Inner monologue of the author while channel surfing:

What is this movie… okay it’s on AMC, can’t be too crazy or intense. Oh wait, bridge scene, bridge scene with lots of cars, I think I recognize this. Dark sky, film quality looks roughly 80’s-ish, epic scale but not an epic production… Okay there’s a taxi cab cut in half. I’m pretty sure this is Escape from New York but let’s see here. Okay zoom in on the taxi passenger seats in the back, guy with long hair, could definitely be Snake Plisskin… kay he’s getting out of the car and… yep Snake Plisskin, it’s Escape from New York.

I spent the majority of today working on an art project involving the use of many bad comic books that I bought for cheap down at the Comics Keep and turning them into collages. This is a new experience for me given that I am not a sixteen year old girl or an art student. Pictures forthcoming.

I have met my match

I spent the last few days downloading The Machine Girl over a slow torrent, and I have to say I couldn’t really watch it. I mean, I like ridiculous overhyped violence, but something about this one just put me off entirely. Just the way the shots were placed and how long to camera lingered on each violent act. It was like violence as a fetish, not as an action or plot device or even an event. It was just… kinda gross. Like I felt dirty for watching it.

So congratulations, from the guy who watched Dead Alive (AKA Brain Dead) with glee and abandon, I couldn’t bear to watch The Machine Girl. Maybe if I had some friends with me and I was hideously drunk, but in the sobering hour of one in the afternoon on a Thursday, not so much.

Downsides to being clean shaven pt. 2:

I no longer bear a striking resemblance to the bassist from Death Cab for Cutie, who I’m told (by skeptical and reluctant fans of the band) is their coolest member.

(picture stolen from Pitchfork)

Such sacrifices must be made for the good of the commonwealth-face.

Instead of content allow me to post what I believe is the image that I thought the future would look like when I was about six:

(Picture stolen from internet)

Snake Mistakes pt. 1: Going clean shaven

Hooo man, that was a bad idea. I had the best intentions in mind you know, cut things off and make it grow back and look better. I’m still hoping that will work. I mean, if I don’t get a better mustache by the end of the summer I will be royally peeved.

But man, I’ve got razor burn all over, I lost a pint of blood, and all I have to show for it is this goofy boyish look. I look like Eric Werheim, only not as cool. It’s really bad.

So uhh yeah. I’m gonna stay inside for a few weeks. Later.

For an uncomfortable bed, you sure know how to hold a guy in until noon

I mean, bed, you and I have got to have a chat about this. We spend a lot of time together, more than we ought to, given that I also watch TV on you (while in your automobile couch mode) and occasionally even indulge in video games on your blue quilted Ikea surface. But this relationship has gone too far. I mean, friends like you and I really shouldn’t be taking it to this level. Four hours of sleep is too little, so is five, six and seven are pretty cool and even eight. But man, nine and a half hours on a daily basis for a week straight? It’s gone too far my friend. I just have to call it off. The fact is, the world does exist before noon, when I finally escape your clutches, and I’ve gotta be a part of it.

Things have been great bed, but enough is enough is enough.

———

After watching some bad anime as a homework assignment from some friends all I can think about is creating my incredible giant robot show based around musical themes. Robots would harmonize and interlock to form new amazing creations based on new musical styles and use songs as attacks. I mean, this show practically writes itself. I mean, you could have an entire show based on the pentatonic scale where none of their coordinations ever accidentally go into dissonance! It would be pretty much brilliant (assuming this hasn’t been done before). To appeal to an American audience all the robot pilots could be inner-city second-generation ipod-toting high schoolers that go to a boarding school to train psychics and superheroes or something. It would work.

So yeah, feel free to steal that and send me the royalty checks kay?

———–

Dirty Harry is a pretty damn fine film. A lot of cop dramas and crime thrillers in the 70’s got this labeled attached to them that they were gritty and that they blurred the lines between corruption and justice and all that, but Dirty Harry is pretty much the opposite. There is no cleaner-cut, right and wrong, black and white story than Dirty Harry. You’ve got good guys that hate people and do a good job kicking ass, some badguys that are really heinous, and some city officials that get in the way with bureaucracy and navel-gazing rule-mongering. If I were to take a guess, Frank Miller watched Dirty Harry at least once a year since the age of 14. I like to think that all of his noir influences were really seen through a lens of starkly moralistic 70’s cop dramas, and then he wrote Sin City while cranking up the violence a notch. Just taking a guess here. But yeah, Dirty Harry is good stuff. I like how the older a movie gets the more emphasis seems to be placed on elaborate camera maneuvers. We get shots that pan through broken windows, that follow tiny bits of light and reflection on an otherwise pitch-black frame, or that pullback shot from the middle of the San Franciscan football field all the way to its outside. Do all the movements add to the thematics of the movie or increase suspension and drama throughout? Not quite, but there are enough hits to punctuate a few good spots and enough interesting misses to help you pay attention. Maybe I’m just saying all of this (vague, half-baked nonsense) through the perspective of a guy who has watched too many action movies that have set, pre-determined framing techniques for every gunshot, explosion, and clever line of dialogue. I guess thrillers are pulling from an entirely different book altogether (Hitchcock’s?)

Well, enough of this nonsense and back to vidcons.

Half Life 2 Mods: Episode 1: Mistake of Pythagoras

Just a little post today in honor of how little I’ve done: Waking up late, lounging, organizing the collection of shameful playing cards, showering in the late afternoon, etc. I did take care of another item on the stuff-to-do list, the Half-Life 2 mod Mistake of Pythagoras. It’s short, a little difficult, and pretty Japanese. I kind of like that it uses the Source engine and the Half-Life universe to tell its story, the sort of understated figure-it-out-yourself mode of exposition is fitting given that its used (though perhaps not in the same way) in the Valve-developed series. Some of the action sequences are vague and require a little too much thought for the player to really figure them out, and as expected some of the set designs are a little amateurish, though I’d like to think that some of the wide, high-ceilinged areas were used intentionally for their geometric simplicity. There was a great little a-ha moment for me when the plot sort of started to make sense instead of just being a collection of “LOL Japan” nonsense. If I’m interpreting things correctly Mistake of Pythagoras is actually a poignant little tale about order, chaos, and a bit of mistaken identity. It’s kind of impressive that using only simplistic shapes in the character designs I was able to get a little emotional catharsis out of them in the end. Check it out if you have Steam/HL2 and have a few hours to spare (about two or two and a half it would seem).

Several unfocused half-baked blog posts in one

I’ve developed a minor addiction to Magic: The Gathering over the course of freshman year in college. Magic is a game more well-known for being played by insular packs of alpha nerds at your local high school cafeteria, but it is also patronized by alpha hipsters looking for a nostalgic kick. I’m friends with some of the latter. So I harmlessly bought a collection of cards on ebay, 800 cards of crap for about $20 shipped. Since then I’ve had compulsive Magic urges, like other people crave for sugary pastries or the smell of a new car. There’s a place called Jeanne’s in Bremerton that carries them, at the Perry Avenue Mall. It is indeed located on Perry Avenue. It is not a mall. Strip-mall maybe. Shopping mall not. But really, strip malls have more interesting stores on the whole than their suburban/urban mall counterparts. Where else can one buy grooming materials for their pets and by-the-pound Chinese food withing jogging distance of their parked Subaru? So Jeanne’s is a warm place with a medium-high ceilings and thinly-carpeted floors. It is either dimly lit or the group of Yu-Gi-Oh players there sucked the remaining light out of the room like so many supermassive black holes. The signs on the outside say that the store also sells used uniforms and other clothing items, which takes up most of the floor space. An elderly woman runs the place, I assume she is the Jeanne’s of namesake. There are sports cards in a few cases and occupying about a third of the wall space. I assume this is what Jeanne of Jeanne’s intended to sell when she determined there would be trading cards at the store. She certainly seemed nonplussed when her younger male coworker had to explain what set of Yu-Gi-Oh cards was coming down the pipe next. She seemed to wince a little at the coarse nerd-talk going on at the playing tables but happily indulged me as I looked through the playing cards. It was hard not to feel a bit of pity when talking to her and observing her body language. I made it as quick of a trip as I could. Sadly I’ll probably return to Jeanne’s a few more times before it is all said and done.

I started Etrian Odyssey II for the DS recently, because the best thing to do in a cramped summer schedule with limited free time is to play a deliberately slow and archaic Japanese RPG based on even more deliberately slow and archaic 1980’s American RPG mechanics. The character classes feel more balanced as a whole, at least from what I can tell from the skill list and what little I’ve played. There is something very relaxing about playing an RPG, especially on a handheld. I’ve always believed that the genre did well as a therapeutic tool for exasperated teenagers and students and businessmen looking for a combination of escapism and logical number-crunching. Point is: EO2 seems to beat out its predecessor at the moment for making the earlier sections of the game less needlessly frustrating and more instantly rewarding, instead of spending the first five hours of play getting nearly-killed by butterflies, rabbits, rats, and pissed off deer.

My dad was trying to figure out why he enjoyed and tolerated the violence in some films (Robocop, The Crow), while hating it in others (300, Sin City), and I BS’d these conclusions. 1. My father has a soft spot for 80’s ultraviolence, not to be confused with post-911 ultraviolence. 2. It’s Frank Miller, who tends not so much to create violent situations and violent actions as he does violent characters, who make the violence harder to digest and less emotionally impacting. That’s purely speculation though.

So yes, maybe something more substantial in the near future.

Mauled

In a desperate attempt to keep this blog updating daily for more than a week we’ll discuss the general inanity that was Friday June 20 2007. A few things on the docket yet to do, namely e-mailing my future Seattle U Honors mentees (hello if you dudes are reading this!) and starting the next game and/or film and/or book on my giant list of things to do over the summer. Oh yeah, and Dr. Faustus. The honors gods deem that we read that over the summer. I’ve always wanted to anyway so it’ll be a good read.

An aside: My laptop just made the scariest tri-beep motherboard noise I’ve heard in a long time. Awesome!

So today not much happened. About two hours was spent mowing the lawn. Like any job it starts off exhilarating and rewarding and either by the end of the first run or at the very latest by the end of the second time doing said job it becomes a tedious soul-sucking monotony. But hey, it’s a living. The propelling mechanism on the mower is blown so I got a good workout from hauling the thing around. I told my friends over the summer I would either learn to play an instrument and write some songs or build up my roadie muscles. Looks like things are moving towards the second option.

Also went to the mall. Going to the mall without friends is like an invitation to openly hate the world. Without some sense of fellowship with friends the place is just a sad void of humanity’s lowest traits (and low low prices!) Really, it’s none too pretty of a sight. The Kitsap mall in particular is a strange junction, an intersection of the temporal planes, where relatively trendy (though none-too-attractive) youngsters prance alongside horribly outdated, horribly white, blue-collar 40-somethings.  There is a curse, and enchantment, of great jadedness that was placed on every stone, every sign, every grease-stained table of the Kitsap County Mall and it makes regular well-meaning relatively optimistic (if a tad sarcastic and a tad less narcissistic) people think less of humanity every time one enters it.

But hey, where else are you going to get the crap you pretend you need to survive.

Half Life 2: Episode 2: The Empire Strikes Back

I just wrapped up Episode 2 a few minutes ago, finishing it only a scant eight months or so since its release. I am nothing if not topical. They really pulled through with this one. Half Life 2 and Episode 1 felt more like a single package unto themselves, like the entire “escape from the core” scene should have been the real finale to HL2 in the first place. It was sort of the glorious end to City 17 and all that. Episode 2 then was sort of like your Empire Strikes Back. Decent plot developments, a couple of good twists, and some action scenes that rival the original material without trying to simply copy it or make it bigger and better. I’m pretty well convinced that the boys and girls at Valve know how to competently create a scene and direct the player and create a really well-structured narrative, that’s pretty much a given. They seem to have a good story all down and taken care of too. I’m just sort of waiting for the action and the shooting itself to catch up to the post-Gears of War world we’re living in right now. The combat just doesn’t feel sticky enough, like you’re just shooting at really dangerous sandbags. They did a good job with the hunters by making them move around and climb on things, but outside of their scripted events they just sort of felt like your average Combine with more health and an extra leg. Not that they should go entirely with the duck n’ cover Gears style of shooting, but something has to be done (other than a little gore, that helped) to make it feel more memorable with each enemy that you take out.

I guess I can’t fault the game for being too predictable either, but really, when every piece of machinery you encounter is out of power, low on reception, in need of service, under attack by enemies, or whatever it gets a little old. Yes Gordon Freeman is the go-to guy but it’s getting to the ludicrous point. He’s like young warrior fleet of foot in all these RPGs, just taking on whatever task must be done (and there are always tasks to be done). I guess they did one right by making the payoff for all these diversions a direct advancement of the plot instead of just getting a new set of pauldrons or whatever. And really, the vistas are fantastically designed to create exciting moments with characters you care about, so I can’t really blame them if the reasons for moving me from awesome locale to awesome locale are a little lame.

So just for reference here all of the things I want to read/play/watch over the summer:

Episode 2

Marathon (Durandal, then Infinity, then Marathon?)
Earthbound
No More Heroes
Smash Bros Stuff
Metal Gear Solid
Metal Gear Solid 2
Metal Gear Solid 3
Etrian Odyssey
Bully
Persona 3: FES
Shiren
PN03
Dragon Quarter
Contra: Shattered Soldier
Neo Contra
Gungrave
Everblue 2
Maximo
Ico
Rez
Front Mission 3
Suikoden
Thief
Spartan: Total Warrior
Mistake of Pythagoras
Minerva: Metastasis
Any other bullshit you have on your HD

READ A  BOOK
Illuminatus
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea
Invitation to a Beheading
God Bless you, Mr. Rosewater
Catch 22
The Things They Carried
Bradbury collection
Invisible Man
Poisonwood Bible
Things Fall Apart
Gravity’s Rainbow
Some Joyce
Finish the rest of Kafka stuff
TS Elliot collection

VIDEO
The Jerk
Fargo
Mighty Wind
Thunderball
Goldfinger
Good Night and Good Luck
Murderball
Kwaidan
Raising Arizona
Batman
Mind Game
The Tick
The Wire
Brick
History of Violence
The One
2046
No Country for Old Men
Bourne Trilogy
fearless
Knocked Up
Live Free or Die Hard
Simpsons Movie
Ratatouille
Black Lagoon
Fulltime Killer
GURREN LAGANN
Mindgame
Mushishi
Twin Peaks
Wild Zero
Castle of Cagliostro

COMICS
Agent X
Batman: Dark Victory
Blame
Deadpool
Desolation Jones
Doom 2099
any and all Dr. Strange
Earth X
Ectokid
Ex Machina
Fear Agent
Formerly Known as the Justice League
Flex Mentallo
Hellboy
Silver Surfer Requiem
Jojo
Animal Man
The Invisibles
The Filth
Doom Patrol
Peep Show
Punisher Max
Shaolin Cowboy
Sin City
Udon Street Fighter
The Authority
Iron Fist
TMNT
Transmet
Universe X
Vagabond
YKK
Black Dossier

BUT NO SERIOUSLY GET
Two-lane Blacktop
Chow Yun Fat – Full Contact
Jackie Chan – Wheels on Meals
THEY LIVE
HARD BOILED
Electric Dragon 80,000V
Tokyo Zombie
Mayonaka no Yaji-san, Kita-san
Brazil
Holy Mountain
Snuff Box (TV SHow)
Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto (Mifune again)
Ran
The Bad Sleep Well
8 1/2
The Killer
Adaptation
Paranoia Agent

Oh sure, I can handle this no problem.

Things that do not make a person bowl better:

-Thinking of theme music (especially not Simian Mobile Disco’s remix of Klaxons’ “Magic”)

-Thinking of a powerful hybrid superhero (like the Hulkernaught)

-Imagining the ball rolling down the lane in your mind

-Following through

-Not following through

-Throwing the ball with eyes closed

-Cursing the elderly people in the adjacent lane and stealing their bowling chi

-Doing the same with the younger birthday crowd in the other adjacent lane

-Engaging the lane in an act commonly known as “flipping the bird”

-Cursing under your breath

Note that some of these techniques will work in minigolf, given the proper circumstances. Also, man you better love classic rock if you want to bowl because you will hear more Steppenwolf than a man rightfully should in his lifetime if you are at a bowling alley for longer than an hour. Hoo boy.

And a bowling lane without a functioning milkshake machine is not a bowling alley at all. It is a daycare with weighted spheres.

Changing gears: The new Mario Kart game is not really that fantastic. The track design is bright and fun and colorful, and even imaginative, but the polygon count actually seemed to dip between Double Dash and this one and the rubber-band physics are even stronger. I don’t necessarily mind the amorphous item chance rate, but it’s weighted to the point of absurdity this time around. I was surprised as hell that I stayed in first for an entire lap once. That and the last-place items seem even stronger this time around (looking at you Bullet Bill).  Shame about the great course design and attractive menus though, because they’re really good. The game attached to them is kind of a letdown.