Nunchux

Merry Christmas

2011-12-24T20:18:00.000-07:00

Skyrim Soundtrack

2011-12-22T11:28:00.000-07:00

Well, it finally arrived! I got my Skyrim soundtrack in the mail yesterday, and it's been on repeat in my car ever since. I'll provide a review of the soundtrack in an upcoming post when I review Skyrim as a whole, but I had a few observations about it I wanted to share.

Last night, I was driving home from a friend's house. It was cold and dark, and the snow was coming down heavy and thick. The road was covered in snow with patches of ice sticking through here and there. The night was black and white, save the golden glow of the street lights. The Skyrim soundtrack was blasting through the speakers, and it was at this point that I realized just how perfectly Jeremy Soule captured the lonely, cold, desolate feeling of Skyrim in his music. Here I was on the cold and lonely journey home, and the music was the perfect accompaniment. Granted, my adventures are hardly as epic as the ones my Argonian rogue is having in game (in fact, "epic" wouldn't be a word I'd generally use to describe any part of my life), the chilly music really fit the atmosphere of the drive home.

I keep hitting the spacebar twice at the end of my sentences, expecting it to insert a period like it does on my iPhone. Damn Apple and their convenience features!

I didn't realize until I was listening to this soundtrack how much I'd come to expect a bit of electronic in my soundtracks. Everything from Transformers to Halo and Mass Effect nowadays has some measure of electronic sound layered into the classical music. Skyrim is different in that this music is pure classical. There is some production work (such as the layering of the choral parts to make it seem like a larger group of people sang them), but by and large, the 3 discs of actual soundtrack material are straight up classical music, and I'll admit to being rather thrilled with the prospect and the results.

There is a staggering amount of material on the discs. Almost 3 hours if individual tracks on the first three discs, and then the fourth disc contains a 45 minute "atmosphere" collection. I haven't listened to this yet, but if it's anywhere near as good as the first 3 CDs' worth of content, I will love it.

This is the first time I've ever used the CD player in my car. At the moment, I'm so completely enthralled with the purity of the music experience, that I have not converted the music to my iPhone yet, for fear of sound degradation. As such, I've put the CDs into my car's CD player, and have been listening to the music that way. It's not often that I eschew my iPhone in favor of CDs. In fact, I don't think that's happened since... well since I got my first iPod back in 2003 or so. Scary.

That's all I got for the time being. I'm going back to Skyrim now; my Argonian looks like he wants to kill some more dragons.

Mass Effect 3 Score

2011-12-20T22:32:00.001-07:00

Crazy story for you. I was happily sleeping. It was the first day of my vacation, and I was going to enjoy the luxury of being able to sleep in a few minutes before getting up to help my mother car shop (a trip that turned out to be more driving than actual shopping). Somewhere subconsciously, I heard my room mate get up and start getting ready to go to work, and I distinctly remember thinking ha ha. So, I wasn't necessarily sleeping, but somewhere between blissful sleep and waking up.

Then, I sat bolt upright, suddenly certain that Jack Wall wasn't doing the score for Mass Effect 3.

Entirely true story, I swear. The night before, I was browsing around the web, trying to find a place I could purchase the score for the Mass Effect 2 Arrival DLC. I managed to find a wonderful person on YouTube who had compiled the songs into a nice video with a link to download the album. Sadly, EA has not made this album available for purchase, despite the fact that the rest of the Mass Effect DLC albums are available for download. For those interested, click this link (click!).

Anyway, in the process of browsing, I happened to notice, just out of the corner of my eye, several headlines about Clint Mansell working on the score to Mass Effect 3. At the time, I wrote this off as hogwash. Of course Jack Wall would be returning for Mass Effect 3. His not returning would be like Marty Russell not returning for Halo 3, or John Williams not returning for Return of the Jedi. Preposterous.

Yet, there I was, sitting in bed with the certainty that Jack Wall was not, in fact, returning. It was a matter of seconds searching Google that I stumbled upon BioWare's forums where Jack Wall confirms that he will not be returning (and there's also a press release).

I suppose this has been common knowledge for a while now, but I am utterly insane about not reading anything about Mass Effect 3. I hate spoilers, and I don't want them for the conclusion of my favorite game ever.

So, where does this leave us, score-wise? Well, for whatever reason, we are out the brilliant mind that composed the amazing scores for the first two games. Whether you pay attention to music in video games or not, the score for the first two games has a significant impact on how we perceive and experience the Mass Effect universe. Imagine, if you will, going on the suicide mission in the second game and not having Jack Wall's epic orchestral backdrop to it. The impact of those moments might be so lessened as to make the whole experience moot.

Perhaps that's a bit of exaggeration, as the story and writing is wonderful too, but the amount of power Wall's score has infused in ME1 and ME2 is staggering. The fact that both stand alone as wonderful out-of-game listens also speaks volumes as well.

Most of the composers that are listed in the press release have worked with Mass Effect before via the various DLC, however, I'm concerned that without Wall at the helm, the third entry in the series will feel (at least musically) disconnected from the rest of the franchise. Given how important continuity is to the franchise as a whole...

As regular readers of this blog will know, I'm a HUGE fan of Clint Mansell's scores for his various Hollywood projects (Smokin' Aces, Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler, The Fountain, etc., etc.), so at the very least, I'm glad that he was the one EA and BioWare decided to bring on board. I will also try have faith that he will remain accurate to his source material and work to compose a score that stays true to Wall's vision with the first two games.

In the meantime, though, I'll be listening to the amazing scores for the first two games.

A Random Update

2011-12-13T19:16:00.000-07:00

So, I'm sitting here at work, waiting for the printer to finish printing the giant posters I've been working on all day. Sadly, I didn't have much of a chance to work on any of the things I need to get done this week to go on vacation at the end of the week. Everybody's priorities are more important than mine. Eh, such is life.

I'm listening to Dream Theater's Ocatavarium right now. Not the whole album, just the song. The song, however, is long enough to be a whole album (by modern album-length standards). If you consider that the average song produced nowadays is about 4 minutes long, a song that is 23:58 is rather incredible. And that's not even their longest song!

You may be wondering why on earth I'm not listening to Chevelle's new album, and the answer is that the album sucks ass.

...
...
...

Just kidding!

At this point, I'm pretty sure that there's nothing Chevelle could do to make me hate their music. Sure, the radio can overplay "Send the Pain Below" and I can still hate that song to this day, but there's nothing Chevelle could do to make me hate their music. Besides, I don't ever listen to the radio any more, so that's hardly even a problem.

In truth, the new album, Hats Off to the Bull is quite wonderful. I'm not quite ready to sit down and pen the full review (that will take a while, and I'd actually like to leave work at some point), but that's coming soon.

Back to the point, I've been on this epic Dream Theater kick for many months now. They have a very deep discography, and their progressive rock stylings are just addicting. So, even when the mighty Chevelle is dropping new music on me, I still need my DT fix.

Before you ask, yes, I've been taking quite a bit of time off blogging recently (I think we're up to a week now). Two reasons for that. A) Work. Lots of it. Gotta get ready for my vacation, which starts in 3 days! Wooooooot! B) Skyrim. The game has firmly inserted itself near the top of my priority list. I'll readily admit to thinking, "I should stop playing this so I can write my blog for the day." Then I ponder about this for a moment before shaking my head and think to myself, "Nah," before refocusing on my Skyrim exploits. And there are many.

I justify this to myself by thinking about how I need to clock through this game so I can write an awesome review for this blog. Totally justified.

Yeah, yeah... I know.

Anyhoo, I'm gonna pack up and head out of here now that my printing is done (finally!). I'll try to write tomorrow and going forward, if I can pry myself away from Skyrim. No promises. Though I do promise reviews for both Skyrim and the new Chevelle coolness soon.

Until then, cheers!

Lulu

2011-12-05T21:20:00.001-07:00

Well, I'd call this post a review, but it isn't. I can't bring myself to even listen to most of the songs all the way through. This is just bad.

So, I've long been a Metallica fan. My first album was Reload, then I went back to Load, then was S&M, before I finally dove back into the discography. I'll be frank, I think S&M is Metallica's crowning achievement. I like Load and ReLoad better than any of their older albums. Master of Puppets was my favorite album of the "hair" era. Then Garage, Inc. hit, which had a few neat songs on it (Turn the Page, Whiskey in the Jar), but most of the dual CD outing was trash. Then St. Anger, which, to this day, is the only album I've ever thrown away the same day I bought it. If Garage, Inc. was trash, then St. Anger was the burning pit of talentless hell. I'd equate that CD to listening to a toddler beat on his mommy's pots. Death Magnetic was better than the previous two, but it still couldn't hold a candle to their pre-Garage days.

So, I'm already so-so on this Lulu album, which is Metallica instruments backing the vocals of Lou Reed, whose non-Metallica music I am wholly unfamiliar with. Hit the music.... and if I'd purchased this album, I'd have snapped it over my leg before throwing it away. As it is, I'm considering burning the album to a disc before deleting it so I can break it anyway.

I'll give props where props are due: the musicality is decent. It's not the Metallica I grew up loving, but it's not St. Anger either. It falls somewhere closer to the St. Anger side of the spectrum, but not intolerably so. Then Lou Reed opened his mouth.

Skip.

He starts singing in the second track.

Skip.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

And this went on for 10 of the most agonizing tracks I've ever subjected my ear drums to. Some of these tracks are epically long, like Dream Theater long, but they lack even a quarter of the talent required to make really long songs interesting. Or tolerable.

The part of this album that kills me is mostly the vocal stylings of Lou Reed. I'm sure somebody, somewhere thinks that this is the most awesomest awesome thing ever, but your not here to read that guy's opinions. The way these lyrics are delivered makes me squirm like somebody is dragging nails across a chalkboard. It's tuneless, it's off beat, it's not much better than screaming into the mic. It's less singing than narration, but if you're going to talk, at least do it to the music. Hip hop is a great pace to find lessons on talking to music without sounding awful (well, not sounding AS awful anyway).

I did happen to say that the music lacked the talent to make really long songs. See, the key to really long songs is that there has to be progression and rise and fall. Listening to 10 minutes of the same 2 or 3 lines over and over again gets dull very quickly. Metallica used to be able to write incredibly long, sweeping, epic music (instrumentals, even), but the years seem to have eroded that talent. St. Anger it is not, but it's also not that good. Decent just doesn't cut it for me when it comes to Metallica.

And so that makes 3 really bad albums Metallica has released in the last decade. Shame.

Oh, and for the record, Lars Ulrich is a dick.

In a more positive note, iTunes should be finished downloading Chevelle's new album, Hats Off to the Bull. Review for that one coming in the next couple of days.

See you tomorrow.

Let it Snow...

2011-12-04T18:50:00.001-07:00

It's been snowing here all weekend. All weekend. And the air is chilly; just looking outside makes me want to bundle up and forget about the world. What can be done about it?

Anyway, it's been a very uneventful weekend, and I blame the weather mostly. It's hard to motivate myself to go outside when everything is so miserable looking. Plus the slippery roads don't help much either.

So... this weekend has mostly been Skyrim, lots and lots of Skyrim. Hard to believe that it's 7 already, and I'm still playing this game. Suffice it to say, it's a little addicting. Plus, it's much more fun to adventure outside in the fake snow than it is to do anything outside in the real snow.

In any case, I'm booking through the game as quickly as possible to try to get a review in for it. Plus I wasn't to have it beaten at least once by Christmas so I can devote ample time to the games I'm going to get that day.

There's my update, see you tomorrow.

A Couple More Preliminary Thoughts on Skyrim

2011-12-01T23:42:00.001-07:00

I continue to dump an inordinate amount of time into Skyrim. That game is a little like a drug. Super addicting, crazy fun while it lasts, but you have a tendency to look back on it and wonder if you're sane for even doing it.

That, however, does not stop me from cracking out on my rogue, power leveling him through pickpocketing, lock picking, and sneaking around.

Bow and arrow? Check.
Double dagger awesomeness? Check.
Chest full of stolen goodies at my house? Check.
Badass thieves guild armor? Double check.

Morals? ...missing entirely. My rogue is a thief and a selfish bastard. I just started one quest line where, to initiate it, I had to lead a follower up to a certain god's shrine and kill him. Then I had to kill all the rest of the followers at the shrine. Now I have to kill the god's previous champion and the people with him. Lots of death and other ways to make myself obscenely rich.

Winning.

Did I mention that I am also a werewolf?

Tonight, I'd like to share a few thoughts on Skyrim, as posed by the fine, creative, and funny folks over at Penny Arcade.

This is amazingly true. I thought I was owning the world after having killed somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 dragons, then I pissed off a mammoth. To be fair, I was only walking by, it's not like I was harassing it with my suddenly-tiny mace or anything. This giant came running after me, grunting, then made a chunky, red paste out of me with his giant hammer. I have also, in fact, seen a giant kill a dragon. There is something seriously effed up about that picture.

And also:

Not picking up absolutely everything takes more discipline than you would think possible. When starting, the number of times I had to interrupt a dungeon run to hop back to sell all of my worth-nothing trinkets, it was a little absurd and just plain sad.

And finally, on an different (but still video game related) note:

That is all.

My Christmas Wish List

2011-11-30T23:04:00.001-07:00

It's that time of year again, that time of year when my parents ask for a Christmas list so they know what to shop for. I, of course, obliged, because there are few things better than getting free video games. Well, I do happen to enjoy giving gifts, so I bought my family some neat things on sale during Black Friday madness.

Of course, I bought them all from the comfort of my living room while wrapped in a blanket, drinking hot cocoa, and playing Skyrim. Sale or no, I do not stand outside in line to shop. Ever.

Anyway, on to the list!

Uncharted 3 - This is a no-brainer. Well, I shouldn't even have to ask for it for Christmas, because if I was a true Nathan Drake fan, I'd have already bought it. Alas, Skyrim won out in the "what to spend my $60 on" competition, so I'll have to wait to get this for Christmas. The third part in Naughty Dog's epic Uncharted series looks to be frigging awesome. I hope it lives up to the stellar review I gave the 2nd entry into the series, though I have little doubt it will.

Assassin's Creed Revelations - I happen to be a HUGE fan of anything Assassin's Creed, so it should come as little surprise that I want this game. I had stopped blogging prior to reviewing Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, but I liked that game almost as much as I liked Assassin's Creed 2. That being said, Jesper Kyd did not do the entire score for this game (which I already own), and I don't like the score for this game as much as I liked the one for Assassin's Creed 2 (which one my best video game score of 2009). While that is a bit disappointing, I have high hopes for the game as a whole.

Batman Arkham City - Holy surprising caped crusader, Batman! Batman is getting all the love in the super hero world lately. Between Christopher Nolan's films that are good beyond words to the new and stellar video game franchise, there has never been a better time to be a Batman fan. I played Arkham Asylum earlier this year, and the game totally caught me by surprise. I was expecting "meh" and I got "OMGWTFBBQ horse radish!!!!" Batman games shouldn't be this good, but they are. And I'll be damned if I don't pay the sequel.

Xbox 360 Wireless Controller - Yeah, kinda boring, but I need a new one. The ability to click the right thumb stick is gone on my current one, which makes switching between first and third person views in Skyrim next to impossible. Unacceptable!

There you have it, my Christmas wish list for the year. I plan on having reviews of all those games, so I can get to the wonderful best and worst of 2011 post ASAP.

See you tomorrow!

A Post in Pictures

2011-11-29T20:29:00.001-07:00

Today, I went back to work for the first time in over a week, and I was greeted with a desk that was quite... amusing.

I have this decided hatred of anything Christmas before I've gotten to eat my Thanksgiving turkey. The other folks who work on my team felt the business end of that hatred any time they wanted to rock the Christmas carols during the month of November. Why oh why do people need to have Christmas for two freaking months?

Anyway, I came back today to this fascinating desk. Follow along as I take you on a brief, pictorial tour.

This was my desk as I saw it this morning. Very festive.

Here was my chair. Pleasantly gift wrapped for me. Thankfully, this wasn't actually MY chair, but the one for the desk next to mine. So, I was able to swap it out without all the hassle of unwrapping it. The drawers in the background, however, entirely different story.

The left side of my desk. Gift wrapped items include my tape dispenser, my pens, and my Mac Mini and monitor for it.

This is the other side of my desk, which includes such goodies as my books, my phone, and a little "Happy Holidays" bag right under the phone.

That little "Happy Holidays" bag? Yeah, it had coal in it. I think my team thinks I'm a scrooge or something. But hey, the stocking was filled with Kit Kat bars, so I made out like a bandit anyhow.

Skyrim Soundtrack and Other Randomness

2011-11-28T23:48:00.001-07:00

All right. Didn't miss today. Though I came very close. It's close to midnight, and it probably will be past that once I finish. But, I'm going to count that as a post for today, Monday.

First things first, today was my last day of vacation. Boo. It's been a great week and a half, but all good things must come to an end, as they say. In any case, in three weeks, I start another, even longer, vacation. Sometimes, not being able to take a vacation all year works out at the end of the year when I get to burn 3 weeks over the course of a couple of months.

I hope everybody reading this had a great Thanksgiving. Same to all those who haven't discovered how much fun reading this can be.

So, you may be wondering why I'm awake if I have to get up for work early in the morning. The answer is simple. I'm not tired. Yeah, I totally fudged up my sleep schedule over the last week, and now it will probably be two in the morning or so before I'm actually tired enough to fall asleep. I blame the all nighter I pulled on Saturday into Sunday. During which, I wrote yesterday's blog post. Man, that feels like so long ago.

The all nighter was a success. We were up playing Mass Effect 2 until 7, when we went to get 2 of his tires on his car replaced. He was out of work at the time (he started his new job this morning), so I ended up footing that bill, which set me back a whopping $200. Jinkees, tires are expensive.

Would you spell that "jinkees" "jinkeys" "jingkeys"?? I have no earthly idea how you spell that word. If you're not sure what it is, flash back to Skooby Doo.

So, after hoofing it around to buy tires, we went back to his place where I fell asleep on the couch for a couple of hours before going back to pick up his car, then coming back to his place to sleep on the couch some more. Wake up, go home, play Skyrim, take shower, go back to bed. That was my Sunday in a nutshell.

Enter today where it was wake up, play Skyrim, watch Raw, play Skyrim, take shower, go to bed... lay there. Stare at wall, listen to some relaxing tunes, get distracted by every little light in the room (alarm clock, iPhone, computer-sleeping-pulsing-light-thingy. Get back out of bed, remember that I haven't blogged yet today, and here we are.

Quite the life, I know.

Moving past that, I would like to take a quick second and get to the primary point of this blog. I've obviously been spending a great deal of time playing Skyrim, and I wanted to point out how absurdly wonderful the soundtrack to this game is. I'm listening to it right now (with the game on pause) as I blog all my thoughts down tonight. The soundtrack does a lot to capture the epic feeling of the game, from the unobtrusive background songs that play while I wander around the world to the epic choral greatness that kicks in when a dragon roars over my head and starts raining fire down upon my poor rogue.

Unfortunately, the game's soundtrack is not available on my beloved iTunes, but a physical CD (well, there are actually FOUR CDs in that soundtrack) can be ordered from the website run by the soundtrack's composer Jeremy Soule. Orders placed by December 23rd will come autographed by Mr. Soule himself.

I bought the soundtrack on the spot. Can't wait for it to get here. If you are interested in it, you can order it here.

I'm looking forward to beating Skyrim, because it will likely be my first video game review since Mass Effect 2. I can't wait to get my game review hat on again. In the meantime, I'll be plugging away at the massive amounts of content to be had.

Cheers.

Skyrim First Impressions

2011-11-27T04:14:00.001-07:00

Hey, y'all! Wow, I've already missed another TWO days on my write-every-day initiative. I'm on a roll... or well, not on a roll, as it were. I gotta get on this thing.

Anyhoo, it's almost 4 in the morning, and I'm writing my blog. I'm in the middle of pulling an all-nighter with my best friend. He's (finally) playing Mass Effect 2, and I'm observing, because the story is THAT good. Plus that gives me lots of time to do things like blog. And sort Magic cards... lots of things that I could've spent the last week of my vacation doing, but things like Skyrim kept getting in the way.

Speaking of Skyrim, I've got some initial impressions to tide us all over until I can finish beating it and write an official review. The game is LONG, so I'm not sure how long it will be until I finish. I run into a problem that I always want to experiment with different charter classes, so I've created about 5 characters so far. I still haven't found one I like any better than the others, which is either really good (they are all just awesome equally) or not (they are all meh). So far, I'm mostly leaning towards the former option.

The game is massive, like I mentioned before. The two characters that are furthest in the game are around 20 hours in and are just wrapping up all the side quests in the second town, at least, what I think are all the side quests. I haven't even really started in on the main story quests yet.

The beginning of the game, the introductory part before you can even start collecting weapons and such, is really epic. I have a giant soft spot for anything involving dragons, and this game does not disappoint. From the opening moments of the game, there are dragons flying around everywhere, and it makes me happy. Their design is badass, fighting them is epic, and killing them feels like a true accomplishment.

The graphics are, of course, jaw dropping. The scenery in Skyrim is beyond description. While fast traveling is available in this game, I often find myself huffing it just so I can explore the scenery. Climbing mountains and exploring forests is almost as good as killing dragons.

This is a pretty neat sample of what the landscapes in Skyrim look like. Click the image for a bigger version.

Yet more epic scenery. As you can see, walking around in this game is just amazing.

One of my favorite character classes in any RPG is the rogue. I love stealthy kills and everything that comes along with that title. This character class is one of the things that Bethesda has always struggled with. While the option to be a rogue or a mage was always available, the games always felt like they were designed with a warrior class in mind. Having played with my rogue for almost 20 hours, I can say that I haven't run into any situations that were flat worse for my rogue than my warrior. In fact, I've found a lot of the missions easier with my rogue, just based on the fact that the stealth damage bonuses are ridiculous.

So far I'm impressed by Skyrim. It does a lot to improve on a lot of the things I wasn't impressed with in Oblivion. I still have some concerns, as it relates to certain things, like the length of the main story line. It was pretty short in Oblivion, all things considered, and I really hope that Skyrim's main story quest line is much longer. We'll see.

Tomorrow, I'll let you know about how the all nighter went. Good morning.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

2011-11-23T22:10:00.001-07:00

So I don't miss a(nother) day of blogging, here's the obligatory Happy Thanksgiving announcement. I'll be up at my parents house tomorrow with no Interwebs access, so, I'm posting this bad boy early. Hope everybody enjoys eating turkey and other, assorted yummies.

So, we'll celebrate today with the best way I know to celebrate anything. Some good ol' Calvin and Hobbes. Enjoy.

See you on Black Friday!

Magic Worlds

2011-11-23T21:52:00.001-07:00

So, with the weekend being over, albeit a few days over, the final Magic: the Gathering World Championships has ended. It's a bit sad that with all the organized play changes that Wizards of the Coast has implemented lately, the biggest tournament of the year is gone. I've been reading about this for a couple of weeks now. The organized play community, that is, the people who pay to play in tournaments, are generally in an uproar about everything that's come down.

I don't care either way very much. As a strictly casual player, it's been a couple of years since I paid to attend a tournament. I usually find myself sitting at a friend's kitchen table going a few rounds of Commander format. However, I did have the goal of one day forking out the money to travel to Worlds, if only for the experience. That goal is, sadly, no more.

In a more positive light, my friend Uriah managed to make it to Worlds for its final public hurrah. Uriah's pretty neat in that he films people's Commander decks then posts them to YouTube as part of his CMDR Decks channel.

The purpose of today's blog was twofold.

Bitch a little about Worlds going away.
Link to to CMDR Decks.

With the first goal covered in the first couple of paragraphs, I just need to link you over to the CMDR Decks channel, so here it is.

All righty, with that bit of advertisement out of the way, I'll let you get back to your Thanksgiving celebrations.

Games and Things

2011-11-22T20:00:00.001-07:00

Sooo, yeah, less than a week into this new initiative, and I miss not one but TWO days' worth of blogging. I am pathetic.

To rationalize: I posted twice on the 19th, so that makes up for not posting on the 20th. Yesterday was my birthday, so there you go.

Today, I'm back with a new post... and a lot of randomness.

My primary character on WoW is level 77. Almost to level 85. So close, I can taste it. End game content, here I come.

I started playing Skyrim yesterday (happy birthday to myself). Despite my general lack of interest in Oblivion, I find Skyrim to be highly amusing. I put numerous hours into it yesterday, and I still haven't made it out of the first major town. There are so many side quests. Oh, and I'm a werewolf. How about that?

I will admit to enjoying Skyrim a lot more than I thought I would. I forgot how deep those Elder Scrolls games could be. Let me put a few hundred more hours into it, and then I'll give you a review (all of which are conveniently filed in the review category now. Awesome, huh?).

What else is going on? In plans for the future, I plan on taking up blogging two topics about which I am particularly passionate: wrestling and Magic.

I've been a fan of wrestling since before I can remember, and it is my longest-held interest. Being such a longtime fan has made me both passionate and opinionated. For those of my readers that are interested, I watch Raw every Monday and I live tweet my way through each episode. Follow me on Twitter (@nunchux) if following along interests you at all. There's a great wrestling community on Twitter, most of whom live tweet through Raw as well, so get in on the conversation.

Magic is another one of my longtime passions, by far the more expensive of the two. I've invested a lot of money into the game, and I've always been fascinated by people who write about it. So, that being said, I'm going to try my hand at it. More on that coming soon.

Anyhoo, I belief this fills my post quota for the day. See you tomorrow.

Review - Mumford & Sons - Sigh No More

2011-11-19T17:57:00.001-07:00

NOTE: This is a post I started many months ago, and am just now getting around to finishing and publishing it. That sorta makes today a bonus day: 2 blogs!!

Good evening. It feels... strange to be blogging here again. It's been a rather long time since I've taken the time to do this. Seriously. Wow.

I'm not sure I even remember how to write.

Nevertheless, I'm in a writing mood, so I figured I'd sit down and write for a bit. Today, I want to tell you about this amazing album that I'm listening to right now. It is about the best damn album I've put money down for in a long, long time.

The album is Sigh No More by Mumford & Sons. It came out sometime last year. I was turned on to it by, of all things, SGU, which used the song "After the Storm" at the end of the season 2 premiere. I was swept up by the beauty of the song in that episode, and it became my personal quest to find out who was responsible for the song. Thankfully, the Internet exists, so my quest was rather short-lived.

Mumford & Son's album can best be described, I think, as a folk album. It combines interesting guitar/banjo lines with some metaphorically deep lyrics to produce helluva CD.

Soon after hearing them on SGU, a local radio station that specializes in a fun mix of current alternative rock and chart topping 90s pop-rock started playing "Little Lion Man". It didn't take me long to purchase the album so I could give the whole thing some listening time. Thanks again to the Internet, I impulse-bought the album within 10 minutes of hearing "Little Lion Man" for the first time. Yay for instant gratification.

I downloaded the album to my iPod and promptly started listening to it wherever I went. The first couple of listens were full of doe-eyed discovery. I'm not usually into the whole folk rock scene, but this album simply blew me away. It's been a long, long time since a band has struck me as Mumford & Sons did over that first couple of days. The songs range in emotion and tempo, fast and slow, sad and angry. It was a whirlwind of heartbreak and fury.

It wasn't until a few listens later that the true power of the album really started to dawn on me. The power of the lyrics, clever ways the band uses their instruments to help tell their stories. Even now, literally hundreds of listens later, the album is still mesmerizing.

Eventually a pattern starts to emerge, the way the songs are composed, their slow build to a powerful climax. The album becomes like a roller coaster, mellow, intense, up, down, moving, furious.Despite the similarities between each song's composition, the range of stories the band tells through their songs, and the power with which they tell those stories, keeps each sing fresh and interesting.

Many bands - I'd say nowadays, but this has held true since the dawning of the more modern, single-focused music era - seem to use their instruments merely as background for their singing. Heck, even some of the bands I like are guilty of this sin. Mumford & Sons defies this in most of the songs on this album. The instruments are just as much a part of the story and the feeling of the song as the vocals. The instruments communicate the pain of the songs, the rage, the joy. You can't just listen to and understand the emotions on the album - you are taken on a journey, you feel the emotions, empathize. A wonderful example of this is the aforementioned song "After the Storm." give me the chance (and a lot of time) and I'll tell you all about how beautiful that song is, the poignancy, the power that is carried through those 5 minutes of music. But for the purposes of this paragraph, I'll restrict myself to just the way the instruments add to the song. The guitars are simple, quiet. The vocals are stirring, rising and falling in an eerie and emotional cadence. Then there's the bass drums, that hit at just the right moments, just ratcheting up the power.

So good.

I really could go on (and on and on) about how awesome I think this album is. Even after the months of listening between when I started this blog post and now, I still crave listening to their album as one might crave a drug. It's addicting, and once I start listening to a song, I really just end up putting the whole album on shuffle. It is that damn good. I highly recommend checking it out.

A Very Nice Chat

2011-11-19T17:21:00.001-07:00

Not to get into too much of a trend of repeating myself on this blog, but I wanted to share again one of my favorite TEDTalks. For those of you who aren't familiar, TEDTalks are where visionary people share their opinions, their skills, and their thoughts. They've started posting these to YouTube, and some of them are quite remarkable.

Anyway, my 2010 new year's resolution revolved around one of these videos. This was one that I discovered through friend on Twitter, and it is still one of the best ones I've found. The talk is funny, educational, and motivational. Take a few minutes and watch it.

Tomorrow, I'll post something entirely original. Probably.

A Late Celebration

2011-11-18T21:28:00.001-07:00

Soooooo, how many people celebrated the Fifth of November this year? I sure did, and I did it the best way I know how. I watched V for Vendetta, which is one of my favorite movies of all time. The message is simple and effective, plus there's a lot of stylish action to entertain us while we listen absorb that message.

The movie constantly serves to remind me that of a lot of things I believe, and things that I sometimes let get away from me in the bustle of day-to-day life. For those of you with about three and a half minutes to spare, I'd like to share with you V's television speech. I would argue that it is one of the most relevant, one of the most important moments in the history of movies. It speaks not just to the government in the movie, but also to what ours is becoming.

I'll save the ranting political commentary for another night. I'm really tired, and talking politics is A) long and B) unproductive. Instead, I'll let Hugo Weaving do the talking for me.

Not Moving After All

2011-11-17T18:29:00.002-07:00

About a year ago, when I was chatting about coming back to blogging again, I mentioned peeking around at other blogging platforms to determine if Blogger was still the home for me. Well, last night, after posting my World of Warcraft blog, I jumped over to a fwe other blogging platforms. After an hour or so of research, I settled on WordPress. My work on ColonelEz.net gave me a taste of what you could do with WordPress, and I think their dashboard control area is about a million times more advanced than Bloggers.

I spent many more hours building a blog over there, going so far as to actually import the contents of this blog over there. I played with the themes, read about pages, made a few of my own, and generally had a good time with it. I enjoyed the amount of customization that WordPress allows.

Not to mention, I was severely disappointed by the utter lack of customization available within Blogger's new dynamic views.

Thing is, I kept running into this problem with WordPress. Namely, there'd be some detail or another I didn't like about a theme, but I wasn't allowed to change it. You see, WordPress is actually a pay to blog service, or, at least, pay to get the most out of your blog service. Want to change fonts? Pay for it. Want to run off your own domain? Pay for it.

Many of the things that WordPress wants to charge me for (and they want a LOT of money sometimes), Blogger gives me for free. As a result, I've decided to stick around Blogger for now, but bear with me as I goof around with carious themes and skins as I try to find the right one. The dynamic view angers me with it's zero customization options, so I'm going to try to find a better one.

Until tomorrow!

EDIT: After several hours of goofing around with themes and layouts, I believe I finally have one I like. Plus, I finally have pages that function almost how I'd like them to eventually, thanks in HUGE part to fiddling around with the code provided from this blog. Yay. More categories coming soon, if all goes according to plan.

Human Behavior and Warcraft

2011-11-16T19:05:00.002-07:00

So yeah, I must confess, one of the reasons for this project is the amount of writing time that has been leached from me by the game World of Warcraft. I resisted the urge for many, many years, but Blizzard's offer of "play for free" snagged me. I was in between interesting things to do and was randomly browsing around the web when a dancing goblin caught my eye. Play World of Warcarft for free, the advert said, until level 20.

What do I have to lose, I thought to myself. It's free. I can really decide whether I like the game by level 20.

Problem was, I REALLY liked the game.

20 levels was enough to whet my appetite for loot hunting, gaining levels, and playing in dungeons. $80 up front and $15 a month later, I was playing the full version of the game, partially cursing myself for falling into the WoW pit to doom, partly cursing myself for not having figured out how awesome it was sooner.

I did make the commitment to myself that if I ever bailed on some real life activity for one in the WoW universe, that I was going to quit immediately. I can't count how many times the last time I ever heard from one of my friends was them saying, "I'm so excited, I just bought Word of Warcraft!!!!"

Nice knowing you.

This wasn't going to be me. So far, I'm winning that battle.

One of the things that helps me immensely is the people. Sure, I've got some real life friends that I also hang out with virtually, but some of the people who play that game are either A) obsessive, B) forget that it is a game, or C) are just flat out childish.

My first experience in a dungeon (a place in the world you go with 4 other players to kill high level enemies and get cool items) was with my neat druid character who turned into a cat to beat the snot out of baddies. I was already nervous about the idea of playing with other people, because I don't play with strangers in games ever. Anyway, I'm in this dungeon, doing my part to kill enemies, and along comes this item that is good for my character, so I needed the item.

-Aside-

When venturing around with other players in dungeons, when a player picks up a valuable item, each person in the party has the option to either need the item (as in "I need this item to make my character better") or greed the item ("The item is cool, but I don't need it"). If any member of the party needs an item, that person gets it. If more than one person needs an item, then the system rolls a virtual dice for each needing character with the highest roll getting the item. If nobody needs an item, the system rolls for all the people that selected greed instead.

It is generally considered bad manners and will earn you a lot of four and five letter words if you choose need for items that are not good for your character.

-End Aside-

So anyway, I selected the need option for this item, because, well, I needed it. Crazy. Anyway, one of the other characters in the party starts freaking out. I could get into all the details of why that character didn't need the item that I had won, but that's beside the point. This person spent literally the entire duration of the dungeon cussing me out for choosing need on an item that I legitimately needed.

Sigh.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. I've put numerous (understatement) hours into that game, and have run into both really cool people, and real assholes. Unfortunately, the game seems to draw more of the latter. Sometimes, I get into a party with more than one asshole. Those are always fun. After a dungeon run with an asshole, I generally find myself logging out for the rest of the day, as that kind of behavior just leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

There's certainly no helping the fact that people are going to act in more aggressive or offensive manners online, nor is this a call to put any sort of policing system into place to try to prevent that. Rather, the rest of this post is simple observation, and my thoughts on what I've observed.

One of the things that has been fascinating me lately is the way anonymity affects personal behavior. You can meet a person in the real world and they will be courteous and respectful. You can meet that same somebody online, and they're totally different. The Internet has this power to strip away personal accountability. There is no consequence for acting like a child online. You are not held accountable for doing so, because nobody knows who you are, therefore, in most cases, you cannot be held accountable. People can hide behind an avatar and a screen name, and this really makes people think they can get away with anything.

Take music pirating as an example. It's highly unlikely that many people would walk into a Wal-Mart or a Best Buy, stuff a few (sometimes a few hundred) CDs into their pockets, then try to leave without paying. However, those same people will not hesitate to download those same hundreds of CDs using a bit torrent client or some such. The difference? The anonymity.

-Aside-

No, I'm not arguing the morals of paying for entire CDs or against any of the other arguments used when pirating music (or movies or software, for that matter), I'm merely using this as an example. THAT discussion is one for another blog post.

-End Aside-

Anyway, back to the point, the anonymity granted by the Internet allows people to behave in ways that they otherwise wouldn't in the real world. Why is that? I'd propose that this is the case because of the lack of consequences that comes with that anonymity. Think about that for a second. The person who's torrenting all that music won't go into a store and steal the physical CDs. Why not? He obviously doesn't care about the moral "wrongness" of stealing the music. He could be broke, sure, but that still doesn't explain why he won't go to the store to steal the CDs. If he's that broke, the gas to get to the store is probably cheaper than monthly Internet access, and those same, stolen, physical CDs can be resold for profit afterwards. No, he torrents instead of steals because it's less likely that he's going to get caught. He may not admit to this reasoning, however he understands it on some level. The consequences for the action have been removed, or at least minimized.

To apply this case back to my WoW gripes, let's compare cussing somebody out in real life to doing it in WoW. Pretend that you are out in the street or at work. Somebody does something that pisses you off, so you go over to them and let them have it verbally for a few minutes. You drop the four and five letter bombs; you trash the person's mother and wife and puppy and future kids. Are there consequences for doing such a thing? Damn straight there are. You could get arrested, punched in the face, fired from your job, etc., etc., and so on. That kind of behavior is just not tolerated by society.

Now, let's take that exact same scenario and apply that to the virtual world of Warcraft. Let's look at the (fictional) WoW avatar named WrathMonkeyHatesYou. WrathMonkeyHatesYou makes an immature brat of himself by telling you all the things he did to your mom last night, somewhere along the way insinuating that he's your daddy and your mom's his bitch. What are the consequences there? You don't know WrathMonkeyHatesYou, you have no idea what his real name is, you're not with him so you can't punch him in the face, and his place of work probably doesn't care how he behaves on WoW. You can ignore his ridiculous jabs or you can sink to his level and make your mom jokes back at him. Either way, there's nothing negative in this deal for WrathMonkeyHatesYou. Thus, he can behave however he wants.

Keep this image with you for a sec.

Way back in 1954, William Golding wrote a book called Lord of the Flies. In writing this book, Golding attempted to show that humans, at their core, were bestial, primal, and savage. The whole facade of being socially acceptable was just a reaction to not wanting to face consequences for any actions that did not fit into that mold. He accomplished this in his book by sticking a bunch of kids on an island, a place where there were no grownups or rules or consequences. They were completely isolated from the real world. Over the course of the novel, the children descended into utter madness, hunting each other, and devolving into violent savages.

I could go on and on about the brilliance of Lord of the Flies, but I'll get to my point. Golding's island provided the anonymity of separation from the real world and thus removed consequences from the equation.

Now, replace the island with the Internet.

Do you see the parallels?

Follow me on Twitter. Circle me on Google+.

Today, A Project

2011-11-15T21:39:00.001-07:00

Welcome back to blogging, I'm saying to myself right now. It's been a long time, as most of the posts I made "recently" said over and over. The last few times I've blogged here, I said I was back to stay and yadda yadda. Of course, I then faded into obscurity, as the very real demands of the real world kept getting in the way. Not that there's a problem with IRL demands, but they definitely got in the way of some of the things I've wanted to do with my life - namely, write.

I'm definitely an aspiring writer, but I'm feeling a little out of practice. I've recently invested in a new MacBook Pro to replace my dying Windows netbook. I've had an Apple laptop since around 2002, one of the old iBook G3s that were made out of white plastic. I accidentally threw that thing once. I put it in my carry bag, forgot to zip it, then went to throw that over my shoulder, and BAM the laptop flies out of the bag and crashes into a cabinet before hitting the hard, tile floor. Crazily enough, I picked up the laptop, turned it on (panicking the whole time), and it worked. Booted right up and everything. The case cracked, and that was it. I've been super-loyal to Apple ever since. Fast forward 9 years, the thing still works. Just so you know.

Anyway, I wrote my first stories on my old Apple iBook, so there's something about using a Mac that makes me want to write. Which brings me back to the point of my new project. Sitting and staring at my laptop screen, I can tell I'm completely out of touch with writing. My brain doesn't want to function on that level any more. My writing hat is damaged.

So, here's my slightly early, new year resolution. I will blog every day. Yes, I said it, every day. Every. Single. Freaking. Day. From now until I get my groove back. It doesn't matter if it's a short post no longer than a tweet, or a great novel-length post, there will be something here every day. And words too, not just pictures. Posting a picture kind of violates the purpose of the project.

I need a catchy name for this project, something short that can be made into a Twitter hash tag and can be used as a label for these posts. Any ideas? Hit me up in the comments.

This here counts as my first post, as I slowly fade from consciousness, thinking to myself how I probably should have gone to bed a couple of hours ago.

Anyway, I hope this is an exciting and productive journey, and I'd like to look back on this in a year's time and think of how awesome this was. We'll see. In the meantime, enjoy yourself as I continue to fiddle with these new (and rather annoying) dynamic views in blogger.

While you're at it, you should follow me on Twitter and/or Google+. I'm usually very active on both services.

Good night.

A Farewell to SGU

2011-05-09T22:32:00.001-06:00

It is with a heavy heart that I return to blogging. After nearly a year of absence and a posts left unfinished, I return on the day that will, at least in my mind, mark the end of great science fiction television.

It hasn't been long that I've been a Stargate fan... just a little over two years now. But Stargate filled a void that I wasn't always conscious that I had, the one for great science fiction. For the last 14 years, the Stargate franchise has been giving fans just that. Like I said, I wasn't watching 14 years ago, but in the last two years, I've managed to cram in 14 years' worth of television, and those last two years have made me a passionate fan.

Simply put, I love Stargate. I've become a diehard fan, because the Stargate franchise offers me everything I want in a TV show and everything I want in a Sci Fi show. For me, it is the epitome of awesome science fiction, and I'm not sure I can think of a better way to put that.

While I love all the Stargate franchises, Stargate Universe really separated itself for me, not only from the rest of the Stargate canon, but also from the rest of the television I was watching. The character development, the story arc, the plots and subplots, they all hooked me. I very clearly remember the day about a year and a half ago, a cold, November day, cloudy and rather dismal, that I first discovered SGU. At that point in life, I had a DVR and still watched live television. I hadn't been watching SGU at that point, but it was recorded on the DVR. The choices for the day were go out in the depressingly nasty weather or stay inside where it was warm. I chose the latter and decided the day was time to catch up on SGU.

It was a decision that, quite frankly, and without exaggeration, changed my life. The first episodes of the show were captivating, and it was a matter of literally minutes before I was hooked, completely and utterly. Within a few days, I had written a blog post, one of my longest ever, entitled Why I love SGU Part 1 - The Characters. I finished and posted the blog post on Thanksgiving a year and a half ago. And because I was also just getting into the world of Twitter, I posted a link to my blog post there.

Within a few hours, I had met some of the coolest people I know, people that I now have the privilege of calling friends, people whose friendship I will take with me even now that the show that brought us all together has been canceled. Karrie and Sherry, my wonderful and hilarious e-Moms, Bruce and his raunchy humor, Curt at whose apartment I stayed and it was great, F.P. Molina whose Twitter company is always appreciated, and Terry, who I talk to every week and I'm still not bored with him yet. There are so many more people on Twitter who I talk with as regularly as possible, and you're all fantastic.

I've also had the opportunity to talk to several people from the cast and crew of the show, both on Twitter and in Hiatus Project chats. They are all wonderful people, and I wish them the best of luck in the future. I traveled to Chicago to meet and hang out with my friends from Twitter; I went to my first ever Stargate convention while in Chicago where I got to see the entertaining and hilarious Alaina Huffman, Elyse Levesque, and Brian Jacob Smith; I co-host a weekly podcast; and, as a team, we put together and hosted weekly Hiatus Project chats... SGU has been the catalyst for so many ridiculously awesome things in my life that it's hard to imagine it's gone.

Yes, SGU is great Sci Fi, the best in my opinion, and yes, I really could go on for a few pages about the cancellation and the general injustice this show suffered, but that's what I do on the podcast. No, this blog is more of a celebration of everything that SGU was about. It was a great show, but it was more than that. SGU was an experience (Well said, Molina :) ), and it was so because of the people - both those that helped create the show and the community that formed around it. I have had some great times and I've met some great people thanks to SGU.

So, SGU is cancelled. The last episode, which I have not yet seen, aired tonight, and then that's it. 40 episodes of amazing TV is all that's left of one of the best shows I've ever seen (and no, that's not spur of the moment hyperbole). What next? Life will go on, of course. But life will be different. SGU was only a TV show, but life will be better for its existence, I think. I'll always have a collection of SGU Blu Rays to fall back on when I start to crave great science fiction again, but more importantly, I'll always have the great people who came into my life because of the show.

Twitter tonight was all about the standing ovation. I think that's the most appropriate thing I've ever seen on Twitter, as it is the perfect way for us fans to show our appreciation for a great show with all the amazing talent that went into creating it and bringing it to life. This blog post is my standing ovation, my thank you message to the folks whose creation honestly changed my life.

So then, it's with a glad heart that I say THANK YOU to everybody who had part in making Stargate Universe. Your work is appreciated and will be sorely missed.

SGU Season 2 - Oh. My. God.

2010-09-22T18:48:00.001-06:00

I know I said I wasn't going to talk about SGU here any more in favor of ColonelEZ.net... but OMGWTFROFLBBQ AAAAAHHHHHHH. This trailer is SO INTENSE and SO RIDICULOUSLY GOOD that I simply had to share it. If you are not on board yet with SGU, WTF is wrong with you?!?!?!

Season 2 starts next Tuesday, so catch up quick! It's going to be EPIC!

Chevelle in Concert Again (Finally)

2010-09-20T19:14:00.001-06:00

Two nights ago, I went to Channel 93.3's "Big Gig", which was a music festival consisting of somewhere in teh neighborhood of 10 bands performing on a single stage. The event was held at what I will always know as Fiddler's Green, an outdoor amphitheater which was bought out and renamed after the Wal-Mart of dentistry, Comfort Dental.

I went with a group of friends who, aside from some questionable music for the drive up to Denver, turned out to be good concert-going brethren.

Did I mention that this is the first concert I've been to in over 3 years?? Well, it has, and shame on me. There isn't an experience quite like a concert - if you've never been to one before, I'd advise you to look at the tour schedules for your favorite musicians and correct that as soon as possible. There's and energy and an atmosphere at concerts that I haven't found replicated anywhere else.

So, the show. We arrived late and missed a good number of the bands. We arrived in time to see the full set of an utterly atrocious band (local, I believe), who will remain nameless here for the simple fact that they sucked that bad. They rushed through their set, taking up a meager half and hour of my time... thankfully. You could tell everybody was rushing through things, because the Fiddler's green is right in the middle of a corporate area, the city requires they finish by a certain time. Nobody was quite sure what the time was exactly, 10:30, 11:00, midnight... who knows. But anyway, the roadies were definitely booking it up on stage between sets.

Flobots was next. I have a healthy respect for their music and the message the bring to the table, but I was only so-so about seeing them live. They're another Denver local band, and their music is a strange, yet decidedly cool, mix of hip hop and rock. Plus, they have a violinist. She kicks ass. She was rocking that stage like nobody's business, all the while playing some ridiculous violin pieces (ridiculous in the complimentary way, that is). As an added bonus, the second singer spent a good majority of his non-singing time doing various forms of the robot. Win! I'm starting to see where they got their name.

The next band up was Anberlin. I'd never heard of these guys prior to this concert. A friend of mine said they were instrumental, so I had high hopes of coolness. They were not instrumental... nor were they particularly good. They had very little stage presence aside from some awkward emo flailing. After waiting a couple of songs to see if I didn't like it because I was disappointed it wasn't instrumental or whether it was really just not good (I decided on the latter), I got up to go merch shopping. By this time, I was getting chilly out, and I was hoping to get a hoodie (Chevelle of course), but they were sold out. In fact, the only hoodies they had left were those for the nameless terrible band I had the displeasure of seeing first. I skipped on those and ended up buying a neat little Chevelle T-shirt instead. I also took the chance to use the restroom - a horrid experience, the place was one step away from being declared a hazard and shut down - and wandered around the market area marveling at the ridiculous prices for everything (ridiculous in a bad way this time). $4.50 for a small bottle of water?!?!

At long last, it was time to see the band I'd paid to see. The setup seemed to take forever, despite the fact that it happened relatively quickly. When the lights went out, though, it was on. See, Chevelle is, in my opinion, the greatest band of all time. I love their music to death - it has been my constant companion through thick and thin for many, many years now. I'm sad to say that this is the first time I've seen them in concert for about 5 years (which is about 5 years too long), so it was a real treat for me to see them live again.

We were stuck back in the general admission area, which is an arch of grass on the highest level, furthest away from the stage. A rail and a short ledge mark the transition from the general admission area to the assigned seating area. I managed to squeeze in between a few other people to stand on the rail, the best view of the stage from the GA area. The people on either side of me were obviously not Chevelle fans, as they were not into the show at all, and they kept shooting me odd glances because it was rather apparent that I was into the show. My friend Stephen, who was watching both the band and apparently me from higher up in the GA area, said that I did enough "rocking out" to make up for the blah reaction from the rest of the people around me. Yes, I am a complete dork, and yes, I rock the fuck out at concerts. What I would have given to be on the floor for this show (it's actually the first time I've seen Chevelle from anywhere farther away than the front row).

Anyway, Chevelle ran through a pretty awesome set that started with "The Clincher" (my favorite Chevelle tune), and ended with "I Get It". Due to the short time they were allotted, the chose to stick mostly to their singles, though there were a few other gems thrown in, like "Comfortable Liar" and "Family System." The crowd was on fire for them, the biggest and best crowd involvement of the night by far, even though Chevelle wasn't headlining. That was a bit surprising to me, because Colorado isn't really a Chevelle supporting kind of state.

I just got back from a trip to Chicago, and I would've killed to see them live there.

As Chevelle left the stage to some truly thunderous applause, I wandered back over to where my group of friends was huddled under a blanket. I collapsed into the grass, worn out and already starting to feel sore. I had very little voice left, and chugged a bottle of water in an effort to preserve it. We chatted about how awesome Chevelle was as a live band to kill the time between them and The Smashing Pumpkins.

So, The Smashing Pumpkins took the stage. I haven't been a fan of these guys for very long. My friend Uriah never stops singing their praises, the Pumpkins are to him what Chevelle is to me. Prior to meeting him, I was familiar with their radio singles, but I never really started going deeper into their discography until I met him. While they are still not in my really, really, really awesome bands list, I have a healthy respect for their music. They also put on one hell of a show. They went crazy with the lights, and that made for an interesting effect. They started off with some of their less known stuff, and by about the halfway point, about a thir of the crowd had left. I was a little shocked to see that. I wasn't familiar with too much of what they played early, but I had a great time watching and listening. The Pumpkins are very talented musically, and it was on full display at this show.

Billy Corgan, the Pumpkins' front man, made a joke about how all the posers had finally left, then they started in on their more commercial songs - "Bullet With Butterfly Wings," "Tonight, Tonight," etc. They played one of their longer songs called "Revolution" I believe, which took up about 15 minutes of their stage time. In the middle, the band walked off the stage and left only their drummer. He's fairly new to the band, and he's 19 years old. He busted out the most amazing drum solo I've ever heard (and I've heard a lot of them). He was going all ninja on the drums, and that took a good 6 or 7 minutes before the band rejoined him and concluded the song. 19 years old!!! Damn!!

Anyway, once they were through, we drove back into town, reliving the best moments from the evening. There were a lot of them, all things considered. I spent Sunday not moving and not talking to anybody - I was far too sore for that, and my voice had gone out completely while I was sleeping. I picked up Halo: Reach and have been playing that ever since (review coming soon!), so that made for a good, vegetative Sunday.

Next weekend, I'll be heading back to Denver, this time for the Muse show. That oughta be great. I'll be tweeting about the concert all night - lots of wit, charm, and banter :-) - much like I did for this show. All right!

You should follow me on Twitter (@nunchux).

All right, back to Reach!

Review - Inception

2010-07-25T10:16:00.000-06:00

Two years ago, I sat down to write the review for a movie that I thought would be the best movie I'd ever see. The surroundings were a little different - I lived in a different place then, had a room mate and a cat. I had central air conditioning then too (something I miss desperately right now). Times have changed a bit, I drive a different car, hold a different position at work, and none of this has to do with the movie I'm trying to review right now.

In the two years between The Dark Knight and Inception, Christopher Nolan's genius has grown in leaps and bounds. It took me a week from the first time I saw Inception until now, when , after the third time I've seen it, I'm sitting down to write the review. My intention in delaying this long was to prevent myself from rambling about the brilliance of the movie like a fool for a few pages. Well, a week has come and gone. I'm fresh off my third viewing of the movie, and I'm still not past mindless rambling yet.

Where do you begin with a movie such as this? On my way home from my most recent showing, I was trying to figure out how I would go about reviewing this movie. The words that came to my head seemed inadequate, descriptions seemed superfluous.

I suppose I'll start simple. Inception is absolutely, utterly, mind-bogglingly amazing from beginning to end. Absolutely everything worked for me - the movie as a whole was so well done that it stands out from everything else I've ever seen.

Perhaps what stands out most, however, is the artistry and scope of Nolan's vision. The movie deals heavily with the layers of dreams, but the movie is itself a complex and layered thing. Even on my third viewing, I was still picking up on little things that I had not noticed before. Additionally, the movie really credits audiences with a certain high level of intelligence. It does not spoon feed us the answers, but rather expects us to discover them for ourselves. Even better is the way that Nolan gives us numerous complex puzzles to solve, and then the movie leads us through the assembly of most of each, finally leaving us with just enough to guide the way without actually giving us complete answers.

Artistically speaking, nobody does it quite like Nolan. Each camera angle, each cut and shot, is chosen with care and is meaningful. The symbolic way he chooses to represent our subconscious and the layers of it are incredible. Above all else, this movie is shocking because of how beautiful it is. The beauty of Inception simply cannot be overstated. At each viewing, I found myself either grinning ear to ear or with my mouth hanging open, because the movie is truly a visual spectacle. Even the destruction of the dream worlds is handled with such finesse that they are inspiring in their beauty.

And it is not only the visuals that are beautiful. The storyline is equally astonishing, perhaps even more jaw-dropping than the visuals that propel it. I will not delve into the storyline here, because I wouldn't be able to stand spoiling it for anybody. One of the joys of the movie, after all, is the thrill of discovering just what Nolan is up to. I will say, however, that you have never seen anything like it before.

One of the other things that makes the movie so damned good is the soundtrack. I'm not sure what it is about the pairing of Christopher Nolan and Hans Zimmer that produces such excellent movie scores, but I hope it continues. Zimmer's score for Inception is one of the best things I've heard in so long, especially while watching the actual movie. The score fits perfectly with the tone of the movie. It is intense, driving, beautiful... it is powerful. Like all the other pieces of the movie, it fits together perfectly with everything else to make the whole experience cohesive.

Last week, I posted the 3rd trailer for Inception right here on the blog. Other than the fact that the trailer made the movie look amazing, the thing that stood out to me was the music. The song is called Mind Heist, and it's by Zack Hemsey (you can listen to it and purchase it here). The music is intense, particularly the bassy horn stabs, and the way they contrast the fast, sharp strings.

<a href="http://music.zackhemsey.com/track/mind-heist">Mind Heist by Zack Hemsey</a>

After seeing the movie the first time, I was convinced that Zimmer had done the music for the trailer as well (though some digging online showed I was wrong), because the song fit so well with score from the movie. In particular, there is one part in the movie that I especially loved, because the music suddenly morphs into the horns from the trailer. I almost jumped out of my seat with excitement. It's a small detail, but it seemed like a bone to the folks who love this kind of music. It tied the movie back in to the trailer that made me want to see it. Very freaking sweet. On the whole, this gets my vote for the best score Zimmer's ever wrote (ah, poetry).

Moving on. I'd like to point out that Leonardo DiCaprio is amazing. He's come a long way since I couldn't stand him in Titanic (granted that was probably more the general crappiness of that movie than DiCaprio himself). Ever since I saw Blood Diamond and then The Departed, I have made a point to see every movie he releases. The man out acts most people in Hollywood, and Inception is no different. He brings Cobb to life and really makes us feel for his plight.

DiCaprio is just one in a list of people that made the characters in this movie great. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Cobb's sidekick and partner in crime, Arthur. Arthur is a complete badass once he enters the dream worlds. In particular his shifting gravity fight scenes (yes, there are a couple of those in this movie) were quite brilliant. Ellen Page plays the architect, Ariadne. What a beautiful name that is. Tom Hardy plays my favorite character in Eames. If I were entering somebody's dream world, I'd want him to come along for sure, both for his humor and his skill. Cillian Murphy (a favorite of Nolan's) plays Robert Fisher, Jr., the, ah, subject. I love Murphy's acting in this and everything else I've seen him in. I'm quite shocked that he's not been in more movies. Hopefully Inception will pave the way for more screen time for him.

The cast is rounded out with folks such as Ken Watanabe (who is also awesome) and Tom Berenger and Michael Caine (Whoo hoo!). Individually, they all turn in great performances, but as a team, they really drive the movie through all its complicated and twisting layers.

Once again, I have to come back to how all the pieces come together so perfectly to make a wonderful, amazing, [insert any other praising adjectives that come to your mind here] whole. This movie is so great because all the little things that Nolan does work so well. His vision for this movie is epic, and through all the things he does, I was left with a sense of wonderment and adrenaline fueled joy that no other movie I have seen could match. Part of that was the thrill of the discovery, seeing just how deep Nolan's vision went, seeing how he realized that vision so perfectly. Part of it was the novelty of the experience. When I tell you that you haven't seen anything like this before, I am not kidding. I've seen numerous reviews that draw comparisons to a couple of other movies, but those just don't match the depth and scope of what Nolan has accomplished with Inception. It is at once a love story and a comedy, an action movie and a moving drama. I mean, where else can you see a movie that may move you to tears in the same two and a half hours that you witness a freight train plow through downtown or a fight scene that takes place as the center of gravity keeps changing?

Two years ago, I called The Dark Knight the best movie I'd ever seen. Art, I said. I maintain that The Dark Knight is a work of art, but Inception is a work of art on an entirely different level. It is a masterpiece, a Mona Lisa in a medium that rarely can produce a thing of such beauty. Despite my attempts at such, the power and beauty of this movie are impossible to describe; you simply must see it to appreciate it. I could tell you all day about how the Mona Lisa is a painting of a lovely woman, but until you actually witness its beauty for yourself, you will never understand. I've told you how wonderful Inception is, now the only thing left to do is to go see it.

And see it in theaters. Trust me when I say you owe it to yourself to see Inception on the biggest screen you can. And, like I did with Star Trek last year, I will ask you to actually pay to see it. Like I said then, Hollywood listens only to your wallet, so let them know that movies that are as astonishing as this should be attempted more often.

In Official Xbox Magazine, they grade games on a 10-point scale. Since they have already given out a perfect ten, they introduced a new score, the eleven. They describe it as "A unicorn. Will never happen. Never." Well, Inception is that unicorn, the perfect movie that I very much doubt will have an equal in our lifetime. So, I find it quite fitting that it is graded as such.

Score: 11.0/10.0

Inception Looks to be Awesome

2010-07-13T13:27:00.000-06:00

All right. First big summer movie is right around the corner. Christopher Nolan's newest film is almost upon us. I've been a fan of Nolan's movies since Memento, and he further solidified his position as one of the best movie minds around with Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. It should be sufficient to say that I'm almost drooling with anticipation. Plus, as an added benefit, the movie is currently pulling in a 97% on the Tomatometer.

Can't. Freaking. Wait.

In the mean time, enjoy the trailer!