THE FUN THEY HAD

NEW BLOG: UPDATE YOUR LINKS

2009-08-06T22:31:00.002-04:00

ATTN WORLD: I HAVE A NEW BLOG. THIS BLOG IS NOW OUT OF SERVICE. ALL PASSENGERS PLEASE DEPART THIS BLOG.

Hey guys. I finally decided to start fresh with a new blog on wordpress, which was long overdue. My new blog is about media and language, instead of it being a rambling on of what I'm reading. Instead, you can find that rambling on my new tumblr site.

I'm using the wordpress for more focused discourse, so a lot of posts will be ripe for watercooler conversation.

The name, "The Last Question", is shared with yet another great Asimov short story. I suggest checking it out. It's about a question a master computer can never answer after millions of years of evolution.

WANNA BE SOMEONE WHO COW WOW WOWS

2009-06-27T12:33:00.007-04:00

The New York Dolls played Music Hall of Williamsburg this past Monday to a confused crowd of hipsters and people way past their prime. Hey, kind of like the band members themselves!

I'm kidding. Well, no. Well, kind of. David Johansen and Sylvain Sylvain, in their wonderful post-drugged-out glories, are the only two original members still performing today. And good for them, because they can still rock harder than probably anyone I've ever seen. They have a good sense of humor about themselves and are very playful - encouraging the crowd to have even half as much fun as they clearly do.

Also with them is my hero Steve Conte, who is the hardest working man in punk who still "get it", holding his guitar out to the crowd so they can pull at and run their fingers across its strings and running it across his monitor for feedback effects. A band like New York Dolls should be a novelty act playing Vegas at this point, which makes seeing them in one of the smaller famous venues in NYC all the more exciting.

Williamsburg is small and decidedly very un-punk. The crowd moved during the songs they recognized, some even going so far as to jump in place. But you do not go to Music Hall of Williamsburg to mosh. You go to show off your new beard and nod your head to the loudest act you can find. "Am I being ironic?" Who knows! Moshing is for teenagers.

###

This past week I read Ode to Kirihito, oft cited as the masterwork of my other hero, Osamu Tezuka. Long-time FTH readers will note my affinity for this man's work, which has made significant contributions to the culture of sf in pure artistist form.

It's about a brilliant scientist named Kirihito who is investigating a mysterious disease called "monmow", which has been turning people into primative animals, eventually killing them. As per his mentor's request, Kirihito goes off to a secluded town where cases have erupted, eventually contracting it himself. The 800+ page graphic novel then follows his downward spiral and the scandal that envelopes it in one of the darkest Tezuka stories I've read thus far.

I very much enjoyed this; I actually wound up reading the majority of it one sitting, because I had no desire to stop. While Tezuka's silliness and cartoony caricatures are absent, many plot points spiral haphazardly toward conclusion in his signature fashion. There are also a number of "breakdown" moments (as seen above) where the reader suddenly enters the abstract psyche of a main character going through stressful agony.

I'm looking forward to getting my hands on Black Jack Vol. 5.

###

Also in the world of bizarre Japanese things is Flower, Sun and Rain released for the Nintendo DS. It was created by grasshopper manufacture, Marvelous Interactive, outsourcing studio h.a.n.d., and published in America by XSEED and Marvelous. It's a port of the sophomore effort of Suda 51, whom I think is the only man in video games worth noting these days.

FSR is a pretty bad game, featuring lots of backtracking, puzzles requiring obscure algebra, and just a general outdated design. Much like other Suda 51 games, it's not so much about the game as it is the story and unique presentation. It goes something like this:

Sumio Mondo, a "searcher" who is a master at cracking codes, is sent to Lospass Island, a small resort island that serves as the home to Flower, Sun and Rain, a high-class hotel. His mission is to prevent a terrorist plan to explode an airplane, which is set to take off the day Mondo gets there. On the first day, Mondo is stopped by a hotel resident and asked to use his expertise to crack a code for them. Because he is nice, he gets to work. After he achieves his goal, he steps out onto the veranda and witnesses the airplane take off and explode in mid-air. The next day he wakes up, and the airplane hasn't taken off yet. He gets up to find the bomb, but it stopped yet again by another resident. This happens over and over again.

As the days go on, Mondo begins to unravel, and he starts to believe in conspiracies against him. More and more outlandish things happen to him at precisely timed moments as the hotel and its entire cast of characters begin to warp and torment the poor searcher.

The game has a nice sense of humor and I enjoy its surreal narrative. I love anything that has a large ensemble for a cast. But it's difficult for me to recommend it, because it's not for everyone. You really need to be patient, because there's a lot of walking (no transportation is allowed on the island). There are some chapters that require you to move Mondo from one end of the island to the other, which isn't difficult as there are no obstacles, but it is tedious work.

###

Last, but certainly not least, is my second trip (and possibly last) to Celebrate Brooklyn this summer. Blonde Redhead played a free show last night, marking the third time I've seen this fantastic band.

The pictures I have of the show are pretty bad, and BrooklynVegan hasn't updated yet today, so deal with it. BR's set consisted mostly of material from their albums 23 and Misery of a Butterfly, much like the last two times I've seen them (although Kazu Makino was not wearing a plastic nurse outfit, and there were absolutely zero technical problems! Imagine that!). I also finally got to see them play "Messenger" without Amedeo Pace's voice going out midway through the song. (Quote of the night: When they broke out into "Spring and by Summer Fall" and someone yelled out "THAT'S THAT SONG FROM THE CAR COMMERCIAL!")

The crowd waited in line through a downpour to see them and it was worth the effort, because the rest of the night was cool and clear. The space in the Prospect Park Bandshell is large, as I mentioned in my Byrne post a few weeks back, and we actually got into it this time, with primo seats.

Every time I see Blonde Redhead there's always one guy behind me explaining to his group of friends about how Makino fell off a horse, had to undergo major surgery, and then wrote an entire album about it. This same expert thought that any song the band played before their Misery is a Butterfly album was "new" and his mind was blown each time. The band has a large repertoire - I believe they don't exploit it enough, but the crowd might be bored with their early psychadelic and no wave efforts.

Still, you know what would really floor me? If anyone knew where they got their name from.

I ENTER THIS DARKENED, HAUNTED LABYRINTH A PAC, AND WHEN I EXIT I WILL BE A MAN

2009-06-21T01:00:00.008-04:00

I decided to enter a Pac-Man tournament for kicks.

It was organized by popular wapanese culture blog New York - Tokyo, which I've decided to link on my blog, because I think they're pretty cool on a structural level. I've never actually been to an event that they've sponsored up until now, and it was mostly because I'm a frequent shopper at the store where it was all going down: Uniqlo. We're talking about a video game tournament at a high-fashion Japanese store, nestled snugly in the heart of Soho. During the summer months, Uniqlo often sets up their nerdy clothing line, this year with designs from unpopular games by Taito, Namco, Sega, Sony, Capcom, et al, as well as a whole line of shirts with designs from 70's anime supergiant Tatsunoko.

Uniqlo had situated two Pac-Man 25th Anniversary machines on their video game floor, set to free play. They had been there all summer, assumingly donated by Namco Amusements, because they were spotless and missing the signature grime of used arcade machines.

To possibly commemorate the end of this clothing line for the year, Uniqlo approached New York - Tokyo to organize a Pac-Man tournament where popular blogs and magazines competed for prizes, mostly a handful of Pac-Man t-shirts and plushes. I stood and watched with my friend Dave, folding my arms and scoffing at the ameteurish mistakes the competitors were making, blown up on a big projected screen. The top blog managed to pull of high score of around 15,000; mind you, the competition was to see who could get the highest score in three minutes, so 15,000 and change is middling if not respectable. Clearly achievable by someone who understands that the basic premise is that you're a goddamn dot and you gotta eat all of the other goddamn dots.

After the blogs had their fun, it was time for the walk-ins to play. This is how connected the organizers were to their audience: the sign-up girl told us to use our fake internet handles instead of our real names. I decided to tactfully go with the name PAC-BEAST, which triggered a number of other contestants to frown audibly. I also convinced my friend to join in, because he realized after seeing the sloppy plays by the magazines that it wouldn't hurt to join, even though he wasn't really too acquainted with the original Pac-Man, but instead somewhat intimately with the vastly different XBOX Live remake.

The tournament was set up in heats - 2 players at a time for 3 minutes each - and there were about twenty contestants. My friend and I actually went head-to-head, and as I played, people behind me gasped, which made me feel a little sorry for myself. After our heat, my friend and I were in second and first place, respectively. Then the dude who had been on the machine all day practicing goes up.

Well this dude decimates my score. I pulled high 19,000, he hit mid 22,000 (my friend, for the record, pulled mid 17,000, which was impressive). Twenty-two thousand is a very difficult score to get in three minutes on two stages of Pac-Man and I thought that my run was over for sure. As it turns out, after all the heats were done, no one had even come close to the third place score now held by my friend.

In the finals, it was Dave versus the fourth-place player, and Dave walloped her with 18,000 something. Then it was me versus the first-place dude. I'd never had a crowd of people form behind me as I played an arcade game, so if it were possible for me to feel excitement then I can guarantee you I would have. I ran around the board with relative ease, making only minor mistakes, but managed to get low 19,000. I thought, damn, he beat me.

Well, he did beat me, but that doesn't really matter because first, second, and third place all got the same prize. Here are some shoddy quality pictures of two of the prizes:

A large plushie and a mousepad. Also, a Uniqlo tote bag and a $50 gift card which I thought was pretty nice.

Then the marketing dude is all like, hey bros, write your names and addresses down here so you can get your real prize. Turns out, the top 5 places all win Pac-Man t-shirts signed by Toru Iwatani, the guy who invented Pac-Man. What a thoughtful prize, I thought. I mean, here I now have the signature of a man who created one of the most iconic pop culture things in the history of things. It's not even that my Grandma can recognize a game of Pac-Man (she can, despite not knowing Mario or Sonic). It's more like, when people see any natural, circular shape with a slice cut out of its side, they make the astute connection: "Oh, that looks like Pac-Man!".

I think, when it comes in, I may frame it and put it on my wall, as it is pretty much the ultimate Pac-Man thing I could ever hope to own.

Scratch that. It is the ultimate thing I could ever hope to own. So ultimate.

Edit: NY-T write-up with scores here.

BYRNING DOWN THE HOUSE

2009-06-11T23:55:00.004-04:00

David Byrne played the Prospect Park Bandshell on Monday night as part of the Celebrate Brooklyn series of free concerts. I did not take the above photograph, it's from here.

I was in attendance, although I was just outside of the concert area, hanging with legions of similarly impatient people. While I did miss getting my shoes muddied by leaping hipsters, I still experienced an excellent set. David Byrne really knows how to pander to his crowds, mixing many of his modern solo songs with older, popular Talking Heads ones (and some not-so-popular). He even had three encores! Obviously "Once in a Lifetime" got the biggest reaction, forcing the whole gamut of attendees to get up on their feet and dance like the awkward white people they are.

And I mean gamut; generations x, y and z were represented in the crowd. Just within the concert area gates I saw a thirty-something woman with her (presumably) husband, two younger kids, and a baby in a stroller, dancing like a flowerchild. I saw men and women, easily pushing 50, mouthing the words to "Life During Wartime". It was refreshing.

The image links to the BrooklynVegan blog post, which pretty much sums it up.

In other news: I bought a new bookshelf! My books were scattered and jammed into various places, so I figured it was about time to get myself a fancy new organizer thingy. Check it out! Actually, I still can't fit all of my books onto it, but most of the ones I couldn't get on were boring non-fiction and writers handbooks that I've never read. Nor do I plan on doing so!

Now my desk is boring. Look at those empty shelves! Look at my paltry CD collection. I'd put the aforementioned boring books on there, but that'd just make it more boring.

That's an Edward Scissorhands poster that I bought from Spencer's in my mid-teens. I'm too lazy to buy a better poster. It will probably remain there until I find a new place to live. I mean, if you need a point of reference as to how long my room typically goes unchanged, just take a gander at that Nickelodeon clock. That's not some vintage toy I bought off of eBay, eyes brimming with tears of nostalgia. I received that when it was brand new.

IT'S A LONG, LONG ROAD TO NOWHERE WHEN YOU'RE TRAVELING ALONE

2009-06-06T00:21:00.006-04:00

I've been reading up on sf book opinions from the hivemind and occasionally I come across a general consensus agreeing that China Miéville writes a lot of unnecessary filler. Well today I say: to hell with you, internet message boards.

The defense is normally along the rails of, "but of course PSS is long, the city is a character!" I also say to hell with you. The city is a setting, and Miéville does a nice job detailing it.

I'm not going to pretend that there aren't parts where PSS doesn't slow down, and I'm not going to pretend to be well-versed in the trilogy it's a part of, considering I've never read the next two books in the series (I do have The Scar on my shelf - the ever-knowing brain suggests that Miéville cuts down on the filler, but it looks just as long to me!).

So right now I'm going to talk about Un Lun Dun. ULD is a children's book that was published by Del Rey in 2007. It is Miéville's first (and only) children's book. It's a crazy, whimsicle story about two girls who are sucked into a bizarro London because there's some prophecy about how one of them is going to be the decaying world's savior in a war against an ever-growing mass of smog. The smog is feeding itself through normal London, and it plans on taking over the real world once it's through destroying the real-fake world.

I don't know how most people read it, but I found it to have a pretty strong environmental agenda. Un Lun Dun is littered with trash from the real world, except in this world the trash is alive (the main character is followed by a sentient discarded milk carton that acts like a dog). The standard of living seems way low, but the inhabitants seem fine with that.

One thing I've come to appreciate about Miéville stories is the imaginative detailing of his fictional worlds. One of my favorite moments in ULD is when the main party arrives in a place where the buildings are constantly shifting around like a slide puzzle. One of the characters who is well-travelled suggests that there are mailmen who are trying to track down homes to deliver mail to after years of searching. This is, unfortunately, a minor moment in the book, as it appears in one of the shorter chapters (although not the shortest by a long shot - one chapter is only a few words long). This is present in PSS, although we tend to spend more time exploring New Crobuzon as there are more minor characters that Miéville revists.

Un Lun Dun is something that I'd recommend to any sf/childrens' stories fan who wants a nice quick read to break up sessions of harder novels. Although it's not too quick - it's still a respectable length, and despite it being a children's book there were a good number of difficult words I actually had to stop and look up. 'It wouldn't be Miéville without some of that.

I read this book some time ago and I decided to revist it for a bit today, and it's every bit as magical as I remember it. "Magical" is probably the best word I can think to describe it despite it being somewhat improper; it's kind of grimey. Grimey magical. It's like a grimey, trippy and magical Alice in Wonderland. It's like Alice in Wonderland meets Alice in Wonderland. I think it even says that on the cover.

POETIC JUSTICE

2009-06-02T20:48:00.007-04:00

Summer has sprung, so they say in the business. Up until this year, my summers have been relatively carefree. Sure, I went to classes and sure, I've had a job to tend to every summer since I was fourteen, but up until this moment in time no summer has been quite as taxing as this very one. For you see, dear reader, this is the summer in which I must relentlessly search for a real job. Not these jobby jobs I've been pulling, but a real, honest-to-God, my-life-is-pretty-much-over job. I need to get on the road to my career. Whatever that may be.

It's also the summer in which I will have a freakishly large amount of free time on the count of me having no life. And so, this summer will be codenamed: POETIC JUSTICE, because no matter how hard I try and how much I try to accomplish, something completely ironic in stature will happen to me. I'm not sure what it is, but when it happens it will happen! There will be nothing I can do to stop it.

I've already started working on two books. One of them is actually codenamed POETIC JUSTICE, but that might not be the final title because of the 1993 Janet Jackson flick of the same name. I've also begun a short story collection. I'd like to post more about them, but I don't want people stealing my precious ideas that will probably never come to proper fruition.

Anyway, this is what I've been reading:

On the Beach by Nevil Shute is a post-apocalyptic novel that takes place in Australia. The entire northern hemisphere has been killed off by nuclear war, and the radiation is slowly traveling down to the southern hemisphere until the world is inevitably enveloped in its deadly blanket.

This novel is wonderfully written and tells the story of a few people who are facing their final months of life. They live in the last city to be wiped out and occasionally live in a disillusioned state of mind where they may wind up surviving and this is all a terrible dream.

I'm not going to ruin much, although I must say that I was only able to find this book on eBay (for a dollar!) so if you are so motivated to read it then I applaud you. It is probably one of the best, frightening and enlightening post-apocalyptic novels you could ever possibly read. But I must say, it is the only book I've ever read that made me cry. I cried like a little bitch for pages. I've never cried during any medium - no movie, no tv series, no song has ever moved me to tears. This book did. So if you want to be sad, try this out.

I'm currently crotch-deep in Rudy Rucker's Software, the first in a quadrilogy of -ware titled novels. I also have Wetware on my shelf, but I might not read past that unless I'm really motivated. I'm reading Software now because apparently it is one of the first cyberpunk novels.

I gotta say, it's a solid book. It's very fun to read, the characters are interesting, and I guess I'm probably not even qualified to say it's anything less than stellar because Rudy Rucker is the fucking man. But I don't think this is really cyberpunk. Maybe I define cyberpunk differently than everyone else, but it's mostly about the grimey city aesthetic, the anti-hero protagonist, his addiction to drugs and sex despite his sexless life... and I mean, there are elements of all that in Software, but they feel more like the absolute prototypes for what would become of the unrelatable crazies in books like Neuromancer and When Gravity Fails.

But it's definitely a cool read and I'm looking forward to Wetware, which I will knock off after I finish the Foundation series which I just recently ordered. I've never read those and I bought editions of them with cool covers.

Last, but certainly not least is The Essential Ellison, 35 years of Harlan Ellison's short stories. I was originally skeptical about this, as eBayers listed its price as $30+. I thought that it may just be a difficult book to get. I managed to score it for a mere $15 and, after receiving it, I understood the original high prices. This book is massive. It is well over a thousand pages. It's a god damn massivology.

I was so inclined to get it because it contains one of my favorite short stories: "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream." I hadn't read much Ellison beyond that and so I figured this would be a good place to start. This is a great place to start, although not all of Ellison's work is science fiction which makes the order of stories a little disorienting.

And so, my attempt to turn a potential summer of solitude into that of glorious nerdening begins with a bang. More on this story as it develops.

HERE COMES A CHOPPER TO CHHHHHHHHH

2009-03-31T20:59:00.009-04:00

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine brought to my attention an off-broadway production of every high schooler's collective favorite dystopian future novel, 1984. I, not being one to miss such a heroic attempt at live-action, low-budgeted adaptation, sought to buy tickets to see a Saturday matinee performance of it. At a paltry $25 per ticket (plus applicable convenience charges), this 80-minute uninterupted spectacle of postmodernism is well worth the price of admission.

Without spoiling too much, this envisioning of the 1949 George Orwell novel does a more-than-adequate job at capturing the disconnected, lonely feeling of Winston's troubles throughout the course of the story. Naturally, minor details are cut in favor of cramming the main plot points into something that's just barely under an hour and a half, but the important bits are there. It's done by a group of artists known as the Godlight Theater Company, who have worked on similar adaptations of other novels such as Blindness, Slaughterhouse Five, Farenheit 451, and so on and so forth. I could go over their merits as a company, but to be honest this is the first time I've ever heard of them, so if you're so inclined to learn more about them you can just click on the link. That's the magic of Al Gore Presents : The Internet, Hard at Work!, hard at work.

The acting was delightful, especially the pasty, soft-spoken yet intimidating man who played O'Brien, although Julia looked somewhat similar to a girl I once dated who dumped my loser ass swiftly, so that totally took me out of it. I also very much liked how the actor who played Parsons reacted in an explosion of nervous fury when he was sentenced to Room 101, as his sentiments very closely parallel mine whenever I'm told I have to go to school, or work, or outside, or basically anywhere that involves leaving my basement.

Perhaps the most interesting of design choices involved the lighting - there was often a square of light in the center of the stage, which was treated differently in each scene (for example, in one scene it's treated as an imaginary table). The telescreens were depicted by four women standing at the outer edges of the stage, quietly chattering away as the action unfolded in the center and wonderfully illustrating the claustrophobic feel Big Brother hammered down on the doomed city.

It's currently being shown at 59E59 on 59th Street between Madison and Park, and it's a grand old time and highly recommended by this sci-fi fart in the wind, so take that as you will.

ALBUM REVIEW: STRIKE ANYWHERE - TO LIVE IN DISCONTENT

2009-01-29T00:01:00.001-05:00

Website: http://www.strikeanywhere.org/ // http://www.myspace.com/strikeanywhere

Wikipedia?: Yes.

The buzz: A melodic hardcore band from Virginia with strong political undertones. They've been featured on the soundtracks of three different Tony Hawk video games.

Sounds like: A thousand pop-punk bands local to the abysmal New York scene. What if Fugazi had suddenly decided punk wasn't worth it? Well, they probably have already.

The verdict: This album is aptly named, for I will no longer live in content after hearing this mess of off-key distortion. I hate to use an old cliché, but each song is basically the same four chords over and over again. You know it's bad when the irritating electric guitars suddenly give away to a heartfelt acoustic performance as the outro.

Strike anywhere? Strike my house and put me out of my misery.

ALBUM REVIEW: MARIANNE FAITHFUL - KISSIN TIME

2009-01-28T00:01:00.000-05:00

Website: http://www.mariannefaithfull.org.uk/ Warning: flash

Wikipedia?: Extensive.

The buzz: Who the fuck is this and why are there so many guest appearances on this album? Beck's entire Midnite Vultures-era band appears on a number of tracks, including Beck himself. Billy Corgan is on a bunch of tracks as well. Even Blur makes an appearance. She fucking covers "Nobody's Fault" off of Beck's Mutations album. What the fuck? Who is this?

Sounds like: If Beck, Billy Corgan, and Damon Albarn were all old women who smoked three packs a day then that's exactly what this sounds like, except sometimes she's more Enya than 90's-alt-rocker.

The verdict: I don't even know what's real anymore! Everything on here sounds like a bizarro version of every song I've ever heard. I'm going to go ahead and say this rocks and it's iPod worthy. Marianne Faithful, I'm not sure if you've ever made it big, but you are a classy woman.

Final Answer: Hey, whatever.

ALBUM REVIEW: CHOMSKY (SAMPLER)

2009-01-27T00:01:00.000-05:00

About chomsky: It's been a long time, but we're back to rock the kids and olds alike. Come with us as we ride the wild horse or "punctual rock" like it's 2000 all over again! Now with Kung-Fu grip and nachos!!!!

Sounds like: It's been a long time, but we're back to rock the kids and olds alike. Come with us as we ride the wild horse or "punctual rock" like it's 2000 all over again! Now with Kung-Fu grip and nachos!!!!

The verdict: "Texas rockers" is a phrase that should only be followed by any combination of "Butthole" and "Surfers". Otherwise we get shit like chomsky. Although this is only a three-track sampler, I feel as thought years have been taken off my life. It ends with a track called "00:15:00", in which the lead singer screams about how he has fifteen minutes to rock. What a coincidence. I only have fifteen minutes to live.

Anyway, hate to break it to you, but no awful band gets a pass by naming themselves after famous linguists.

ALBUM REVIEW: FIELD MUSIC - FIELD MUSIC

2009-01-26T00:01:00.000-05:00

Website: http://www.field-music.co.uk/ // http://www.myspace.com/fieldmusic

Wikipedia?: Yes.

The buzz: According to the promo sticker, it's for fans of bands like Spinto Band, Pinback, and The Sea and Cake. Great. I don't know any of those dudes. Apparently the trio is on break because they're sick of their own music.

Sounds like: Airy English Indie band with very minor influences in Britpop, with crying guitars over weepy string ensembles.

The verdict: There are many songs on this album, most of them averaging at the 3:15 mark. They're nice enough tunes although occasionally they sound like ditties, as if the songwriter wanted to quickly move on to the next track and get its point across as quickly as possible. However, it feels more like over-saturation, resulting in nothing that is particularly memorable but instead dozens of memories slowly fading away. The perfect euphemism for the singer's despaired vocals drowning behind twinkly pianos, xylophones and harmonica symphony. It's kind of like Beta Band mixed with Sufjan Stevens if they wrote an album for The Sea and Cake. Sorry.

Probably: good, who knows? I'm sad, for some reason.

ALBUM REVIEW: THE BROKEN HOMES - WING AND A PRAYER

2009-01-22T00:01:00.000-05:00

Website: No

Wikipedia: Kinda.

The buzz: These guys are so obscure that I can't even find their album art online. They were a British band formed by members of Mr. Big, which is a band I've never heard of. The album I'm about to review was released in 1991 and I have no idea why I picked it.

Sounds like: Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians, except replace them with the most generic 90's rockers you can imagine. The lead singer's a dude FYI.

The verdict: Softcore early 90's rock never gets old. I have to admit I'm surprised by the writing and the production values of this album, it is honestly just about as typical as you can get. There's nothing particularly notable about any of the songs, but there's nothing unpleasant about them either. Considering how hard these guys try to rock, I'm slightly uncomfortable when I say that this is appropriate background music. They are tragically missing that edge that would have propelled them into at least one-hit-wonder stardom back in 1991. They should have given Jesus Jones a call for some pointers or something.

Final Countdown: Sometimes you wonder why people bothered writing music at all in the 90's.

ALBUM REVIEW: SHE WANTS REVENGE - THESE THINGS EP

2009-01-21T00:01:00.000-05:00

Website: http://www.shewantsrevenge.com/ (warning: flash website)
Wikipedia?: Yes

The buzz: Probably one of the more popular bands I'll be reviewing. They had a minor hit in 2006 with "Tear You Apart" and then fell deeper into obscurity until KROQ cut their airtime from once every five minutes to once every hour, thinking they were playing the next big thing.

What they sound like: Tears for Fears in the dark years, if they had ever existed. The lead singer sings from the bottom of his throat and moans with every word. The backups sings in military monotone voices over droning pads and metallic percussion. It's like industrial collapsed onto itself and invented new wave instead of the other way around.

The verdict: They're really not that bad, but I unironically enjoy bands like Orgy and Fischerspooner so take that as you will. This is their original EP with just four songs, including "Tear You Apart", which isn't nearly as good as the title track. I once passed up the opportunity to see them live a year or so ago and I now mildly regret it.

Recommended for: If you ever listened to the guy from B-52's sing and wished he were a bit more serious (and gayer), then this is the band for you.

ALBUM REVIEW: BROTHERSPAST - THIS FEELING'S CALLED GOODBYE

2009-01-20T00:01:00.001-05:00

Website: http://www.brotherspast.com/

Wikipedia?: Yes.

The buzz: Apparently "one of the most talked about independent acts in the nation." How this was measured, I do not know.

According to their album cover: Lots of brown, with grown men holding their hearts surrounded by a slow-dripping splotch. We're in for a real treat.

What they sound like: Ben Gillard and Gruff Rhys tried to start a prog-rock band and then committed suicide together when it didn't work out.

The verdict: As long as you don't pay attention to the lyrics, it's at least enjoyable. "One Rabbit Race" is is a fun song with a catchy hook and not quite Bamboozled material as one would expect. But then there are ridiculous words, such as in "Forget You Know Me", that tend to rhyme the same word multiple times for some totally emoshunal effect, or something (In my world it's you // Still framed dreams of you // Rhyme less verse for you // Speechless words to you). Give me a break. Still, the instrumentation is nice, with plenty of warm synth sounds and not too heavy on the effects. The vocals tend to get drowned out just enough.

Recommended for fans of: Some of the songs on the album sound like shitty Depeche Mode, so Depeche Mode if you're really tired of Depeche Mode. And I mean really tired.

ALBUM REVIEW: GO ROBOT, GO! - CONVERTIBLE

2009-01-19T00:01:00.000-05:00

Website: http://www.gorobotgo.com/

Wikipedia?: Nope.

What they sound like: Poppy retro-style rock with semi-ironic lyrics ripped from campy 50's jukebox roller-disco tunes. Classic guitar riffs crunch alongside organs and vocoders with predictable chord progressions mixed lo-fi style. Occasionally sounds like they gagged Noel Gallagher and forced him to write shitty melodies while wearing ear plugs.

The verdict: Disappointing, considering their attractive album design. Someone must have told them that their post-modern take on music absolutely no one really likes really wasn't going to fly, because this appears to be the only album they've ever released. The music is so forgettable that I can't remember a single lick, and I'm listening to it right now. Their focus is all over the map; certain tracks sound like half-hearted attempts to capture a Top 40's audience, other tracks like "Idiot Boy" attempt to be experimental, but just come off as sloppy, poorly conceived catastrophes of reverb and effects peddles. And then there's stuff like "Daphne", which is just a boring acoustic ballad. It sounds like a bunch of concepts for three different albums, none of which being particularly interesting, but at least they are consistent in their mediocrity.

Final Answer: More like No Robot, No!

HE KNEW IT WAS HAPPENING ALL OVER AGAIN

2009-01-11T21:02:00.004-05:00

I have a tendency to have frightening dreams based on whatever I'm critically engaged in at the moment.

A few weeks ago, I had begun playing killer7 for the Gamecube again, a videomajiggy that features co-design credits of Shinji Mikami, creator of the campy Resident Evil series. In this game, enemies would laugh maniacally before slowly crawling towards you, invisible, and if you didn't take them down quickly enough they'd grab you and explode, wrecking your shit. I had a dream where I was running down tight corridors, and I heard the laughter and got very frightened, as if an army of invisible bad guys were waiting behind every corner.

Again, just last week after a hardcore 1984 session, I had a dream that involved telescreens. I had, apparently, broken some mortal law that was about to be scrutinized by the Party, and I had done it in front of a telescreen, which has the ability to watch the viewer at all times. Knowing that I was about to be erased, panic began welling up inside my chest. To me, in a nightmare, there is nothing scarier than knowing you are, undoubtably, going to die. Not even death itself is a scarier concept than knowing that your inevitable doom is slowly spreading through you like the slowly retracting jaw of a snake, ready to attack and strangle its prey for a quick meal. Holy mother of balls.

Needless to say, I have woken up the past few nights in a cold sweat. Sometimes I wake up with the fear still inside of me, as if the dream hadn't ended yet, and it has somehow manifested itself into my waking life.

So perhaps it is not a good thing that I have begun reading Ring, Koji Suzuki's horror novel that spawned the popular films. I briefly mentioned this in my last post, which I will not dignify with a link (scroll down). I, admittedly, have never seen the movies. I'm not much for the horror genre, in case you can't tell. But I find the book engrossing, at least in the first fifty pages, and despite the morbid air and atmosphere it is a casual, fun read.

The translating/publishing house is Verticle, who also has a hand in translating a few of Tezuka's works including Black Jack, which is fucking awesome. It's about an unlicensed surgeon who has the ability to perform miracle cures on patients. He is generally considered an outcast and a thief, considering how loner qualities, deformed appearance, and outrageous doctor's fees. However, we know he's grossly misunderstood - Black Jack is unbearably tragic, constantly the victim of circumstance and a bastion of moral indignity - he is essentially the human, adult version of the serialized Astro Boy and repeating his laundry list of woeful sorrow would be best left for a post later on, when volume 3 is released later this month.

Unfortunately this blog post must be cut short; I have decided that taking a winter class that forces me up at 6AM was a good idea, and so my recent nights have been cut tragically short. I shall end this post with a YouTube video of the Talking Heads, because if I can't see David Byrne live then I can at least close my eyes and pretend I'm there.

KILLIN' IT

2008-12-30T20:49:00.005-05:00

I recently finally got around to reading Battle Royale, the sci-fi thriller by Koushun Takami about a bunch of Japanese middle school kids forced by the government to kill each other on a remote island. Since I don't feel like summarizing it beyond what I just wrote, he's an easily-digestable clip from the novel's produce page on Amazon.com:

Battle Royale, a high-octane thriller about senseless youth violence, is one of Japan's best-selling - and most controversial - novels. As part of a ruthless program by the totalitarian government, ninth-grade students are taken to a small isolated island with a map, food, and various weapons. Forced to wear special collars that explode when they break a rule, they must fight each other for three days until only one "winner" remains. The elimination contest becomes the ultimate in must-see reality television. A Japanese pulp classic available in English for the first time, Battle Royale is a potent allegory of what it means to be young and survive in today's dog-eat-dog world. The first novel by small-town journalist Koushun Takami, it went on to become an even more notorious film by 70-year-old gangster director Kinji Fukusaku.

The book's setting is rife with dystopia, given the uneven political landscape and fear of Japanese youth. I have to say that, despite the somewhat stilted and unbelievable dialog, I thoroughly enjoyed this book enough to get me interested in other modern Japanese authors. In my queue I have Koji Suzuki's The Ring, a book given to me for Christmas by Zoraida. I've also been getting into Osamu Tezuka manga, having recently read (and fallen in love with) Dororo and MW, the latter of which was also a Christmas gift from a good friend who does not have a blog. More on that later, however.

The issue at hand here is another movie versus book diatribe - I had not seen the Battle Royale film prior to reading the book, and I have to say that after watching it after my complete read-through, I am disappointed. Although this is absolutely an issue of length and content - a 600+ page novel is sure to have a more detailed story than an under-two-hour film - I couldn't help but be bothered by the film's pacing. I felt the novel to be less about the brutality of the killings and more of the sadness caused by them, and one of the major missing elements from the novel in the film was the development of the relationships between all of the classmates. Very little background is given on any character, to the point where development was so spare that I left completely unsatisfied.

Beat Takeshi is good, but his character in the film seemed a lot more personable than the ruthless game master in the book (they even have different names and backgrounds). The end events were also slightly different, and I was let down by how the entire final scene played out. That said, the film was at least watchable and I can understand why it's a cult classic. The film successfully tells its story even though it alienates so many elements and themes from the novel. Taken seperately, I don't think I'd like the film at all if I weren't able to fill in background information that isn't even there. I'd probably watch it once and shelf it.

Right now I'm reading through 1984 because I hadn't really before, a book also given to me for Christmas by a friend of mine who remains blogless. But in between readings I've been on a Tezuka kick. Right now I'm reading through Astro Boy, which I scored a complete manga set of off of eBay a week ago. One of the truly interesting things about Astro Boy, to me, is that as it is Japan's first animated series, the character himself is a long-standing children's icon in American culture as well. The original television show (which I purchased on DVD last year - over 100 episodes that I am still working my way through) is the first anime.

While all of your classic children's show elements are there: morals, friendship, the monster-of-the-week specials, Astro Boy is a strikingly bleak and depressing look into a future populated by corrupt humans and oppressed robots. And as Asimov would have us believe, robots who go haywire go haywire. They go haywire here too. But then there are the sentient robots who exist for good, only to be reprimanded and despised by humans (Detective Gumshoe, a snarky reoccuring character, has a serious vendetta against all robots) just because of one or two bad ones. This is Astro Boy's most famous dilemma: constant alienation and rejection. The unwavering wish to be a real boy.

In the end, though, Astro Boy learns that it's OK to be different as long as you can save the world a thousand times over. But still, so many episodes deal with death and isolation, that you have to feel at least a little sad.

The differences between the stories in the manga and those in the TV show are aplenty. This is obviously because us soft gaijins can't stand to see violence. Tezuka was the man, though, because in one of his (comic-strip) introductions, he complains about the hypocrisy of American executives who asked him to tone down the violence in the cartoon despite unjustly killing thousands over in Nam. For example, there's an episode in the manga which a national holiday exists where robots are created to look exactly like deceased loved ones. In the same episode of the TV show, those robots are created to duplicate those who are currently in space. I have a feeling the original Japanese episode kept the original story and the English one had it changed, because once you understand certain elements of the driving-character the entire episode revolved around, you kind of realize that it's unbelievable that his family would consider him in space and not dead.

So, it's little things like that that bother me, but it's all good.

In other news, I'm going to see Blonde Redhead again at Terminal 5 tomorrow night. Should be a good show. I've seen them before a year ago and it was a nice way to cap off the year. I end this post with a YouTube video I particularly enjoy, with no reference at all to a part 2 of my end-of-the-year list.

FUN THEY HAD 2K8: A YEAR IN REVIEW PART 1

2008-12-23T12:07:00.011-05:00

This year was an interesting one for the fruitless escapist, wasting his or her free time away carefully mapping out what they're going to read/watch/play next to keep his- or herself occupied. For me, it was a fairly successful year, although once again rather than spend all too much time anticipating things that have yet to be released, I looked back at an entire past's catalog of bullshit. This post is my attempt to categorize, review, and inform you all of everything you may have missed that I certainly did not. A compendium of pop culture non-sense that only those with sharpened acquired tastes would believe to be of any worth. For this post, I'll be constantly referring back to my many little journals I keep where I write down things that annoy me. I present to you, dear reader,

FUN THEY HAD 2K8: A YEAR IN REVIEW PART 1

BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY: PROBABLY BAD
Jay McInerney's 1984 airport epic told entirely in the second person is a scathing criticism of yuppie culture, following the antics of yourself, a dude working on "the magazine" with an outrageous nightlife, intent on oblivion. It's probably bad, but it's too great to not recommend since it's a fairly simple read and somewhat iconic. Its self-depricating narrative progressively gets worse as a once-hopeful youth slowly comes to terms with his monotonous lifestyle and hopeless endeavors, and it left me a bit empty inside. It was like looking into a future mirror!

2008 MOVIE "JUMPER"
SUCKED. Sucked. Hard. Some lame story about an angsty teenager who can teleport. Nice job. I only wished I could have jumped out of that horrible movie.

2008 MOVIE "CLOVERFIELD"
Another retarded movie about a giant monster that destroys New York City. Probably great in concept, however much of the film follows a bunch of twnety-somethings intent on saving some chick one of the dudes boned.

THIS QUOTE FROM MY INTERVIEW TECHNIQUES CLASS THAT SUMS UP MY COLLEGE EXPERIENCE QUITE WELL
"Don't try to be too intellectual when asking questions. Yes, this is college, but it's also a journalism class."

2008 MOVIE "PERSEPOLIS"
A finally great French animated film based on a graphic novel by the same name. Nothing particularly moving about the story, although it was interesting enough the whole way through because the art was strangely alluring.

2008 MOVIE "RAMBO"
Excellent. Just the bomb. Great action, lots of explosions and heightening. Sylvester Stallone is the worst actor ever.

JOSIP NOVAKOVICH, CROATION WRITER ON LINGUISTICS
"English words to me are goat turds... despite the stink, I sniff in them the freedom to be away from Croatia and Yugoslavia."

FIRST BATCH OF NEW GAMES: THE SUCKS AND THE NOT SUCKS
StarFox Command: The sucks.
Sega Bass Fishing: The not sucks ironically.
House of the Dead 2 + 3 Returns: The not sucks unironically.
Kirby Squeak Squad: The not sucks
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games DS: The sucks.
Super Smash Brothers Brawl: The sucks ironically.
Octomania: The greatest game.

NO MORE HEROES FOR THE WII: THE SECOND GREATEST GAME
An excellent action game by Suda 51, the only man who knows how to make them right anymore. In an artsy world inspired by Alejandro Jodorowski's El Topo, NMH follows Travis Touchdown, a kid who orders a light sword in the mail and decides to kill a bunch of dudes in order to be the top assassin. To quote Dave, Suda 51 games aren't great games, but they are awesome games.

2008 MOVIE "STREET KINGS"
Keanu Reeves's idiocy is suffuciently blithering.

2008 MOVIE "DOOMSDAY"
The doomiest thing about this film is that I actually sat there and watched on as the greatest genre of all time, dystopian post-apocalypse, is shattered in a string of Audi commercials. Fuck you, whoever directed this.

2008 MOVIE "SUPERHERO MOVIE"
Actually got one laugh out of me. Exactly one.

2008 MOVIE "IRON MAN"
Watch for an hour as Tony Stark builds a super robot suit and then has it destroyed in an anti-climactic scene, and then spend another hour as he does the same exact thing. But it's the best movie ever, am I right?

SECOND BATCH OF NEW GAMES: THE BLARGH AND THE NOT BLARGH
Mario Kart Wii: The blargh.
Boom Blox: The multiplayer not blargh.
Zack & Wiki: The anime not blargh.
Soulcalibur Legends: The super blargh.
Dragon Blade Wrath of Fire: The tears-of-blood blargh.
Samba De Amigo: The not blargh ironically.
Wii Music: The not blargh unironically.
Sonic Unleashed: The greatest game.

2008 MOVIE "SPEED RACER"
Eye candy with a feel good ending and a cartoony presentation. At times pays nice homage to the original anime, other times it pinches a loaf on it, but it's all forgivable. Probably my favorite movie I saw in theaters this year. How sad.

2008 MOVIE "SON OF RAMBO"
I don't remember this film much, but I wrote "cute" next to the ticket so I'm assuming I liked it.

2008 MOVIE "Indiana Jones and th whatever the fuck this movie is called"
Aliens controlled everything and there's a shitty UFO sequence at the end of the film, it was like a punchline to a cruel joke.

2008 MOVIE "THE HAPPENING"
It happened to suck.

2007 MOVIE "LIKE A DRAGON"
A movie based on the unpopular Yakuza games, directed by Takashi Miike. And it really ruled. Really.

THE UNTIMELY DEATH OF THE BEAUTIFUL TRUCK
An unfortunate accident spelled the end of the reign of the Beautiful Truck, the only woman I've ever loved. The five-speed 1990 Ford Ranger will truly be missed. It has been replaced by SUV the Suburban Ussault Vehicle, which isn't nearly as cool, but at least it has a few features the Beautiful Truck didn't. For instance, I can roll the windows up and down, I have heat, I have a CD player, I can tell how much gas is left in the tank, the emergency brake works, the speaker system works, and it generally isn't a huge pile of metal crap on wheels.

2008 MOVIE "WALL-E"
It was good, I guess.

2008 MOVIE "WANTED"
"Action cheese, but I liked it." That's what I wrote. Looking back, it probably sucked, I don't know. I don't even remember what it was about. Didn't they curve bullets or something? Did I really go to see this?

2008 MOVIE "DEATH RACE"
Paul W.S. Anderson's disasterous remake of the god-damn-incredible movie from the 70's, which starred Stallone when he was still unironically good.

1975 MOVIE "DEATH RACE 2000"
Please just watch this instead, I'm serious.

THIRD BATCH OF NEW GAMES: THE WHARF AND THE NOT WHARF
Sega Superstars Tennis Wii: Not wharf.
Sega Superstars Tennis DS: Not wharf.
Space Invaders Extreme: Not wharf.
Arkanoid DS: Not wharf.
Pokemon Pearl: ???
Bangai-O Spirits: Not wharf.
Kirby Super Star Ultra: Not wharf.
Sonic Chronicles: Not wharf.
Legend of Kage 2: Not wharf.
Exit DS: The greatest game.

CHRONO TRIGGER FOR THE DS: THE SECOND GREATEST GAME
A remake of the SNES classic RPG by Squaresoft, right before they started being terrible. It furthered that crazy half-real-time-but-not-really fighting system that stays consistently fun. And it predates the angsty animeness of their future games. It was honestly made right when they games started being good and right before their games started being terrible. The DS port is good enough.

In hindsight, this isn't even the tip of the iceberg. So, I'm relabeling this "part 1" and I promise a "part 2" forthcoming, although I anticipate this to go up to "part 20" at this rate. In the next installment I'll talk about the other movies I saw this year that didn't suck (most of which didn't come out this year), more of the books I've read, and further on the list of games and random pop culture things from my book. Maybe I'll even make a list! Who knew so many stupid things could happen in just one year!

FUTURE TAPPING GAME

2008-10-24T15:38:00.008-04:00

Wii Music is a bad video game.

Wii Music is better than video games. When I had originally started this blog, I decided that I would not write to any great detail about a video game that I'd been playing without an ironic tone. Today, you might think, I'm going to break that rule. However, I won't. I can't. Video games aren't cool.

Wii Music is cool. It's the latest in a series of Nintendo Wii games catered towards people who just like to wave a stick around and instantly see fun and cute results on their television sets. Their standard definition television sets, like mine. It's kind of a rhythm game, and it's kinda not - it's mostly a toy, a piece of software for a video game system that isn't a video game itself, but something more reliable and understandable than your average Mario or Zelda. Oh no, Wii Music isn't a rhythm game like Guitar Hero, but rather an interactive visual with no goal or boundaries or competition. It is the definitive non-game. Not something you can be better at or worse at, not something that will discourage any new player from attempting, not something that can easily hook the Generation Y gamer plodding away on Xbox Live, garnering a higher gamerscore and a better kill/death ratio on Call of Duty 4. It's not something that will impress you, or bore you.

It's a thing where you wave your remote and press buttons to make music. It's a way to play air guitar or drum your fingers on a desk or pretend to sing into a microphone in front of a mirror, alone, except now you're seeing physical representations of these things happening on screen and in front of you, and you can do it with other people.

It's a thing that allows you play along to a Latin arrangement of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" or a jazz arrangement of "Wake Me Up Before You Go Go". And then you can select which part of the song you want to play: the percussion, the harmony, the melody, etc. And you can swap instruments out for other ones. You can switch between basses, or you can use a piano or a trumpet as bass if you want. You can replace the drumkits with turntables and taiko drums.

And then, you can save your performances and play on top of them. Then you can save your performances to videos and mail them to your friends. And they can mail you their performances, and you can play alongside their take on the harmony or backing chords.

When I play alone, it's fun to relax and mess around in the improv section. And then sometimes I'll play a song or two and make a video, and turn it off. That's how video games should be. I played it with my sister, and it was nice to have a game that wasn't competitive, where there was no goal, and the individual arrangements and experiences came together to form a whole piece - even if it wasn't a masterpiece of music, it was still fun to fool around with the arrangements and improvise our own parts.

These days, video game developers talk about "experience" - the experience of playing Halo 3, the experience of killing a hooker. Wii Music is about the rawest form of entertainment, still proving that there's room for it on the shelf at GameStop. It's the anti-Guitar Hero. Better and worse than Guitar Hero.

Anyway, that's all the time I have for today! But Perdido Street Station is still rockin', this week I recommend Max Headroom, the new Squarepusher sounds like it might be good, Legend of Kage 2 is a good DS game, there's a nice place downtown that sells good veggie dogs, Hornado and Ragnarok killed at UCB last Tuesday, and I hate people with lots of pennies and fake social security cards. I leave you with Let's Tap!: not the past tapping game, not the present tapping game, but the future tapping game!

BECK: LEVEL 5 BODY THETAN IN THE CHURCH OF SERIOUS OWNOLOGY

2008-10-10T10:35:00.008-04:00

Jeet Christ he ripped it up last night.

Alright, fine. I do have a few complaints. I was a bit disappointed in his 80 minute set (although this is standard, it was just an expensive show). Some of the songs were sped up and a few were neutered. The crowd itself was mostly dead; they didn't seem to know much pre-Guero save for the mega-hits like "Where It's At" and "Loser", so when Beck tore out "Minus" in the beginning of his set many seemed confused. The venue (United Palace Theater, which doubles as a church, which has a sign out in front of it that says "Come on in or smile as you walk by") was assigned seating, which became assigned standing when Beck came on.

Now here are the good things about the show:

Beck is cool as hell.
Huge setlist.
Tight band with tons of energy even though the drummer was clearly taking cues from the keyboardist.
Awesome stage lights - the screen behind him lit up with patterns and at first you think they're just for simple shapes and whatever, but then full images start taking shape and moving behind the band.
Beck is fuckin' cool.
The sound was great save for some odd screw ups with "Hell Yes".
The new song they played during the encore was so damn hardcore.
They played "Walls", which is rare.
The cute black-haired guitarist was shredding it up like what.
Beck is one cool mother fucker.

He is a very mellow person in general, but was clearly tired, which is to be expected. This is a three-night show, but it was originally only one night (the night I went to). My friend managed to get the tickets the moment they went on sale so we were rockin' the orchestra seating (fantastic seats, too).

MGMT opened, and while they were much tighter than the last time I watched them live, the second half of their set was pretty boring. They used up all of their ammunition in the first half (playing "Electric Feel" and "Time to Pretend" back-to-back) and the second half kinda dragged on. The show would have felt complete even if they weren't there.

I'll post a few of my pictures, but my camera absolutely sucks for concerts.

Better pictures, full setlist, and a video of his performance on Letterman is here.

THE FUHN THEY HAD

2008-10-09T12:26:00.006-04:00

It wasn't as good as the book.

Fortunately, I don't really care. It was good enough on its own, I suppose. Not necessarily as bad as critics panned it out to be. But I tend to like movies that are unabashedly terrible. Which is why I only had lukewarm feelings towards most of the film. Blindness seemed to delude itself into thinking it was more artsy than it actually was, scenes and images were made out to be more powerful than they should have and mostly undershot their goals, I felt. But I told my mom I was going to see it anyway, and she said it'll probably be good because it got bad reviews. She knows the score.

The film took a number of liberties from the book, which is to be expected. They both had similar key moments, including the first and last scenes, albeit slightly altered.

I enjoyed it. I think my only issue was how the characters were made to be personable in the film, whereas they are disconnected and afraid in the book and, I believe, allowed the reader to be more empathetic with them rather than sympathetic.

This post isn't about Blindness, however. It is about The Uhn. What is The Uhn? I'll tell you.

It's a webseries written and produced by a few friends of mine, which means I can't say bad things about it. To their faces. The editor finished putting the first few episodes together and it debuted two Wednesdays ago. As far as I can tell, it's a show about a bunch of soap opera writers who make out with each other. I forgot to mention, I co-star in it.

I play the snarky head writer of a rival television show. When I was asked to play this role, I was duly informed that I was their absolute last choice. After reading the script, I figure out why. Not why I was the last choice, but why no one else would do it. Hoyooohhh.

But don't watch it, or anything. There are three episodes up and I have small roles in episodes one and three. They are uhn-fortunate. They make me cringe. I am a bad actor.

I seem to be the only person involved who isn't plugging it on their Facebook profiles, and that was probably expected by the creators as I acted pretty pissy and miserable throughout the entire shoot. I seem to remember being angry in the two or three days I was there, although I can't remember what for.

Please watch this instead because it's hilarious.

ANYWAY, here's the new full clip for Frankmusik's "3 Little Words". It's a nicer mix of the song, although there is a terrible bridge towards the end that wasn't in the rough cut, and that makes me sad. The video itself is kind of nice. I can't seem to find this album anywhere so I can ~~illegally download it~~ obtain the mp3s through kosher channels. There's a little Yom Kippur shout-out to my yeshivot brethren.

He has a weird face but seems to be incredibly versatile. The Michael Phelps of pop music. I mean, musik.

NOT THE BOSSA ME

2008-10-03T23:30:00.009-04:00

The movie is never better than the book.

The Blindness movie adaptation is seeing a widespread release beginning today. Or perhaps it isn't seeing anything! HaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAA. The film was directed by Fernando Meirelles, a Brazilian director who is perhaps more famous in his native country than he is here, because I've never heard of him before now. Mark Ruffalo and Julianne Moore star as the Doctor and the Doctor's wife, the latter of which turns out to be the only person in the story who can see after a blindness epidemic spreads throughout a city. The first to go blind are quarantined off in an abandoned mental hospital and forced to fend for themselves, resulting in panic, unease and disease thanks to those affected being unable to properly take care of themselves, not being accustomed to their new sightlessness.

The original novel was written by José Saramago, and is one of my favorite books ever. Its prose is beautiful and sometimes disorienting - no speech is quoted, and sometimes it's unclear as to who is speaking and to whom. Characters are nameless and introduced at regular intervals until there is an overwhelming amount of patients to keep track of, and it's filled with more twists than a Twizzler, and I wish I had a better analogy than that, but whatever. It's filled with more twists than a ... 50's Rock 'N Roll dance party??? I don't know. Leave your better analogies in the comments.

Holding the book to such high standards, I am weary of the film. I won't settle for anything less than slightly above mediocre. It's times like these when I begin to wonder if there were any movies that most generally agree are better than the book. Apparently Blade Runner is better than Philip K. Dick's Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep, the book on which the film is loosely based, although I've never read it. 2001 A Space Odyssey is apparently better than the book, although it was written after the movie.

The book I'm reading through now is called Perdido Street Station, written by China Miéville. It is considered to be one of the greatest science fiction books of the past 25 years, and I've been meaning to read it for some time now. While I find everything about it to be fascinating, I'm making my way through it at a fairly slow pace, just tonight breaching the 1/3 point after three weeks of reading (to be fair, it is over 600 pages long). It's about a man who is discovering all new types of fun scientific thingies and expanding rapidly on his life's work by helping out a trouble half-man half-bird thingy. It also follows the escapades of the man's secretive girlfriend, a highly artistic and muted insect with human-like features who is commissioned by a powerful druglord to create a life-sized sculpture of himself. The world they exist in is seedy, grimy and, dare I say, post-apocalyptic, which is the best kind of apocalyptic. The novel itself draws a lot from different sub-genres of science fiction such as cyberpunk, which is the best kind of -punk.

On an unrelated note, here's a pop song I discovered tonight called "3 Little Words" by FrankMusik. Apparently, a rearranged version of this song is going to appear on his major record label debut, which I can't seem to find much information on. He has a MySpace with a fun Radiohead remix on it, if there ever were a greater oxymoron than that.

Also in the vain of pop music I shouldn't be listening to is Girls Aloud's "Can't Speak French" single, which has been on repeat pretty much all day. YouTube embedding has been disabled by their soulless corporate parents, who probably control 90% of all pop acts coming out of the UK. Talk about cyberpunk. The video itself is absolutely horrible, and earlier today the Greatest Thing Since Cyberpunk correctly described them as a sluttier version of the Pussycat Dolls, which is an astonishing feat.

Also on my playlist is Sergio Mendes's first collaboration with Brazil 66, which includes the superior and non-shittified "Mas Que Nada", later totally destroyed by will.i.am and the rest of his crew of terminating producers. And, to further my bossa mood, I discovered sheet music for Chick Corea's "Spain" on my sister's piano, which made me happy. Here's an incredible performance of it with Hiromi Uehara to cap this post off with:

2001 A PHELPS ODYSSEY

2008-09-26T11:28:00.009-04:00

A lot of really nice things happened to me in the past week.

Naturally, perhaps even as natural as that picture, a lot of terrible things happened as well. However, I've been in a better mood more often than a worse mood lately, which means you, dear reader, will benefit from my sudden inspirational writing kick as I'll make a point to keep Midnight Reviews updated for the next week.

School is off from Monday through Wednesday, and while that doesn't necessarily mean as much of an extended break for me, it's enough. If you read the other blog that I participate in, you can check out my club promotional exploits at the Hunter College USG Fair which was held two Wednesdays ago. This past Wednesday was a different story. I had to sit in on an intimidating College Association board meeting to discuss the budget for the Media Board, which was something in the ballpark of $150,000.

Having big shots from student services sit in front of you while they prod and question lines from your budget should have been more daunting than it was. In actuality, the dean of student services seemed to already know what my answers were going to be and, being as prepared as I was, I hit a figurative home run into the gaping maws of any non-believers. The budget was approved on our first try, which may be a media board landmark. Unfortunately, it wasn't until after we were approved that I forgot to include some vital information into it; I now have no money budgeted for events other than two liquor licenses and security costs, and while unruly drunk underage kids and police brutality are both staples of the college experience, keep in mind that I didn't budget for the actual booze itself. Whoopsie.

Doesn't matter, though. Like when you accidentally stumble upon the German-American Steuben Parade of New York that marched up Fifth Avenue this past Saturday. I was walking along Central Park with some friends and this happened. Being uncultured swines, we didn't actually know what was going on other than it obvious having something to do with glorious Deutcheland.

Also included was a trip to the always colorful Ground Zero, named after its entertainment value written on a scorecard. Someone in the office recently called it "Ground One", and I can't remember who it was but it was surely in bad taste. Way too soon.

This happened on Monday. It was the Strawberry Poetry Party in the Olivetree Review (blog forthcoming). Two and a half of those pieces of strawberry origami are mine, and believe you me, it's much more difficult to fold those things than you'd imagine.

And then things like this happen. Over the summer I posted this picture of Phelps celebrating one of his many Olympic victories on our bulletin board. This is the end result. We have a lot of talented artists, huh?

ANTIOXIDANT ADVANTAGE ORANGE JUICE

2008-09-18T00:01:00.000-04:00

Those who know me particularly well know how I like my orange juice: cold, orange, and filled with vitamins and minerals. Those who know me even more well know my routine: I drink two glasses of orange juice with breakfast (one with a multivitamin) and two glasses before I go to bed. I'm willing to bet 400% daily value of Vitamin C a day is detrimental to my health, although I don't know why, since vitamins help me grow and stuff.

When I'm feeling particularly risky, I'll drink another carton of orange juice in school. My choice is always the Antioxidant Advantage™ Orange Juice© by Tropicana Manufacture, registered trademark. This choice is actually somewhat of a recent development. I realized my stomach hurts more than it doesn't, and it is most likely due to bad oxidants, possibly from drinking so much orange juice. Antioxidant Advantage corrects this by introducing little things called ascobic acids, not present in regular orange juice. As the name suggests, this means it helps fight the bad oxidants that can negatively affect our mortal stomachs.

As for the drink itself, it's okay. It's a little watery. Which is fine, as antioxidants are water soluble so we don't have to chew on them. I give it a two, for two thumbs way up.

LET'S GO TO THE HOP

2008-09-17T00:01:00.000-04:00

During a large storm one night over Rhode Island, a Colombian cartel plane is struck by lightning in mid-flight and crashes. Zooming in the wreckage, the cargo is revealed: psychoactive toads, which get into the hands of teenagers and begin drug fanaticism among the middle and high schools. Lois and Peter become concerned when the toad-licking problem arises in school.

This is the premise of a hilarious episode of Family Guy from season 3 that, get this, I watched in a class today. In school. And we analyzed the show unironically. Here's another word italicized.

The above image isn't from that episode; however, it perfectly sums up my feeling for it and the entire show in general. Every season is an endless stream of vomit. It's like a Slip 'n' Slide of throw up.

It's also a string of terrible pop culture references and non-sequiturs. There are a few lines in the show that are just straight-up stolen from movies or song titles, for example, Peter says, "I have to fight for my right to party," which is clearly a reference to Jethro Tull.

See? Non-sequiturs. I wrote this episode of Family Guy. I give it a zero.

A TRUCK

2008-09-16T00:01:00.000-04:00

A truck!

THE NEW FACEBOOK

2008-09-15T00:01:00.000-04:00

I am SO ANGRY!!

This is me TOTALLY FREAKING OUT over the new Facebook redesign. Yes, I smile when I'm mad.

I hope corporate hamster Mark Zuckerberg is sleeping soundly in his bedding made of shredded thousand-dollar bills while the rest of us peons are suffering the insufferable with the latest aesthetic overhaul to a service offered to us free of charge. I really hate how they streamlined the news feed and friends lists to make them more manageable and relevant to my interests. The improved profile pages to take away the clusterfuck of useless applications so the pages load faster is... well... not an improvement at all! And don't even get me started on the updated Applications bar. Easily being able to click between my applications from any page really bunches up my panties.

I hate change. Having to take more than three minutes out of my day to learn something new is a fate worse than death. How can an America college student be expected to succeed in this country if our leisure time provides minor obstacles that can be championed and improved upon with little effort? By the way, go Obama.

I give it a two, because I don't want to waste precious arm energy by moving my mouse cursor three more inches to the left so I can select a zero.

SPRAWL CRAWL

2008-09-13T15:54:00.004-04:00

Ever try to jump back into a dense novel that you hadn't picked up in months?

Really quick: I'm nearing the end of William Gibson's Count Zero, the second in his Sprawl trilogy written many a moon ago, but I haven't read it since the beginning of the year and I didn't even properly grasp it then. I am really desperate to finish this book so I can finally move on to Mona Lisa Overdrive and finish the series. This morning when I decided to dive back into it I had no idea what was going on, who the characters were, what the point was...

Maybe I just don't like it because Neuromancer was comparatively a light read. But I am really desperate for good cyberpunk.

THE BLOCK

2008-09-12T11:54:00.006-04:00

FTH diehards might have noticed there was no Midnight Review this morning. I was too busy remembering 9/11 to crank one out. Also, the next review would have logically involved a brush of some sort, and I didn't want to review one of those things. I have a bad history with brushes and the last thing I want to do is come off as bitter.

I went to see Hamlet 2 this week, for some reason, and it managed to be more tragic than the original Shakespeare play. Although I do admit, at the halfway point I did at least expect its story to be interesting enough to go somewhere, which is more than I could say for Deathrace, last month's mess. And Steve Coogan did a nice job of being a bad actor, which was the point, I guess.

The catch is, bad things like this happen. Let's go back in time and get Jesus to prance around in a wifebeater. Edgy and hilarious? Yes and yes. Musical number about being raped in the face which you can download as a ringtone? Just tell me where to sign.

On the opposite spectrum is this week's Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job!, which has been posted up on adultswim.com. It's called "Jazz". Maria Bamford and Bill Hader have guest spots, and their sketches are hilarious and maybe slightly less weird than the Tim and Eric's, as this is overall one of the most surreal episodes I've ever seen. Tongue-in-cheek humor has been replaced with cut-out animations reminiscent of Terry Gilliam except less elaborate, coupled with cartoon vomit, high squeaky voices and split-second repeats of real-time video screams. It is fairly disorienting and probably not as funny as the usual T&E; however, it is twice as incredible.

Also this week is Yakuza 2, the sequel to the oft-misunderstood Playstation 2 game about an ex-mafiosa type trying to recover billions of yen gone missing from his family's bank account. I don't know much about this one as I haven't bought it yet, but IGN gave it a favorable review even though they gave the first one a less-than-favorable review for the same issues. Such is the arbitrary nature of games journalism. And number scores. And words, for that matter.

I saw the Takashi Miike film based on the game a few months back during the New York Asian Film Festival, and it is one of the finest video game-to-movie adaptations I have ever seen, and I've seen Doom!

Finally, what about the new New Kids on the Block album "The Block"?

CAT BRUSH

2008-09-11T00:01:00.001-04:00

I'M USING THE CAT BRUSH!

CAT BRUSH!

Garfield is a below-average comic strip. Fischerspooner is a below-average industrial band [e: Actually, it is Nine Inch Nails; Fischerspooner was in a different video where Garfield eats a purse. In this case, I take back my below-average remark. Nine Inch Nails is simply average.] But for some reason, when both of these things combine, something well above average is created.

Would have gotten a zero since zero times zero is usually zero. But I'm giving it a two, because the video description explains the joke.

LASER CATS

2008-09-10T00:01:00.001-04:00

Probably funny.

I'd embed the video into this blog, but I could only find it on MySpace. Funny how NBC Universal will put it up on MySpace, a website owned by News Corp, which owns one of NBC's biggest rival network stations, but they flip when their material is posted up on YouTube. This is the kind of world we live in.

"Laser Cats" is a sketch from Saturday Night Live that aired a year ago, possibly more. It features Bill Hader and Andy Freakin' Samberg. If you don't recognize those two names, don't worry, I haven't watched SNL in ten years either.

Andy Samberg is that guy who deliberately does things that are unfunny for the sake of comedy, because he is incapable of writing actual jokes. "Laser Cats" is a good example of this. It's about Hader And Samberg pitching a bad sketch about cats that shoot lasers out of their faces to Lorne Michaels, who apathetically shoots down their ideas even though Michaels would find it hilarious if this weren't a sketch and actually real life.

The biggest laughs came from a Hader pressing his sash-strap thing and making beeping noises and from an awkward pause followed by a "what?", although that might have been me and not in the actual script. The biggest problem with SNL is how they now completely rely on dorky white people for their comedy, when fifteen years ago it was just Norm Macdonald, and Samberg makes Macdonald look like a linebacker.

Despite my gripes I still give it a three, because unexpected and wacky things are funny and I was really building up to this hilarious punchline.

LASER GHOST

2008-09-09T00:01:00.000-04:00

You shoot lasers at ghosts.

You can play with three players in the arcade version. Each player has their own laser gun with which they can use to shoot lasers at the ghosts that pop up. There's nothing sweeter than that.

There really doesn't seem to be any story to it, you're just kinda some chick who gets lost and then ghosts attack you. You counter them by shooting lasers at them. Laser Ghost.

I'd give it a three but it's severely lacking in narrative.

GHOSTBUSTERS FOR THE MASTER SYSTEM

2008-09-08T00:01:00.002-04:00

In honor of the next-gen Ghostbusters video game being delayed indefinitely, I thought I'd take you all for a trip down memory lane and review a game I'm sure all of you have played: Ghostbusters for the Sega Master System.

I'll go ahead and spoil this one for you right now: this game really bites. Hard. You're given some money to buy weapons and car parts, and then you ride around town finding buildings infected with ghosts. You use a capture device, which looks like a shitty trampoline, and then you suck up some ghosts.

It switches from overhead view to side-scrolling view frequently, just like the movie. Also, sometimes you go to your headquarters to pick up more parts or an extra character. I believe all of the characters are white, of course, which means Ernie Hudson's character never existed since this game is perfectly canon.

There's a better ghost-zapping game on the Master System and it's called Laser Ghost. Seriously, all you do is shoot ghosts with lasers.

THE COVER OF DRACULA

2008-09-05T00:01:00.003-04:00

You can't judge a book by its cover, but you can still judge the cover. Which is what I'm going to do. Booyah.

Tonight we're judging this cover of Dracula, the Back Bay Books edition with a foreword by Elizabeth Kostova, author of The Historian, which is a different book. This cover is quite literally a close-up photograph of a "velvet pattern", probably one of the publishing staffers' great aunt's tablecloths.

Also featured is a girl, probably. Who is she? All I know about Dracula is that some angry dude wants to kill a vampire and I figured I'd save myself the bother of actually reading the book and just watching that one episode of The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror where Homer drives a stake through Count Burns's heart. What does it matter? I already know how it ends anyway.

Normally, artistry of such low caliber would score nothing higher than a perfect zero; however, avid readers of my blog will remember how this is the very same book that was caressed by a cute girl who rang me up at Barnes & Noble. Considering the circumstances, I will award it a two, as I too one day hope to be held by a beautiful woman.

MY NEW OLD SUV

2008-09-04T23:29:00.002-04:00

Yes. Yes. (trumpets)

So what should I name it? Also, this is me:

SNAKE PLISSKIN

2008-09-04T00:01:00.004-04:00

Snake Plisskin is a real man's man.

Dude doesn't care about the President, the American government, or the will of thousands of oppressed people. He's looking out for number one (himself).

So the free world sends all of its convicts to a quartered off New York City in the not-too-distant future. The president is held up in a terrorist attack on an airplane, but manages to escape. Of course, he falls right into the heart of Manhattan and is kidnapped by renegade hooligans. Snake Plisskin is a fresh convict and a war hero. He agrees to rescue the president so that he may be wiped of all charges and also spared death at the hands of a deadly inhibitor that is set to kill him within 24 hours. If he can't complete the mission before that, he and the president are as good as dead and nobody will care.

Not one to go out silently, Snake goes commando on a bunch of hungry lunatics and befriends a cast of colorful characters including Ernest Borgnine and Isaac Hayes in the process. Eventually, the president is saved, but Snake does a little switcharoo on an important plot point which I forgot to reveal and gets the last laugh indeed. By the way, the name of the movie is Escape from New York.

I would have given Snake a perfect score, but I have to knock him down two points for being a blatant rip-off of Solid Snake, a character created by Hideo Kojima for Metal Gear Solid. Comparison below:

Shameful. Look at that. They both have mustaches and eye patches.

A PICTURE OF SUDA 51

2008-09-03T00:01:00.001-04:00

"Before we begin, I just want to let you know that I'm a huge fan of killer7"

That's what I said to game developer Goichi Suda shortly before conducting the worst interview of all time. Suda heads up a Japanese development studio called 'grasshopper manufacture', who has made cult classic games such as No More Heroes and of course killer7, along with overseas-only titles like Flower, Sun, and Rain and Michigan. His style can be characterized as cartoony-stylish and hyperviolent, with plenty of cursing and ambiguous narrative in between.

This is not a review of the man himself. It is a review of this photograph of him:

This is a cropped photo of his entire development team, which consists of dozens of hapless Japanese men and women sitting stoically. However, Suda himself is all smiles. I'm not sure what he's happy about, or why everyone else is so sad. It may have something to do with him being the most enthusiastic person I have ever met.

Seriously, when I told him I liked killer7, he exploded so fiercly it was almost as if I was the first person to ever tell him that. Comparatively, when I told Yuji Naka that I enjoyed Sonic the Hedgehog, he brushed me off. I guarantee I was the first person to tell him that in ten years. Both of these men speak about the same amount of English (practically none).

Because it's not so clear why Suda is happy in this photo, I'm afraid I will have to knock it down a whole point. I give it two dots.

A BEAUTIFUL SMILE

2008-09-02T00:01:00.005-04:00

To the girl who rang me up at Barnes & Nobles today:

I'm dedicating my first ever Midnight Review to your wonderful smile. I wish I had the chance to take a picture of how perfect your face was, but I decided at the very last moment that that would have seemed creepy. So here's a dramatization and, although it is a nice smile, it is not nearly as bright and pleasant as yours.

I'm telling you, reader, the road to heaven is paved with this girl's teeth. That actually sounds frightening, on second thought. But imagine it is a very sweet compliment.

You rubbed the cover of my copy of Bram Stoker's Dracula for a few seconds before informing me that it is your favorite book of all time. I smiled and agreed that it is a wonderful book, even though I've never read it in full, and don't even really enjoy it that much. I don't know why I did that. It's not like I had a chance with you.

Before you handed me my bag, you were smiling so hard I started getting a headache. Speechless I stood, bleeding out of my ears. I have seen many picture-perfect mouths in my day, but none quite as shining as what I witnessed today. I give this smile a perfect score. It is pace-setting.

MIDNIGHT REVIEWS

2008-09-01T22:25:00.005-04:00

One thing I hope to accomplish with this new blog is getting a new review up every weekday at midnight. I'm calling these quick write-ups "Midnight Reviews", because that's what they are. I have a score system based on zero to three. To give you an example of what to expect, here's a review of my blog.

MY BLOG.

It sucks. Zero.

LABOR? I HARDLY KNOW HER

2008-09-01T12:40:00.005-04:00

Happy Labor Day or whatever.

So my parents just went out to go check out an SUV they will probably be buying, which means I'll have a new car to drive this week, finally. For those not in the know, our poor old Beautiful Truck was involved in an accident earlier this summer, crippling our transportation outlook.

It's a GMC Jimmy, I think a 2001 or a 2002. So it might look like this:

Although I'm not really sure. That's kind of big, isn't it? Oh well. At least it doesn't look like this:

Yep, that was our 1990 Ford Ranger. Four-speed MT. I'm going to miss manual transmission so hard. So tenderly.

Now I'm waiting for our single car to get home so I can go to Barnes & Noble and buy a thousand books for this terrible course on gothic literature that I stupidly signed up for. After that, it is Labor Day with the fam. The meat-eating fam.

Being a vegetarian sucks. Never do it, especially if you're the only person in your family who doesn't eat meat. Because my family meats it up almost exclusively, every holiday. And I'm stuck with the crappy vegetable left-overs and potato salad.

In between now and my hammy doom, I have to read all of Shakespeare's Hamlet (hurrr), which also sucks. My life is a thousand yards of inconvenience. I have no real legitimate reason to complain, yet I do it anyway because... man, I really just don't want to read Hamlet again. I can't even find my copy of it.

Now I might answer the tons of e-mails in my backlog, which you might be able to read about here. My writing is bland today for some reason, so I'm going to stop now.

FOR THE BIRDS

2008-09-01T00:21:00.002-04:00

Finally, a fun and exciting new way to transmit my thoughts over the internet.

I promise I will try to not let this blog be a confusing mess like the old one. I promise you, dear reader. I never break my promises.

Some of the few perks of working in a video game store are the pre-order bonuses ripe for the swiping, despite having not pre-ordered the game. Right now there are a chorus of nerds screaming in outrage at the lowly game clerk stealing the last of their special bonus figurine or something as equally lame.

I took this for my sister, because sometimes we do nice things for each other despite rarely speaking. We have one of those pleasantly silent relationships where we both understand our pathetic and ridiculous surroundings, but choose not to take action and change our lives for the better; it is comfortable apathy.

It's the pre-order bonus for a Nintendo DS game called Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness, which was fine for taking considering how nobody pre-ordered it or even came in to buy the game. I, generally, have a bit of shame compared to most clerks. But I have been in retail for so long that I'm never less or more shameful of what I do for pocket money.

Besides, compared to my quickly-turning-full-time job at Hunter dealing with the creative unwashed, retail seems like a nice vacation.