Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Lost Season 1 Post Mortem
First, I must get this out...
WHAT THE HELL IS IN THE HATCH?!?
The show won me over. It's fun. A whole lotta' fun. In the long run though... I dunno. The biggest appeal of the series seems to be that it combines the operatic arc of a melodrama (character development wise) and combines it with a ghost train mystery ride through a haunted house, in this case, the haunted house being the island. And while I was really sucked into the character development and have a lot of admiration for the sheer gutsiness of this show, I can also feel its limits. I mean, how often can you keep pulling out tragic character circumstances to make the audience cry? And how can you possibly rope together all the inexplicables and mysteries of the island into a satisfying conclusion that provides logical and emotional closure?
I'm really hoping the creators of the show can do it... But a part of me has the feeling they can't. The FUN of this show, really, is the mystery. As an audience we like asking the questions, we love having our curiosity piqued, and we love talking with other people about it and speculating. But you can only keep pulling one mystery out after another before it begins to stretch credibility and I fear that they've already put out so many questions that need answering that it'll be difficult to give any kind of closure in a acceptable way.
Or maybe I'm just too much of an SF geek. I still prefer Battlestar Galactica to this slightly more, but mostly because BSG doesn't seem quite so dependent on the cliffhanger or the MacGuffin to drive the story. Both programs share a lot of similar qualities--small groups, in exile, struggling for survival, confronted with conflicts from large, external forces that threaten their existence, and small internal conflicts from trying to remain a society in the absence of a larger one.
However, the big difference for me--aside from setting which is a bonehead observation--is in the structure of their conflicts. There is definitely a melodramatic, almost soap operatic level to the characters and conflicts of Lost. While there is obviously a lot of character drama in BSG, it seems more "realistic" somehow, if you can apply that to a science fiction program, in that it's not all completely dependent on high volume situations or backgrounds. For example, in Lost, I don't think I'm giving away any spoilers by saying you have tortured doctor, a tortured former Iraqi soldier with a scarred conscience, a tortured and beautiful fugitive with complicated relationships, a tortured con artist traumatized by his childhood, a tortured rich brother and sister messed up by their wealth, a tortured Korean wife and her similarly tortured husband who does it all for her and makes things worse, a tortured former rock star who--surprise!--is strung out on drugs, a tortured mother to be who doubts her ability to be a mother, a tortured new father who also doubts his new 10 yeard old son now that his Ex is dead, and a tortured "woodsman" of sorts who needs to believe in destiny or else his world--and sanity--will fall completely to pieces. All of them have had extraordinarly terrible things happen to them in their past that make for some incredibly beautiful and moving flashbacks, but, if you don't believe in fate or destiny, or, worse yet, simply see the mechanisms of plotting at work, it simply starts to be too much trauma to be entirely convincing.
On BSG, there is the initial trauma of... well, the end of the world. Or at least the annihilation of the Colonies and the forced exodus of the survivors to escape from the race they'd originally created as slaves who have now destroyed them utterly. And that's a big issue. The only other really major character conflicts are the death of Commander Adama's youngest son and how that colors his relationship with Starbuck and Apollo, and the fact that the President of the Colonies is dying of cancer. The rest of the character conflict and drama tends to evolve more "naturally" around the situations the series crafts, rather than relying on a shocking or tender revelation about someone's past to generate an emotional attachment to the characters. Although, to be completely fair to Lost, when they do it, it WORKS, and works GREAT.
The other thing of course is the abundance of mysteries. The monster on the island, the mystery of the hatch, the numbers... All of these things keep cropping up, and once again, if you don't believe in destiny, or are simply too aware of feeling a team of writers pulling out--some admittedly brilliantly compelling--questions to keep your curiosity fired up, that can pull you out. In BSG, the only real mystery is the Cylons, and exactly how they operate as a society and a silicon based lifeform and how that affects the human survivors. Once again, the rest of the plot related conflicts come naturally from the situation, how do you eat in space? How do you get more water? How do you refuel? How do you get enough parts to keep you fighters in the air? Does society continue as per usual in the aftermath of near total extinction, or is it time for new rules? These are natural questions that need answering as opposed to, "Wow! A polar bear! How'd that get there? GOSH! ANOTHER MYSTERY!"
Although let me once again iterate, Lost does this absolutely, bloody BRILLIANTLY.
I love what the show does. I'm just a little disappointed at my awareness they're doing it. BSG on the other hand more or less just sucks me in and makes me completely forget my critical faculties thinking to myself "Wow..." when the show's over, whereas Lost will occasionally make me smile in disbelief and think myself, "Clever little bastards, you are..."
I guess (Caution, blasphemous cinematic allegory coming up) it's kind of the difference between Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise and Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Both are triumphs in their own way, but Linklater made you forget entirely that a movie was happening. Spielberg on the other hand plays up all the flame and thunder and even if you're perfectly aware you're on a rollercoaster with precisely engineered twists and turns, you're having so much fun, you don't care.
First, I must get this out...
WHAT THE HELL IS IN THE HATCH?!?
The show won me over. It's fun. A whole lotta' fun. In the long run though... I dunno. The biggest appeal of the series seems to be that it combines the operatic arc of a melodrama (character development wise) and combines it with a ghost train mystery ride through a haunted house, in this case, the haunted house being the island. And while I was really sucked into the character development and have a lot of admiration for the sheer gutsiness of this show, I can also feel its limits. I mean, how often can you keep pulling out tragic character circumstances to make the audience cry? And how can you possibly rope together all the inexplicables and mysteries of the island into a satisfying conclusion that provides logical and emotional closure?
I'm really hoping the creators of the show can do it... But a part of me has the feeling they can't. The FUN of this show, really, is the mystery. As an audience we like asking the questions, we love having our curiosity piqued, and we love talking with other people about it and speculating. But you can only keep pulling one mystery out after another before it begins to stretch credibility and I fear that they've already put out so many questions that need answering that it'll be difficult to give any kind of closure in a acceptable way.
Or maybe I'm just too much of an SF geek. I still prefer Battlestar Galactica to this slightly more, but mostly because BSG doesn't seem quite so dependent on the cliffhanger or the MacGuffin to drive the story. Both programs share a lot of similar qualities--small groups, in exile, struggling for survival, confronted with conflicts from large, external forces that threaten their existence, and small internal conflicts from trying to remain a society in the absence of a larger one.
However, the big difference for me--aside from setting which is a bonehead observation--is in the structure of their conflicts. There is definitely a melodramatic, almost soap operatic level to the characters and conflicts of Lost. While there is obviously a lot of character drama in BSG, it seems more "realistic" somehow, if you can apply that to a science fiction program, in that it's not all completely dependent on high volume situations or backgrounds. For example, in Lost, I don't think I'm giving away any spoilers by saying you have tortured doctor, a tortured former Iraqi soldier with a scarred conscience, a tortured and beautiful fugitive with complicated relationships, a tortured con artist traumatized by his childhood, a tortured rich brother and sister messed up by their wealth, a tortured Korean wife and her similarly tortured husband who does it all for her and makes things worse, a tortured former rock star who--surprise!--is strung out on drugs, a tortured mother to be who doubts her ability to be a mother, a tortured new father who also doubts his new 10 yeard old son now that his Ex is dead, and a tortured "woodsman" of sorts who needs to believe in destiny or else his world--and sanity--will fall completely to pieces. All of them have had extraordinarly terrible things happen to them in their past that make for some incredibly beautiful and moving flashbacks, but, if you don't believe in fate or destiny, or, worse yet, simply see the mechanisms of plotting at work, it simply starts to be too much trauma to be entirely convincing.
On BSG, there is the initial trauma of... well, the end of the world. Or at least the annihilation of the Colonies and the forced exodus of the survivors to escape from the race they'd originally created as slaves who have now destroyed them utterly. And that's a big issue. The only other really major character conflicts are the death of Commander Adama's youngest son and how that colors his relationship with Starbuck and Apollo, and the fact that the President of the Colonies is dying of cancer. The rest of the character conflict and drama tends to evolve more "naturally" around the situations the series crafts, rather than relying on a shocking or tender revelation about someone's past to generate an emotional attachment to the characters. Although, to be completely fair to Lost, when they do it, it WORKS, and works GREAT.
The other thing of course is the abundance of mysteries. The monster on the island, the mystery of the hatch, the numbers... All of these things keep cropping up, and once again, if you don't believe in destiny, or are simply too aware of feeling a team of writers pulling out--some admittedly brilliantly compelling--questions to keep your curiosity fired up, that can pull you out. In BSG, the only real mystery is the Cylons, and exactly how they operate as a society and a silicon based lifeform and how that affects the human survivors. Once again, the rest of the plot related conflicts come naturally from the situation, how do you eat in space? How do you get more water? How do you refuel? How do you get enough parts to keep you fighters in the air? Does society continue as per usual in the aftermath of near total extinction, or is it time for new rules? These are natural questions that need answering as opposed to, "Wow! A polar bear! How'd that get there? GOSH! ANOTHER MYSTERY!"
Although let me once again iterate, Lost does this absolutely, bloody BRILLIANTLY.
I love what the show does. I'm just a little disappointed at my awareness they're doing it. BSG on the other hand more or less just sucks me in and makes me completely forget my critical faculties thinking to myself "Wow..." when the show's over, whereas Lost will occasionally make me smile in disbelief and think myself, "Clever little bastards, you are..."
I guess (Caution, blasphemous cinematic allegory coming up) it's kind of the difference between Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise and Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Both are triumphs in their own way, but Linklater made you forget entirely that a movie was happening. Spielberg on the other hand plays up all the flame and thunder and even if you're perfectly aware you're on a rollercoaster with precisely engineered twists and turns, you're having so much fun, you don't care.
Labels: Rants, Sci-Fi Television
Monday, January 30, 2006
Lost Season 1
Holy crap.
So Boone is... He's really...
Ack.
I thought there was some kind of unspoken rule about things you don't do to main characters in the first season... Heck, I thought it was because of rules like that that television was inferior to film and literature.
Daaaaaaaaaaaaaamn...
Holy crap.
So Boone is... He's really...
Ack.
I thought there was some kind of unspoken rule about things you don't do to main characters in the first season... Heck, I thought it was because of rules like that that television was inferior to film and literature.
Daaaaaaaaaaaaaamn...
Labels: Sci-Fi Television
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Unproductive Fun
I did nothing but watch Lost and play Shin Megami Nocturne: Digital Devil Saga today.
So there.
I did nothing but watch Lost and play Shin Megami Nocturne: Digital Devil Saga today.
So there.
Labels: Boring And Insipid Posts
Saturday, January 28, 2006
Happy Dog Year
If you're Chinese, you're hanging out with family, getting red envelopes full of money--assuming you're not married, and if you are married then you give them out--and generally doing the things most white people do at Christmas.
Or if you're me, you watch a few more episodes of Lost watch Claire and Charlie get kidnapped and sit there thinking, "OH MY GOD..."
And just what the heck is it with this American fascination with Singapore anyway? When I was watching Batman Begins a chuckle was elicited from the audience when it turned out that Bruce Wayne's various batsuit components were mass produced in Singapore. And now on Lost the plane that crashed was a Sydney flight bound for Singapore...
The weirdest part of watching Lost for me personally has been the fact that I've occasionally thought to myself, "Wow, this TV show really feels like it's transporting me to a far away small, tropical island..."
And then I realize I already AM on a small tropical island and feel incredibly foolish. However, unlike the castaways on Lost, what I lack in glamour and drama I make up for with the always welcome presence of air conditioning and, most important of all, indoor plumbing.
If you're Chinese, you're hanging out with family, getting red envelopes full of money--assuming you're not married, and if you are married then you give them out--and generally doing the things most white people do at Christmas.
Or if you're me, you watch a few more episodes of Lost watch Claire and Charlie get kidnapped and sit there thinking, "OH MY GOD..."
And just what the heck is it with this American fascination with Singapore anyway? When I was watching Batman Begins a chuckle was elicited from the audience when it turned out that Bruce Wayne's various batsuit components were mass produced in Singapore. And now on Lost the plane that crashed was a Sydney flight bound for Singapore...
The weirdest part of watching Lost for me personally has been the fact that I've occasionally thought to myself, "Wow, this TV show really feels like it's transporting me to a far away small, tropical island..."
And then I realize I already AM on a small tropical island and feel incredibly foolish. However, unlike the castaways on Lost, what I lack in glamour and drama I make up for with the always welcome presence of air conditioning and, most important of all, indoor plumbing.
Labels: Culture, Singapore Stupidity
Friday, January 27, 2006
For All You Non-Chinese
Things are winding down over here. But that's because it's the Friday night before the Chinese New Year weekend.
I am a rat. Specifically a water rat, by the Chinese Zodiac. The Wife is a monkey. Apparently rats and monkeys get along incredibly well. The animal of choice this year is the dog, which means that lots of kids will probably be getting a Nintendo DS with Nintendogs included as a "cute" timely gift. Speaking of which, I've recently done an article for GameAxis about just such a topic, and it's right here.
Things are winding down over here. But that's because it's the Friday night before the Chinese New Year weekend.
I am a rat. Specifically a water rat, by the Chinese Zodiac. The Wife is a monkey. Apparently rats and monkeys get along incredibly well. The animal of choice this year is the dog, which means that lots of kids will probably be getting a Nintendo DS with Nintendogs included as a "cute" timely gift. Speaking of which, I've recently done an article for GameAxis about just such a topic, and it's right here.
Labels: Culture
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Another Ho Hum Day
Did not watch Lost. Did write a script. Did go to a script meeting. Did not beat Bark At The Moon on Guitar Hero. Did kill a million buzillion demons in Shin Megami Nocturne Digital Devil 2.
Oh, and we picked up a copy of Eternal Darkness supposedly one of the best games made for the Nintendo GameCube. It was a used version on sale for $28, so we figured what the heck...
Did not watch Lost. Did write a script. Did go to a script meeting. Did not beat Bark At The Moon on Guitar Hero. Did kill a million buzillion demons in Shin Megami Nocturne Digital Devil 2.
Oh, and we picked up a copy of Eternal Darkness supposedly one of the best games made for the Nintendo GameCube. It was a used version on sale for $28, so we figured what the heck...
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Gilligan's 48 Passengers Stranded On A Tropical Island
Okay, so I'm no longer a Lost virgin.
I have officially watched one episode, and so far, I think it's fun and I like it. It's kind of a Survivor meets Friday the 13th meets every soap opera you've ever seen the way it seems hell bent on killing people, developing relastionships, and forcing people to innovate in order to stay alive away from modern amenities.
Okay, so I'm no longer a Lost virgin.
I have officially watched one episode, and so far, I think it's fun and I like it. It's kind of a Survivor meets Friday the 13th meets every soap opera you've ever seen the way it seems hell bent on killing people, developing relastionships, and forcing people to innovate in order to stay alive away from modern amenities.
Labels: Sci-Fi Television
Monday, January 23, 2006
Too Much Guitar Hero
I had some bizarre dream today where I was walking around in what seemed to be an area of my home town, Edmonton. It was at a McDonald's that was sitting on the other side of a parking lot for Beaumaris shopping mall, and I had my Guitar Hero controller slapped on.
It was a summer day, so the weather was fine and the sun was mild but comforting, and I noticed that there were a lot of other people--teenagers and adults of the male persuasion mostly--that were walking around with real guitars strapped on. A lot of Gibsons and Fenders all over the place. I was really puzzled by this, though strangely not puzzled at all about the fact that I had my controller slung on my neck, and was getting strange glances of approval from all the real guitar players hanging around.
So I went into the McDonalds and it was there, sitting at a table, I found Michael J. Fox and Christian Bale. There were also a whole bunch'a guitarists. It turns out that for some reason that particular McDonalds was holding a guitar contest, and Fox and Bale just happened to be there. The contest started, and the guitarists took off, I hung out with Mike and Chris and showed them how to play Jimi Hendrix's Spanish Castle Magic on Guitar Heroe despite the fact that I had no PS2, game, or TV to hook the guitar up to.
Bleah. Maybe it's time to get a real guitar...
I had some bizarre dream today where I was walking around in what seemed to be an area of my home town, Edmonton. It was at a McDonald's that was sitting on the other side of a parking lot for Beaumaris shopping mall, and I had my Guitar Hero controller slapped on.
It was a summer day, so the weather was fine and the sun was mild but comforting, and I noticed that there were a lot of other people--teenagers and adults of the male persuasion mostly--that were walking around with real guitars strapped on. A lot of Gibsons and Fenders all over the place. I was really puzzled by this, though strangely not puzzled at all about the fact that I had my controller slung on my neck, and was getting strange glances of approval from all the real guitar players hanging around.
So I went into the McDonalds and it was there, sitting at a table, I found Michael J. Fox and Christian Bale. There were also a whole bunch'a guitarists. It turns out that for some reason that particular McDonalds was holding a guitar contest, and Fox and Bale just happened to be there. The contest started, and the guitarists took off, I hung out with Mike and Chris and showed them how to play Jimi Hendrix's Spanish Castle Magic on Guitar Heroe despite the fact that I had no PS2, game, or TV to hook the guitar up to.
Bleah. Maybe it's time to get a real guitar...
Labels: Games, Guitar Hero, Rare Dreams
The Boring Monday
The Wife stayed home today and so we did our own separate work, I had a minor breakthrough in Guitar Hero managing to survive halfway into Ozzy Osbourne's Bark At The Moon, and then we played more Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga. The sequel lies on a table, patiently being ignored until this one is soundly trashed.
The Wife stayed home today and so we did our own separate work, I had a minor breakthrough in Guitar Hero managing to survive halfway into Ozzy Osbourne's Bark At The Moon, and then we played more Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga. The sequel lies on a table, patiently being ignored until this one is soundly trashed.
Sunday, January 22, 2006
The Boring Sunday
In which all that was done was a little bit of script writing and a whole lotta' Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 1, which is the second playthrough. The "serious" one, where I go for everything so that all that precious save data can carry over into DDS 2, and give me a boost when it comes time to finally resolve this "God is awful" game.
In which all that was done was a little bit of script writing and a whole lotta' Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 1, which is the second playthrough. The "serious" one, where I go for everything so that all that precious save data can carry over into DDS 2, and give me a boost when it comes time to finally resolve this "God is awful" game.
Labels: My Life
Saturday, January 21, 2006
I Am NOT On Ron Moore's Viral Marketing Team
But I suppose I should be.
T'was a very Galactica day. One of the Wife's clients is a small design/marketing firm and one of the owners for it is a pop culture kind'a guy that goes in for good TV and had never watched the show, so I promptly shoved my season 1 DVD collection of Battlestar Galactica down his throat and he proceeded to inhale it and then promptly go looking for season 2 through more... enterprising, online digital means. As repayment for me tipping him off to this most excellent of shows, he has decided to throw some good TV karma my way in the form of season 1 of Lost. I guess now I'll finally see what all the screaming is about. As soon as I got it back, I remembered that the Father-In-Law had mentioned that he vaguely remembered the original show, and kind'a liked it, though he confessed that his most recent favorite Science Fiction show would have to be Babylon 5. Having now firmly put Babylon 5 on the 2nd place/silver medalist pedestal, I figured I'd better share the joy and for all I know, now he is sitting around going, "Starbuck's a WOMAN!?" at this very moment.
In other news, I finally had a breakthrough and managed to survive Crossroads by Eric Clapton/Cream on the expert level of Guitar Heroes. Slowly but surely I am starting to come to grips with the game and have graduated from competent to Starting To Kick Ass. Heck, maybe I'll get a real guitar after this...
Oh yeah, I wrote a review for the game which is now online.
But I suppose I should be.
T'was a very Galactica day. One of the Wife's clients is a small design/marketing firm and one of the owners for it is a pop culture kind'a guy that goes in for good TV and had never watched the show, so I promptly shoved my season 1 DVD collection of Battlestar Galactica down his throat and he proceeded to inhale it and then promptly go looking for season 2 through more... enterprising, online digital means. As repayment for me tipping him off to this most excellent of shows, he has decided to throw some good TV karma my way in the form of season 1 of Lost. I guess now I'll finally see what all the screaming is about. As soon as I got it back, I remembered that the Father-In-Law had mentioned that he vaguely remembered the original show, and kind'a liked it, though he confessed that his most recent favorite Science Fiction show would have to be Babylon 5. Having now firmly put Babylon 5 on the 2nd place/silver medalist pedestal, I figured I'd better share the joy and for all I know, now he is sitting around going, "Starbuck's a WOMAN!?" at this very moment.
In other news, I finally had a breakthrough and managed to survive Crossroads by Eric Clapton/Cream on the expert level of Guitar Heroes. Slowly but surely I am starting to come to grips with the game and have graduated from competent to Starting To Kick Ass. Heck, maybe I'll get a real guitar after this...
Oh yeah, I wrote a review for the game which is now online.
Labels: Battlestar Galactica, Guitar Hero
Friday, January 20, 2006
More Existentialism On The PS2 & Ron Moore
A quiet Friday.
So far the bulk of it has been spent in quiet recreation. There was the educational aspect of Battlestar Galactica, which more or less means I listen raptly to the commentaries and think "Gee, Ron Moore's like one of the smartest writers in television today" and envy the fact that I'm not him. Also, just for the heck of it we had dinner at one of our old dining haunts when we lived in our former apartment. The guy who runs the Indian food stall actually remembered us and noted he hadn't seen us for a few months. I guess it's nice to be recognized and remembered...
But mostly we've been taking turns tackling Shin Megami Tensei Digital Devil Saga 1, yet another in a long line of Atlus demonic RPGs that examines the purpose--or complete lack thereof--in life, and wonders aloud if God really does exist, and if God exists, is he really all that great, and isn't it about time someone really stuck it to him. Frankly I'm amazed that America even tolerates such blatantly anti-Christian sentiments in video games, but since the series addresses these themes in surreal images with minimal gore and no sexual element, it slides right under their radar in the same way that Heavy Metal gets past censors here because they think "It's a comic book."
Kind of funny to me how potentially, the SMT series of games can corrode Western values in impressionable minds far more than something like GTA San Andreas, but because it stays away from "flashier" content like sex and violence and instead heaps questions and scorns on the entire Christian faith, this is somehow far more acceptable. The United States apparently would rather die than expose their children to some skin or some gun play, but hey, let's let these video games turn their children against fundamental cultural tenets, that's perfectly harmless.
A quiet Friday.
So far the bulk of it has been spent in quiet recreation. There was the educational aspect of Battlestar Galactica, which more or less means I listen raptly to the commentaries and think "Gee, Ron Moore's like one of the smartest writers in television today" and envy the fact that I'm not him. Also, just for the heck of it we had dinner at one of our old dining haunts when we lived in our former apartment. The guy who runs the Indian food stall actually remembered us and noted he hadn't seen us for a few months. I guess it's nice to be recognized and remembered...
But mostly we've been taking turns tackling Shin Megami Tensei Digital Devil Saga 1, yet another in a long line of Atlus demonic RPGs that examines the purpose--or complete lack thereof--in life, and wonders aloud if God really does exist, and if God exists, is he really all that great, and isn't it about time someone really stuck it to him. Frankly I'm amazed that America even tolerates such blatantly anti-Christian sentiments in video games, but since the series addresses these themes in surreal images with minimal gore and no sexual element, it slides right under their radar in the same way that Heavy Metal gets past censors here because they think "It's a comic book."
Kind of funny to me how potentially, the SMT series of games can corrode Western values in impressionable minds far more than something like GTA San Andreas, but because it stays away from "flashier" content like sex and violence and instead heaps questions and scorns on the entire Christian faith, this is somehow far more acceptable. The United States apparently would rather die than expose their children to some skin or some gun play, but hey, let's let these video games turn their children against fundamental cultural tenets, that's perfectly harmless.
Labels: Battlestar Galactica, Games
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Tech Toys, First Meetings & PC Blues
There's always a kind of cautionary feeling to meeting new people for potential work. It's this sensation almost of warplanes circling each other, testing for maneuverability or weaknesses before finally clashing in engagement. You need to suss each other out, find exactly where the Jerk Tolerances lie, see if there's any kind of compatibility at all in terms of work philosophies--and more importantly, creative philosophies--and even after all that, there's still no guarantee that any work is going to come out of it.
Still, once in a while it turns out to be a pretty okay experience. My friend Rachel reccommended me to someone who'd just come back to Singapore after a decade long hiatus and was looking to start messing around in the videos & features game in Singapore and so he needed to meet up with various creative types, including writers. I don't think he was really expecting to meet anyone like me here, since I seem almost permanently trapped on campus in my approach to work and creativity, but there ya' go. It was nice to meet someone new and sit around discussing creative issues. Especially since he was the one that was out of the loop in terms of what the industry here is like and I found myself in the ironic position of being the guy In The Loop.
Also, it comes about five freakin' years late, but having only recently noticed that our television has an S-Video cable input, we finally got around to buying an S-Video cable for the beloved PS2 and I am pleasantly surprised to be able to say there is a definite improvement in the quality of the picture. The image is crisper and the color seems a little richer. It's like getting a new graphics card for the PS2, except that there's no near total annihilation of your system and total reconstruction just to get it all to work.
Speaking of which, that is exactly what the Wife is going through right now.
It's one of those days when you really wonder why the computer industry doesn't take more notes from the console industry.
The Wife figured that since she's doing a lot more illustration work, it was time to go Hardcore and get a decent, professional level monitor for herself. We popped into the Singapore electronics Mecca, aka Sim Lim Square, and she picked out a nice, shiny 19" LCD monitor that has one of those rotatable features built into it so that it can actually be pivoted for "portrait" viewing as opposed to the traditional "landscape" or "widescreen" orientation monitors normally have. It's a Viewsonic VP 390 or something like that, and local tech-head magazine (And owners of GameAxis) Hardware Zone gave it a mess of awards, so it seemed like a pretty safe bet.
Unfortunately, the Wife has a tremendously bad track record with her PC. It seems like anytime she buys anything new for it, be it a new hard disk, more RAM, a new graphics card, a new driver, whatever... The thing refuses to work, and once installed, usually brings her entire computer to a halt. This has once again happened with the new monitor. Or at least, the software that comes with it. The monitor seems fine, but as soon as she installs the software the monitor refuses to work. So she's kind of resigned herself to operating it in a half-crippled state for the moment since it seems like it's on the warpath with her PC.
My theory now is that this is one of the reasons why Microsoft got into the console business. They were probably starting to wonder if was within the realm of possibility for their company to create anything that could operate just by turning on a switch that didn't come crashing down due to driver incompatibilities, hardware conflict, or any of the other million, buzillion things that make the concept of "plug and play" on PCs a blue moon event at best.
There's always a kind of cautionary feeling to meeting new people for potential work. It's this sensation almost of warplanes circling each other, testing for maneuverability or weaknesses before finally clashing in engagement. You need to suss each other out, find exactly where the Jerk Tolerances lie, see if there's any kind of compatibility at all in terms of work philosophies--and more importantly, creative philosophies--and even after all that, there's still no guarantee that any work is going to come out of it.
Still, once in a while it turns out to be a pretty okay experience. My friend Rachel reccommended me to someone who'd just come back to Singapore after a decade long hiatus and was looking to start messing around in the videos & features game in Singapore and so he needed to meet up with various creative types, including writers. I don't think he was really expecting to meet anyone like me here, since I seem almost permanently trapped on campus in my approach to work and creativity, but there ya' go. It was nice to meet someone new and sit around discussing creative issues. Especially since he was the one that was out of the loop in terms of what the industry here is like and I found myself in the ironic position of being the guy In The Loop.
Also, it comes about five freakin' years late, but having only recently noticed that our television has an S-Video cable input, we finally got around to buying an S-Video cable for the beloved PS2 and I am pleasantly surprised to be able to say there is a definite improvement in the quality of the picture. The image is crisper and the color seems a little richer. It's like getting a new graphics card for the PS2, except that there's no near total annihilation of your system and total reconstruction just to get it all to work.
Speaking of which, that is exactly what the Wife is going through right now.
It's one of those days when you really wonder why the computer industry doesn't take more notes from the console industry.
The Wife figured that since she's doing a lot more illustration work, it was time to go Hardcore and get a decent, professional level monitor for herself. We popped into the Singapore electronics Mecca, aka Sim Lim Square, and she picked out a nice, shiny 19" LCD monitor that has one of those rotatable features built into it so that it can actually be pivoted for "portrait" viewing as opposed to the traditional "landscape" or "widescreen" orientation monitors normally have. It's a Viewsonic VP 390 or something like that, and local tech-head magazine (And owners of GameAxis) Hardware Zone gave it a mess of awards, so it seemed like a pretty safe bet.
Unfortunately, the Wife has a tremendously bad track record with her PC. It seems like anytime she buys anything new for it, be it a new hard disk, more RAM, a new graphics card, a new driver, whatever... The thing refuses to work, and once installed, usually brings her entire computer to a halt. This has once again happened with the new monitor. Or at least, the software that comes with it. The monitor seems fine, but as soon as she installs the software the monitor refuses to work. So she's kind of resigned herself to operating it in a half-crippled state for the moment since it seems like it's on the warpath with her PC.
My theory now is that this is one of the reasons why Microsoft got into the console business. They were probably starting to wonder if was within the realm of possibility for their company to create anything that could operate just by turning on a switch that didn't come crashing down due to driver incompatibilities, hardware conflict, or any of the other million, buzillion things that make the concept of "plug and play" on PCs a blue moon event at best.
Labels: My Life
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Games, Deadlines & Galactica
The Wife has officially turned into a gamer. She's not a hard core gamer, and she's not going to be takin' it online and trash-talking with the l33t speak anytime soon in Counterstrike or Quake servers, but you know you hit a turning point when the often ignored portable gaming system (In this case, a Nintendo Dual Screen that was given in the Christmas of 2004 as a gift and went by largely unused) finally gets a game and is played whenever possible.
I myself finally slacked off on Guitar Heroes, but that was because of two prime factors, Battlestar Galactica and work respectively. Work was articles and scripts. Of the three articles I'm owing to GameAxis, two have now been cranked out with a final one probably finished by tomorrow. There was also another Nanoboy script and that's also been done and submitted.
But my God, I'm still in abject amazement of how good Battlestar Galactica is.
I mean, I loved the show when I saw the mini-series. I was digging it even more when I saw the first season. Now I practically worship Ron Moore. He doesn't have the wittiness of Joss Whedon (And to be honest, Joss will always be the more "fun" writer for me) but man does he go places with science fiction that no one had ever dared and he goes right into the heart of darkness, turns on the flashlight, and makes sure you take a good, hard look, no blinking allowed.
I think the thing that I'm really, really starting to love about his take on this show is the ambiguity of it, which translates, ultimately in more believeability. If I had to start tossing themes at this show, one of them would be "No one's hands are clean." Because the main characters, as likeable, admirable, or pitiable, or sympathetic as they may turn out to be, make mistakes. And sometimes those mistakes are big ones that can cost lives. In a situation like that, do you simply say "You screwed up, I don't like you anymore?" Or do you try to reconcile it with what you previously knew. CAN you? In the same light, antagonist characters that are nominally supposed to be "bad guys" are capable of inflicting great suffering but are also capable of reacting to suffering--of themselves and others--in very real, very understandable and even respectable ways. So when they perform acts of courage, or compassion or when they suffer unspeakably, do you say, "The law is 'what have you done for me lately' and since this latest activity is a good one, I don't hate you anymore?" Or do you try to reconcile that with what you previously knew. CAN you?
I really, really, really love this show...
The Wife has officially turned into a gamer. She's not a hard core gamer, and she's not going to be takin' it online and trash-talking with the l33t speak anytime soon in Counterstrike or Quake servers, but you know you hit a turning point when the often ignored portable gaming system (In this case, a Nintendo Dual Screen that was given in the Christmas of 2004 as a gift and went by largely unused) finally gets a game and is played whenever possible.
I myself finally slacked off on Guitar Heroes, but that was because of two prime factors, Battlestar Galactica and work respectively. Work was articles and scripts. Of the three articles I'm owing to GameAxis, two have now been cranked out with a final one probably finished by tomorrow. There was also another Nanoboy script and that's also been done and submitted.
But my God, I'm still in abject amazement of how good Battlestar Galactica is.
I mean, I loved the show when I saw the mini-series. I was digging it even more when I saw the first season. Now I practically worship Ron Moore. He doesn't have the wittiness of Joss Whedon (And to be honest, Joss will always be the more "fun" writer for me) but man does he go places with science fiction that no one had ever dared and he goes right into the heart of darkness, turns on the flashlight, and makes sure you take a good, hard look, no blinking allowed.
I think the thing that I'm really, really starting to love about his take on this show is the ambiguity of it, which translates, ultimately in more believeability. If I had to start tossing themes at this show, one of them would be "No one's hands are clean." Because the main characters, as likeable, admirable, or pitiable, or sympathetic as they may turn out to be, make mistakes. And sometimes those mistakes are big ones that can cost lives. In a situation like that, do you simply say "You screwed up, I don't like you anymore?" Or do you try to reconcile it with what you previously knew. CAN you? In the same light, antagonist characters that are nominally supposed to be "bad guys" are capable of inflicting great suffering but are also capable of reacting to suffering--of themselves and others--in very real, very understandable and even respectable ways. So when they perform acts of courage, or compassion or when they suffer unspeakably, do you say, "The law is 'what have you done for me lately' and since this latest activity is a good one, I don't hate you anymore?" Or do you try to reconcile that with what you previously knew. CAN you?
I really, really, really love this show...
Labels: Battlestar Galactica, Games
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Oh My God
Battlestar Galactica is so good it makes me weep.
I feel like one of those Catholics that went to church one Sunday just to hear the priest's sermon and instead ended up with an angel putting in an appearance and singing Hey Jude with an actual heavenly choir for back up.
Does humanity even deserve TV this good?
Battlestar Galactica is so good it makes me weep.
I feel like one of those Catholics that went to church one Sunday just to hear the priest's sermon and instead ended up with an angel putting in an appearance and singing Hey Jude with an actual heavenly choir for back up.
Does humanity even deserve TV this good?
Labels: Battlestar Galactica, Sci-Fi Television
Monday, January 16, 2006
Don't Frak With Me
Because thanks to a belated Christmas present from my friend Eugene I now have Season 2 (Or the first half of it, anyway) of what is shaping up to be the best science fiction TV show I have ever seen, Battlestar Galactica.
Needless to say, it is time to ignore EVERYTHING and just turn on, tune in, and drop out...
Because thanks to a belated Christmas present from my friend Eugene I now have Season 2 (Or the first half of it, anyway) of what is shaping up to be the best science fiction TV show I have ever seen, Battlestar Galactica.
Needless to say, it is time to ignore EVERYTHING and just turn on, tune in, and drop out...
Labels: Battlestar Galactica, Sci-Fi Television
Sunday, January 15, 2006
Poor Little Giant Monkey
I finally got around to watching King Kong last week, so this is a belated review. It only just occurred to me that I hadn't talked about it.
It seemed to me that The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe and King Kong suffer from opposite problems. Narnia was too rushed at the expense of moving from action scene to the next, not giving much time to develop characters in the last half of the film, whereas Kong spent entirely too much time on both characterization and action sequences, and honestly could have had anywhere from 45 minutes to a full hour cut out without really doing the picture much harm.
I enjoyed the movie immensely. I thought it was incredibly fun, moving and watchable and I didn't see anything particularly bad about any of the film's content. However I did question how much of it was entirely necessary. I sort of got the feeling that Peter Jackson must've had the same dilemma most writers have when a novel is finished, that being you put so much into it and then it comes time for the painful pruning. But in this case, he just didn't have the heart--and the studio didn't have the desire--to cut any of his hard work out.
I can understand that impulse, although I don't think it's always a good idea to follow it. For the last novel I wrote, The Pale Summer I had to do a major hatchet job to get the thing to approach 100, 000 words, and I threw out a lot of stuff that I liked quite a bit, but I also knew the story would survive without it, no matter how much fun it would have been. Sure enough, once the deletions had been made, no one would've known they were in there at all, except me, and the story just moves along at a much faster pace.
It's situations like this--and, far more notably, George Lucas--that really make me question whether having total creative control really IS such a good idea, to the point that when people are telling you something is extremely problematic, you can still ignore them and go on to create an ungainly, bloated thing... that has your fingreprints all over it.
I know it's extremely hard to judge when you think something is essential to the story, and when it's simply an emotional attachment to a piece of story you've crafted, but increasingly I'm coming more and more under the viewpoint that you really HAVE to have other viewpoints (obviously with sensibilities you respect) take a look at your work and honestly tell you what is working and what isn't. It does no good to a storyteller to praise every single thing, and it does even less good to say something stinks with no explanation or possible solutions.
I guess it's just that delicate question, "Can you make the distinction between your sense of story and your ego?"
I don't think George Lucas can anymore. I think I'll try really hard to maintain it. So far I've been pretty good with criticism--both good and bad--of my novels, and I've made changes when the reasoning seemed sincere and compelling. Of course there have also been times when I've ignored advice, but then you have to do that as well, I think. In the same way that you can't ignore every criticism levelled at your work, you can't incorporate every single suggestion or criticism either.
I finally got around to watching King Kong last week, so this is a belated review. It only just occurred to me that I hadn't talked about it.
It seemed to me that The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe and King Kong suffer from opposite problems. Narnia was too rushed at the expense of moving from action scene to the next, not giving much time to develop characters in the last half of the film, whereas Kong spent entirely too much time on both characterization and action sequences, and honestly could have had anywhere from 45 minutes to a full hour cut out without really doing the picture much harm.
I enjoyed the movie immensely. I thought it was incredibly fun, moving and watchable and I didn't see anything particularly bad about any of the film's content. However I did question how much of it was entirely necessary. I sort of got the feeling that Peter Jackson must've had the same dilemma most writers have when a novel is finished, that being you put so much into it and then it comes time for the painful pruning. But in this case, he just didn't have the heart--and the studio didn't have the desire--to cut any of his hard work out.
I can understand that impulse, although I don't think it's always a good idea to follow it. For the last novel I wrote, The Pale Summer I had to do a major hatchet job to get the thing to approach 100, 000 words, and I threw out a lot of stuff that I liked quite a bit, but I also knew the story would survive without it, no matter how much fun it would have been. Sure enough, once the deletions had been made, no one would've known they were in there at all, except me, and the story just moves along at a much faster pace.
It's situations like this--and, far more notably, George Lucas--that really make me question whether having total creative control really IS such a good idea, to the point that when people are telling you something is extremely problematic, you can still ignore them and go on to create an ungainly, bloated thing... that has your fingreprints all over it.
I know it's extremely hard to judge when you think something is essential to the story, and when it's simply an emotional attachment to a piece of story you've crafted, but increasingly I'm coming more and more under the viewpoint that you really HAVE to have other viewpoints (obviously with sensibilities you respect) take a look at your work and honestly tell you what is working and what isn't. It does no good to a storyteller to praise every single thing, and it does even less good to say something stinks with no explanation or possible solutions.
I guess it's just that delicate question, "Can you make the distinction between your sense of story and your ego?"
I don't think George Lucas can anymore. I think I'll try really hard to maintain it. So far I've been pretty good with criticism--both good and bad--of my novels, and I've made changes when the reasoning seemed sincere and compelling. Of course there have also been times when I've ignored advice, but then you have to do that as well, I think. In the same way that you can't ignore every criticism levelled at your work, you can't incorporate every single suggestion or criticism either.
Saturday, January 14, 2006
Another Slow Weekend
Not doing much today except for a little bit of shopping the acquisition of another chiropractic style pillow (hereafter referred to as "The Brick.") and messing around with Guitar Hero. I have now entered into the Expert Mode and it is bringing me to my knees in ways that would make Baby Jesus cry with its satanic guitar solos. Once again, Ozzy Osbourne proves that he is indeed in league with the devil, because Bark At The Moon as a guitar piece--not to mention Pantera's Cowboys From Hell--are positively unholy.
With the force of a million suns, Guitar Hero also manages to suck the Wife into its Geek Gravity Well, and now she too is rockin' hard. The game cannot be resisted, it's almost frightening how fun it is.
In other news I went looking for James Frey's A Million Little Pieces out of idle curiosity and the Wife had to remind me that I was in the wrong section, because I went straight to fiction.
Not doing much today except for a little bit of shopping the acquisition of another chiropractic style pillow (hereafter referred to as "The Brick.") and messing around with Guitar Hero. I have now entered into the Expert Mode and it is bringing me to my knees in ways that would make Baby Jesus cry with its satanic guitar solos. Once again, Ozzy Osbourne proves that he is indeed in league with the devil, because Bark At The Moon as a guitar piece--not to mention Pantera's Cowboys From Hell--are positively unholy.
With the force of a million suns, Guitar Hero also manages to suck the Wife into its Geek Gravity Well, and now she too is rockin' hard. The game cannot be resisted, it's almost frightening how fun it is.
In other news I went looking for James Frey's A Million Little Pieces out of idle curiosity and the Wife had to remind me that I was in the wrong section, because I went straight to fiction.
Labels: Games, Guitar Hero
Thursday, January 12, 2006
I Am Almost Inspired
I admit it. I'm now officially a James Frey junkie.
I check the net every half hour or so to see if there are any new developments because for some reason, I am intensely interested in the outcome of this situation. I suppose part of its because this falls within my sphere of interest. It is news, dramatic, discussion worthy, highly debateable and yes, exciting news about a writer.
A writer who has lied.
Of course, it was Neil-O himself who once wrote, "Writers are liars, my dear. Surely you have realized that by now" in Calliope and here is that concept coming out once more. But this time, there seems to be greater consequences. Because there is so much money, and, more importantly to Oprah Winfrey, so much reputation at stake, drastic measures are being taken that are doing things that no literature professor or writer could ever do single-handedly and usually takes a few generations to really take hold.
Oprah Winfrey is redefining how we define literature.
It is kind of stunning to me now to hear phrases like "It's a new kind of memoir," and "The important thing, the thing that REALLY matters in a memoir, is the EMOTIONAL TRUTH, not the historical truth."
Everyone is passing the buck here. Oprah has said that she relies on the publishers to ascertain the authenticity of the non-fiction they receive, so she's washed her hands of the entire affair. Doubleday, the publishers have said that they accept the manuscript as is, giving responsibility to the author and assuming in good faith that it was written as recollected by the author. And James Frey himself is saying the Emotional Truth is what is the most important thing here.
It would seem that slowly, ever so slowly, the mentality of reality television where things are carefully prepared and then staged as truth is beginning to take hold in literature as well.
The thing that really knocks me on the head is that I should be agreeing with this stuff. I am, after all, an aspiring novelist. I've already written three very weighty books with not an ounce of historical fact to them, but plenty of what I think are emotional truths, so I definitely believe in the importance of something feeling right. Of something feeling like truth even if it didn't actually happen.
What I find myself in violent disagreement with is the ability to create an emotional truth and then go on to incorporate that emotional truth into your own personal history, deliberately altering your own life and then positing that that this more dramatic, more emotional truth you have manufactured actually was your life, and is what people should accept, rather than what really happened.
It's kind of like saying to all the middle class white kids who desperately want to be black, "Go on, tell people you killed someone and that you've been in jail for drive by shootings and drug trafficking, if that FEELS true to you, then it's MORE true than something as boring as What Really Happened."
I'm getting so full of thoughts about this whole situation that it is sorely tempting to me to just sit down and try to tell a story (Fiction, course, I want to be honest here) about truth, and how people twist it or reject when it proves to be inconvenient. It seems to be a side-effect of the abundance of information that rather than making it easier to find the truth, more information has hidden the truth.
Or, speaking metaphorically, truth is just one kind of plant in a forest of information, and we're now wandering in California redwood territory, when truth just happens to be a beat up little pine tree like the Christmas tree on Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown.
I'm wondering why, if it's the emotional truth that counts, Frey didn't just stick to his original presentation of the novel as fiction. I'm wondering why, as fiction it was rejected 17 times, and I'm wondering why, when it was finally accepted it was at the suggestion of the editor that it be changed from fiction to a "memoir."
Why, if everyone is going on and on about how it's the emotional truth that counts, is it still being pushed as a memoir? Why can't it simply be a beautiful lie, like great fiction? Henry Miller, who is--unsurprisingly--a huge influence on James Frey, wrote The Tropic Of Cancer by combining elements of his own life with his imaginings, his thoughts, his opinions and his wishes. It was a hodge podge of reality, idea and emotion.
And it was marketed as fiction.
If Frey admired Miller so much for his integrity, his absolute refusal to compromise on anything, including his writing, then how could he have allowed himself to do what Miller would probably find to be the literary equivalent of blasphemy? How could he have done the one thing his idol would loathe?
He finally broke after 17 rejections. I'm going to tell myself the same won't happen to me. But I have learned one important thing. If I want to get away with writing something really, stupendously outlandish, the kind of thing that defies all common sense, I should write it for the non-fiction crowd. Apparently fiction fans have a much sharper sense of believability than they do...
I admit it. I'm now officially a James Frey junkie.
I check the net every half hour or so to see if there are any new developments because for some reason, I am intensely interested in the outcome of this situation. I suppose part of its because this falls within my sphere of interest. It is news, dramatic, discussion worthy, highly debateable and yes, exciting news about a writer.
A writer who has lied.
Of course, it was Neil-O himself who once wrote, "Writers are liars, my dear. Surely you have realized that by now" in Calliope and here is that concept coming out once more. But this time, there seems to be greater consequences. Because there is so much money, and, more importantly to Oprah Winfrey, so much reputation at stake, drastic measures are being taken that are doing things that no literature professor or writer could ever do single-handedly and usually takes a few generations to really take hold.
Oprah Winfrey is redefining how we define literature.
It is kind of stunning to me now to hear phrases like "It's a new kind of memoir," and "The important thing, the thing that REALLY matters in a memoir, is the EMOTIONAL TRUTH, not the historical truth."
Everyone is passing the buck here. Oprah has said that she relies on the publishers to ascertain the authenticity of the non-fiction they receive, so she's washed her hands of the entire affair. Doubleday, the publishers have said that they accept the manuscript as is, giving responsibility to the author and assuming in good faith that it was written as recollected by the author. And James Frey himself is saying the Emotional Truth is what is the most important thing here.
It would seem that slowly, ever so slowly, the mentality of reality television where things are carefully prepared and then staged as truth is beginning to take hold in literature as well.
The thing that really knocks me on the head is that I should be agreeing with this stuff. I am, after all, an aspiring novelist. I've already written three very weighty books with not an ounce of historical fact to them, but plenty of what I think are emotional truths, so I definitely believe in the importance of something feeling right. Of something feeling like truth even if it didn't actually happen.
What I find myself in violent disagreement with is the ability to create an emotional truth and then go on to incorporate that emotional truth into your own personal history, deliberately altering your own life and then positing that that this more dramatic, more emotional truth you have manufactured actually was your life, and is what people should accept, rather than what really happened.
It's kind of like saying to all the middle class white kids who desperately want to be black, "Go on, tell people you killed someone and that you've been in jail for drive by shootings and drug trafficking, if that FEELS true to you, then it's MORE true than something as boring as What Really Happened."
I'm getting so full of thoughts about this whole situation that it is sorely tempting to me to just sit down and try to tell a story (Fiction, course, I want to be honest here) about truth, and how people twist it or reject when it proves to be inconvenient. It seems to be a side-effect of the abundance of information that rather than making it easier to find the truth, more information has hidden the truth.
Or, speaking metaphorically, truth is just one kind of plant in a forest of information, and we're now wandering in California redwood territory, when truth just happens to be a beat up little pine tree like the Christmas tree on Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown.
I'm wondering why, if it's the emotional truth that counts, Frey didn't just stick to his original presentation of the novel as fiction. I'm wondering why, as fiction it was rejected 17 times, and I'm wondering why, when it was finally accepted it was at the suggestion of the editor that it be changed from fiction to a "memoir."
Why, if everyone is going on and on about how it's the emotional truth that counts, is it still being pushed as a memoir? Why can't it simply be a beautiful lie, like great fiction? Henry Miller, who is--unsurprisingly--a huge influence on James Frey, wrote The Tropic Of Cancer by combining elements of his own life with his imaginings, his thoughts, his opinions and his wishes. It was a hodge podge of reality, idea and emotion.
And it was marketed as fiction.
If Frey admired Miller so much for his integrity, his absolute refusal to compromise on anything, including his writing, then how could he have allowed himself to do what Miller would probably find to be the literary equivalent of blasphemy? How could he have done the one thing his idol would loathe?
He finally broke after 17 rejections. I'm going to tell myself the same won't happen to me. But I have learned one important thing. If I want to get away with writing something really, stupendously outlandish, the kind of thing that defies all common sense, I should write it for the non-fiction crowd. Apparently fiction fans have a much sharper sense of believability than they do...
My New Author's Bio
In the wake of just how amazingly effective James Frey has been, I've been tinkering around with the idea of "revising" my personal history to make it more marketable. This is my new author's bio:
Wayne Santos has been addicted to crack since he was in the womb. Unpopular, bullied and tormented by everyone from the doctor that delivered him to the furniture in the house, he grew up surly, misunderstood and was already breaking the law bank robbing and assassinating South American dictators by the age of three. He has consistently broken the law and defied the police, being an outlaw wanted in 54 states of America for the consumption of drugs (All of them. Simultaneously). The most traumatic time of his young life was when a girl he barely knew that he thought of as his best friend died in a horrible train accident when he knocked her and her boyfriend out, drove the car in front of train tracks, locked them in, and stood by as they screamed and he wrung his hands saying, "You were my only friend! I need the trauma in life, it makes me more tragic and likeable!" and she died, in a senseless accident that forever traumatized him and, curiously enough, made him more tragic and likeable with a justifiable chip on his shoulder to explain what came next.
He had his turning point when he was sent to rehab, courtesy of his immensely rich parents who supported his drug and revolutionary habits without question. While in rehab he also made friends with a gangster, a judge, a CEO of a multionational corporation specializing in operating systems for computers, a president of a country obssessed with invading Iraq, and Bigfoot, aka Sasquatch. He also met six former prostitutes who were there for drug addiction. They all continued to maintain a relationship wtih him but were extremely dependent on him and he spent an hour each day talking to them for ten minutes each on the phone when they got out ahead of him.
He later ended up serving 40 years in jail for running over a cop 12 times then beating up the corpse and setting fire to the house the cop's family lived in. In jail he also befriended a 14 ton gorilla serving hard time for defacement of public property (He climbed the Empire State Building, wrecked an antenna, broke a few planes and hurled ape shit at pedestrians below) nicknamed "Kong" and spent many minutes reading "Curious George" stories to his cellmate. It had to be minutes since the 40 year sentence was reduced to 12 minutes thanks to intervention from the gangster, CEO and president who intervened on his behalf. Unfortunately, just 12 minutes before he was going to be released, the six girlfriends (All of whom he was deeply in love with) simultaneously committed suicide by hanging, jumping off the Grand Canyon, being fired out of a cannon and reading fictional memoirs purported to be the truth resulting in brain hemorraging.
He also, strictly for fun, 'cause that's just the kind of HARD AS NAILS GUY HE IS, performed a root canal ON HIMSELF WITH NO ANASTHESIA WHATSOEVER, using a pogo stick, a magnesium flare for lighting, and setting his own foot on fire to increase the pain while using said flaming foot to kick several cops, all the while calling them pigs as he does his own dental work.
Every word in his books is true and happened to him exactly the way it was written, especially the part where he gets a bunch of Ayn Rand disciples drunk and has them singing Do You Believe In Magic? And if you don't believe him, he'll go on Oprah and say so, so there.
In the wake of just how amazingly effective James Frey has been, I've been tinkering around with the idea of "revising" my personal history to make it more marketable. This is my new author's bio:
Wayne Santos has been addicted to crack since he was in the womb. Unpopular, bullied and tormented by everyone from the doctor that delivered him to the furniture in the house, he grew up surly, misunderstood and was already breaking the law bank robbing and assassinating South American dictators by the age of three. He has consistently broken the law and defied the police, being an outlaw wanted in 54 states of America for the consumption of drugs (All of them. Simultaneously). The most traumatic time of his young life was when a girl he barely knew that he thought of as his best friend died in a horrible train accident when he knocked her and her boyfriend out, drove the car in front of train tracks, locked them in, and stood by as they screamed and he wrung his hands saying, "You were my only friend! I need the trauma in life, it makes me more tragic and likeable!" and she died, in a senseless accident that forever traumatized him and, curiously enough, made him more tragic and likeable with a justifiable chip on his shoulder to explain what came next.
He had his turning point when he was sent to rehab, courtesy of his immensely rich parents who supported his drug and revolutionary habits without question. While in rehab he also made friends with a gangster, a judge, a CEO of a multionational corporation specializing in operating systems for computers, a president of a country obssessed with invading Iraq, and Bigfoot, aka Sasquatch. He also met six former prostitutes who were there for drug addiction. They all continued to maintain a relationship wtih him but were extremely dependent on him and he spent an hour each day talking to them for ten minutes each on the phone when they got out ahead of him.
He later ended up serving 40 years in jail for running over a cop 12 times then beating up the corpse and setting fire to the house the cop's family lived in. In jail he also befriended a 14 ton gorilla serving hard time for defacement of public property (He climbed the Empire State Building, wrecked an antenna, broke a few planes and hurled ape shit at pedestrians below) nicknamed "Kong" and spent many minutes reading "Curious George" stories to his cellmate. It had to be minutes since the 40 year sentence was reduced to 12 minutes thanks to intervention from the gangster, CEO and president who intervened on his behalf. Unfortunately, just 12 minutes before he was going to be released, the six girlfriends (All of whom he was deeply in love with) simultaneously committed suicide by hanging, jumping off the Grand Canyon, being fired out of a cannon and reading fictional memoirs purported to be the truth resulting in brain hemorraging.
He also, strictly for fun, 'cause that's just the kind of HARD AS NAILS GUY HE IS, performed a root canal ON HIMSELF WITH NO ANASTHESIA WHATSOEVER, using a pogo stick, a magnesium flare for lighting, and setting his own foot on fire to increase the pain while using said flaming foot to kick several cops, all the while calling them pigs as he does his own dental work.
Every word in his books is true and happened to him exactly the way it was written, especially the part where he gets a bunch of Ayn Rand disciples drunk and has them singing Do You Believe In Magic? And if you don't believe him, he'll go on Oprah and say so, so there.
Labels: Random Blargh, Writing
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Thank You James Frey. I Now Know My Error.
Shows you how much out of the loop I've been.
I don't pay much attention to the New York Times bestsellers list outside of my favored genres (ie, Science Fiction, Horror, Fantasy and the medium--'cause it's NOT a genre--of comic books) and so it is only recently, like, today, in fact, that I stumble upon the story of James Frey.
For those of you who are as clueless as I was several hours ago, here's the deal.
In 2003, James Frey, a writer who had unsuccessfully tried to sell a novel about drug addiction and had experienced 17 rejections, finally managed to get his first book published when he realized that the power of his story should not be disguised as fiction, and should instead, be worn as a naked, courageous, badge of honesty, openly admitting that the events in the story actually happened to James Frey and were not the imaginings of a writer with no sense of grammar.
And so the book rose to the charts and hit a critical point of nuclear fission when Oprah Winfrey championed book and all the Oprah-lites who follow her word religiously--except of course for the French who, bastards they are, won't let her shop in their store--adopted the book and it became one of the best selling books in America. It was hailed as the War & Peace of addiction and one of the most audacious and compelling true stories ever produced in recent American literature.
Except, it turns out, that it's actually fiction after all. A website known as The Smoking Gun has done extensive research into the veracity--or distinct lack thereof--behind this best selling autobiographical memoir and it paints a rather startling picture of a writer who just wanted to get published so badly that he was willing to do anything--up to and including lying about the nature of his work--in order to get it published.
So the furious, angry, pariah like outcast of rich parents that hit the bottom of the pit and courageously crawled out defying police, losing loved ones to suicide and spending time in jail...
Ends up actually being a rich Frat-Boy who has a few misdemeanors for drunk driving, and is described by police as "very polite and cooperative."
Now I realize what I've been doing wrong all this time. I'm going to write to my agent and I'm going to tell him to stop hitting up all these SF/Fantasy publishers and instead go to someone like Oprah and tell them, "Hey, this tale of sorrow and tragedy is my true story!"
Of course, then I'll have to figure out how to explain my ability to change genders, not see ghosts any more, jump 30 feet into the air and shoot lasers outta' my eyes, but heck, if James Frey can write about having a root canal done without novocaine and have people believe him, how hard could it be for them to believe that at some point I was a half Thai, half English chick that could see ghosts and shoot green beams out of my extremeties?
Shows you how much out of the loop I've been.
I don't pay much attention to the New York Times bestsellers list outside of my favored genres (ie, Science Fiction, Horror, Fantasy and the medium--'cause it's NOT a genre--of comic books) and so it is only recently, like, today, in fact, that I stumble upon the story of James Frey.
For those of you who are as clueless as I was several hours ago, here's the deal.
In 2003, James Frey, a writer who had unsuccessfully tried to sell a novel about drug addiction and had experienced 17 rejections, finally managed to get his first book published when he realized that the power of his story should not be disguised as fiction, and should instead, be worn as a naked, courageous, badge of honesty, openly admitting that the events in the story actually happened to James Frey and were not the imaginings of a writer with no sense of grammar.
And so the book rose to the charts and hit a critical point of nuclear fission when Oprah Winfrey championed book and all the Oprah-lites who follow her word religiously--except of course for the French who, bastards they are, won't let her shop in their store--adopted the book and it became one of the best selling books in America. It was hailed as the War & Peace of addiction and one of the most audacious and compelling true stories ever produced in recent American literature.
Except, it turns out, that it's actually fiction after all. A website known as The Smoking Gun has done extensive research into the veracity--or distinct lack thereof--behind this best selling autobiographical memoir and it paints a rather startling picture of a writer who just wanted to get published so badly that he was willing to do anything--up to and including lying about the nature of his work--in order to get it published.
So the furious, angry, pariah like outcast of rich parents that hit the bottom of the pit and courageously crawled out defying police, losing loved ones to suicide and spending time in jail...
Ends up actually being a rich Frat-Boy who has a few misdemeanors for drunk driving, and is described by police as "very polite and cooperative."
Now I realize what I've been doing wrong all this time. I'm going to write to my agent and I'm going to tell him to stop hitting up all these SF/Fantasy publishers and instead go to someone like Oprah and tell them, "Hey, this tale of sorrow and tragedy is my true story!"
Of course, then I'll have to figure out how to explain my ability to change genders, not see ghosts any more, jump 30 feet into the air and shoot lasers outta' my eyes, but heck, if James Frey can write about having a root canal done without novocaine and have people believe him, how hard could it be for them to believe that at some point I was a half Thai, half English chick that could see ghosts and shoot green beams out of my extremeties?
It's Away
Or very nearly
The writing of an alternate submission piece (Since I didn't have a Neverwinter Nights editor lying around) went by remarkably quickly, and was actually kind of an interesting and fun exercise, since it gave me the chance to hint at a much bigger story, though I have no clue exactly what that story is. So I've updated my resume, the Wife has gone over the sample for typos that I usually miss, and I've printed and filled out their product submission form, which more or less makes it impossible to sue them if you mention an Elf in your sample and a game comes along a year later with an Elf in it.
Once the submission has been e-mailed, I'll have to fax off that product submission form as well, since they want that dated and signed. But it got me to thinking, and it reminded me of an article put out not too recently by GameAxis itself, in which a professional game writer was interviewed. I'm including a link here because the website has a tendency to push down the more "professional/academic" side of things way at the bottom where it's easy to miss.
One of the things I'm interested in is the relationship between writers and the development industry. I think there's a horrible amount of interference on both sides, though I also think that this is slowly changing. For the longest time, because games were regarded as "toys" even by the developers themselves, the use of a professional writer was a novelty at best, a complete redundancy at worst. Thankfully, this has been undergoing a major revision in perception as the the sophistication of both the games and the gamers increases, and now characterization, plotting, pacing and plausibility are all just as important considerations in interactive entertainment as in the non-interactive versions. Perhaps moreso since developers want to keep players "sucked in" and cookie cutter characters and story can demolish an immersive virtual experience in a heartbeat, no matter how good the textures look.
On the other side of things, I think writers though, have to understand that writing for games--while new--is not "slumming it." In the same way that many writers, particularly the "literary" types and more "serious" writers didn't take comic books seriously until the aftermath of Miller, Moore and Gaiman, thinking that any moron could write a comic book, so too do games still suffer from this same stigma. A lot of writers tend to not take the craft seriously when it comes to games, somehow feeling that the audience is less sophisticated and not ready--or willing--to be exposed to "the good stuff." Nothing could be further from the truth. However, the problem lies in the approach to writing for games, and in the application of technology.
When you write for a game, you cannot think of it as a script, or novel. This isn't a set, fixed entity that is finished once the last word is typed in. It is like going into a debate, or conversation, or an argument. You have a vague idea of what it is the opponent (Or player) is going to say or do, and you must be prepared to respond appropriately, though not in a fixed order. There is a flexibility to conversations and argument, where the content is identical, it is simply the order and method of presentation that can vary from person and the same is true for writing and narrative in games.
In other words, a good game is like a good conversation. It carries the illusion of flow, of moving to a destination that is under the control of the speakers, although discovery is still possible within the confines of the exchange.
Or at least, that's what I think, anyway...
Oh well, it's all a moot point. Seriously, the odds of getting a response on this application are astonishingly low, and I'm still not entirely sure I'm that crazy about a job that will take me back to Edmonton, though it's not really going to be a concern. But at the very least, if anyone now asks me why I never tried for a job like this, I can now honestly say, "I tried, they just turned me down."
So I can now scratch this off my list.
Or very nearly
The writing of an alternate submission piece (Since I didn't have a Neverwinter Nights editor lying around) went by remarkably quickly, and was actually kind of an interesting and fun exercise, since it gave me the chance to hint at a much bigger story, though I have no clue exactly what that story is. So I've updated my resume, the Wife has gone over the sample for typos that I usually miss, and I've printed and filled out their product submission form, which more or less makes it impossible to sue them if you mention an Elf in your sample and a game comes along a year later with an Elf in it.
Once the submission has been e-mailed, I'll have to fax off that product submission form as well, since they want that dated and signed. But it got me to thinking, and it reminded me of an article put out not too recently by GameAxis itself, in which a professional game writer was interviewed. I'm including a link here because the website has a tendency to push down the more "professional/academic" side of things way at the bottom where it's easy to miss.
One of the things I'm interested in is the relationship between writers and the development industry. I think there's a horrible amount of interference on both sides, though I also think that this is slowly changing. For the longest time, because games were regarded as "toys" even by the developers themselves, the use of a professional writer was a novelty at best, a complete redundancy at worst. Thankfully, this has been undergoing a major revision in perception as the the sophistication of both the games and the gamers increases, and now characterization, plotting, pacing and plausibility are all just as important considerations in interactive entertainment as in the non-interactive versions. Perhaps moreso since developers want to keep players "sucked in" and cookie cutter characters and story can demolish an immersive virtual experience in a heartbeat, no matter how good the textures look.
On the other side of things, I think writers though, have to understand that writing for games--while new--is not "slumming it." In the same way that many writers, particularly the "literary" types and more "serious" writers didn't take comic books seriously until the aftermath of Miller, Moore and Gaiman, thinking that any moron could write a comic book, so too do games still suffer from this same stigma. A lot of writers tend to not take the craft seriously when it comes to games, somehow feeling that the audience is less sophisticated and not ready--or willing--to be exposed to "the good stuff." Nothing could be further from the truth. However, the problem lies in the approach to writing for games, and in the application of technology.
When you write for a game, you cannot think of it as a script, or novel. This isn't a set, fixed entity that is finished once the last word is typed in. It is like going into a debate, or conversation, or an argument. You have a vague idea of what it is the opponent (Or player) is going to say or do, and you must be prepared to respond appropriately, though not in a fixed order. There is a flexibility to conversations and argument, where the content is identical, it is simply the order and method of presentation that can vary from person and the same is true for writing and narrative in games.
In other words, a good game is like a good conversation. It carries the illusion of flow, of moving to a destination that is under the control of the speakers, although discovery is still possible within the confines of the exchange.
Or at least, that's what I think, anyway...
Oh well, it's all a moot point. Seriously, the odds of getting a response on this application are astonishingly low, and I'm still not entirely sure I'm that crazy about a job that will take me back to Edmonton, though it's not really going to be a concern. But at the very least, if anyone now asks me why I never tried for a job like this, I can now honestly say, "I tried, they just turned me down."
So I can now scratch this off my list.
Labels: Gaming Industry, My Life, Writing
Monday, January 09, 2006
Oh The Irony...
So it turns out that at the moment, Bioware is hiring again.
For those of you that don't know, Bioware is a video game developer. They specialize mostly in role playing games that either run directly off of, or are heavily inspired by, the table-top, pen/paper/dice role playing game known as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, or AD & D, for short. In recent years, they've been recognized for cranking out such RPGs as Planescape Torment (Which was excellent for it's time, by the way) and, much more recently, the Knights of the Old Republic series. They're looking for a writer, particulary one that is good with dialogue.
I'm kind of torn about this whole thing, because despite the fact that most people would say this is Destiny and I am supposed to have this job, the part that really kills me is where Bioware is located.
It's in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. My hometown.
So it strikes me as perverse that on the off chance I were to apply for this job and actually get it, it would actually mean going back to my old city, rather than breaking off for parts unknown like Vancouver as is currently the plan. Still, the job itself would be a ton of fun, and while I have no desire to produce games, I sure wouldn't mind working on one.
Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Time to finish my writing sample...
So it turns out that at the moment, Bioware is hiring again.
For those of you that don't know, Bioware is a video game developer. They specialize mostly in role playing games that either run directly off of, or are heavily inspired by, the table-top, pen/paper/dice role playing game known as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, or AD & D, for short. In recent years, they've been recognized for cranking out such RPGs as Planescape Torment (Which was excellent for it's time, by the way) and, much more recently, the Knights of the Old Republic series. They're looking for a writer, particulary one that is good with dialogue.
I'm kind of torn about this whole thing, because despite the fact that most people would say this is Destiny and I am supposed to have this job, the part that really kills me is where Bioware is located.
It's in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. My hometown.
So it strikes me as perverse that on the off chance I were to apply for this job and actually get it, it would actually mean going back to my old city, rather than breaking off for parts unknown like Vancouver as is currently the plan. Still, the job itself would be a ton of fun, and while I have no desire to produce games, I sure wouldn't mind working on one.
Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Time to finish my writing sample...
Labels: Gaming Industry, My Life
Sunday, January 08, 2006
Saturday, January 07, 2006
For All You People Planning To Migrate
Going over the forms to apply for the Wife's Permanent Residency in Canada (She has to go through this step first, and if she holds onto it without getting arrested for three years, then she can get citizenship) it sort of becomes frighteningly clear that if you plan on becoming a permanent resident by way of marriage, then there's a lot of planning involved at the earliest stages. The questions they ask are pretty detailed, and they want to know an awful lot of things to confirm that you're not just doing this in order to help get someone into the country.
So, for the sake of those of you who are thinking of bringing someone into the country by way of marriage, here's a little hypothetical playlet to let you in on how you can avoid the many documentation foibles the Wife and I now find outselves facing.
Scene: A Canadian citizen is being introduced to a foreign girl by way of a friend of his.
Friend: Canadian, meet girl. Girl, Canadian.
Canadian: Hi, I'm a Canadian citizen!
Girl: Hi, I'm not!
Canadian: Hey, friend, did you happen to bring a camera with you?
Friend: Uh... Yeah, why?
Canadian: Can you time stamp it?
Friend: Yeah.
[Canadian puts his arm around girl]
Canadian: Snap one.
[Friend does it]
Canadian: Great, now we have photographic proof with a date of the first time we met. Is there a major landmark in shot to confirm the location?
Girl: What's this all about?
Canadian: Do you think you can confirm a time with your parent for when we can meet?
Girl: What?
Canadian: Yeah, but make sure it's a restaurant where they give clearly legible receipts so we can confirm it. Also some references, hey friend.
Friend: Huh?
Canadian: Are you going to be staying at your current address and phone number for a while?
Friend: Why?
Canadian: I need to put you down as the person that introduced us when I put in her application for citizenship. They need proof that I didn't do it over the internet or that someone is paying me to marry her.
Girl: HEY, WHO SAID ANYTHING ABOUT MARRYING YOU?!?
Canadian: Oh, and for the honeymoon, let's go to a hotel, preferably one with video surveillance, so they can catch us on their security cams. That's easier to confirm.
Girl: What makes you think we're getting married?!?
Canadian: Well, I'm not entirely sure either, but I need to start gathering the documentation now, it's pretty thorough. Do you have any birthmarks I should know about?
Girl: Your friend is a jerk! I'm leaving.
[She does it]
Canadian: I don't understand why I can't meet anyone nice...
Going over the forms to apply for the Wife's Permanent Residency in Canada (She has to go through this step first, and if she holds onto it without getting arrested for three years, then she can get citizenship) it sort of becomes frighteningly clear that if you plan on becoming a permanent resident by way of marriage, then there's a lot of planning involved at the earliest stages. The questions they ask are pretty detailed, and they want to know an awful lot of things to confirm that you're not just doing this in order to help get someone into the country.
So, for the sake of those of you who are thinking of bringing someone into the country by way of marriage, here's a little hypothetical playlet to let you in on how you can avoid the many documentation foibles the Wife and I now find outselves facing.
Scene: A Canadian citizen is being introduced to a foreign girl by way of a friend of his.
Friend: Canadian, meet girl. Girl, Canadian.
Canadian: Hi, I'm a Canadian citizen!
Girl: Hi, I'm not!
Canadian: Hey, friend, did you happen to bring a camera with you?
Friend: Uh... Yeah, why?
Canadian: Can you time stamp it?
Friend: Yeah.
[Canadian puts his arm around girl]
Canadian: Snap one.
[Friend does it]
Canadian: Great, now we have photographic proof with a date of the first time we met. Is there a major landmark in shot to confirm the location?
Girl: What's this all about?
Canadian: Do you think you can confirm a time with your parent for when we can meet?
Girl: What?
Canadian: Yeah, but make sure it's a restaurant where they give clearly legible receipts so we can confirm it. Also some references, hey friend.
Friend: Huh?
Canadian: Are you going to be staying at your current address and phone number for a while?
Friend: Why?
Canadian: I need to put you down as the person that introduced us when I put in her application for citizenship. They need proof that I didn't do it over the internet or that someone is paying me to marry her.
Girl: HEY, WHO SAID ANYTHING ABOUT MARRYING YOU?!?
Canadian: Oh, and for the honeymoon, let's go to a hotel, preferably one with video surveillance, so they can catch us on their security cams. That's easier to confirm.
Girl: What makes you think we're getting married?!?
Canadian: Well, I'm not entirely sure either, but I need to start gathering the documentation now, it's pretty thorough. Do you have any birthmarks I should know about?
Girl: Your friend is a jerk! I'm leaving.
[She does it]
Canadian: I don't understand why I can't meet anyone nice...
Labels: My Life, Stupid Scripts
Friday, January 06, 2006
It's Half Entertainment, Half Table
So of course, they had to go and call it the Entertaible.
Witness the geeky glory in action right here...
It's essentially a touch screen, so Phillips is planning to market it as a sort of universal game board that will presumably display all the classics like Monopoly or Game of Life and combine it with the interactive elements already displayed by neat little gadgets like the Nintendo Dual Screen.
I have no idea if this will catch on, considering the cost, but it does seem like a convenient idea to do away with all those boxes junking up your closet simply keep one of these around for those rare occasions when playing a console just doesn't cut it...
So of course, they had to go and call it the Entertaible.
Witness the geeky glory in action right here...
It's essentially a touch screen, so Phillips is planning to market it as a sort of universal game board that will presumably display all the classics like Monopoly or Game of Life and combine it with the interactive elements already displayed by neat little gadgets like the Nintendo Dual Screen.
I have no idea if this will catch on, considering the cost, but it does seem like a convenient idea to do away with all those boxes junking up your closet simply keep one of these around for those rare occasions when playing a console just doesn't cut it...
Labels: Neat-O Gadgetry
Thursday, January 05, 2006
Legend In My Own Mind
Thanks to the evil that is Guitar Hero, I now feel totally ROCKIN'.
It has also had the unfortunate side effect of giving me a new appreciation for bands I had previously had no taste for whatsoever due to their excessive volume, or simple abundance of cheese. However, God help me, after going through it yourself and playing to a enthusiastic--albeit virtual--audience that is screaming, hollering and whooping you on, I now FEEL THE ROCK when Boston's More Than A Feeling kicks in, and I too want to raise my hands, devil horns proudly swaying the air and nod my head up and down.
I'm also starting to really dig licks in stuff like Bad Religion's Infected and just can't help but go back and again to Ziggy Stardust I guess I'm just a sucker for Bowie.
Y'know, I really should get around to writing that review of the game.
Just one more song...
Thanks to the evil that is Guitar Hero, I now feel totally ROCKIN'.
It has also had the unfortunate side effect of giving me a new appreciation for bands I had previously had no taste for whatsoever due to their excessive volume, or simple abundance of cheese. However, God help me, after going through it yourself and playing to a enthusiastic--albeit virtual--audience that is screaming, hollering and whooping you on, I now FEEL THE ROCK when Boston's More Than A Feeling kicks in, and I too want to raise my hands, devil horns proudly swaying the air and nod my head up and down.
I'm also starting to really dig licks in stuff like Bad Religion's Infected and just can't help but go back and again to Ziggy Stardust I guess I'm just a sucker for Bowie.
Y'know, I really should get around to writing that review of the game.
Just one more song...
Labels: Games, Guitar Hero
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Can't... Resist... DNA... Gotta'... Rock...
It is a belated, and potentially lethal Christmas present.
The Wife had been meaning to get this, but unsurprisingly, stocks were out in Singapore around Christmas shopping season. It's a game. But not just any game. No, this is a game that plays to the cultural stereotypes in south east Asia, and makes me out to be exactly the kind of person that people here expect me to be. This is a game that puts me firmly in my place as artsey Filipino type, the kind that commonly appears in hotels, playing the guitar--usually bass--in some cover band.
This is Guitar Hero.
The game is fun in a way I can't even begin to describe. It is probably my favorite game of 2005, despite the fact that it's the new year, but it still feels like 2005, and anyway, the damn game came out that year. Locals will already be quite familiar with the premise, since arcades in Singapore have a similar game by the Japanese company Konami called Guitar Freaks. In the arcade, it's a big cabinet with a plastic guitar attached--and usually chained up for reinforcement--and the game play is simple. A series of colored bars corresponding to the colored buttons on your guitar fall down the screen. When they hit the bottom, you "strum" by pushing or pulling up/down on a plastic lever to stimulate hitting the strings. It's just a guitar version of Dance Dance Revolution, which most North American gamers will probably be more familiar with.
Here's what you get with Guitar Hero for the PS2:
For the more guitar oriented readers, you'd be correct in thinking, "That looks just like a Gibson." It is indeed a plastic, travel-guitar sized replica of a Gibson SG, the axe of rock gods such as The Who, Cream and AC/DC. You get the guitar, the game itself, a strap and, for the young or young at heart, stickers to adorn your guitar with. Just plug that sucker in, take some time to familiarize yourself with the tutorials (That is, if you haven't been rocking to Guitar Freaks in the arcade the way I have over the last few years) and prepare yourself for the Majesty Of Rock.
And here's where the evil of the game makes itself first known. I think every kid--or at least male kid--has been guilty at some point in their life, of giving into their impulses and doing a little bit of air guitar. This takes it to a whole new level, and strikes an amazing balance between being accessible enough that you won't require Rock God skills to play, but will acquire some Rock God-ish skills on along the way if you want to play on expert mode. When you play it on easy or medium, you get a feel for it, but once you kick it up to hard and expert mode, that's when you'll realize that the level of complexity borders on the real thing. And by God, you WILL feel like you can play a guitar for real once you survive those solos.
The game really lives up to its advertising slogan, which is, "All the thrill and excitement of being a rockstar without ever leaving home!" But more importantly, you will get more an appreciation for the actual skill of playing a guitar. There are only five buttons to fret with here, compared to the 72-132 frets on a real guitar, and once you try something like Higher Ground by Red Hot Chili Peppers, you'll realize exactly how much coordination, practice and discipline it takes to play those tunes so flawlessly. Suddenly, it won't seem like some drug addict with long hair just mindlessly strumming his hand up and down a guitar, you'll see how much craft is involved it getting to rock to sound loud and obnoxious to call the cops and shut down the party.
I'd write more, but I got permission to do the review for GameAxis, so I'd better save the rest for that, put the link here once it's out.
It is a belated, and potentially lethal Christmas present.
The Wife had been meaning to get this, but unsurprisingly, stocks were out in Singapore around Christmas shopping season. It's a game. But not just any game. No, this is a game that plays to the cultural stereotypes in south east Asia, and makes me out to be exactly the kind of person that people here expect me to be. This is a game that puts me firmly in my place as artsey Filipino type, the kind that commonly appears in hotels, playing the guitar--usually bass--in some cover band.
This is Guitar Hero.
The game is fun in a way I can't even begin to describe. It is probably my favorite game of 2005, despite the fact that it's the new year, but it still feels like 2005, and anyway, the damn game came out that year. Locals will already be quite familiar with the premise, since arcades in Singapore have a similar game by the Japanese company Konami called Guitar Freaks. In the arcade, it's a big cabinet with a plastic guitar attached--and usually chained up for reinforcement--and the game play is simple. A series of colored bars corresponding to the colored buttons on your guitar fall down the screen. When they hit the bottom, you "strum" by pushing or pulling up/down on a plastic lever to stimulate hitting the strings. It's just a guitar version of Dance Dance Revolution, which most North American gamers will probably be more familiar with.
Here's what you get with Guitar Hero for the PS2:
For the more guitar oriented readers, you'd be correct in thinking, "That looks just like a Gibson." It is indeed a plastic, travel-guitar sized replica of a Gibson SG, the axe of rock gods such as The Who, Cream and AC/DC. You get the guitar, the game itself, a strap and, for the young or young at heart, stickers to adorn your guitar with. Just plug that sucker in, take some time to familiarize yourself with the tutorials (That is, if you haven't been rocking to Guitar Freaks in the arcade the way I have over the last few years) and prepare yourself for the Majesty Of Rock.
And here's where the evil of the game makes itself first known. I think every kid--or at least male kid--has been guilty at some point in their life, of giving into their impulses and doing a little bit of air guitar. This takes it to a whole new level, and strikes an amazing balance between being accessible enough that you won't require Rock God skills to play, but will acquire some Rock God-ish skills on along the way if you want to play on expert mode. When you play it on easy or medium, you get a feel for it, but once you kick it up to hard and expert mode, that's when you'll realize that the level of complexity borders on the real thing. And by God, you WILL feel like you can play a guitar for real once you survive those solos.
The game really lives up to its advertising slogan, which is, "All the thrill and excitement of being a rockstar without ever leaving home!" But more importantly, you will get more an appreciation for the actual skill of playing a guitar. There are only five buttons to fret with here, compared to the 72-132 frets on a real guitar, and once you try something like Higher Ground by Red Hot Chili Peppers, you'll realize exactly how much coordination, practice and discipline it takes to play those tunes so flawlessly. Suddenly, it won't seem like some drug addict with long hair just mindlessly strumming his hand up and down a guitar, you'll see how much craft is involved it getting to rock to sound loud and obnoxious to call the cops and shut down the party.
I'd write more, but I got permission to do the review for GameAxis, so I'd better save the rest for that, put the link here once it's out.
Labels: Games, Guitar Hero
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
From The WTF Department
I haven't mentioned it yet to my magazine, but I figure this is worth looking into because it's just so out there...
Yep, that's right. Someone went ahead and did it. They made an exercise bike that you can plug into a video game console, forcing you to exercise in order to steer your vehicle around on screen. If you've got a PS2 and thought you could stand to lose a few pounds, here's one way to do it...
From what I can tell, they've already tested it with a few games, mostly racing games of the auto and motorcycle variety, but I can see the thinking behind this contraption, regardless of how loopy that concept is. People will put in the extra effort to do something--especially guys--if you change it from a meaningless repetition of actions to something you do in order to WIN. Sitting around on an exercise bike is one thing, but coming in first place in Gran Turismo or something provides a little bit more motivation.
I have no idea how effective this set up is, but I'm hoping the GameAxis guys will be sufficiently interested enough in this that they'll send someone off to take a look at it and give it a spin. After all, it's a local invention, in the video game industry no less. How often does that happen around here?
I haven't mentioned it yet to my magazine, but I figure this is worth looking into because it's just so out there...
Yep, that's right. Someone went ahead and did it. They made an exercise bike that you can plug into a video game console, forcing you to exercise in order to steer your vehicle around on screen. If you've got a PS2 and thought you could stand to lose a few pounds, here's one way to do it...
From what I can tell, they've already tested it with a few games, mostly racing games of the auto and motorcycle variety, but I can see the thinking behind this contraption, regardless of how loopy that concept is. People will put in the extra effort to do something--especially guys--if you change it from a meaningless repetition of actions to something you do in order to WIN. Sitting around on an exercise bike is one thing, but coming in first place in Gran Turismo or something provides a little bit more motivation.
I have no idea how effective this set up is, but I'm hoping the GameAxis guys will be sufficiently interested enough in this that they'll send someone off to take a look at it and give it a spin. After all, it's a local invention, in the video game industry no less. How often does that happen around here?
Labels: Neat-O Gadgetry
Monday, January 02, 2006
The First Monday Of New Year's
Was spent in the typical fashion of getting various sundries for the fridge, and then spending way too much time in the post apocalyptic world of Digital Devil Saga. Oh, and writing some of the next script that's due on Friday.
Although it still means the clock ticks ever slowly, the geek in me is gratified to see that Kingdom Hearts II has gone platinum in three days in Japan. That is to say, it sold a million copies. Square-Enix is satisfied, but not immensely pleased. Their Final Fantasy series normally goes platinum within a day of release, so 72 hours, while nothing to sneeze at, can be done better by their standards.
Was spent in the typical fashion of getting various sundries for the fridge, and then spending way too much time in the post apocalyptic world of Digital Devil Saga. Oh, and writing some of the next script that's due on Friday.
Although it still means the clock ticks ever slowly, the geek in me is gratified to see that Kingdom Hearts II has gone platinum in three days in Japan. That is to say, it sold a million copies. Square-Enix is satisfied, but not immensely pleased. Their Final Fantasy series normally goes platinum within a day of release, so 72 hours, while nothing to sneeze at, can be done better by their standards.
Labels: Games, Television Production
Sunday, January 01, 2006
The Weekend
In which I totally forgot it was New Year's eve. I thought for some reason that was supposed to be today.
The weekend passed pleasantly enough. Friday night was the first dinner party we had in our new apartment, and the first dinner party we had as a married couple. It was a surreal, very "grown up" experience if only because the other couple there had recently gotten married in November, and except for The Wife, and my friend Eugene's Wife, everyone there had known each other for about five or more years.
I had a weird moment when we were sitting at the table and remembering how the guy sitting at the table across from me used to play all-nighters at his office on various games, and now here we were, preparing dinner, eating it, talking about how their new house is coming along, and callig it quits before midnight, because people wanted or needed to get home. A bit of a contrast to playing Counterstrike until sunrise and then slinking off to the nearest hawker center just in time for breakfast before crawling into bed to sleep in until 4 or 5 pm...
Saturday was movie day yet again. This time it was The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe. Generally I liked it. I think the pace was a little off, with so much emphasis put on the character development at the start, that it left very little screen time for similar development in Narnia once the film shifted over to the enchanted lands. It was a shame, because while they did a wonderful job making sure you could really buy the character's motivations for actions good and bad, the lack of similar screen time for the "Narnian" characters tended to kill--or at least mute, somewhat--the emotional impact of later scenes for them.
Still, aside from a few questionable make-up effects (The cyclops characters looked disappointingly cheap. ESPECIALLY by WETA standards) it was a grand looking movie, and if I were a ten year old, precocious, literate boy with a penchant for fantasy, this movie probably would have been the greatest of my life. I could really see how the director understood the archetypal appeal of what C.S. Lewis had written; the whole mundane-children-are-in-reality-destined-to-be-magical-beings-of-importance-somewhere else plot taps into profoundly universal children's fantasy. It was handled right here, and I expect some kids will probably cite this film as an all time favorite.
In which I totally forgot it was New Year's eve. I thought for some reason that was supposed to be today.
The weekend passed pleasantly enough. Friday night was the first dinner party we had in our new apartment, and the first dinner party we had as a married couple. It was a surreal, very "grown up" experience if only because the other couple there had recently gotten married in November, and except for The Wife, and my friend Eugene's Wife, everyone there had known each other for about five or more years.
I had a weird moment when we were sitting at the table and remembering how the guy sitting at the table across from me used to play all-nighters at his office on various games, and now here we were, preparing dinner, eating it, talking about how their new house is coming along, and callig it quits before midnight, because people wanted or needed to get home. A bit of a contrast to playing Counterstrike until sunrise and then slinking off to the nearest hawker center just in time for breakfast before crawling into bed to sleep in until 4 or 5 pm...
Saturday was movie day yet again. This time it was The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe. Generally I liked it. I think the pace was a little off, with so much emphasis put on the character development at the start, that it left very little screen time for similar development in Narnia once the film shifted over to the enchanted lands. It was a shame, because while they did a wonderful job making sure you could really buy the character's motivations for actions good and bad, the lack of similar screen time for the "Narnian" characters tended to kill--or at least mute, somewhat--the emotional impact of later scenes for them.
Still, aside from a few questionable make-up effects (The cyclops characters looked disappointingly cheap. ESPECIALLY by WETA standards) it was a grand looking movie, and if I were a ten year old, precocious, literate boy with a penchant for fantasy, this movie probably would have been the greatest of my life. I could really see how the director understood the archetypal appeal of what C.S. Lewis had written; the whole mundane-children-are-in-reality-destined-to-be-magical-beings-of-importance-somewhere else plot taps into profoundly universal children's fantasy. It was handled right here, and I expect some kids will probably cite this film as an all time favorite.
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