Jon loaned me his giant volume of all ten Amber books, and I tore through the first two on my way down to Tulsa yesterday. Great stuff. I'll post more when I'm done. Today, I'm going to see how bad a golfer I am after not having played for over two years.
One of the great parts about being on vacation is that you can turn on a movie at 9 AM (particularly a movie that your spouse won't want to watch) and be done with it by 11. I took in Scream, yet another "oh my God I can't believe you haven't seen that!" films. Having missed it at the time, I can certainly see how it had an affect on horror films in the last ten years. I would hesitate to call it good horror, but as a cinematic artifact (and pretty good film) it's entertaining and compelling.
Seth sent me this link, which has a variety of other sources, about a high-school kid who might be going to jail for his short story about zombies.
Reminds me of the guy who was detained by some half-wit Homeland Security officer for carrying a Dungeons and Dragons book.
We showed up last night planning to replace a door and work on a little bit of the trim in the den, to see how easily it would come off so we can start scraping the popcorn there. We forgot the door measurements, and ended up tearing off all of the trim, some of the wood paneling (there is great drywall underneath!) and Liz went to town on those two strange knick-nack shelves, removing them as well. We only made a couple of small holes in the drywall, nothing major. With any luck, we should be able to patch it all in a day or two.
I have to say, taking a crowbar to that stuff was an excellent form of stress relief!
It's strange coincodence, I promise.
For you MP3 bloggers and Russian music lovers out there, check this out: a blog devoted to MP3s of old and current Russian artists.
Via MeFi, the Liberty Film Festival, billed as the world's first conservative film fest. Of note are the five films they've picked as the best conservative (narrative) films of 2004: The Passion of the Christ, The Incredibles, Team America: World Police, I am David, and Hero.
Since I've only seen three of them, Team America, Incredibles, and Hero, I'm only going to comment on those three. It's dubious to call Team America a conservative film, when it was mocking the conservative gusto for war, the decision to invade Iraq, and conservative hate for Hollywood. Sure, it mocked liberal institutions as well, but just because Michael Moore's puppet died in the movie doesn't make it a conservative film.
You can probably make the strongest case for The Incredibles as a conservative film, but only just. Its message of family, teamwork, and using your talents to be your best certainly isn't an exclusively conservative one, but it's one that conservative talking heads have managed to boggart in the last ten years (see my previous post on conservative commentators boggarting race relations).
But it stuns me that Hero is on this list. Hero is two things: a Confucian movie, and a Maoist movie. Period. SPOILER WARNING. When the main character sacrifices himself at the end of the film - which he does, as he could have easily deflected those arrows and escaped - he does so out of a sense of duty to the Emperor and the unity of the country. That's pure Confucius, and even though the Maoists would never publically acknowledge the Confucian connection, it's pure Maoism too.
Perhaps its somewhat telling that a film about sacrificing yourself for the good of your country - and more specifically, the good of your leader, whose life and continued leadership are more important than yours because of the instability that would occur should he die - should be named by modern conservative commentators as one of the top five conservative films. This follows the meme that "if you're not with us, you're against us," "if you question George Bush's plans, you're not a patriot," "if you disagree with the war in Iraq, you're supporting the terrorists," and so on.
The only question is, will they realize how Maoist they've become?
Boyz N The Hood is one of those "oh my God, I can't believe you've never seen that!" films. After playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas so much, why not watch the movie that started it all?
Boyz was surprisingly great. It wasn't just some blaxpolitation, glorification of gangs; director Singleton painted a very bleak portrait of the cycle of poverty in South Central LA. His symbolism sometimes erred on the heavy side (the opening shot is a "stop" sign riddled with bullet holes), but the guy was two years younger than I am right now when he made this movie.
It's beginning to show its age a little, but jeeze this was a great movie. I will probably have to add it to my collection.
Work sure is fun when you're playing catch-up after having been out of the office for a week, and you're getting ready to be out again.
And there's all the fun of the new house in there, too!
Did I say fun?
Things accomplished:
Garage cleaned out, cobwebs removed. Front drive and street swept, yard waste removed. Back deck swept, back porches swept, yard waste removed. Purple room and pink room spackled, caulked, sanded, and ready to be primed. Removed den door (discard). Removed spare closet piece (purple room). Removed purple room and pink room doors (will replace). Removed broken doorstops. Explored removing popcorning, found it came off easier than expected. Explored sanding drywall underneath; sands easily. Will removed popcorning from entire house.
This week: remove popcorning from den, and old carpet, in preperation for new carpet next weekend. Priming pink and purple rooms on hold. Call about refurbishing bathroom.
Yesterday I joined Jon, Seth, Matt, and Chris for a hike in Couger Mountain Park - which is right up the road from Bellevue. The plan was to hike a 3.7-mile loop and see an old anti-aircraft gun; we ended up straying a little off course and went a little longer than expected, but I have to say it was a hell of a workout and although I felt winded during the hike, I felt pretty darn good afterwards. I'd be very interested in doing more such hikes around the area, especially as the weather gets nicer. Hint hint.
Last Thursday we got the keys to the house.
Yesterday we drove over to survey the joint.
Last night, we hit Home Depot for the first round of needful things.
Today, we're up early and going to do some work.
First on my list: assemble the lawn mower and mow.
I've already got my plan of attack. Just like dad taught me.
And I realized: I'm turning into my father.
Being that I was in New York eight days after Monty Python's Spamalot opened, it was my geekly duty to attend. So I procured a great ticket and attended after the last day of Toy Fair.
How was it you ask?
Let me put it like this: I would fly back to New York JUST to see this musical again.
It's not Holy Grail. The characters are (mostly) the same, there are some of the same scenes, and the plot begins in the same way, but Spamalot is a Pythonization of musicals both modern and classic. The jokes are great (and it's the first new Python material in quite a while, so Eric Idle had some time to prepare), and the songs - well, the songs demonstrate why last year's Team America: World Police is amateurish and poorly refined.
Tim Curry, David Hyde Pierce, and Hank Azaria were very much into the show, as was the rest of the cast. They were having fun, and it gave the show an unbelievable energy. The audience was having a great time too, singing along with familiar songs (and the cast invited us into a great sing-along after the bow). And their was audience particpation! "Behind the fourth wall" was one of the lines from a song. Even my program has a fake listing for the latest Finnish national musical... which of course is how Spamalot starts.
If you're a geek - or if you're a norm - see Spamalot. See it with the original cast. Today. Now. What are you waiting for? Stop reading this, and get your ticket!
Yesterday was officially my day off, but I went into the office anyway for about an hour, and then headed over to Angela's because for some reason I thought she was going to move yesterday. She introduced me to The Sims, a game more addicitve than it has the right to be. I hate addictive games. They are antithetical to progress on my creative projects.
I headed back to Bellevue to attend a going-away party for a guy who's leaving my company, after which Seth and I hit the nearby theater and took in The Aviator. I had a preconceived fear that I wouldn't like the movie because I don't like Martin Scorsese, but I was glad to be wrong: the film was great. I'm not sure if it's "best picture" great, but since I don't give two shits about the Oscars anymore, I'm not really comparing it like that in my mind. It was very "non-Scorseee" in that he dropped a lot of the intentionally gritty and numb feelings he typically uses in his films for a much more emotionally involved and personal portrayal of Howard Hughes.
Airplanes and a love for flying are the still points around which the rest of the movie turns. It's great watching Hughes tear into corrupt Senators, and there's a feeling of elation when the "Spruce Goose" takes off, but the best bits are when he's flying his experimental aircraft. Leo (and Angela was right, Goddamn he was a great actor in this!) portrays a Hughes who succeeds by and large by his own force of personality; the women, the airplanes, his business, is all conducted in a way that says "well, no one's told me I couldn't do this, and even if they did I wouldn't believe them, so let's do it," an attitidue I have to respect.
Scorsese did good. Not only would I watch this movie again, I would buy it on DVD.
My "airplane reading" and hotel reading on the trip out was Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves, something Liz and I picked up the other day on the "highly recommended" endcap at Barnes & Noble. This book is difficult to describe, at best. The story revolves around a Nobel-winning photographer, Will Navidson, and his family as they move into a new house in Virginia. They soon discover that their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. And it seems to be growing. And a new doorway sprouts in one of their rooms, with a hallway inside of indeterminate (and changing) length. This new labyrinth seems harmless at first, but takes a sinister turn when something inside it starts to growl.
House of Leaves is a horror novel, but it's a post-modern work that utilizes tools created by authors like Nabokov and Borges, while firmly placing itself as a great piece of literature in its own right. The story is "told" through the book House of Leaves, notes on the documentary film that Navidson shot about his house. Another story is told through the footnotes by the compiler and editor, an unstable young man rendered even moreso by reading about the house. There are resounding echoes of Pale Fire and Charles Kinbote here, but House of Leaves is much more. Every technique Danielewski utilizes has some meaning or bearing on the tale: the physical cover of the book is smaller than the pages inside, mirroring the house; footnotes lead to other footnotes lead to the appendix lead back to footnotes, at one point miring the reader in a twisting labyrinth much like the characters in the novel; photographs mix with letters and poems, shopping lists, and scholarly notes; sources both real and made-up are cited in the same breath. The singer Poe (sister of the author) even created her album, Haunted, to mirror the events in the book.
But on the other hand, House of Leaves is a classic horror story, where unexplained (and thankfully, never explained) events turn something ordinary into something twisted, sinister, and ultimately dangerous. The characters explore this at length, and turn to Heidegger, who discussed the idea of "being in the world" which causes existential dread; although the characters note that Heidegger used the term "sein nicht-zu-Hause," literally meaning "being not-at-home," implying that dread comes from being outside of a comforting area, like a house. One of the key elements of any horror story is the perversion of the "safe" into the unsafe, and that is exactly where Danielewski succeeds: his characters never realize just how dangerous the house is until it's much too late.
House of Leaves is the kind of book you'll love or hate. It's got more than a little Nabokov and Borges knitted into it, so if you like either of those writers, Leaves is probably a good bet. My suggestion: when the book refers to the appendixes or footnotes, follow it. Get lost. It makes for a much more disturbing reading experience.
The Gates is a large-scale piece of performance art in Central Park by Christo and Jeanne Claude, the artists who, among other things, wrapped the Reichstag in plastic. The premise is that 23 miles of walking paths in Central Park would be lined with large orange gates 12 feet high, and from those gates hang large swaths of orange canvas. The artists have been interested in this project since the 1970s, and it finally came to fruition this year. It was only scheduled to run from February 12th through February 27th, so I thought I'd stop by and take a look. The hours for Toy Fair prevented me from going in the daytime, unless I went in the morning, so I got up early on Monday, was greeted with a nice dusting of snow, and set off.
Unfortunately, either through my own technological ineptitude, my shivering hands, or something else, I was only able to snap one decent picture:
Click on the picture for a high-resolution version.
The Gates seems to be an interesting experiment. The most striking thing about it is that it's a bunch of giant orange metal-and-canvas things in the middle of the only green area on Manhattan, a man-made intrusion into nature. But Central Park itself is a natural intrusion to an island that has become, for better or worse, almost entirely man-made. And Central Park itself is suspect: the entire park (or the park south of the reservoir anyway) is not natural, but completely man-made, too. Every path, every tree, every hill was graded and planned with precision.
I'm not sure what it all means, but it did require me to think a little.
I got in yesterday afternoon and (believe it or not) went directly from the airport to work and worked for about three hours. At the end, I was pretty much a worthless zombie, but I actually managed to write an article for a magazine and get almost everything done I had to get done (mainly, sort through my emails).
I've got lots of posts to make, so I'd better get to it!
This was posted on a website to make fun of it, but I actually think it's kind of cool, so this post is for Anne.
You can now order pizza from within EverQuest 2, without ever leaving the game.
OK, now that I type that, I'm getting flashbacks of Roman taping alluminum foil over his windows to block out light that might interfere with him playing EverQuest 1.
I haven't seen this year's Clint Eastwood Oscar-contender Million-Dollar Baby yet (although I know the "twist,"), but I caught up on last year's Eastwood Oscar-contender Mystic River. It was a decent story, and I have to admit that Clint's direction was great. It was more of a character exploration than the murder mystery surface plot, and very well acted too. Not a type of movie I would watch more than once, but certainly worth catching the first time around.
Somehow Amazon.com got the exclusive to run the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy trailer. Looks... pretty cool!
Comic geeks can be some of the most asinine people on the planet. There's the usual Marvel vs. DC baloney, but that's a catfight compared to Indie Comics vs. Mainstream Comics - a false dichotomy if I've ever heard one. The discussion on Time Magazine's Top Ten Comics of 2004 over at Metafilter illustrates the battle perfectly. Note that I'm using the term "Indie" instead of "Indy," to illustrate the difference between houses like Top Cow, Image, and IDW (Indy) with little houses that publish black and white stuff on newsgrade paper (Indie).
My experience with Indie comics is, admittedly, limited. For several reasons. First, I don't find a whole lot of it all that interesting. Take, for example, Ghost World. Ghost World could have been written as a novel and not gained or lost anything from its form as a comic. Ghost World made a better film than it did a comic. And frankly, I couldn't stand the ego of a writer who plugged himself in his own then-unknown book (the characters discuss how much they love Clowes the Underground Artist). Although I would hardly call this a rule, comics should offer something different than what I can either see in a movie or read in a book. There has to be a reason to create something as a comic book, something compelling that attaches story to art. American Splendor and its film adaptation succeeded (and it is, incidentally, one of the few Indie comics I think are worth a damn).
I'm not arguing that Marvel or DC books are better than Indie books - although 100 Bullets is some of the best sequential art I've read in a long time - but that Indie comics aren't as good as their fans think they are. They're kind of like independent films. Sure, the freedom not to be forced to work with a big studio does occasionally produce a decent film, but most of the time you find something amateurish, over-egoized, and extraordinarily self-important - which perfectly sums up my encounters with Indie comics fans.
When I was busy building my freelancer's portfolio back in Tulsa, I did some work for Outline magazine, Tulsa's alternative lifestyle mag (which covered everything from homosexuality to BDSM). One of the editors was this corpulent fucker. Funny, I can't even remember his name, but I want to say it was Warner or Gordon or something. The first time we met, he shook hands and he had this weak, slimy handshake. He proceeded to ask me what I did, and I mentioned that I was a comics fan. He mentioned that he, too, was a comics fan, and asked me what I read. I told him: Fantastic Four, some Vertigo stuff, whatever my comic shop guy recommended, etc. He practically exploded: he didn't read that stuff, no way. Ghost World was his favorite comic. He mentioned a half-dozen others that have been erased by more important data in my memory banks, and extolled the virtues of Indie comics in the midsummer Tulsa heat for a good ten minutes before I found an excuse to leave.
That pretty much sums up my experience with Indie comics fans. I find them to be a lot like Anime Nazis, the people who insist you watch anime with subtitles because the dub ruins it and that yeah, Miyazaki's work is nice and all, but Nubile Gundam Evangeliion Princess Fuckamech 3 is the greatest work of art since the Forbidden Palace was created and if you don't understand that then you're a complete idiot and very likely an anti-Japanese bigot. I've encountered my fair share of those folk in my life, too.
So anyway, this long and lack-of-sleep induced rant isn't really leading anywhere but to me reiterating my dislike for self-aggrandizing pricks who think that anything mainstream is instantly inferior to anything "Indie," whether it's an Indie comic book, and Indie film, some obscure anime, or a role-playing system that five people have heard of and fewer have played.
Today was running, running everywhere. Work has turned into two things in the last week: getting ready for Toy Fair, and putting out fires. It makes for high-caffiene kind of days, but I need these every now and then.
Last night after the meeting, I banged out 1000 words on the novel. I've got designs on 1000 more tonight.
It's great what a little competition does for the creative soul.
This deserves its own post, rather than being tacked on to the "what I did today" post. Yesterday, Liz gave me her Valentines's gift: a sapphire that will be placed in a custom-designed (by her) tie pin. Stylish, sexy, and utilitarian all at the same time - she's good, folks.
Today was meetings. Nothing but solid meetings. 9 AM conference call with Europe. 10 AM can't even remember what. 11-12, answering emails. Noon to 4, another solid meeting. 4-4:30, a creative-type meeting I insisted I join (stupid, stupid me). 4:30-5:30, answering emails, writing a press release, writing web content for tomorrow, and so on.
Passed on gaming tonight to meet with other Alliterates to discuss fiction. Wolf shamed me by writing five chapters, and I didn't realize how much five chapters was until I downloaded it and went to print it out and thought the little watchdogs at work might wonder what I was doing with company property. So I'll print it a little at a time and get it to him next time. Jeff spun a tight little short story, and all chimed in with helpful comments on my Martian Commies project. Liz hadn't eaten either, so we caught an overexpensive, under-satisfying dinner at Denny's which turned into "draw-ma" when some trashy friend of one of the trashy waitresses showed up with her three-year-old breederspawn and ran amok (yes, the both of them).
That comment was so elitist, but dear God, that was not what I was in the mood to experience after today.
I had a Swingers experience this morning.
Liz had to drive out to one of her company's outlying branch offices, so she was out the door at 6:45. I had to be at work at 9 and spent too much time dicking around with my old DOS programs to walk, so I caught the bus.
Typically I don't really look at the people on the bus when I'm sitting down, I just sit in the front, so I'm facing the opposite windows. There was an empty space, so I sat down.
After I settle in, I notice the other people around me. Across from me was a really - well, a really smoking hot girl. The bus that runs in front of my apartment goes all the way to the University District, so it's not unusual to see college students on the bus. I'm guessing she was a UW student, maybe a freshman or a sophomore.
I notice, but don't really do anything. I settle back, listening to The Offspring and enjoying the ride to work.
I happen to glance over, and she's looking right at me. She smiles. I smile back. I think, "hey, cool, she smiled at me, that's nice. Most people just scowl."
A minute later, I look again. Again, she's looking at me. She beams me a huge smile and kind of mouths "hi." I look down - I left my wedding ring on the counter from doing dishes. I admit, at this point, I'm starting to think, "hey, she thinks I look good, maybe it's the long wind-blown hair, or maybe my time at the gym hasn't been a complete waste after all." I nod back and mouth "hi." I'm still listening to my music, oblivious of all sounds around me.
I keep looking at her, occasionally making eye contact. At one point, she even waves, and I wave back a bit. My self-esteem has received a nice little boost; this young hottie thinks I'm good looking!
The bus rolls into the Bellevue Transit Center. I stand to get off, she stays. I wonder if maybe she'll try to slip me her digits or whatever the kids call it these days. I look at her one last time, and she's still smiling and waving - but looking at where I was sitting. I think, "hey, I'm right in front of you now!"
Then, I look behind me. And see the three-year-old kid in the seat next to mine that I missed because I was sitting sideways.
And the three-year-old kid is smiling and waving back at her.
Sigh.
I've been looking for a program that correctly emulates DOS on an XP to run all my old games. I believe I found that program in DOS Box.
Two hardcore days at the gym. My arms are sore, I had a muscle twitch in my abs, and I don't feel any healthier. If anything, I feel fatter.
I hate this bullshit.
The election results in Iraq show that people voted for the parties most likely to take away their rights, including the right for women to vote.
After reading this article about how blue states like Washington pay far more into taxes than we get out of it (we get approximately 90 cents for every dollar we pay in, and New Jersey gets approximately 57 cents per dollar they pey) vs. red states that get upwards of two dollars for every dollar they pay in, I now propose a new tax plan: states get what they pay in, no more, no less. Washington can improve our national parks, give healthcare to our infant citizens, and do all of those nasty evil socialist commie pinko things that the red states profess to hate so much but will happily take our tax dollars to do.
And the red states?
As if I needed another reason not to live in one.
One of my old buddies from the Fallout PnP days created a Fallout wiki over on Duck and Cover.
Articles like this one about a library in a town with a population of 1 remind me of the power of a good book.
I've been on the search for something good to read lately, and I think I may have found it. A while ago, Seth loaned me a book called The Years of Rice and Salt, an alternate history where the black death wiped out 99% of Europe rather than 30%, so Islam and Buddhism grew to tbe the world's dominant religions, colonize the Americas, and so on. The premise sounded great; the execution, for lack of a better word, sucked. Kim Stanley Robinson (author of the Red Mars series) seemed far more interested in showing off his knowledge of Asian culture than in telling a good story.
Seth then loaned me The Philosophy of Horror, which is a fascinating nonfiction look at horror - why we read it or watch it, what the internal machinations are that attract us to it, and so on. It's not exactly light reading, so I've been going through it slowly. I'll read a few pages here and there, but it's not the kind of book I can spend an afternoon on.
A few days ago, Liz and I went to Barnes and Noble just to browse around. I needed to grab a copy of the Rider-Waite tarot deck for the game I've been working on, but otherwise had no goal. A book called House of Leaves sat on one of their "staff recommendation" shelves. "Best novel ever," some of the staff gushed. OK, I picked it up and looked through.
It looks like a combination of Nabokov's Pale Fire, a haunted-house horror story, and a meditation on the nature of films and movies. What's not to love? I bought it. I started reading it, and I love it. It's going to take me a while to finish, but since I'm leaving for a few days in the near-future, I'll have a nice long planeride all by my lonesome so I can get some good reading done.
Today Liz and I took in the Fifth Avenue Theater production of Singin' In The Rain. Aside from a couple of minor technical glitches (and hey, I can forgive that, it was their first performance), it was an amazing production. I'm familiar with the movie, of course, but this stage musical seems to be unique in that it was based on a movie, and not vice-versa. Therefore, all the worry of "will they get this part right?" is turned around, and instead you wonder how they could possibly do things like the "Make 'Em Laugh" sequence.
5th Avenue pulled it off in amazing fashion, wall-flips and all. I've gotta say, it was one of the best times I've had at the theater in a long time. Not that I go to live theater all that often, but damn this was a great show. My Seattle-based readers might want to check it out.
The Perlinger Archive is an extensive collection of government-produced safety films (think Burt the Turtle and Duck and Cover). There's some unique and wacky stuff on there.
"Our assignment is to knock out the nuclear-weapons plant at Falafel Heights. The plant goes on line in 12 hours and is heavily defended. Now, if you have trouble hitting your objective, your secondary targets are here and here: an accordion factory and a mime school."
- Admiral Benson in Hot Shots!
Here's an interesting historical tidbit: in the early 1900s, a community of midgets called Lilliputia was created on Coney Island as a kind of permanent sideshow attraction.
He's a husband seperated from his wife. She's a wife, seperated from her husband. They meet over the Internet, find out they have a lot in common. Romance blooms. They make plans to marry. They decide to meet.
They discover they are still married - to each other.
Once again, real life is better than fiction.
I have a bad habit of quitting books. Some of them, I'll quit ten pages or so from the end. Others, if they lose me, I'll quit halfway through. Much to Liz's chagrin, I have quit Love in the Time of Cholera about five times.
Today, I officialy quit The Moon is a Harsh Misteress even though I haven't been reading it, I've been listening to the audio book as I work out. It started out strong but got damn boring. I'm going through some other audio books I've got lying around trying to find another suitable workout book.
After watching Carnivale, I've been thinking a little bit about tarot card games and ways to use a tarot deck in role-playing games other than as a fortune-telling device.
In my research, I ran across this page, an interesting overview of games still played with tarot decks in Europe.
Superbowl XXXIX: a great excuse to get together with friends, singe the hair off my hand with the grill and an out-of-control BBQ fire, have a good time, laugh at the same commercials (the AmeriQuest "Bad Kitty" commercial was the best, by consensus of laughter), and just relax.
 | You scored as Punk and Pop Punk.. Punk and Pop Punk.
Music Recommendation created with QuizFarm.com |
Yesterday I met up with a pretty big posse from the office and headed over to the Emerald City Comic Con, Seattle's comic show. It was surprisingly large, considering this is only their third year: I'd say there were easily two thousand people there on Saturday. They managed to get some pretty big-name artists, too, like Kurt Busiek and others (Mark Waid skipped out - just as well, I didn't even know he was planning on going). A good time was had by all, even if we covered the whole thing in about three hours.
Today is some big football game. I've got a handful of folks from the office (and Chad) coming over to watch in glorious 50" HDTV. And we're doing ribs and wings on the grill. I love that it's warm enough to grill such things on Superbowl Sunday.
I admit, I avoided The Rundown because I have a prewired dislike of professional wresting, but this is one of those instances where I'm happy to report I was wrong. It was everything an action movie should be: fun, campy, with good one-liners and plenty of fights. I don't have much else to say, but it was an excellent way to waste two hours.
It's been five years since I watched Requiem for a Dream, and only lately have I felt ready to watch it again. Last night, I was in such a funk that I figured it would be a perfect catharsis, and it was. Liz was as floored as I was the first time I saw it; for me, it had much less impact this time around, and I could take the opportunity to notice stylistic things I missed when I was so emotionally involved in the film. My problem with some of the "artistic crossover" that occurs in major Hollywood films (Gladiator being the most notable offender in my mind) is that they try to use techniques pioneered by people like Arranofsky in movies like Requiem, and they use those techniques arbitrarily or inconsistantly. Arranofsky did neither, and used non-traditional cinematography to visceraly enhance the movie. If you haven't seen Requiem for a Dream, I highly recommend it, but it is an intense trip. Be prepared.
A random person commented on Liz's blog, and following the link back to the random person's blog revealed a very funny personal blog. Looking over my blog, you'd think I was a workaholic with time for nothing other than complaining about politics and watching movies.
I got to thinking about how I should make more posts about the funny things that happen in my life, and my wry observations regarding those things, when I realized that my life is actually pretty fucking boring, and I don't have a lot of wry observations to make on anything. And I got to thinking about that some more, and the more I thought about it, the deader I felt on the inside. And I started looking really hard, and I'm beginning to wonder where the life is at all right now.
Wolfgang posted a quote from Mark Twain on his blog a few days ago, something along the lines of: "twenty years from now, you'll regret the things you didn't do much more than you'll regret the things you did do." The problem is, aside from working at my job, going to the gym, and buying a house, I'm not doing a whole fuck of a lot. I've written a little, but it wasn't long ago that I was cranking out 10,000 words a month on my novel (sometimes more). I'm playing a lot of DnD (whoop-de-do), but so much of the stuff that is still important to me - traveling, experiencing cultures and people, and so on - I've back-burnered. I've thought before that I feel fuzzy and withdrawn, and I'm still trying to figure out if that's just how you live your life as a responsible adult, or if I'm missing out on something much wider than my life at the moment.
Gack. Just gack. It's been a while since I've felt this discontented, unmotivated, and generally depressed. Part of that may be tied into the fact that I feel like I've accomplished very little at work this week (which isn't really the case), but I've also got to ask myself why it is I would feel depressed over my job - which is just my job?
So World's Largest Dungeon is out, Jon's homebrew world is in. I'm playing a female gnome sorceress, in a party made entirely of "little people." It's been great so far - I think losing the extra characters was a huge boon, and Jon knows a lot about his own world, or isn't afraid to make up what he doesn't know. I sense a fun game a-comin'.
Higher-than-expected voter turnout occured as voters defied terrorist threats against the polling stations. It's time to celebrate the triumph of Texas-style military policy!
The date?
September 3rd, 1967 - Vietnam.
Laid out in detail are various quotes about Iraq, including the plan to invade as early as September 17th, 2001; the money illegally rerouted from Afghanistan to plan the invasion; the assertions by Condi Rice not three months before 9/11 that Iraq had zero weapons of mass destruction (suddenly, the intelligence got all faulty after 9/11 and then returned to normal?); and in many instances a case for optimism after the election.
As good as the removal of Saddam is for the world and the Iraqi people, we should not forget that we were intentionally led to war on false pretenses (as any rational person looking at these quotes would agree) so that a few people could make a lot of money.
If Saddam was really so bad and getting rid of him was such a moral imperative, Daddy Bush should have done it in '91, and the conservative right should have supported Clinton's efforts to curb Slobodon Milosivic. That these two things did not happen shows the greedy, opportunistic hypocrites beneath their self-righteous exterior.
An excellent article about the Christian underground in North Korea, and what might be the beginning of the end of Kim Jong Il.
This last weekend, the Iraqi election turnouts were higher than expected, despite threats by insurgents that voters would be killed if they tried to vote.
With all the monumental fuckups in Iraq, it's only fair to say, with utmost sincerity, that the election is really damn cool. It doesn't change my feelings on the war, but I have to say that this is worth some of the sacrifice our soldiers have made, and it is a good thing.
What they do with this freedom - that's kind of what scares me a little.
But people often surprise you. We'll see.
Watched two movies yesterday: Predator and AVP. Predator was less cool than I remember it being as a twelve-year-old, but better then I expected it to be. AVP was actually much better than it was in the theater, for some reason. Maybe I'm just more forgiving of a movie as time passes. I certainly want to see Primer again, and considering my pretty harsh critique the first time around, I didn't think I'd say that.
Tonight, I'm in the mood for something dark. Really dark. I wonder if Liz is up for Requiem for a Dream.
Oni-no-Anne (one-half of the cool gamer couple I mentioned a few days back) pointed out this great audioblog and review of the World's Largest Dungeon. I think I know what I'm going to be listening to at work the next few days.
It's a good day when I log onto a forum related to our games, and I see this directed at me (my handle on these forums is "Brother Magneto", after my favorite mutant):
James is sick, Liz is training puppies, so I'm home alone. Time to do some writing.
Yesterday morning, I watched Black Sunday, on old horror movie I picked up super-cheap on a recommendation and never had time to watch. Black Sunday is Tim Burton's favorite horror movie (according to the marketing blurbs on the packaging, anyway), an Italian horror film done in the early 50s before there really were such things as Italian horror films. It's a vampire flick set in the mid-1800s, with all the appropriate gothic scenery: ruined cathedrals, old crypts, crumbling castles, mobs with torches and pitchforks, the works. It was surprisingly gruesome, too: the "mask" in the alternate title is a spiked iron affair nailed to the face of a witch with a huge mallot, and they didn't spare any blood.
It seems pretty tame and cliche by today's standards, but there were certainly a couple of wince moments, and some really cool special effects. Probably worth more as a historical curiosity than a horror film, but I've seem much worse.
Sunday morning. I slept well last night, for the first night in about a week. Seems like this cold is on its way out; I had a couple solid hours of coughing fits last night, but then it all stopped. This morning, it's just a little bit in the nose.
Last week was pretty much dealing with the cold when I wasn't dealing with work. I've got a nice little extracurricular activity from the office that's taking up most of my free time, but it's one of those things that I really enjoy doing, so the time I've put into it is really more personal therapy than work. I still have a contract with some nice billable hours left on it, and I'm planning on jumping back into that this afternoon.
Yesterday, John and Angela came over. The plan was originally to see Hotel Rwanda in the afternoon, but Angela was hung over and didn't want to see a movie about genocide, so it turned into a dinner thing. We broke out the Clue Master Detective my parent's got me this Christmas (thanks Mom!) and had some fun with that, and then with Apples to Apples. We thought about seeing the movie late last night, but tickets would have been too expensive, so we stayed in and played games and talked instead. We should get together with them more often.
Today, I'm going back to the gym this morning, and I think I'm going into the city to play cards with James and Chad. And that's really all that's happnening in my life these days. The World's Largest Dungeon group appears to be breaking up, either from lack of interest, too many characters, or whatever, which is too bad. We fought the Dungeon, and the Dungeon won.
I think I need some breakfast.
Two movies in one day? Lucky me!
Well, not really. The office kicked in so I could see Elektra; again, I'm glad I didn't pay for it. It was actually really good for about the first thirty minutes: the introductory sequence was taken word-for-word and shot-for-shot from the comics, which considering a comic book is basically a storyboard, is one of the best ways to shoot a comic book movie. The beginning of the rest of the film also follows another Elektra comic story arc, but quickly degenerates into a bunch of bad martial arts nonsense. There was even a bad-guy roll-call at one point (Baroness, Cobra Commander - ATTACK!)
The high point was the trailer for Sin City (Quicktime required to view at link), which I hadn't watched yet. Now that looks like an amazing comic adaptation!
Tonight's Netflix offering was Intolerable Cruelty, a Coen brothers romantic comedy with some big Hollywood names and some usual Coen hijinks. The plot was predictable (twice, I called out what was going to happen next), but it wasn't terrible - if you're going to watch a romantic comedy, you might as well watch one by the Coens. My only problem with the film was that they spent a good deal of time creating the reasons why Catherine Zeta-Jones disliked George Clooney, and about thirty seconds on why she actually did like him, so when they (SPOILER ALERT!) end up together, it lacked a certain authenticity.
But, it was a fine way to spend an evening.
Normally, Thursday would have been gaming night, but we cancelled due to the creeping crud, which has now decided that my lungs are OK places to rest as well as my sinuses. Liz got this one day before I did, and she is still feeling bad, so I know I've got at least one hard day left.
I hate viruses.
Even though I lived in Tulsa for four years, and attended a high school with a large population of fundamentalist Christian teenagers, and I was a religion major in college (even took a class specifically in 20th Century Christian Thought), I still feel rather clueless about the conservative, fundamentalist, Protestant worldview. I think that's in no small part to my being raised Catholic, and the fluid nature of conservative evangelical Protestantism seems to run contrary to a lot of what I learned as a Catholic, but it could just be a cultural thing as well. So I Netflixed Saved!, an indie flick billed as a teen high school comedy, at an evangelical high school. It was surprisingly serious - covering homosexuality, teen pregnancy, abortion, and so on - but most of the main characters seemed to be cariactures rather than fully-developed entities, especially the school's "fundie queen" (played by Mandy Moore).
While Saved! was obviously critical of people such as Moore's characters - those for whom faith is a tool to serve their own self-interests - it really shined in its portrayal of Patrick the preacher's son, Dean the gay kid who gets the main character pregnant, and Mary, the main character and soon-to-be unwed mother who screwed Dean to try to save him from being gay. While Mary struggles with her faith, the other two don't lose theirs, and the film ended up quite complimentary of the quiet kind of Christian who isn't out to create a running tally of souls personally saved, but is merely there to help and love his or her neighbor.
The end got to be a little heavy-handed and contrived, but Saved! is still worth a look if religion interests you as much as it does me.
In another example of why talking about a success before it is certain jinxes me every time, I started feeling awful about noon yesterday and felt bad enough to come home around two. I slept until about six, woke up, watched a movie, ate, and went back to bed. Liz's version seems to have settled as a cough, while mine has migrated up into my ever-inviting sinuses. The good news is, I really do feel better today - the aches are gone, which was a major reason for me going home yesterday, so I'm going to brave the office today, too.
Liz has spent the last two days in the throes of a coldflu, and I woke up yesterday with a sore throat and a bit of a cough. I started feeling progressively worse throughout the day, and right after work I hopped out to the drugstore to get a bunch of zinc, throat drops, cough medicine, and NyQuil. I took a combination of that last night, and I seem to be better this morning - still not tip-top, but a hell of a lot better than yesterday. My throat still feels a tad scratchy, but I think I beat the system on this one.
The Monkey King reminded me that the Monty Python musical, Spamalot, opens in New York about three days before I arrive for Toy Fair.
I'll be attending the night of the 23rd. You may worship me... now.
I haven't written any movie reviews in a while, and this blog has been a little behind on content lately, so I figured I'd get back into my thoughts on what I've been watching.
A few months ago, I got a subscription to Netflix so I could catch up on movies I didn't want to buy and I didn't want to waste my time to rent. House of 1000 Corpses was one of those, but of the movies I've gotten from Netflix, it's the only one I think I would buy, if the price was right.
The plot of the movie is largely summed up in the title: like the ax-murderer horror movies of the 1970s, four kids stop at a roadside attraction and end up prisoners of a deranged family in the title house. I didn't count, but there may very well have been a thousand corpses there. It's a raw horror film with zero hope, as it's pretty clear from about twenty minutes in that the main characters are well and rightly fucked (by their own stupidity as much as anything else). Calling it a gorefest doesn't do it justice, as it's relatively light on the gore; instead, it's a repeated, crushing nightmare of human depravity, made all the worse because there isn't some supernatural force behind it: as is implied in the beginning, everything that happens, can (and has) happen(ed) from the hands of regular human beings.
Director Rob Zombie, formerly of the band White Zombie, has a strong, if frentic, screen presence. The cuts are quick, and he makes excellent use both of hallucinagenic-like cut scenes (often with regular character dialogue still occuring), and of split-screen scenes showing reactions of characters to the horror other characters are inflicting on them.
I certainly won't say House is for everyone - in fact, I can only think of a couple of people I would recommend it to - but if you're a horror fan, this is certainly one of the better American horror movie offerings to come along in quite a while.
In case you'd like to read about a real dictator whose citizens are starving (and, by some reports, eating each other), check out this book review about a tome covering the horror that is North Korea. Or, if you're interested in seeing what it's like for an American to visit North Korea (and you're into the photo thing), check out this photo essay (it will take you a while to read the whole thing, but it's fascinating reading). Or, examine North Korea from space.
If Bush had sold us that North Korea was a nation with nukes and they were ready to use them on us, I would have bought it. Hell, I probably would have enlisted.
Tonight wrapped up the third of three weeks of playtesting over at Wolf's place. He's got a cool little adventure; I especially liked the end, there were a couple awesome little details that cemented the whole thing for me and made it memorable. I also met a very nice couple who were fun to game with; they mentioned they were looking for a game, so if we ever get up and running back into a more fantasy setting, I might drop them a line.
It's 20 minutes after midnight, and I don't feel tired at all. In fact, I feel like goofing off in San Andreas for a while.
Incidentally, if you're interested in reading more blogs from Iraq, this soldier's blog has an excellent directory of them.
A couple of days ago, Bob posted a story on his blog titled "How the Left Betrayed My Country: Iraq", and suggested that it should be required reading for anyone who opposes our presence in Iraq. As one who opposes our presence in Iraq (and, indeed, the whole sorry mess that the invasion has created in the international community), I have it a read. The article states - basically - that the leftist media has it all wrong, and that Iraqis really are grateful that we Americans came and overthrew Saddam. The story opens:
I can't take credit for writing this - it appeared in my inbox this morning - but it's damn funny, and true.
Dear President Bush:
Congratulations on your victory over all us non-evangelicals. Actually, we're a bit ticked off here in California, so we're leaving.
California will now be its own country. And we're taking all the blue states with us. In case you are not aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, and all of the North East.
We spoke to God, and He agrees that this split will be beneficial to almost everybody, and especially to us in the new country of California. In fact, God is so excited about it, He's going to shift the whole country at 4:30 pm EST this Friday.
Therefore, please let everyone know they need to be back in their states by then.
So you get Texas! And all the former slave states. We get the Governator, stem cell research and the best beaches. We get Elliot Spitzer. You get Ken Lay. (Okay, we have to keep Martha Stewart, we can live with that.) We get the Statue of Liberty. You get OpryLand. We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom. We get Harvard. You get Old Miss' We get 85% of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get all the technological innovation in Alabama.
We get about two-thirds of the tax revenue, and you get to make the red states pay their fair share. Since our divorce rate is 22% lower than the Christian coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms to support, and we know how much you like that.
Did I mention we produce about 70% of the nation's veggies? But heck, the only greens the Bible-thumpers eat are the pickles on their Big Macs. Oh yeah, another thing, don't plan on serving California wine at your state dinners. From now on it's imported French wine for you.
Ouch, bet that hurts.
Just so we're clear, the country of California will be pro-choice and anti-war. Speaking of war, we're going to want all blue states citizens back from Iraq. If you need people to fight, just ask your evangelicals. They have tons of kids they're willing to send to their deaths for absolutely no purpose. And they don't care if you don't show pictures of their kids' caskets coming home.
Anyway, we wish you all the best in the next four years and we hope, really hope, you find those missing weapons of mass destruction.
Seriously. Soon.
Sincerely, California
This article is a must-read for gamers of all stripes:
Apparently the Iraqis have not only learned about democracy, but they have been taking lessons from Dino Rossi. Why, you ask? Hell, you don't even live in Iraq, or be a citizen of Iraq, to vote in their election!
Golly, I sure hope these elections really are democratic, like Bush promised, and not an excuse to empower a bunch of vulnerable US stooges, like the world suspects.
I think we're actually destabilizing now.
I haven't done a personal update for a while, partially because I've been pretty busy at work helping to transition my responsibilites onto the new guy, and partially because there's not a whole lot to update about. The new guy is OK, but he's damned slow and doesn't seem to have a solid concept of how long it should take to do some of these tasks - nor does he realize how time-sensitive some of this stuff is. It's probably because I have more experience with how our game community tends to respond to things (negatively) and how quickly they pick up on stuff and start dissecting it (almost immediately), so I'm much more sensitive to those kinds of things. Perhaps I should tell him to begin monitoring our forums.
The big news in our life is that we're buying a house. As I said in the writing post below, I don't like to talk about things until they're sure, but this one is looking good, so I'll mention it. We found a house. The price was right. The value should go up. We're looking to stay there for 2-3 years and make a hundred grand off it. We'll see how that plan works.
Good news, everyone!
Normally I don't talk about this stuff until it's 100% sure, but this is 99%, so here goes. I got an email that my Deadworld setting for All Flesh Must Be Eaten will be published!
I do believe I may have just climbed a rung on the ladder, which puts me right around rung number three.
I got completely swamped at work yesterday, so while I was following the Huygens probe data, I couldn't post about it.
It looks like everything went as planned. You can now download the sounds of Titan, see the moon in true color, and get a composite of the liquid near the landing area.
Most importantly, however, is the fact that Huygens has detected frozen water on Titan's surface. And where there's water, generally, there is life.
The Huygens probe was designed to transmit data for ten minutes after landing - and has instead transmitted for at least an hour and a half. This is very exciting - it would appear that everything fell into place, and we're going to know a lot more about an alien world very soon!
Yup, that's what President Bush said regarding his "bring 'em on" comment to American troops in response to Iraqi insurgents. He realizes that now, Bush says.
What the fucking fuck? You mean to tell me we elected a man - TWICE - who didn't realize that words have fucking consequences? I mean, isn't that something most normal average human beings learn around Kindergarten?
Honestly, I thought I was a little nerdier than this - but I've never been very good at math.
At 7:45 ET this morning, the Huygens probe successfully landed on Titan. This is exciting beyond belief, because it means that most of the variables, if not all of them, have worked in our favor. More news as it develops.
Yesterday, the White House quietly admitted there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and there likely never were (sorry, no article to link to - it was on TV last night, but it seems to have fallen off the radar at many news sites). As far as I know, this is the closest admission to any kind of wrong by this administration, even though I watched Bawbawa Watwaws interviewing Bush while I was on the Stairmaster last night and Bush brazenly said, no, he regrets nothing, we've freed Iraq. Yes, the country where 92% of the population views us as an occupying force is free. I suppose to a President who can't seem to get his approval ratings over that vicious 52% hump without a terrorist attack on American soil, 8% must still seem pretty significant.
I've always loved space and space exploration. As a kid, my parents took me to see Star Wars and Star Trek movies, and the later was one of my first television memories - it might have even been the Tribble episode. More than once, family vacations centered around trips to the Air and Space Museum and Cape Canaveral. I remember exactly where I was when I heard about the Challenger exploding, and I was moved to tears a couple of years ago when Columbia was destroyed on re-entry. I've got a great telescope my friends and I used in college to check out planets, stars, and more.
So I've been watching with some excitement the Cassini mission to Saturn. Unlike Jupiter, which we've explored thoroughly with the Galileo probe, Saturn, its rings, and most imporantly its moons remain a mystery. While Jupiter's Europa remains one of the prime candidates for finding extraterrestrial carbon-based life, Saturn's moon Titan is another candidate, along with the moon Mimas, which may consist almost entirely of water ice. Cassini has already returned startling information, like images of massive storm activity on Saturn. But the truly historical part of the mission will come next week.
One January 14th, the Huygens probe will descend beneath Titan's thick atmosphere for a two-hour ride to the moon's surface. During that descent, it will continuously radio information to the Cassini probe, which will then relay the information back to Earth. Huygens, a flat flying-saucer-like disc, contains instruments that will measure the composition of Titan's atmosphere, a microphone to record sounds (thunder will indicate atmospheric activity - and this will be the first recorded sounds from another world!), and numerous cameras to take pictures the entire way down. It also has lights to illuminate its landing area, so we can get some clear images of that, and should it survive landing, then it can analyze its landing space.
Of course, a thousand things could go wrong, from the chute not opening to the probe landing in a sea of liquid methane to the probe landing on a cliff and sliding to its doom. But we should have enough data for a unique look at a strange, new world.
The data will be rolling in on the 14th, so I'll be watching carefully and making updates as we see cool new stuff.
We watched the last five episodes of Carnivale in a mini-marathon tonight, in preperation for tomorrow's debut of Season 2. I have to say that I'm really glad to see quality writing for TV in the day of "reality shows," even if I do have to spring an extra twelve bucks a month for it.
And if anyone is looking for an apocalyptic, classical Christian, magical realist dust-bowl era fantasy, look no further than Carnivale.
This morning, we put an offer on another house. I think this is going to be a good deal, but it's scary as hell right now, and I'm trying pretty hard not to think about it.
So instead, I'm going to dink around with my website, and see if I can't come up with a cool, work-safe concept.
Having been medicated myself for ADD, I can certainly relate to the spirit of this comic strip.
Yesterday, Liz and I headed to the gym for the first time in... well.. a long time. At least two years (we quit going when we moved to Seattle). My legs feel like Jell-o, but it's a good feeling - I'm committed to this whole losing-weight thing, doing it in a healthy way, and changing my lifestyle. Now I just need to follow through.
In other news, we've been watching Carnivale on the video-on-demand, a great way to watch reruns if you have digital cable. It's an impressive show with an impressive cast, kind of a magical realism but with more sinister overtones.
Speaking of, I'm going to watch another episode or two right now. And try to write at the same time.
Want to know if you're a registered King County voter, or if your vote was counted in the messy 2004 election? The Seattle Times offers a database for this task.
Will Eisner, the father of the graphic novel and surely one of the most influential figures in comic history, has passed away according to his website.
Via Metafilter, an excellent article on the truth behind video and music piracy, filesharing, and so forth, from Wired.
Someone once asked James Joyce how work on his novel Finnegan's Wake was going. It took Joyce twenty years to write his book, and his response to this unnamed person was, "I've written six words." His friend responded "James, that's great!" And Joyce's response was, "but I don't know what order they go in!"
I did some work on my novel last week, but I've tried to sit down several times this weekend to pound out some words and I've been able to manage about a paragraph or so. It's extraordinarily frustrating; every time I sit down, it feels like writing even a word or two takes a colossal effort.
I've had these spells before, but I still don't like them.
Yesterday was my first New Year's Eve in Seattle, and boy howdy did they light up that Space Needle with some bitchin' fireworks. Liz and I joined Seth and Matt for drinks, dinner, poker, The Great Dalmuti, and conversation over at Brook and Wendi's, and rang in the new year with style. A good time was had by all. This morning, I'm realizing I've got an entire weekend in which to work on my book, watch a couple of Netflix movies, and cruise through the rest of The Simpsons Season 5. My stomach feels a little woozy (I was the designated driver last night, so it weren't the booze), but otherwise, I'm ready to tackle the weekend in full work-goof-work mode.
The best DVDs of 2004, based on movie, picture, and sound quality. If you're building a DVD library, these are the ones to get.
I usually don't rank the "best" movies (hard to do that when you've got over 430 of them sitting on your shelf), but I'll do a little list of my recommended films from 2004.
2004's Movies You Should See:
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