarious scheme: Ra's al Ghul.  So the real mastermind behind the whole plot was just using Hugo Strange as a puppet.  And when Strange failed to live up to expectations, he was murdered in cold blood.  I only wanted to humiliate Strange by knocking his thugs around - I didn't know it would get the poor guy killed.  But in a disgusting, morally reprehensible way, Ra's's actions saved me thinking through a difficult conundrum.  Because let's get real: Strange knew my secret identity.  I couldn't very well have just turned him over to the proper authorities.  It wasn't like I could have staged some elaborate ruse involving Robin dressing up as Bruce Wayne in order to deflect attention and "prove" him wrong...

Anyway, as Ra's was wrapping up his "I want to take over the world" speech (which I had to sit through for the thousandth time, at least), Strange, with his dying breath, voice-activated Protocol 11.  As a five second countdown to an imminent explosion of the tower flashed up on the screen, I had no choice but to grab Ra's and crash us both through the window.  As we hurtled through the air - me latched onto Ra's like a parachute instructor to a first-timer - he made the worst decision of his criminal career so far: he stabbed HIMSELF through the chest, apparently hoping to catch me with the end of his blade as it passed through his ribcage.  Needless to say, I just let go, and the thrust ended too short to pierce my armored costume.  And then for good measure, Ra's continued to fall and was impaled on a sharp piece of stone.  I'm no expert on the capabilities of his Lazarus Pits, but this looked like a tough predicament for him to recover from.  So today marked the ignominious ends to two of my most formidable opponents...

Part 18: Showdown with Joker at the Monarch Theater

Arkham City Post #16: Confronting Joker in the Steel Mill

WARNING: SPOILER ALERT!

Part 15: Pre-Steel Mill Adventures

Upon heading back into the Steel Mill, I was greeted by a video message from Joker.  He dropped hints in his chatter that this would definitely be our final confrontation, the most telling being a meta-reference to the disappointing ending of his favorite TV show that "all took place in a church."  Way to date the piece, Joker; I thought Gotham City was supposed to be timeless.  I didn't watch that particular show myself, but the knowledge that Joker was a fan just made me want to punch him in the face all the more.

All my new technology came in handy, especially the Freeze Grenade, which I needed to create ice rafts on the various water channels buried deep within the steel mill.  I also learned a new trick: throwing a Remote Control Batarang through an exposed electrical arc, imbuing the projectile with an electric charge.  This allowed me to power up various hard-to-reach fuse boxes in the area.  I surprised Dr. Stacy Baker, the doctor I had rescued in my first trip to the mill.  Apparently she had done a pretty good job staying out of sight, seeing as she hadn't been recaptured.  Her survival might have had something to do with the lead pipe she tried to take a swing at me with, before she saw who I really was.  I was glad she was able to curb her swing first, ask questions later instinct... cuz if she had connected with that pipe, I don't know if I would have been able to curb mine.

As I was crawling through a particularly isolated steam vent, I saw the strangest sight: Harley Quinn, bound and gagged without a soul in sight.  After some coaxing, she let on that there was some proprietary stolen Mr. Freeze technology hidden in the boiler room.  (This turned out to be a cluster grenade that could freeze multiple enemies to the ground at once.)  I didn't think twice about how she found herself in that particular predicament.  I chalked it up to one of the newly-revitalized Joker's famous mood swings.  Had I stopped to question her a bit more, I might have learned something that would help me later on.

Instead, I continued on to Joker's secret lair, where he was gazing at himself in a mirror.  Only when I saw his sickly, scarred, pockmarked, still clearly Titan-infected reflection, I was shocked: could the cure not have worked after all?  But when the actual villain turned to face me, it was the familiar, emaciated yet healthy figure of Joker himself.  He had the nerve to try and teach me some kind of moronic lesson about something or other... as if I had anything to learn from that sick clown.  Then, to my surprise, he jumped down off his platform and challenged me to fisticuffs, one-on-one style.

Well, this was a new streak of courage, which promised to make this final showdown all the more gratifying.  In these types of situations, my enemies usually resort to throwing wave after wave of henchmen at me.  Rarely am I afforded the opportunity to deliver a beatdown to the main crime boss himself (Penguin was clearly the exception).  But no matter how many times I tried to deliver a finishing blow, the fiend wriggled out of the way with near superhuman quickness.  Right as my gratification turned to frustration, the tried and true group of henchmen came.

These were not just your typical thugs with weapons - which ran from bats to knives to fire extinguishers to riot shields.  But the one-armed clown (whose other half I left beaten up at Penguin's headquarters) and a beefed-up Titan Henchman as well.  This Titan monster was more powerful than the ones I faced back at the Asylum - as he charged, he protected his face from a quick Batarang, removing one of the main ways I could incapacitate one of these brutes.  This left my arsenal with only my new move, the Ultra Stun, and it was hard to get in close enough to execute the "full attack action" (or, more colloquially, the triple button-press) it took to pull it off.  But it was all worth it, because when I did jump on its back to take control of it, I could independently execute each of its moves: the charge, the ground pound, and the regular punch.  That made it much easier to eventually take out the entire crowd.

Then, just as I was about to stand triumphant over Joker's debilitated form, wouldn't you know it a train falls on me.  That's right, a train.  And guess who goes unconscious (again).  Yerp, that would be me.

Part 17: Protocol 10 In Effect

Arkham City Post #15: Pre-Steel Mill Adventures

WARNING: SPOILER ALERT!

Part 14: Down the Rabbit Hole

But Oracle was right: I should focus on my primary objective of confronting Joker in the Steel Mill and securing the cure for good.  I was hearing radio chatter from Joker and his thugs that was simultaneously encouraging and disheartening: Joker sounded fully healthy, which meant the cure had apparently worked.  That was good news for me, if I could ever get my hands on it... and provided he didn't drink it all himself.  He had to have saved some for me, right?  Sure we're arch-enemies, but there's no way he could let me die, right?  Unless I was taken down by his army of thugs, who seemed to be revitalized by their boss's sudden recovery.

Their revitalization might also be due to their advanced weaponry: thermal vision equipped sniper rifles, which essentially turned the whole city into one massive predator challenge!  In order to put off dealing with this irritating heightened security, I decided to try to cross some side missions off my list as opposed to adding more on.  The idea being that these would provide me with some welcome w00tz - and in one case, a cool gadget upgrade, allowing me to use the disruptor to detonate a nearby mine.  (This was courtesy of the undercover cops locked barricaded inside the Iceberg Lounge; good for them for staying industrious!)  Not only that, but it would be infinitely less satisfying to enter my final showdown with the Joker with so many loose ends.

Firstly I decided to tackle the Riddler's challenges, seeing as I had left those hostages in the lurch for quite some time now.  Nygma wouldn't give me the location of his next hostage unless I had solved a requisite amount of his riddles, but luckily I was pretty diligent about solving any that I came across during my travels.  Riddler had set up many elaborate death traps from which I had to rescue the hostages: electrified floors, rotating blades, a life-sized Three-card Monte-style gimmick with a hidden hostage substituted for the money card (I used my Detective Mode to thwart Nygma's attempt to cheat at that one).  My personal favorite was when I used my Line Launcher to snag a hostage, who was hanging over a deadly drop, then crashed through a window to safety.  But determining the location of Riddler himself required solving nearly all the riddles on the map, so I let that be till later.

Zsasz was next on my list: it wasn't hard to isolate the location of his hideout after having the Bat Computer trace the calls he was making to various payphones across the city.  The hardest part of that whole mission was resisting the urge to hang up on the bastard once I had found his phone.  You see, the time necessary for the computer to trace his calls necessitated listening to Zsasz's twisted ramblings on the other side of the phone.  But it was all worth it to sneak into where he thought he was be secure, knock his scarred ass out, and lock him in a cage where he belonged.

Deadshot would have been harder to track were it not for a series of stupid mistakes he made that led me right to him.  The evidence I was able to gather from both a tripod he left at one of the crime scenes and the impression his body made in the snow as he laid prone to take a shot led me to a PDA he left behind where he evidently thought it would be secure.  From that I was able to determine his next target's location and confront the assassin in the act.  It seemed almost too easy, and for a minute I was worried that he was setting a trap for me; but the ease in which I bested him in our one-on-one showdown put my fears to rest.

As for the Identity Thief and the Watcher in the Wings, it was just a matter of scouring the city and keeping my eyes open for sightings.  Analyzing the third victim of the chilling serial killer led me to his hideout, where the killer trapped me and revealed his identity: famed surgeon Tommy Elliot.  Rebranded as "Hush," Elliot had used pieces of the faces he had surgically removed to graft himself a new face: that of Bruce Wayne.  It still didn't explain the fingerprints though...  After meeting the mysterious figure three more times and scanning the symbol he left behind, I was able to overlay their locations onto a map of Arkham City, leading me to his final meeting place: the Church.  He revealed himself as Azrael, a member of the Sacred Order of St. Dumas.  He delivered a chilling prophecy of doom, the meaning of which remains unclear.  We'll just have to see how things play out: I wasn't about to alter my whole mission based on the arcane ramblings of a mysterious figure with a flair for the dramatic.

Now I was finally ready to enter the Steel Mill via the back door... when what should I come across but the last Titan container!  Now I had to go back and check on Bane, right?  As it happened, rather than destroy the Titan containers as he had promised to do, Bane had gathered them all to his hideout in the Krank Co. toys factory.  This attracted a squad of TYGER guards who were interested in confiscating the Titan for themselves.  Bane and I teamed up to take them all out, but it turns out that fighting alongside Bane is very similar to fighting against Bane, as you still have to dodge his blind charges and avoid his reckless swings and ground-pounds.  In the end, though, I ended up fighting against Bane as well, as he had never intended to destroy his share of the Titan containers anyway.  Turns out he just wanted to control the entire supply.  But I used my wits to trap him in a cage (which must have been much stronger than it looked to contain the muscly beast), after which I proceeded to take care of the Titan containers myself.  And now, with my side mission checklist truly complete, I was ready to press on.

Part 16: Confronting Joker in the Steel Mill

Arkham City Post #14: Down the Rabbit Hole...

WARNING: SPOILER ALERT!

Part 13: Confronting Mr. Freeze

To make up for his stubbornness (which led to the loss of my cure), Mr. Freeze provided me with a new gadget based on his freezing technology: a grenade that could create a freezing blast, either stunning enemies or creating a block of ice that would float on a mass of standing water.  It was necessary for me to escape the GCPD building, the main door of which Freeze had barricaded with a mass of ice.  The only path out was blocked by some broken pipes spewing steam into the hallway.  A freeze blast on each of the offending pipes did the trick, and I was ready to hunt down Harley Quinn and my cure.

Except as soon as I left the building, I saw Vicki Vale's news helicopter shining a light directly on me.  Apparently in addition to sneaking in and stealing the cure, Harley had also leaked my location to the press.  I was more annoyed at than concerned by the situation - it would have been easy enough for me to dodge the attention of an amateur helicopter pilot - until an RPG streaked across the sky and sent the chopper into a tailspin.  Following the source of the radio broadcast led me to the crash site: an open area overlooked by the majestic Dini Towers, from which snipers were taking pot shots at the news team.  I was easily able to take care of the snipers (while also recognizing and appreciating the metagame reference), rescue the damsel in distress, and deliver her to the safety of the Church/Medical Center.  Although I stopped short of granting her request for an exclusive interview.

As I was delivering Vale to the Church, I thought I caught a glimpse of a sickening vomit-green colored top hat flitting in and out of view.  But before I could react, my attention was drawn by a radio communication from Alfred informing me that Lucius Fox had been working diligently on developing his own cure, and that it was ready for me to use!  In hindsight, that broadcast, which would allow me to circumvent the Main Objective of the entire game adventure, seemed exceedingly suspicious, despite Lucius's genius.  But something unexplainable drew me to the canister Alfred had delivered, and I injected myself with the "cure" it contained totally cavalierly.  Needless to say, the injection did not in fact cure me, but rather caused me to pass out, for the fourth time tonight...

...and for the third time tonight, I woke up from unconsciousness to find myself tied to a chair.  But this time, I was sitting at a grotesque tea party attended by a bunch of brainwashed thugs wearing rabbit masks - clearly the work of the Mad Hatter.  Just what I needed, I thought, another random encounter with a villain who had seemingly nothing to do with my main objective.  Jervis Tetch then appeared and explained that he had implanted a hypnotic suggestion in my brain that caused me to see what I wanted most: in this case, the cure.  The more I struggled, the crazier the hallucinations got: I found myself in a void, balancing on the face of a stopwatch, surrounded by attacking rabbit thugs.  It took some willpower, but I was able to master my mind (you'll remember from my previous adventures with Scarecrow Toxin and Demon's Blood that I have ample practice in combat while under the influence of dangerous psychoactive substances), subdue Tetch's army, and destroy the magical hat that was responsible for all the mind control.

As I left the Mad Hatter's hideout in Park Row, I stopped to pay my respects to Crime Alley, the site of my parents' murder on that fateful night.  Nearby, I noticed another victim of the Identity Thief, this one situated next to a knife bearing Bruce Wayne's fingerprints.  I was unnerved by the find, but determined to find out the truth, when I noticed a mysterious figure watching me from a rooftop!  He was wearing a red hood and cloak, and when I approached him, he gave me some cryptic message and disappeared, leaving behind a mysterious symbol, which I scanned into the Bat Computer.  What the heck, I thought, as long as I'm still riding the rejuvenative high from Ra's Al Ghul's Demon's Blood, I might as well add another couple more side missions to the list...

Part 15: Pre-Steel Mill Adventures