Jeff Rubin's Articles

10 total in May 2007
  • Caption Contest

    Caption Contest Voting

    by Jeff Rubin May 30, 2007


    Time to vote! What do you think the best caption is? Congratulations to everyone who managed to write an inoffensive entry!!slice






    See More: Caption Contest
  • Mario 2, StarCraft 2, and Weezer


    My guest this week is Alex Zalben, one fifth of sketch comedy superpower Elephant Larry.

    TALKING POINT: Besides Hardest Mario, what's the hardest Mario?

    Alex: Well it's not Super Mario Land. That's the only Mario game I've been able to beat five times in a row without losing a life

    I know what it looks like, but this game is tough.
    Jeff
    : It's not Super Nintendo's Super Mario World or Yoshi's Island either. Don't let those eyes fool you, Yoshi's a dinosaur at heart and all dinosaurs are killing machines. It's kind of a pain-in-the-ass to get every star in Mario 64, but just beating it is pretty straight forward. I'm not ready to talk about Mario Sunshine yet, so it's probably one of the NES ones.

    Alex: I'd go for Super Mario Brothers 2. SMB is appropriately tough. So is SMB3, but you can also warp to the end pretty quickly if you want. SMB2 you have to play the whole stupid game, radishes and all.

    Jeff: Nu-uh! SMB2 has warp zones, though they are a little tricky.Throw a potion, enter the shadow world, then go into a pot? That doesn't make any sense, everyone knows warp zones are in pipes. That's how you get warped.

    Alex: Everyone knows that. I could sit down right now, and my fingers would automatically take me through SMB and SMB3; SMB2 is such a slog, I don't even remember it.

    Jeff: You can't save in those NES games either, you have to beat them in one sitting. The Japanese Mario Brothers 2 (perhaps better known as The Lost Levels, from the SNES Super Mario All-Stars collection) is extremely difficult. It's basically like Mario 1 doesn't end, and this is just level 9 through 16.

    Alex: Mario games, by definition though, shouldn't be hard. Not that they need to be a breeze, but they're well made diversions

    Jeff: Maybe it's not that Mario games are easy, it's just that Bowser is really stupid. That's why Mario 2 is the hardest.


    See More: Bleep Bloop
  • Caption Contest

    Caption Contest

    by Jeff Rubin May 25, 2007


    Can you come up with a good caption for this one? Make it funny, post it in the comments, and the winner will become the permanent caption. Congratulations to last week's winner, Henry Alexander.



    Remember, only one submission per user, and all submissions must be posted as new comments and not replies. There's only two rules, so make sure you follow them.


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  • Dirty Rotten Cheaters

    Have you ever looked around during a final and wondered how many students were getting an unfair advantage? Or more importantly, how they were doing it?

    We wanted to know who was cheating and why, so we asked you guys. Almost 30,000 students took our anonymous survey and the results, along with commentary from some of your favorite CollegeHumor All-Stars, are now just a click away.

    Click to read.



    See More: Cheating
  • Caption Contest

    Caption Contest Nominees

    by Jeff Rubin May 22, 2007


    I can't decide! What do you guys think is the best caption for this picture?





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  • Villains, Tetris, and Nick Arcade

    My guest for this week's A Winner Is You! is CollegeHumor writer Patrick Cassels. Some of Patrick's most popular articles have been about Mario and getting NES games to work.

    TALKING POINT: How sweet is watching Nick Arcade reruns on GAS?

    Nick Arcade would be more exciting if losing contestants were locked in the video zone for a year.
    Jeff: Pretty sweet. Nick Arcade's a great game, but not without its flaws. It's from a magical time before producers knew what video games actually looked like, so it's got this artificial "FUTURE!" feel. That said, I would pay any price for three minutes in the video zone. I've studied that mine cart level, I can't lose.

    Patrick: I always pictured the contestants surrounded by blue screen, dodging whiffle balls thrown by Nick studio production assistants. Nick always made the final rounds impossible. Minivans and paid vacations to Universal Studios don't grow on trees.

    Jeff: I've seen contestants conquer the video zone, but nobody escapes the Hidden Temple alive. The temple guards need to consume the bones of children to survive.

    Patrick: I believe there's still bones at the bottom of the Double Dare ball pit.

    Jeff: I was watching Nick Arcade recently, and it never occurred to me that the host is gay.

    Patrick: It never occurred to me he was black.

    Jeff: It was a terrible idea to pad out the non-video-game segments with boring trivia about things like history. Wouldn't it have been great if the questions were like, "Who is the boss in the first level of Turtles in Time?"

    Patrick: Remember, this was during the great video-game-apathy scare of '95. I guess they wanted to promote reading as well.

    Jeff: Who cares about presidents and stuff? By the way, the answer is Baxter Stockman in fly form.



  • Caption Contest

    Caption Contest

    by Jeff Rubin May 16, 2007


    Are you funny? Can you rhyme song lyrics with the word boobie? Are you just the right amount of racist? If so, you might have what it takes to write CollegeHumor picture captions. Let's find out.

    For our first caption contest, I picked one of my all-time favorite CH pictures. What's the best caption you can come up with for this?



    Friday morning, we'll change the picture's official caption to the best entry. The lucky author will receive credit for their joke, eternal life in the pictures section, and all the other perks that come with writing captions.

    To enter, just leave your caption as a comment below. Some boring rules:
    - Only one submission per user, so make it count.
    - All submissions must be posted as new comments and not replies.
    - Though this is a take home exam and you can take as much time as you need, you may not collaborate with other students.

    Good luck!


    See More: Caption Contest
  • E. Honda, the X-Men, and Quiet Riot


    My guest this week is Dan Hopper. As one third of A Week of Kindness, Dan has been seen in many hilarious videos including Guitar Hero Hidden Tracks. He's also the proprietor of the music blog Band Madness.

    TALKING POINT - You just bet someone your life you can beat them in Street Fighter 2. Who do you play as?

    Dan: Blanka. If my life is at stake, I'm going to be too nervous to do Ryu's fireball correctly.

    HOI!
    Jeff: Great point. I'm picking E. Honda, because I like to live dangerously.

    Dan: It's hard to see that hundred-hand slap coming if you're blind, deaf, and facing away from the machine.

    Jeff: Did you know he does more damage per-punch than anyone in the game?

    Dan: That's like saying Manute Bol is the tallest, and therefore best, basketball player.

    Jeff: Well if I wanted to win, I think I'd go with Guile. It's been fifteen years since Street Fighter II came out, and scientists have yet to develop a successful defense against the slow-sonic-boom/fierce-punch combo.

    Dan: Is yelling "That's cheap!" permitted in this life-and-death match?

    Jeff: Definitely, though I would rather die than live with the dishonor of being cheap.

    Dan: That's Lao Tzu, right? A terrific philosophy that applies to life as well. And GoldenEye. If you had to pick a game to bet your life on against someone, what would it be?

    Jeff: Super Puzzle Fighter II.

    Dan: Wow, no wonder this other person wants you dead.

    Jeff: It's such a fantastic game, but very few people play it. I have never really gotten a chance to see how good I am, and entering a deadly tournament seems like the easiest way to find out.

    Dan: I'd take Dr. Mario. If someone is able to beat me at that game, it means they're such an off-the-charts nerd that I could then just beat them up afterwards and not have to lose my life.



    See More: Bleep Bloop
  • Other Things I Would Like To See Black-Suit Peter Parker Do

    • Hang out more with Bruce Campbell.
    • Fix that apartment door.
    • Trade in motor scooter for gun, start shooting at bad guys. Not instead of the webs, just in addition to.
    • Fight Batman.
    • Release a rap album.
    • Successfully hide that he is Spider-Man from a super-villain.
    • Gotten some black suit goo on Red Foreman, too.
    • Not dance.


    See More: Spider-man
  • Knife-Wielding Babies, the Dreamcast, and Mega Man


    This week's guest is illustrator and sculptor Derek Walborn. You can see his work at www.derekwalborn.com. He was also the star of our very own Dan Gurewitch's short film, A Death Sandwich.

    TALKING POINT: What games stick with you after you've turned them off?

    Derek: The Silent Hill series will pretty much ruin any slumber party you might have planned in the near future.

    Jeff: Resident Evil and other horror games use cheap scare tactics, like sudden music stings and creatures leaping into frame. Sure you'll jump, but it doesn't stay with you the way Silent Hill's knife-wielding skinless babies do.

    Video game or Megadeth album art?
    Derek: I feel like if I fumble for too long with my keys in a hallway, I'll be pummeled to death by a naked mannequin or perhaps puked on by a phallus in platform hooker boots. I mean, I guess there are some people who might really enjoy either of those things happening to them.

    Jeff: Getting into the Hellraiser series when I was 11 desensitized me to bizarre imagery, so I'm going to choose a different game. Guitar Hero has completely changed the way I listen to music. I now pay more attention to guitars, and when it's something particularly complex I'll think to myself, "Wow, daring use of the orange button. These guys are good."

    Derek: People usually have no idea that Carlos Santana actually invented the red button. Before that, the scale just went from green to yellow.

    Jeff: When Vice City first came out, I was playing it for several hours a day. As much as I hate to admit it, every time I got stuck in a traffic jam I was tempted to murder a hooker with a golf club.

    Derek
    : After I played GTA 3, I was really tempted to break out my dad's old jet pack, eat burgers until I threw up, and then stab a nun. Luckily, dad forgot to fuel it up. I mean, the thing just sits there in the garage.

    Jeff
    : It doesn't really work the other way - real life behavior doesn't affect the way you play games. If you get stuck in a traffic jam before playing GTA, you don't hijack a virtual firetruck and sit at a traffic light.

    Derek: If real life were more like Grand Theft Auto, parking garages would always be packed full of criminals hiding out for five minute intervals until the police, SWAT team, and Army just say "Well, guess he's gone" and go about their business.

    Jeff: Every winter Neversoft unleashes a new Tony Hawk game, and every winter I go through a temporary obsession with it. On the rare occasion I go outside, I'll start seeing potential combos everywhere. "If I got some speed up and hit that railing just right," I'll think to myself, "I could probably jump onto to the top of the bank. No, definitely."

    Derek: This is interesting because way back in the day I doubt that anyone who was just playing Mario Brothers 3 would have been like, "Dude, I bet I can fit in this pipe." And then their buddy would be like, "No man... Those things are full of venus flytraps."



    See More: Bleep Bloop
  • Jeff Rubin Penn State

    About Me

    Jeff's likes - captioning CollegeHumor pictures, Parker Brother's Sorry! (preferably played with teams), pajama pants, Entenmann's Chocolate Chip Original Recipe Cookies, Arrested Development, when it suddenly starts to rain heavily on a Spring day.

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