Monthly Archives: February 2006

Eat Well

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I was all excited at the prospect of Lego Eggo Waffles — how could any sane person not be — but in reality, they’re kind of disappointing. It’s as if they were so proud of coming up with the idea [...]

Toast, Break, and EatI was all excited at the prospect of Lego Eggo Waffles — how could any sane person not be — but in reality, they’re kind of disappointing. It’s as if they were so proud of coming up with the idea (even though pretty much every kid in America came up with the idea years ago) that they didn’t follow through on the execution.

They’re not very construction-worthy. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say they’re not any more suitable for building things than traditional waffles.

I’ll admit that I was hungry, and therefore didn’t really attempt any project more sophisticated than stacking two of them on top of each other and then eating them. So it’s possible that my hunger was distracting me from the educational fun potential of these things. But for now I’ll just voice my disappointment that these are nothing more than waffles with bumps on the top. It’s almost as if it’s nothing more than some cheap marketing gimmick.

I still want to try combining them with my Lego Mindstorms kit to make a Wafflebot, but only after I’ve figured out how to hook up a voice box to it. You can’t have a Wafflebot without its shambling up to people and pleading “Kill… me…”

Speaking of wrath-filled mechanical hybrid monsters, I wrote a review of Yokai Daisenso for SFist yesterday. Short version: it was pretty cool, but not mind-blowing. More of a lightweight comedy than anything else. And just in time, the Obakemono project added an entry for the Azukiarai that featured prominently in the movie.

Guitar Background Character

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I finally broke down and spent my gift certificate on a copy of Guitar Hero. What got me was Matt’s reminding me on here that it contains “More Than a Feeling” (as made famous by Boston), and this video of [...]

You, sir, are my nemesisI finally broke down and spent my gift certificate on a copy of Guitar Hero. What got me was Matt’s reminding me on here that it contains “More Than a Feeling” (as made famous by Boston), and this video of a guy playing on expert.

It really does deserve the hype it’s been getting; it’s awesome. Best things about the game, in order of awesomeness:

  1. They didn’t make it as much a guitar simulator as an air guitar simulator. It’s not about really learning to play guitar, it’s about the rock.
  2. It’s got a tilt sensor, so to enter star power mode you turn the guitar up on end. Rock.
  3. The difficulty progression is really well thought out. I went through the tutorial, played a few of the songs on easy level, and I was getting over 90% on each one. So I figured I could advance up to medium difficulty and all of a sudden it was throwing weird colors and solos and chords at me. I went back to easy and worked my way back up, and it’s a lot more rewarding than failing repeatedly.
  4. They didn’t have to put in a whammy bar, but they did anyway. Rock.
  5. All the covers are really well done; many of them I can’t distinguish from the originals.
  6. Supposedly, they really have hammer-down and pull-off moves, although I have yet to be able to pull one off. Rock?

So far the best I’ve done is 99% accuracy and a 332-note streak on “More Than a Feeling” at medium difficulty. And the thing is: just playing a cover version of it, pressing colored versions on a little plastic guitar, standing in front of a TV in my living room, naked, with little pixelated people clapping along, is so freakin’ awesome, that I can’t imagine how the real guy from Boston, playing the real song on stage in front of hundreds of real people, didn’t just explode from the sheer 70s Rock Majesty of it all.

Speaking of exploding, I saw on iTunes that N Sync did a mostly a cappella Boyz II Men style cover of “More Than a Feeling” on their first “album.” It’s almost Lovecraftian — you know in your rational mind that it’s horrible, but you can’t really understand how horrible it truly is until you experience it for yourself.

At the moment, my most hated song is “Crossroads” by Cream. It’s not just that I can’t play it; it’s that I can’t understand how anyone can play it. And this is on easy difficulty. I’m guessing Clapton had a little bit more practice than I have, or else the big colored buttons make it more difficult. Or the makers of the game have a cruel streak, which is why they didn’t use “Sunshine of Your Love” or “White Room” instead. Also, including “Killer Queen” is a little sadistic, because it’s such a goofy and cheesy song and that just adds to the humiliation as you’re reminded you’re no Brian May.

The Gamespot review was right in that the game needs some Van Halen. Some Led Zeppelin would’ve been cool as well. I’m hoping there’s going to be a sequel that uses the same controller.

Also, I don’t really play the game naked, I’m just wondering if people really read these things when I start talking about videogames.

George Bush Doesn't Care About Black Puppets

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It was pretty asinine how Fox ran all four final episodes of “Arrested Development” in one night, on a Friday when nobody watches TV, and how they kept showing commercials for sitcoms they weren’t cancelling, and how they all looked [...]

It was pretty asinine how Fox ran all four final episodes of “Arrested Development” in one night, on a Friday when nobody watches TV, and how they kept showing commercials for sitcoms they weren’t cancelling, and how they all looked really stupid and pandering.

It doesn’t really matter, though, because I got to see all four episodes, and they blew me.

Away. I keep forgetting to say “away.” All four of them were awesome, and it was about as perfect a series finale as you’re ever going to get from television. Even if they don’t end up continuing the series on Showtime, it’s okay, because it ended so well. It was funny, and juvenile, and topical, and self-referential, but it also tied everything together brilliantly — the kind of plot twist on top of another plot twist on top of a reference to something that happened two seasons ago on top of an adolescent sex joke that only they can pull off.

My favorite bits that I can remember: the Hung Jury, Maeby’s birth announcement, having to bleep out the mention of “Veronica Mars,” the guy visiting Buster in a coma, Ann-yong’s real name, the cabinets without enough set decoration, Buster’s directions to the cab drivers, the names of the Iraqi streets, every time Ron Howard said “oh my,” and pretty much every time Ron Howard said anything.

The only way it could’ve been more perfect is if they’d been able to get not just Judge Reinhold and Bud Cort, but Jude Law.

The Day the Wonder Died

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I’d been concentrating on the heartwarmingly awkward and comedic side of the WonderCon, and I’d forgotten one basic fact: when you get thousands of socially inept people in a building together, it can really get annoying. We went to see [...]

Warning!I’d been concentrating on the heartwarmingly awkward and comedic side of the WonderCon, and I’d forgotten one basic fact: when you get thousands of socially inept people in a building together, it can really get annoying.

We went to see JJ Abrams’ talk about Mission Impossible 3 and he came across as just a good guy: genuinely enthusiastic about his work and about being at the convention, genuinely nice to the fans, neither too self-deprecating nor too arrogant, and showing a career-healthy level of reverence for Tom Cruise. The people all around us, however, were there to see Kevin Smith, who was coming up next. So they talked all through the panel, in their normal, irritating conversational volume.

I’d planned to stick around for Kevin Smith, but I was so annoyed by his followers that I went with Jessica and Jeff to see the panel with TV Creature Feature hosts. And got the same behavior from the people who wandered in waiting to see Grant Morrison. Is it really that hard to just show a little common courtesy?

And when you can get pretty much the entire group interested in what’s happening on stage, like with the Bryan Singer panel about Superman Returns, you get the flip side of rude loud-talkers — the cringingly uncomfortable Q&A session. One of the people was almost hyper-ventilating and couldn’t ask his question. Another criticized the costume. Another mentioned the rumors that Singer had molested young boys in a hotel room. And part of me wants to know what the guy in the banana costume was going to ask, but then the rest of me hates that part of me.

I forget which panel it was — either Bryan Singer or JJ Abrams — but somebody fawned for a minute or so and then asked if he could give them his business card. He got booed by the crowd, and he deserved it.

On the show floor itself, there wasn’t a lot that grabbed my attention. I’d been looking for some recent issues, and everyone was selling silver-age and golden-age stuff. Or crap. Or silver-age and golden-age crap. Some combination of all of those. One of the vendors had all their trade paperbacks discounted, so I picked up a Sandman collection (I’d bought all the single issues of the entire series, but stopped reading them about a year or so before it ended, and then most of my comics were destroyed in a flood at my parents’ house). I also got a Challengers of the Unknown collection that was recommended in one of the blogs that Alfredo had told me about.

So I didn’t bother going back to the show today, and I’ll just head to Isotope and ask them to order the comics I’d been looking for. And still, for some reason, I’m compelled to go to the San Diego one. Guess I’ve got a few months to see if that compulsion lasts.

That Awkward Phase

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One day of WonderCon down, and the magic hasn’t really taken hold of my soul yet. I’m hoping that that’s just because it’s a weekday, and most people didn’t have the luxury of working in the morning (I actually got [...]

Mike MignolaOne day of WonderCon down, and the magic hasn’t really taken hold of my soul yet. I’m hoping that that’s just because it’s a weekday, and most people didn’t have the luxury of working in the morning (I actually got stuff done this morning; I couldn’t be more proud) and then finishing up later that night.

I’m still hoping for big, balls-out displays of nerdosity; that’s a big part of why I bought a three-day pass, after all. I’m hoping that they just have to build to that, because today all I saw was a dull sense of desperation and melancholy. It was like the computer game developer’s conference, but with more women. A middle-aged guy wearing a Captain America T-shirt a couple sizes too small here, Blue Sun and Browncoats T-shirts scattered about, a whisper thin guy dressed up as a vampire there. I want to see full-on I-don’t-give-a-damn-because-I’m-with-my-people men and women in costumes, dammit.

As it was, I got to just be a nerdy fanboy today, instead of looking at them and making fun, pretending that I’m not one. I was hoping to continue my tradition of stalking Steve Purcell, but he didn’t show up. It’s just as well; the last time I saw him was when he pulled up along side me in Emeryville and he honked and waved. That just ruins it. Some people are just too friendly and unassuming to be stalker victims, no matter how much you like their work.

But I think I made up for it around Mike Mignola, though. There was a long line of people at the Dark Horse booth waiting for signatures when I went upstairs to catch the lecture from Telltale Games. When I came back down, the crowd was gone, so I walked up and pulled out my big hardback copy of Art of Hellboy, only to be stopped by a Dark Horse representative telling me that the signing was closed, and they’d had to turn away people 20 minutes ago. And my puppy had died.

So I awkardly and dejectedly put my book back in my backpack and shuffled across to the Metreon to drown my disappointment in soba. Afterward I caught the end of a session about Mirrormask (which I still haven’t seen but is coming out on DVD next week), and then the Q&A with Mignola. He kept pretty much the entire time open for questions, and there were actually some good questions asked — I didn’t see any awkward and uncomfortable gushing fanboy comments (they wouldn’t give me the microphone, dammit) or just dumb questions.

Actually, I did ask what’s the status of “The Amazing Screw-on Head,” and he said they’re finishing up the pilot and it should air on SciFi this year; he hasn’t seen it. He also said that he didn’t plan to do any more Screw-on Head comics, because everything he wanted to do with the characters and setting, he managed to get in that one book.

Other stuff: Hellboy 2 is in preliminary talks and could be Guillermo del Toro’s next movie; it depends on his schedule. A couple of Hellboy animated movies are in the works to probably air on Cartoon Network; if popular, they could turn into a series. (Mignola later said that they’re in the storyboard phase and he’s acting as a consultant and plotter but isn’t directly involved other than that). In the comic books, Duncan Fegredo is taking over art for the next three Hellboy mini-series; Mignola said that he sees Fegredo’s three series as Act II in the Hellboy story, and when he takes the book back over after that, it’ll be the final act. He finally knows where he wants to take the character and the story. He also said he appreciates the time he has where he doesn’t have to draw Hellboy or BPRD, because he can work on side projects like Screw-on Head.

After all that, he went back down to the show floor and signed more books, and I finally got to get an autograph and a sketch of Hellboy. He was selling sketchbooks celebrating the 10th Anniversary of Hellboy, and I bought one of those, too. I’d brought my copy of Screw-on Head, but said it was so dark there was no good place to sign it, but he did anyway. When I told him that I thought that was my favorite single comic book ever, he replied that it was probably one of his as well; he was really happy with how it turned out. And he didn’t want to push his luck and make another story that wasn’t as good.

Later I saw Scott Shaw! (he uses the exclamation point) at a booth and I stopped by to say that I was a huge fan of Captain Carrot & His Amazing Zoo Crew “when I was a little kid.” I guess that was kind of rude, in retrospect. Ah well, I’m still going through my awkward phase. And he reminded me that they appeared in a fairly the most recent issue of Teen Titans, so I came out learning something. Learning is growing.

Really, though: I still don’t get the whole idea of being laid back and chatting with comics creators at these things. You’re in an artificial situation to start with, there are a ton of people who also want to get in to get an autograph or picture or whatever, and besides, what is there really left to say after, “That was so awesome.” I thought part of the appeal of comic books was that once marked as a fan, you didn’t have to make conversation with people or be socially adept.