I remain indifferent to the boogie

Another SFist post is up today, about the robotics convention I went to last weekend. I have to say it was kind of a disappointment (the convention, and the column), probably because I’ve been jaded by all the money that gets poured into E3 shows. I’d expected to see more ASIMO and AIBO and less Lego Mindstorms and circuit boards.

In other news, the Wallace and Gromit movie is just awesome, probably my favorite movie of the year. I was thinking there’d be no way they could keep up the level of the shorts in a feature film, but they did. I also saw Serenity a second time, and it was still good, but I don’t have much desire to see it again. Now the wait’s on until DOOM.

And apart from that excitement, I’ve been playing a lot of DOOM 3 (because I’d been feeling guilty I hadn’t given it enough chance, when it turns out I had), waiting to get into a Battleground in World of Warcraft (I’m not yet convinced they actually exist), and playing the Sims 2 expansion pack, “Nightlife.”

They did a good job with it; in fact, I think that this is the expansion pack they should’ve released first. I still believe that the “University” expansion is too separate from the main game; when most of us were still just looking for more content for the main game. One of the things that always impressed me about the Sims franchise and kept me from getting totally burned out on it was that they were really committed to making the expansion packs have real content instead of just being shovelware. But with “University,” they went too far in that direction; just an updated “Livin’ Large” pack would’ve been welcomed.

“Nightlife” is the right balance — it’s the same theme as the old “Hot Date” pack but adds a lot more, and it’s all well-integrated into the main game. All the new interactions and locations are welcome, and there’s just a lot more to do. I’m one of the sad little people who plays it like a soap opera, setting up families to watch them intermingle and fall in and out of love and make each other’s lives miserable, so I appreciate all the new features making it easier to get your computer people to get other computer people into bed with them. It’s still frustrating in places, and the pack introduces a whole bunch of new bugs, but on the whole it’s engaging. Probably not enough to draw in somebody who’s not already interested in the Sims, but good for those of us who are.

Currently I’ve got the Gordon family moved in with the Wayne and Prince families; I’m hoping that Bruce Wayne will make the moves on Diana Prince and kick his current wife Selina out to the curb. I think the only thing geekier than having comic book families in the Sims would be Lord of the Rings families, but I never claimed to be highbrow. As an example: because the Sims 2 doesn’t have a “young ward” option, I had to make Dick Grayson Bruce Wayne’s son. None of the game’s built-in aspirations are really suited to the Batman, so I just figured he was obsessed with family and should have the family aspiration. So now all his wants are “Tickle Dick” and “Play with Dick.” Which is high comedy.

Imaginary Prom Dates

I wrote another thing for SFist that’s up now; they’re getting lighter and lighter, I’ve noticed. This week I’m going to some big robot convention in San Jose, hopefully I’ll be able to get something more substantial from that instead of just letting Eve do the research while I add TV references.

And it turns out I need help with the TV references as well. I found out this week that for years I’d been mis-remembering the most important thing to any Generation X aspiring trendy hipster: Brady Bunch trivia. See, I always thought that when Jan made up the name of her imaginary boyfriend, she chose “Ron Glass“. And I always thought that was awesome. What better way to get attention away from Marcia and stick it to your uptight mom and homo dad, than show up at the big dance with a black man 20 years your senior?

And then when she showed up with the big black afro wig, that just knocked it over the top. Jan had gone past living out some predictable mid-70’s white girl Mandingo fantasy, and had blossomed into a true nubian princess.

But I was looking around the web, and it turns out the name she picked was George Glass. Who’s way more boring. Still, it turns out he was an associate producer for Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? which I guess is kind of funny.

Can you smell what The Rock is cutting up with a chainsaw?

What was almost as good as Serenity was seeing the trailer for the new DOOM movie which is going to be out at the end of the month. Hot damn, I can’t wait.

As much as I love the Resident Evil movies (no, really), they still cling to this idea that they’re somehow real movies. They think that deep down, they’re still horror movies using a videogame franchise as the basis for their stories. This is a mistake. And if the trailer is any indication, the braintrust behind DOOM has escaped that trap and made the first true videogame movie that is going to kick so much ass. They’ve got The Rock, who’s awesome; they’ve got the chainsaw, which is awesome; and they sure as hell better have the first-person sequences in the movie, and not make that just a gimmick for the trailer. Because that’s what’ll make this not just another cheesy sci-fi action flick, but a truly transcendently cheesy sci-fi videogame movie.

I didn’t even like Doom 3 that much and lost interest after about a half hour. Looking back on it, they had the reverse problem — it’s a mindless videogame that thought that deep down, it was a sci-fi horror movie. Some games — Half-Life 2 for one — can pull that off, but the Doom guys couldn’t. So the whole thing came across as bland and uninspired. And really, really dark.

In other Martian news, The Pixies Sell Out is coming out on DVD tomorrow. It’s a DVD of last year’s tour with, I’m assuming and hoping, brief interviews and such. There’s a clip from the DVD on ifilm.com which rates a big “meh.” But it was still a good show.

My Entertainment Dollar

At the beginning of the show, Doughty promised we’d all get big value from our entertainment dollar, and I got that this weekend.

First was Serenity on Friday night at the Northgate. It was awesome. Sure, I’d been looking forward to it, but once I actually got there, I was going into it as critical as I get. I wanted to find stuff to complain about, if only to talk about on the internets. And I had nothing to criticize.

The closest I can get to a criticism of the movie is that it’s pretty much all science fiction — the western element of the setting gets a little bit of attention at the beginning, but is quickly lost in everything but the clothes. When you lose the “Western in Space” angle, the characters lose a little bit of their depth, because you can’t see that they’re all twists on archetypes — the embittered war vet who becomes an outlaw, the hooker with the heart of gold, the preacher, the citified doctor, the optimistic prairie girl, the untrustworthy hired gun (Jayne is supposed to be “the Bad,” I think), and the genius psychic girl with superhuman fighting abilities. (All right, that’s not Western, but it’s still a Joss Whedon production.) And the Reavers, who are central to the plot of the movie, stop being “The Injuns.”

All the characters still work, and I think they work well — except for Wash and Inara, who are left a little underdeveloped — but they’re just not as strong as they were in the series. Which is perfectly understandable, because there’s stuff you can do in even 15 hours of a prematurely cancelled TV series that you just can’t do in a 2-hour movie.

And the movie is just great. Not only did it stand up as a movie, but it tied up elements of the series. And the most impressive part about that is that it ties them up without feeling either too pat, too forced, or too final, and it leaves plenty of room to grow. I read a review that said that it felt like an expanded episode of a TV show, which is just bullshit — not only does the movie have a complete arc, but really big, significant stuff happens in it. Not significant in the sense of a series, like the “Star Trek” movies, where they blow up the ship or kill off a character just because they can’t do that on the show but can in a big-budget movie. Significant in the sense of the overall story. I loved that. We got answers to some major elements of the series, but not everything was answered, and there’s no sense of its being over. Just this part of the story is over.

Also, I never would’ve expected a large-scale space battle, and it delivers on that. Until now, the most impressive space battle I’d ever seen in a movie was in Return of the Jedi, and the one in Serenity tops that, not only in the scale and quality of the effects, but in that you actually give a damn what’s going on. It fits in with the plot and it doesn’t feel like a big battle for its own sake because they’ve finally got the budget for it. And it doesn’t suffer from car chase syndrome — usually, when a movie has an action sequence like a car chase, the story just pauses for a while to let you watch a bunch of crashes or explosions or stunts, then picks up again when they’re done.

Now I just have to figure out when to see it again. And maybe a third time.

Saturday was the aforementioned Mike Doughty concert at the Independent in San Francisco. Great show, in particular the stuff he did from Skittish and Rockity Roll was better than on the albums. He did my two favorite songs from Haughty Melodic (“Unsingable Name” and “I Hear the Bells,” in case anyone’s curious), plus his cover of “The Gambler.” Other covers were “Hungry Like the Wolf” and a little bit of “It’s Raining Men” (dude knows how to play a San Francisco crowd, I guess). The only Soul Coughing song he did was “St. Louise is Listening,” which I like better than the original but is still one of my least favorite Soul Coughing songs.

We were noticing that the whole crowd was made up of the people who are usually standing at the back of other concerts. “Lots of people dancing with their hands in their pockets,” said Mac, “and the reflection off all the horn-rimmed glasses must’ve been blinding.”

Meet Jack Torrance

I first heard about it from Rain’s blog, but some people on the Straight Dope did some digging to find out more about it. Apparently it’s been going around the internets and has made an impression.

What it is is a new trailer for The Shining, using clips from the movie (except for one cheat piece of dialog). And it’s genius, one of the best things I’ve ever seen on the internet. Bonus points for including the kiss and the choice of music. I can’t stop watching it.

The New York Times did an article about it with more info and an interview with the guy who made it.

On the same site, there’s a trailer for West Side Story as a horror film, but it’s not as good.

Eet ees Scieyencia!

I’ve got yet another post up at SFist, so check it out if you’re so inclined.

A lot more interesting is the story about the ski jump on Fillmore Street yesterday. I drove by it on the way to lunch yesterday, and although traffic was backed up on Broadway, it was pretty well-handled. I didn’t see much of it, but after looking at the photos of the event on flickr, I wish I’d stopped to check it out. I have to admit I thought it was a stupid idea when I first heard about it. After seeing it, well I still think it’s a stupid idea, but I also think it’s a stupid idea that’s totally wicked awesome. Locals never seem to appreciate when I say that San Francisco is like a theme park with panhandlers, but this is exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about.

And it sounds like there’s a ton of other cool stuff going on this weekend, like Serenity which I already knew about, but also Mirrormask if you’re into Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, and a Free Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park. Makes me wish I didn’t have actual work I had to get done this weekend.

Who are you and what have you done with my television show?

Rain pointed out that TNT has started showing season 4 of “Alias” in preparation for the premiere of season 5. I watched a couple from the TiVo, and thought this is no good. The people are still there, and they’re still saying things that sound familiar, but everything’s all different. And they’re spoiling stuff. This isn’t the show I fell in love with! I must’ve come in halfway through the season and ruined everything!

But then I checked an episode guide, and I found I’d started with episode 3. All the big changes that were confusing me so, had happened in the first two episodes. Damn! When they reboot a show, they don’t fool around.

Then I decided as long as I was confused, there’s no harm in watching both seasons simultaneously. So I went ahead and watched tonight’s premiere of season 5. Damn! When they reboot a show, they don’t fool around.

So as near as I can make out:

Continue reading “Who are you and what have you done with my television show?”

Brain Cloud

Speaking of my degenerative brain disease: APPLES!

Sorry, don’t know what came over me. I was saying: this morning, I’d made it to the gate at the airport before I realized that only the top two buttons of my shirt were buttoned. Now, either my shirt had magically flown open, like Heather Thomas’ in Zapped!, or else I’d gone from my car to the long-term parking lot, talking to a stranger about his upcoming trip to Vegas and what it was like being a commute flier, the ride to the terminal, the self-service check-in, standing in line at the United desk, talking to the United representative, standing with the people in the smoking area, going through the security station, ordering from the Burger King, pushing past people on the moving walkway, and riding the shuttle to the commuter terminal, all the while flashing everyone my big, white, hairy gut.

For now, I’m using the fact that I’ve been pre-occupied lately and I did only get five hours of sleep last night as an excuse. But just in case, I’m going to stitch my name and address into my jacket sleeves in case I’m found wandering the Sunset naked from the waist down. (Because I’ve lived here long enough to know never to leave the house without a jacket.)

Do you like magic? No. I LOVE it.

Haw haw haw! Fooled you! The Terry Pratchett book signing was last week! So here I sit with a still-unsigned copy of Good Omens and apparently the onset of some degenerative brain disease. Hopefully nobody tried to go on the basis of that blog entry. And if you did, hopefully you didn’t drag somebody out of work and halfway across the city for a no-show. I’m feeling like such a moron I’m going to do the rest of this one like Jackie Harvey from The Outside Scoop.

Item! People have been saying that “Arrested Development” is great for a long time now but I never believed it. Even after watching their little mini-marathon a while back with Martin Short on it (which was damn funny, I don’t care what anybody says). But after watching last night’s episode (“For British Eyes Only”), I’ve finally come around to realizing this is the best comedy on TV.

I mean, I could watch 30 minutes just of Portia di Rossi doing the chicken dance and still be plenty entertained, but they actually add jokes and stuff. “Has anyone in this family even seen a chicken?” The Rumsfeld/Hussein photo. Dave Thomas giving an international phone number via flash cards. Wee Britian and the Itsy Bitsy IRA. “At that moment he was struck by something from his childhood.” “I think they came for the free chicken,” and then the people all bend over for the chicken feed! And all that was before “We’re not here to talk nonsense to Bob Loblaw.” I don’t care if I am coming late to the party asking if I can play too; this is awesome.

Item! I was watching “The Daily Show” tonight and was reminded of why I don’t shave. I end up looking like a cross between John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants, and Ed Helms. Eh, whatever. Considering the alternative, I guess I’ll put up with the Daily Show comments for a while. Better than being called “distinguished,” which I actually was called and which everybody know just means “old.”

Item! Serenity opens this weekend! I’m totally going to see it! If it’s not sold out and there’s not a long line! I just don’t know what to dress up as, since there’s no equivalent of Boba Fett, and Blue Sun T-shirts are just played out.

Item! Mike Doughty formerly of Soul Coughing is still playing at The Independent this weekend, this time I swear to God I got the date right. I’m going to see that too!

Item! My second post for SFist is up today. The usual day for these things is Friday, but it turned out there were enough news links from the past couple of days to fill up a column. Plus, they’re kind of fun to write.

Discworld and Apple

Two more things I forgot:

Tomorrow night (Tuesday, September 27th), Terry Pratchett will be in San Francisco reading from and signing copies of his new book, Thud!. I’m going to go check it out with Mac and figured other Pratchett fans might be interested.

And this week’s cover of Entertainment Weekly keeps cracking me up. Fiona Apple is as creepy as ever, and Sheryl Crow just looks kind of haunted and annoyed. Like she’s asking, “Uh… is she still there?”

I don’t have much of an opinion one way or the other about Fiona Apple or her music, but I wish she’d just cheer the hell up and eat something. I get the impression that she just sneaks around behind generally happy people, like say Sheryl Crow, and just does a total Wednesday Addams on them, making them headachey and kind of sad but unable to say anything out of politeness.

Remixed, Remastered, and Bewildered

Rum, Sodomy, and the LashA while ago, my hero and name-dropping victim Steve Purcell was talking about some toys he’d seen at a store and said, “I liked them so much, I wished I hadn’t bought them already so I could buy them again.” Today I got to do exactly that, because of the media companies who’ve hatched an evil scheme to make me spend more of my money.

First I was at the Best Buy looking for We Love Katamari, but apparently Best Buy doesn’t love it as much as everyone else, because they weren’t selling it yet. But luckily for Bandai, they had the first of the new Cowboy Bebop Remix DVDs. This is the same as the earlier DVDs that I’ve already bought and watched repeatedly, it just remasters the audio in Dolby Digital 5.1 and adds some commentaries from the voice actors.

Of course I had to get it, partly because the audio is such a big deal on the series, and I’m looking forward to hearing it in surround sound. But mostly for the I-liked-it-so-much-I-want-to-buy-it-again factor. It’s not just the best anime I’ve ever seen, and it’s not just the best animated series I’ve ever seen, it’s one of the best television series of any kind that I’ve ever seen. The music is phenomenal, the setting is cool, the tone is just right and manages to swing between the genuinely scary, moving, and funny. And a couple of the episodes have actually made me cry (which isn’t that big a feat, I guess, but it’s still worth pointing out). At least the first DVD has five episodes on it, instead of the four that was on the first issue — I’m hoping that this means there are fewer discs for me to have to get this go-round.

And I can more than make up for that by buying all of the Pogues albums a third time. I wasn’t aware that there was even a division called “Warner Strategic Marketing,” but it’s an apt name because I feel like I’ve been the victim of a surgical strike. I first bought the Pogues albums on cassette when I was at school in Athens; I think CDs were a real luxury at the time. I upgraded to getting them all on CD, but could never find two of their EPs — “Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah” (which has an awesome cover of the Stones’ “Honky Tonk Women” on it), and “Poguetry in Motion” (which has “Rainy Night in Soho”, one of my favorite Pogues songs) — on anything other than tape. The re-issues have those EPs on them, some of them the first ever released on CD, so as a completist I’ve got to get them.

I didn’t do the math correctly in my head, because the bill at Amoeba ended up being 90 bucks. Ouch. (I also got The Best of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds so that I’ll finally have a copy of “Red Right Hand”). And I didn’t even bother getting the two post-Shane MacGowan albums, or the new Ultimate Collection album. And I don’t even listen to the Pogues that much anymore. But at least I can stop thinking I need to keep an eye out for “Poguetry in Motion” every time I go into a used record store. So it’s paying extra for peace of mind.

Hooray for Marketing!

Civilization IV adI couldn’t be looking forward to Civilization IV any more than I already am. Especially if they keep this screenshot of The Internet wonder.

But they’re trying to make me more excited, with their genuinely funny CivAnon ad campaign. It’s in competition with the Burger King and Geico ads, and of course Cartoon Network’s bumpers, to make me think advertisements are actually worth watching again.

My current guilty pleasure for a commercial that I can’t help but like is the one for travelocity.com. It’s the one with the gnome talking about how easy the website is to use and dispelling the myth that American appliances don’t work in European outlets. It’s the bit where he says, “Am I going to die?” Sorry, I can’t help but laugh at that.