Excuse me for a moment as I express some national pride. Filipino boxer Manny Pacquiao has signed on to fight Oscar De La Hoya in what many expect to be the former champ’s final bout in the ring. And if Pacquiao hands De La Hoya his ass as handily as I expect, he’ll ride off into the sunset with a few memorable bruises.

Of course, the 60/40 split over a $100 million prize should make De La Hoya happy no matter who wins - $60 million is a hefty retirement bonus. Pacquiao and De La Hoya throw down December 6, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

I’ve been meaning to blog this for a couple of days and just haven’t had the time. Leiji Matsumoto’s classic anime Space Battleship Yamato is set to take to the skies once again after a quarter-century absence. I think I speak for a lot of anime fans my age (pushin’ 40, for the record) when I say that Yamato is probably the anime that made me a fan of the genre.

At a time when most after-school distractions featured wise-cracking rabbits or spinach-addicted sailors, Yamato was a solid piece of human drama in which people seriously put their lives on the line for something important and frequently lost said lives. I don’t think I’m going to far in saying that Yamato taught me that death had meaning, that war had a human cost, and that the people on the other side of that war had lives of their own.

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Hats off to Kotaku’s Brian Ashcraft, who recently was approved for permanent residency in Japan. Bash (as he’s affectionately known over yonder) penned a handful of reviews for us back in tha’ day, which I’ll get around to re-posting in his honor.

Anyway, congrats Brian!