Sorry about the near impossible dork-out last week. Hope I didn't scare you off. Here's a consolation prize for the more casual gamer looking for simplicity and ease in their gaming experience.

This week's waste of time is Little Wheel by Fast Games. And, honestly, it really shouldn't waste too much of your time. The goal is simple and the game guides you easily from one challenge to another. It's much more about the art deco landscape and silhouetted art design. Little Wheel errs toward the artistic, skimping a bit on the gameplay and difficulty but, like I said, I'm going easy on you this week.

Tangent time: Silhouetted games are becoming quite the trend for handheld systems and downloadable content on the major gaming systems. From the rhythm-based Patapon (and now Patapon 2) for the PSP to the techno-infused trip of PixelJunk Eden available for download on the PlayStation Network. World of Goo brought the Wii a bit of shadowy physics to the platform and is available for download. And another WiiWare title to be released is the blissfully moody Night Game. I'm expecting some sort of motion-capture shadow-puppet game for all this new user-recognition technology being touted at the recently ended E3 conference.

Till then, click here to play Little Wheel. The load time is a bit lengthy. Why not get some work done while you wait.

Enjoy.

Every year, Texas has the honor of hosting the longest-running anime convention in North America: Project A-Kon. I go every year. For three days, a Dallas hotel hosts more than 10,000 attendees attracted by A-KonÕs eclectic mix of parties, games, concerts, and Japanese animation in a grand celebration of anime and sleep deprivation. Anyone expecting wall-to-wall geekery at an A-Kon is sure to be surprised at how diverse the crowd and its interests are, and itÕs this diversity that brings me back again and again. In the United States, animation is largely limited to sitcoms and childrenÕs shows. In Japan, it encompasses all genres, especially science fiction and fantasy. It is this cross-genre nature of anime that gives it such wide appeal and attracts such a variety of attendees to Project A-Kon. There is the geek stereotype, to be sure Ð introverted teens and young adults opening up in the company of their own kind Ð but there is also the older crowd who were into anime before anime was cool, professionals and parents who may have kids to bring, to get the next generation hooked. A-KonÕs programming has something for every kind of anime/SF/fantasy fan: Players of video, board, and roleplaying games congregate in the gaming rooms, collectors scope out merchandise from all over the world in the dealers room, aspiring artists and writers attend panels on honing their craft or sell their wares in the comic market, and everywhere there are the costumers.

If you've been paying any attention to the current Chronicle/Statesman smackdown (up to and including Kelso's latest taunt of "Hey, Chronicle weenies"... Um, burn?), then you know relations can get a bit testy between our fair city's weekly and daily papers. Hell, when John Pierson invited two film critics from the rival papers to spar in front of his UT RTF Master Class back in February, the flier publicized the event with a pen drawing of the pair arm-wrestling. Turned out to be false advertising, though: It was all very civilized – a smart, engaging, and far-ranging discussion between the Chron's Marjorie Baumgarten and the Statesman's Chris Garcia – and now you can hear it, too, when KUT airs the program on June 28. KUT 90.5 FM will broadcast edited-down versions of five Master Classes this summer on The Best of Public Radio. Schedule below.
6/21: media mogul Harvey Weinstein (11:30am)
6/28: filmmaker Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me) (11am)
6/28: film critics Marjorie Baumgarten & Chris Garcia (11:30am)
TBD/August: director Mike Judge (Office Space) / cinematographer Ellen Kuras (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)

You'd be excused for thinking the world was coming to its exhaust-choked, living dead end last night, particularly if you were in the vicinity of the Alamo Ritz on Sixth St. Not only was the ever-ear-splitting Republic of Texas motorcycle rally in town -- think Roger Corman's The Wild Angels meets Akira, with ribcage-rattling sound design courtesy of Satan himself -- but also the Alamo's long awaited (and long sold-out) director's cut and cast reunion of the criminally under-seen Night of the Creeps, which went off like a fistful of firecrackers shoved in a dead man's mouth. Bang! In anticipation of the cult classic's coming October 20th DVD release from Sony Home Entertainment, director Fred Dekker (Monster Squad) and stars Tom Atkins (Escape From New York), Jason Lively, Steve Marshall, Jill Whitlow spent the day recording commentary tracks and marveling over the splendid chaos that is the annual ROT Rally. After a brief intro from Aint It Cool News's Quint, the house lights dimmed on what Dekker dubbed his "special director's cut" of the film and the audience, many of whom had never seen the film before, went dead...silent. That's not surprising, because Night of the Creeps, released in 1986, is one of the best horror/comedy/noirs ever made. Dekker's film is a loving ode to the genre, snappily scripted and smartly shot, and featuring slug-like alien body snatchers, undead frat-rats, flamethrowers, and the brilliant character actor Tom Atkins (recently seen in My Bloody Valentine 3-D) doing his best Philip Marlowe as Greeks versus Geeks versus gore galore explodes around him. Hands down, it's one of the most original and fun genre movies the 80s produced.

Remember that scene (as if you could forget) in Pulp Fiction in which Uma Thurman's Mia is revived from a drug overdose via a shot of adrenaline directly to her heart? Thought that sprang forth wholly from Quentin Tarantino's twisted imagination? No, that incident, more or less, is something witnessed personally by Steven Prince, who tells that story (among many, many others) in Martin Scorsese's 1978 documentary "American Boy." Virtually unavailable these days, Scorsese completists have always placed a premium on "American Boy." The champion raconteur and former junkie was at one time the road manager for Neil Diamond before turning to acting and other things (he appears in Richard Linklater's Waking Life and, most famously, plays the gun dealer in Taxi Driver. Now Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly producer, Tommy Pallotta, has made a new documentary, "American Prince," that visits with the cult figure to catch up on the last 30 years. "American Prince," premiered at SXSW this past spring, and was double-billed with a rare screening of "American Boy." The film is now available for BitTorrent download by clicking here, and an interview with Pallotta, a former Austin filmmaker now living in Amsterdam, is available here.

Last week's cover story, When the Sun Rises told the tale of a group of Galveston high school students who made a documentary about their post-Ike community and its struggle to recover. Tonight these young filmmakers will host a screening of their work, Ike: A Documentary, The Story of a Torn City Rebuilt by Everyday Heroes tonight at 6:30pm at the Austin City Limits Studio 6A at KLRU. Seating is limited. To attend, please RSVP to [email protected]. Details after the jump.

I've been jonesing to make a text-based adventure game our weekly waste of time, if only to take a week off from pandering to the casual gamer and offer something only a true dork could love. As the title implies the original text-based games involved little to no graphical elements to play – like a game of Dungeons & Dragons but on a computer and therefore without a human to interpret your actions. This makes for some of the most frustrating player controls of all time. Here's an example I made up but swear is not far from reality:

>>move south
An ogre blocks your path wielding a large wooden club.
>>fight ogre
You're not close enough.
>>Approach ogre
I don't know "Approach."
>>Get closer to ogre.
You can't get "closer to ogre."
>>move south
You approach the ogre.
>>fight ogre
Fight ogre with what?
>>fight ogre with sword
You sword is in its sheath.
>>Remove sword from sheath.
You remove your sword and prepare to fight the ogre as his club comes down on your head killing you.
Try again?

The problem with American shows about cars is that they're so enthusiastic. They're all, "Ooo, look at my fast car, isn't it pretty, and here's the list of the show's sponsors who will sell you enough spare parts to ensure you'll spend weekend after weekend in your garage, covered in grease and utterly miserable." Thank the BBC for the grand British institution that is Top Gear, whose tenth season is now on DVD (BBC Warner, $39.98). It's less a car show, more an excuse for three overgrown schoolboys to drive fast enough to scare themselves and then mock each other. There's Jeremy Clarkson (the tall, sardonic one), Richard Hammond (the short, enthusiastic one) and James May (better known as Captain Slow, a man that could get lost on a circular track.) They are unified by their fearless dedication to fast cars and comfortable slacks. Oh, and their seething hatred of Volkswagen Beetles. It's officially an institution. Now in its twelfth season in the UK, that means it's run longer than Monty Python's Flying Circus. And, whisper it quietly, but it's arguably a lot funnier. Although that's not always deliberate: After all three hosts spending a sweltering week driving uncomfortable super cars around the wrong bits of Europe, Clarkson proudly proclaims, "Top Gear: Ambitious, but rubbish!"

In conjunction with the Harry Ransom Center's ongoing exhibit The Persian Sensation: The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám in the West (on display through Aug. 2), the HRC kicks off the Orientalist Silents film series Thursday night. The first two films of the free series feature two of silent cinema's most adored leading men, The Sheik's Rudoph Valentino (whom H.L. Mencken called "catnip to women") and The Thief of Bagdad's Douglas Fairbanks. But it's the last film in the series – the one without any actors at all – that'll knock your socks off. Lotte Reiniger's shadow art film The Adventures of Prince Achmed, an adaptation of The Arabian Nights, is believed to be the first ever full-length animated film. A visual stunner, Achmed is all bendy bodies and filigreed landscapes. And remarkably expressive, too, considering the entire film is rendered in (a sometimes very creepy) silhouette.

The Sheik screens Thursday, June 11, at 7pm. For more info, go here.