HE KNEW IT WAS HAPPENING ALL OVER AGAIN

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.

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

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

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!

THE BLOCK

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"?