Just another blog with nothing really to say except to express myself to no-one in particular with no particular reason other than other people are doing it. If you are reading this, you may have to tollerate posts with good recipes, great guitar, and video game references all at once. I hope that you are not too put off.
So, when I checked my Google reader feed for the first time today I got the notification that it would be shutting down. I surprisingly went through all the stages of grief. Denial(this can't be right, something must be wrong), anger(What the FUCK, google?), bargaining(There has to be some kind of petition somewhere that I can use to appeal to Google to preserve this tool), depression(I'll never find a reader to take Google's place!), to finally, acceptance(feedly.com). Which, you know, took all of 30 seconds. Seriously, it's not like it's an entitlement. Being a permanent tab on every browser I open(Tab 1 email, tab 2 RSS reader) is a privilege. That's ad space, and I'm an attentive consumer who cares when I see something I want to buy. It took a great product at the right time at the right place to get Google into that spot, and in 30 seconds it was gone, and not because someone had taken it from them. They gave it up and I needed to replace it and there was no reason to give them a single penny in ad revenue for the privilege of clinging to a product that they don't want me to have. Good riddance.
Life is exciting, I have so many cool things coming up that I am all a tingle. Rite of Spring at the Wortham Center tonight, Irish folk stories at the tea shop on sunday, new job and still old job all week next week, being M.C. for the Habitat for Humanity fundraiser dinner next weekend, and so on and so forth. It's all a bit overwhelming how quickly everything is happening. And how delicious good beer is. Mmmm... Goooooood beeeeer.
Really enjoyed the original, and looking forward to the sequel. The trailer looks really good.
I got my dental appointment for tomorrow. One of my teeth has been really bothering me and now that I have my tax return I should be able to afford to get it taken care of. Been a while since I've been to a dentist, but they don't really bother me. Never really hurts, and they always help with something wrong. Anyway, this ruthless rye ale is delicious, and so is this mexican chicken with the mole sauce that Scott made from scratch. Today is a good day.
First off, I want to share something beautiful I found:
I love those things. I could never get tired of how beautiful they are. The combination of music and the accelerated revelation of the product of hours of work and care is just really amazing.
I watched OZ: The Great and Powerful this week, and I liked it a lot. I felt it had a lot more potential than it took advantage of, and there were a few really thin parts, but overall the film was very solid and creative. Definitely go see it if you have fond memories of Wizard of Oz.
I got a new job last week, and I'll be starting on monday. That's cool. Also, Habitat for Humanity feels I'm worth putting on stage as an M.C. for one of their fundraising events. I guess they were desperate enough to just grab any old homeless person off the street... well, as long as they had a suit to wear for the event. So, no actual homeless people. Unless there are some very well dressed ones out there.
It's late and I am tired. I will post more tomorrow, hope all is well with the world, I'll see you folks later.
So, I definitely cooked one of these for Christmas this year. The fabled turducken. I learned to debone all three birds, make corn bread stuffing from scratch, and then I DID IT. I made a legendary beast this holiday season and it was AMAZING. One of the best tasting christmas birds EVER. All the flavors were brilliantly blended together. If I were to do anything differently, I'd be more careful with the construction. The swelling of the dressing caused my turkey exterior to burst like that guy's chest in that one scene in alien. I would also thaw the turkey sooner, I think. Also, I would have liked to use a spicier sausage in the cornbread stuffing. All in all, though, the flavors came out amazing, and every single bite just POPPED. I would probably also stitch the bird closed instead of just trying to hold it together, which worked okay, but made getting it into the oven bag a little difficult.
It took a little over 6 hours for me to put the thing together, though. So, I think I could definitely accelerate that kind of prep. Either way, though, after eating it, I have decided to do another one next year.
It occurs to me that I definitely do learn several things every day. I actually do consider a day where I have learned nothing to be wasted, and maybe I would do well to share that here a little more.
The things I have been learning today are relatively minor. I've been learning how to get the most out of the Fantasy and Science Fiction literature course that I am taking from Coursera.org. I'm fascinated by the course and am looking forward to sharing my reading experience with so many people at once.
I think if steam really followed through on producing a console that delivered a significant number of games and made their experience truly cross platform between their hardware and linux and windows and mac so that if you bought a game once you could play it on any machine that the code supported playing it on and that you own... I do not say this lightly, but I literally see the winner of the console wars for all time.. and it's basically a PC.
I generally feel that in order for a technology to die it needs to be completely replaced and have every single function it provides be eclipsed by a superior device. In short, the new thing needs to do everything the old thing did, but better, and then do some more. People have said for years that console gaming would kill PC gaming. But this was always erroneous and short sighted. A console could never fill the function of what a PC represents.
Consoles wont die. I mean, the function of having a standard set of hardware that lasts for a generation is what a console is. A Steam box will still be a console, but it will bring everything to the console space that corner of the market can handle that none of the other hardware manufacturers have been able to do. It's been DISGUSTING watching them flounder around and take advantage of a market that doesn't know what it's missing or that can't get it's style of fix from a competitor that offers it better.
Those days look like they are nearly at an end for now.
I'm going to make this a double feature. I saw two movies this past week, and both of them were inspired, beautiful, and imaginative. Anyone who loves a good movie should see both of them. They take, in no particular order, the number 2 and number 3 slots for the best movies I have seen all year.
Life of Pi Review
The Life of Pi is not just an amazing movie, and you should watch it. It is not just a beautiful script with wonderful actors telling an amazing tale set to vivid and evocative imagery and music that touches on every emotion in the spectrum of human feeling effectively. Yes, it is all of those things, but I also feel that it is the first movie to really prove that a movie can be designed so thoroughly around 3d that the final result simply wouldn't be quite the same if you saw the movie without it.
Every frame of this film is a work of art, and it is fully aware that its story is allegorical. It plays on it, and it makes a powerful impression with impossible images that each stand out as inspired.
The movie has to be taken as a whole. Some of the decisions feel a little clumsy in the beginning of the movie, but over the course of the plot they make more and more sense. Irrfan Khan as older Pi is one of those choices. As the film opens and as we are introduced to older Pi he seems extraordinarily plain in every way. Even his voice lacks anything compelling. As he narrates it becomes clear that his opening is a brilliant stark contrast against the events, and his voice becomes a calm narrative force when everything else feels terrifying and isolating.
Enthralling and captivating contrasts fill the entire film beginning to end. Having read the book, the initial trailers didn't seem to understand what the book meant, or the way it felt. Ang Lee does get it, astoundingly so. Lee gets it and shows it off in the way every animal is captured and in how every single moment is filled with living things.
The only two criticisms of film would be the dialog for the writer. It comes off as a little cheesy and heavy handed. Rafe Spall does what he can with it, and he does well enough that a lot of people may not even agree that it is a little thin. Being contrasted against the beautiful narrative and dialog of Pi Patel may even be the only reason it felt that way. The other would be a very slight heavy handedness of the emphasis on faith in the narrative toward the middle of the film.
About three times the movie made statements that felt forced and unnecessary. The symbolic structure of the movie is so well done that it just was not necessary to have it pointed out so many times. Even if you feel that a certain level of it was needed at some points in the film, it goes just a hair too far, and the audience is not quite left to draw their own conclusions despite being told that they should.
Overall Life of Pi is am amazing work, and a film that is worth watching. Try and find the time to go see it because movies like this just do not get made very often and especially not with a budget like this. Vote with your dollars and let them know that they made the right decision when this movie got funded.
Rise of the Guardians Review
You should watch this movie. I'm starting to sound like a broken record, and I know that two movies in a row is a bit difficult to justify, but that's the plain simple truth. This movie is excellent. It is thoughtful, beautiful, and touching. In some ways it manages to cut deep and rip at something important and essential. It pulls a few of its punches short and those few pulled punches stopped this from being one of the best movies ever made instead of just one of the absolute best animated movies ever made. Even when Rise of the Guardians holds back, it does so beautifully and with grace and you will never even notice.
Peter Ramsay has managed to capture a sense of wonder and amazement in the entire world. All of the major characters manage to deliver something unforgettable to the viewer that speaks to that part of you that loves what belief represents.
The opening is incredibly abrupt. The movie opens almost immediately with the essential exposition that is in all the trailers. There is so much substance to Rise of the Guardians that the film needs to get this information to the audience and out of the way of the narrative as soon as possible.
And the part that's really amazing? The action is intense and meaningful! All of the conflicts and characters are arranged and in play inside of the first ten minutes. Everything is coming together and moving in a whirlwind. The basic elements of the plot start with the rogue good guy joins the organized team of heroes, but it makes this seed into its own thing.
Santa Clause manages to be one of the best Santas put to film. Alec Baldwin delivers his lines superbly. His character is layered, responsible, and feels like a natural leader figure. Jack Frost feels like more than a thin representation of roguish rebellion being forced into a role of responsibility because he is more than that. We are told that it is important to find your core identity early in the film and then we are shown this theme being reinforced throughout the plot.
Jude Law makes his villain sympathetic and plays well off of Jack Frost's character. I make a note of the performances by Alec Baldwin and Jude Law, because they are exceptional; but, Chris Pine, Isla Fisher, and Hugh Jackman each turn in excellent performances.
This movie lives and breaths both spectacle and substance, and on top of it all it has some of the very best action of the entire year. Watch it. You won't regret it.
Today I will be interviewing Netsenshi. He is a good friend of mine, and also a local photographer and cosplay artist.
DS: So, I thought I'd start out asking about your alternative lifestyle. How long ago did you come out publicly as a cosplayer? netsenshi: Publicly I came out in 2005 DS: How did that come about? netsenshi: After having attended a couple anime conventions already, I asked myself two questions. What costumes are popular, and what characters have I not seen cosplayed before. I had noticed there were a lot of costumes from the Squaresoft game Kingdom Hearts, specifically the mushrooms. I then frowned, because my favorite mushroom characters in games are the power ups and Toad's from Super Mario Bros. I was then inspired to make my first costume, The Poison Mushroom, for the anime convention Kamikaze con. DS: Of the costumes you felt were missing, why start with The Poison Mushroom? netsenshi: I think I started with him because I thought it would be easy. It's a character that has appeared in only one game, and since it was a power up and not an actual person, It left a lot of room for creative interpretation.
DS: Was it as easy as you thought it would be? netsenshi: No. netsenshi: My first attempt is somewhat embarrassing. I used a grim reaper outfit, Halloween makeup for the face, and used about two pillows to make the mushroom cap originally. The hat never stayed in place so I had to modify it there. It was extremely heavy and uncomfortable. The makeup was cheap, and it burned my eyes. I later had to go back to the drawing board and completely redesign the character. DS: How many different characters have you created costumes for? netsenshi: Well, I have sketched out many different costumes on paper as well as wanted to do others, but I haven't actually fulfilled a lot of them. I have finished costumes for 10 different characters. The Poison Mushroom has had 3 different incarnations though, so 12 different completed costumes. DS: So, The Poison Mushroom is the only one you've done multiple times? netsenshi: I've done a couple different iterations of the 1-Up mushroom. I mainly only count the first costume on that one though, because I only made the cap and recycled the mask from one of my Poison Mushroom costumes. The rest of the costume was different plain clothes, each incorporating the color green when I wore it. DS: I'm to understand you're one of the minds behind the Pose Off panel that has been circulating around a number of conventions. Maybe you could share a bit about what that is and who you made it with, perhaps give a bit of background about its origination?
netsenshi: The Pose Off first started in 2005 in Austin, Tx at the convention Ushi-Con 4. It was started without a name randomly that sunday with several people present. The main person was my good friend Geoff Greer. I didn't have much to do with that one, but ultimately I helped refine it under the name The Pose Off months later. What the event is, is it's a competition amongst two or more individuals in a period of three rounds. The first two rounds have the contestants repeating the pose of a moderator, while the third round has them come up with their own pose. We used to always try and make it where the contestants would always win one, and force it into the third round, as me and Geoff were big into 2D fighting games like Street Fighter and Guilty Gear. Eventually though, we admitted that the first couple of rounds are more for our entertainment and is a way to help the posers come up with poses for their third round. DS: You have also created several cosplay and gaming videos, correct? netsenshi: That's correct. DS: How did that start? netsenshi: 10 years ago, my girlfriend at the time showed me how to make music videos to anime in windows movie maker. Later, I started going to anime conventions. I might have been inspired by my friend Marzgurl's anime convention videos, but I eventually decided to make some videos eventually after buying a flip video camera. A year or two later, my friend Evan Normand asked me to make videos on a website with him, and I did that for a year or so. I always intend to make more videos, but I never end up getting around to it.
DS: Why didn't you? netsenshi: My friend Evan Normand is currently in school, so I ended up having to come up with most of our content. I ultimately got burned out quickly after making several gaming videos for the website www.funwithmirrors.com .After taking what I thought was a shorty break, I attempted to start back up after buying a camera that captures in HD. My other hardware is really old, and conversions take up a lot of time, if they convert at all. DS: Are you working on any projects currently? netsenshi: Outside of my blog and future commitments to Louisianime, none come to mind. netsenshi: I would like to do some Let's Play videos, but I don't know when and if I will get to them any time soon DS: We are running out of time for today's interview, and I don't want to keep you for too long. Is there anything else you would like to say to my readership before we say goodbye? netsenshi: Yes. There is. I urge your readers to try many different things, simply on the whim to do so. Do NOT scoff at things because you think they are embarrassing. I could have gone to anime conventions years before my first one, as well as traveled abroad a couple years sooner if I would have done that 100% of the time. DS: Well, thank you so much for your time, I hope you have a wonderful afternoon! netsenshi: You as well. Drive carefully
“And then I felt sad because I realized that once people are broken in certain ways, they can't ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see the people in your life break one by one. You wonder when your turn is going to be, or if it's already happened.”
— Douglas Coupland
Anything I touch is my instrument, be it with words or fingers. It is a mistake to limit the scope of what is art and music.
Every single scene and line of dialog in Skyfall is brilliant on its own. The visuals are beautiful, the characters are interesting, and the music is stunning. The problem is that they took all of these scenes that are amazing by themselves and put them together, and they don't work so well like that.
The plot is overly complicated, which is not necessarily a bad thing on its own. Problems with the overcomplexity arise, however, when halfway through the film the basic execution of the evil scheme could have been done without any planning or forethought. Every climactic culmination of the villain's schemes is reduced down to just marching straight at what they want to kill after a long and complicated plan that appears to have worked but accomplished nothing.
Criticizing a Bond film for being predictable just feels wrong. That is part of the point, after all, however in this case the predictable plot points are so obvious that they are tiring. Skyfall plays its twist cards too early, and then stretches out too long after the fact trying to ride on events of the first half of the movie. The entire last half of the film is pure straightforward resolution without any real story progression.
The absolute best part of the movie is the villain. Silva is played by Javier Bardem, and every second he is in the film is compelling. Daniel Craig also does a superb Bond. The rest of the cast is on par with the superb technical and artistic quality of the film. THe visuals are stunning, and almost every frame is a work of art and every conversation could stand on its own as enjoyable Bond style snippets, so being on par in this case is high praise.
If you love Bond movies, see it anyway. This is not the worst film in the franchise, by far. If you're not a fan, maybe take the time to watch the movie when it comes out on video. It was largely enjoyable. It is certainly a very passable action flick.
So, I'm going to have a small thanksgiving gathering at my house in the evening after I have spent the morning with family. Not enough people will be there to justify a turkey, so after a little bit of thought I decided to do fried cornish game hens, which will feel like overkill in a turkey frier.
I've started looking up some recipes:
Fried Cornish Game Hens
Whole Berry Cranberry Sauce(made some of the best EVER last year)
Sweet potato recipes(I might do sweet potato gnocchi with butter sage sauce)
Pie!
Veggies
I will keep updating as I consider what to make for the day, but I'm excited to have started thinking about it. For the veggies I am considering green bean, or possibly corn. Hard to go wrong with either of those. Anyone who'd like to come and is able to is absolutely welcome, I'd love to see everyone I love that day.
So, loved Wreck it Ralph. It isn't anything new, but everything it does, it does do very well. The film makes excellent use of its talent. John C. Reilley's performance is likeable and humorous. Sarah Silverman manages to pull off a mildly annoying, sympathetic, and entertaining character. So, she basically plays herself, but less vulgar than usual.
A game like this probably could have gotten by on just the cameos of famous game characters alone. A lot of people really thought that's all they would get, but Wreck It Ralph manages to deliver an engaging story and use the myriad of game characters as set dressing rather than a crutch. The story doesn't feel either new, or fresh, but it has some original ideas that, and what isn't new is pretty classic.
It's one of the best movies I have seen all summer, really. I highly recommend it.
By the way, I am looking forward to failing NaNoWriMo this year.
Finished reading A Feast for Crows last night, and so this morning I read through Signal to Noise in an hour. Loved it. Then moved on and started reading Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow. He's probably my favorite author right now.
Tonight I am going to go see a screening of Wreck it Ralph! I will let you know what I think of it tomorrow morning or afternoon or never.
I liked it! I think what I liked best about Looper was that almost none of what made it engaging was in the trailer. There was a whole story here that I was unprepared for, and it was reasonably well told. Very exciting and surprising.
Cloud Atlas does a lot of things right. It manages to weave together a set of stories that are each substantial in their own right. The visuals are spot on and well done, the acting is outstanding, and the audio mixing manages to be some of the best in recent memory. There are a few hangups that keep it from being a truly exceptional film. It is a little hung up on its own cleverness, making it feel a bit pretentious about things that are pretty obvious or been done.
Impressive use of symbolism, colors, and imagery help tie the stories together early and often. By the time you get to the end the definitive connection between the narratives at the end, the links are still a little thinner than might have been optimal. Cloud Atlas manages to compensate for this through all of the methods the film uses to link the stories together outside of the narrative, using all the actors in every story, or the beautiful musical themes. This is probably the greatest strength of the movie.
In fact, these accomplishments are so positive that the film is already a success by the time its negatives show up. A lot of its turns are just way too obvious, and have been done better elsewhere. It is 2012, is the audience still supposed to be shocked that Soylent Green is people? When you see it, you'll know what I am talking about, and you will probably find it as laughable as I did. The only thing it does worse than pull twists that are obvious and trite is to act as though they are original and powerful and meaningful observations and metaphors. I did notice that the newspeak dialect that was spoken in the far future story managed to be difficult enough that the actors didn't quite make it feel natural and fluid.
Overall, Cloud Atlas is a solid movie. If you don't have the patience for disjointed story telling, the movie probably isn't for you. The action and special effects definitely aren't enough to make the movie appeal to a crowd that doesn't have the patience to work through the narrative, and there is a very real barrier there. It makes sense by the end, but you have to be willing to spend the whole movie actively asking questions and looking carefully for the answers.
Maybe if its plot twists had been a little less sill, and even preachy, this could easily have been a classic for all time. As it is, it's probably in the top two or three movies all year. Watch it.
It's pretty exciting to see an Humble Indie bundle do an entire bundle of novels. I went ahead and picked it up because it looked so exciting and had some of my favorite authors in it.
I have wanted to read more Cory Doctorow for a while now ever since I read Little Brother, and Pirate Cinema looks like a great place to start. Also, I have been reading more and more by Gaiman, and it is all amazing. Smoke and Mirrors was incredibly enjoyable, with some beautiful stories. He's also very accomplished as a graphic novelist, so Signal to Noise looks fascinating.
Everything in this pack looks delightful, though. I'll certainly be posting about it as I read and dropping down some reviews over at The Dangling Colloquy.
Game analysis, as a part of social psychiatry, is only interested in describing the game when it does occur regardless of how often that may be.
It's international book week. The rules: Grab the closest book to you, turn to page 52, post the 5th sentence as your status. Don't mention the title. Copy the rules as part of your status.
Life is exciting, I have so many cool things coming up that I am all a tingle. Rite of Spring at the Wortham Center tonight, Irish folk stories at the tea shop on sunday, new job and still old job all week next week, being M.C. for the Habitat for Humanity fundraiser dinner next weekend, and so on and so forth. It's all a bit overwhelming how quickly everything is happening. And how delicious good beer is. Mmmm... Goooooood beeeeer.
