Top Spin 4 is the latest entry in the popular tennis series from 2K Sports released on the XBOX360, Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii consoles. The game features a laundry list of officially licensed professional players, equipment and venues. Most of the usual suspects have returned (Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Andy Roddick, etc.) from the previous installment and 2K have actually stepped it up by incorporating Playstation Move compatibility as well as 3D support for the XBOX360 version.

There is a copious amount of content here that can be appreciated by tennis fans, players and sports gamers alike. Top Spin 4 allows you to create a character to participate in a professional career mode where you can customize facial characteristics and utilize clothing and equipment from real companies. This gives your character a sense of identity and offers a real incentive to invest your time in the game moving forward.

Read on to find out how you can win a copy!

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The Academy of Natural Sciences’ Bizarre Beasts is a fun exhibit with exotic creatures… but alas, the exhibit is wrapping up at the end of the month. These creatures are prehistoric marvels from our evolutionary past. If you love weird looking creatures, science, and evolution—then this exhibit is for you!

Bizarre Beasts showcases a few interesting creatures. For example, you may find the Pipa Pipa frog. A species that lays eggs into the female’s back, grows skin over those eggs, and the tadpoles then emerge from the skin later. Leaving a Swiss Cheese mess on the back of the female. Appetizing, no?

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Don’t forget about the Helicoprion, the Pterosaurs, and the giant terrifying Diatryma. What’s that you say? Oh– it’s just something that existed after the Cretaceous period. There weren’t any dinosaurs around, but these gigantic birds moved to the top of the food chain. These birds of prey were even known to eat horses.

So don’t miss this exiting exhibit! You’re sure to learn a thing or two and be amazed by the creatures that once walked this earth. Fun for the whole family, and if you have little ones I highly recommend you bring them. Kids are astonished by these bizarre beasts!

The Academy of Natural Sciences
1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway (19103)
(215) 299-1043
www.ansp.org

Put simply, the guys at Alphabuyer want to save you money. Seriously. To elaborate, they want to save you money on the things considered necessities – gas, electric, and phone service – as well as internet bills, cable bills, and beyond. What’s the kicker? They need you to do it.

Alphabuyer, a local social media company based in Paoli, PA, is not unlike Groupon; they offer a group deal, people buy in, and the more that are involved, the greater the deal is. And while the deals aren’t as sexy as half off gift certificates, tango lessons, or the like, they’re saving you money on the things you’re already spending money on, and will be spending money on.

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Sucker Punch is a lot like an infomercial for the wonders of post traumatic stress syndrome on the female psyche. The film focuses on Baby Doll, a girl whose stepfather has blamed her for the death of her sister and put her in a mental institution, to claim the inheritance left behind by her mother.

But to silence Baby Doll and cover up the crime, her stepfather has seen to it that in five days Baby Doll will be lobotomized. The five days leading up to this event is where the story of Sucker Punch unravels. But taking a page from Inception, instead of levels of dreams, we are then taken though the levels of post traumatic stress syndrome of this very unfortunate girl.

Because how else would you escape from a mental institution’s cruel reality where all the inmates are being raped, but imagine you’re simply living in a glamorous whorehouse/nightclub where you are forced to do musical numbers?

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On Tuesday, I had the pleasure of chatting with Mary Roach, one of my absolute favorite writers. You might know her from essay books, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, and Bonk: the Curious Coupling of Humans & Sex. Her latest book, Packing for Mars: the Curious Science of Life in the Void, came out in August of 2010 from W. W. Norton.

I just barely avoided turning into a fanboy and #squeeing through out the entire phone call. Read on. She talks about her latest book, how she gets into her subjects, what she loves about Philadelphia, and dishes out advice for budding essay writers. And be sure to catch Mary at the First Person Arts: Philly vs. Boston Storyslam (April 15th) and at the Franklin Institute this Saturday (April 16th).

Oh! And her wonderful publicist (what up Whitney!) was kind enough to drop off a copy of Packing for Mars. Leave a comment about what planet you’d travel to and why, for a chance to win a copy. I’ll email the winner sometime next week.

So Mary! Tell me a little bit about your latest book, Packing for Mars.

Packing for Mars is a book about the very surreal and entertaining challenges of keeping human beings alive and happy in space… which is a place they really aren’t suited for. There’s nothing up there that can keep them happy and thriving.

All these peculiar things happen to the body in zero gravity, and all the things that go on up there are done down here in simulations. They can simulate moon dust (there’s a company that does it and I like to hand out little packets), you can lay down for three days straight to simulate zero gravity, etc. It’s really an exploration of all the things that happen to human body in space, since space is so foreign and hostile.

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Ten days from now (April 23rd!), the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology is hosting Gladiator Day, an event that’ll celebrate ancient Rome’s famed fighter.

The event, which will be sans Russell Crowe (sorry ladies), will feature “gladiatorial bouts and demonstrations, a gladiator lecture, gladiator-inspired arts and crafts, balloon art creations, a food demonstration, and Italian-inspired cuisine.” And yes, I’m questioning what “gladiator-inspired arts and crafts” are as well.

As for the gladiatorial bouts… re-enactors from the Great School of the Gladiator (this is a real thing) will demonstrate combat in the museum’s outdoor Warden Garden every hour after 1pm. They’ll discuss the weapons, discuss fighting techniques, and more.

Think you’ll be bored by a lecture? Think again. Dr. Kathleen Coleman, who was the historical consultant on Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, will be speaking to guests about Ancient Rome and the gladiators. Awesome.

The event is free with museum admission ($10 for adults, $6 for students). For more information, visit the Penn Museum’s official website. See you there.

Gladiator Day @ the Penn Museum
April 23rd, 2011
www.penn.museum/press-releases/919-gladiator-day-a-peco-world-culture-event.html

Disney was nice enough to hook us up with a DVD+Blu-ray combo pack copy of its 50th animated feature film Tangled, which hit stores back in March.  Tangled, which is a retelling of the classic Grimm’s fairy tale Rapunzel, stars the voice talents of Mandy Moore, Zachary Levi, and Donna Murphy.

In case you’re somehow not familiar with the story of Tangled, it goes something like this:

After receiving the healing powers from a magical flower, the baby Princess Rapunzel is kidnapped from the palace in the middle of the night by Mother Gothel. Mother Gothel knows that the flower’s magical powers are now growing within the golden hair of Rapunzel, and to stay young, she must lock Rapunzel in her hidden tower.

Rapunzel now a teenager has hair that has grown to a length of 70-feet. The beautiful Rapunzel has been in the tower her entire life, and she is curious of the outside world. One day, the bandit Flynn Ryder scales the tower and is taken captive by Rapunzel. Rapunzel strikes a deal with the charming thief to act as her guide to travel to the place where the floating lights come from that she has seen every year on her birthday. Rapunzel is about to have the most exciting and magnificent journey of her life.

Want to win a DVD+Blu-ray copy of Tangled? Simply comment with your favorite fairy tale and why and I will pick a winner sometime next week. Good luck!

Scope out the flyer above. That says it all. Just about.

On April 15th, the University of Pennsylvania is holding a comics symposium, Comics Without Borders, offering guests an opportunity to meet Charles Burns and Marc Legendre. They’ll be giving a talk, answering some questions, and signing books. Don’t own any of their titles? Relax. Penn will have a handful available to purchase.

More information and directions are available at the department of Germanic languages & literatures’ official website. The event kicks off at 7pm in the David Rittenhouse Lab at 209 South 33rd St… okay yeah, get directions here. Cause you are never going to find that.

Comics Without Borders @ UPenn
April 15th, 2011, 7pm
ccat.sas.upenn.edu/german/graphic

For this week’s Comic Roundup, we officially begin the summer comic season with a review of Fear Itself #1, a look at the latest Image darling Nonplayer and check in on the Reign of Doomsday with Superman/Batman Annual #5.

Fear Itself #1
By Matt Fraction and Stuart Immonen

Ah spring. Nothing says warm weather like a massive company wide comic crossover. This year Marvel is first on the stands with Fear Itself, a Thor-centric event that promises the usual “nothing will be the same” and big changes. Forgive me if I don’t hold my breath. But that doesn’t mean the story itself has to be bad. And the first issue of Fear Itself is surprisingly good.

Given a Thor movie comes out this May, an event featuring him and Asgard really isn’t all that shocking. What is shocking is how enjoyable the issue is. Fraction has done a great job introducing the concepts and characters and laying out the framework for the crossover. He wastes no time putting events in motion and throwing us in the middle of the action.

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Comments Closed! Enjoy the event!

Were you upset about missing your chance to nab tickets to Mega-Bad Movie Night at the Academy of Natural Sciences last week? Don’t worry, Geeks. We’ve got a last minute giveaway that starts… well, now and wraps up tomorrow night.

Still not familiar with the movie?  It features Tiffany, a piranha chomping a helicopter out of the sky, and an utterly brilliant plot about giant piranhas meant to protect us. The Academy is screening this cinematic gem in their beautiful theater, with the Academy’s scientists providing MST3K-esque commentary on the movie’s inaccuracies.

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Do you get dragged along to quizzo to carry the team on tech, only to feel inferior when sports and pop culture rule the answer sheet? Here’s your chance to restore the geeks to their rightful place atop the quizzo totem pole.

As a part of Philly Tech Week, the Grey Lodge Pub out in the North East will be hosting Tech Quizzo on Wednesday, April 27th at 7pm.

The Grey Lodge Pub has been serving the great northeast since 1950, and doing a good job. Beer Advocate named it one of the 50 Best Bars in the Country, so even if you are getting your butt kicked at the quiz, you’ll have a good time anyway.

The games take place upstairs. Be there or be quadrilateral.

Philly Tech Week
www.phillytechweek.com

Grey Lodge
6235 Frankford Avenue (19135)
(215) 856-3591
www.greylodge.com

I really don’t care for the fantasy genre. Films involving wizards, knights, unicorns… just doesn’t do it for me. But when I first saw the trailer for Your Highness at the beginning of Paul I knew I had to see this film. With James Franco, Natalie Portman and Danny McBride in a comedy spoofing one of my most hated genres, how could this not be good?

The story of Your Highness is one we have seen many times, a fair maiden about to marry a brave knight is kidnapped by an evil wizard, and the brave knight must quest for her return. James Franco plays Fabious the knight and favorite son of the king. He must travel on his quest with his slacker brother Thadeous (Danny McBride) to save his brother’s bride, played by lovely Zooey Deschanel.

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