Wasting time

ST:TNG I'm really not very thorough

2011-08-14T09:40:00.000-06:00

So it looks like some super nerds over at tor.com have started an in-depth rewatch of all the Next Generation episodes. It's kind of embarrassing posting my stream of consciousness crap after seeing how thorough they are! Embarrassment has never been a problem for me, just acknowledging it.

ST:TNG 1.7 The Lonely Among Us

2011-07-31T20:26:00.002-06:00

Hot delegate transportation action!

Delegates from alien species 1 seem closely related to the Goombas from the Mario Brothers movie.

Ooh, enter the 'unusual energy object'. Considerable energy is changing patterns and.. travelling at warp speed! Be still my quivering geekiness.

Ugh. Worf got zapped while working on the sensor array. Zapped so hard his forehead prosthetic nearly blew off.

We get to see Dr. Crusher sporting the latest in.. weird medical skullcaps? Enough of that, though, she's apparently caught some energy transference from Worf. In other news, Picard "loves mysteries".

Not a whole lot to actually say about this episode. Can I really continue talking about Wesley's sweater? Very much looking forward to Crusher doing more than walking around looking creepy.

13 minutes in and I think they blew the writing budget on the alien costumes, but they've only been used in one brief scene each.

At this point this episode has lost me. The alien species are both dicks and.. wait.. huh.. Data has begun channelling Sherlock Holmes, including pipe, as they try to figure out what the delegates have to do with the ship problems. Ah, the moment has passed. Return to boredom..

Energy whatever has possessed Picard. Actually kind of loving cocky Picard. Wondering what the Federation would be like if every ship had all this random crap happening to it all the time.

How did this energy being not decide to go after Data?

Energy/Picard used the transporter to beam both of them out into the energy cloud, supposedly because Picard wants to explore the universe as energy. Turns out that won't work, so Energy version of Picard gets back into the circuitry of the Enterprise. But when they reverse the transporter beam, they essentially recreate the captain from the transporter buffer. Don't they have the ability to just create a few more Datas using the same technique? Is this how the replicators work? I need more detailed mumbo-jumbo to explain this..

Ultimately the delegates seemed there to fill time in the episode and give the crew a false trail to follow as to why an engineer was found dead in the engine room.

This episode is possibly too pulpy for me. Maybe if I was reading this in a magazine from the 50s, but..

Great finds this weekend

2011-07-31T14:23:00.001-06:00

Went to Louisville, KY this weekend for the first time. Found some great media sources. Picked up the following at great prices.

MST3K Collection Volume 12 - The one with Parts:The Clonus Horror.
MST3K - Beginning of the End - long out of print!
Freaks - I've seen it, but really look forward to the commentary. Unless I've actually watched it before..
Battle Royale

The latter two of those I found at Wild and Wooly Video in Louisville - fantastic horror, import, sci-fi imports for rental.

ST:TNG 1.6 Where No One Has Gone Before

2011-07-29T17:31:00.001-06:00

Riker is getting younger by the episode.

This episode is about tests and tuning on the Enterprise's warp engines. EXCITEMENT.

BUT, I suspect that those testing fellows from the USS Fearless might be werewolves, or something. Yeah, that's a reasonable direction for this episode. LET'S FIND OUT.

Geordi not being the chief engineer is a little disorienting. Perhaps he's off filming Reading Rainbow? Oh, no. He's just on the bridge. Hrm.

Apparently Wesley has screwed up something and the Enterprise has passed Warp 10? What does Picard do? Jams it into reverse. BAM. 2.7 million light years in minutes. Over 300 years to get home at normal warp. Is this Voyager?

If this were X-Files they would be investigating what supernatural sources this Kosinski guy's douchebagginess come from.

Oh, this must be that Traveller guy that eventually removes Wesley from the series as the assistant to Commander Douchebag..

Interesting aging of the special effects in the show. Kinda neat that this ep is where that picture of Picard falling out of a turbolift into space comes from. Ah, then everything goes totally haywire. Lovely. They must be about to all assume their pure energy forms, being at the end of the universe as the hallucination of Picard's mom claims.

Oh, obviously. They're in a place where mind, time, and space are one. Why would I ever have suspected werewolves?

This guy is actually the Traveler and foreshadows Wesley becoming some kind of fancy lad.

This episode could have ended so well with somebody thinking of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and having epic battle with the Enterprise.

Instead it turns out the Traveler manages to somehow convert Kosinski's douchebaggery directly into motive force behind the Enterprise. Douchebaggery strong enough to throw the Enterprise hundreds of millions of miles. That, or channeling the hideousness of Wesley's sweater. I don't know. This is all new territory for me..

Picard decides to nurture Wesley on the Traveler's advice by making Wesley an ensign. Hooray.

ST:TNG 1.5 The Last Outpost

2011-07-20T20:06:00.000-06:00

Oh, this one is about T9 energy converters. Awesome.

First impressions, why is Geordi on the bridge so often instead of in engineering? Probably for the same reason the captain goes on so many away missions.. Or does he just lead the way in the movies?

Starting to suspect I may have hallucinated that Riker ever had a beard. I may have to put it down as a wonderful dream, never to be fulfilled.

Tasha Yar isn't dead yet. Bah.

Oh, first encounter with the Ferengi! Although they never met before, they subscribe to the same verticality rules as the Federation. No problems with ships meeting at odd angles to each other.

WTF. The entire ship is losing power and Geordi is still sitting in the bridge updating Facebook or whatever.. I guess he's cool as long as gravity doesn't fail..

Data gets caught in a chinese finger trap. Apparently he lacks the upper body strength to defeat that friction..

Pretty sure the Ferengi were designed while drunk. "Let's just give them butt heads. OK?" "Winner! " And thus, the douchebags of the Star Trek universe were born.

They officially did decide to still devote power to their gravity systems as they RAN OUT OF OXYGEN. Maslow's hierarchy was lost in the mid-21st century wars.

Oh crap. I got distracted at the end. Now I'll never know if they got their energy converter back. Why even bother continuing with the series? That lack of knowledge will haunt me. Always.

ST:TNG 1.4 Code of Honor

2011-07-18T19:10:00.000-06:00

Hey, let's have a racist episode! British Captain will attempt to negotiate with backwards African planet for unique vaccine only available there. Unfortunately, jungle love is in the air, as Tasha Yar is kidnapped by their leader.

Still no beard on Riker. Such disappointment. Still, a discussion on shaving between Geordi and Data.

Only sign of Wesley is a peek out the turbolift. Oh, dammit. Mom is making a thing out of it. Oh, god. Picard is seating him at the Ops console. It's amazing how instantly I'm channeling the Wesley rage of the time.

Seems like a waste of an episode.

Crusher has epic 80s hair.

ST:TNG 1.3 The Naked Now

2011-07-18T15:35:00.001-06:00

Episode appears to start with a raunchy pop-up ad, which is apparently a ship of infected drunks.

Of course the black man gets drunk first on the away mission.

Wesley built a machine that satisfied his hero worship by resampling Picard's announcements into commands as if he were working on the bridge. Disturbing.

Pretty much everybody gets the intoxication virus and starts getting it on. On the second mission with that crew. Expect many references back to this.
Second episode and it's the second episode with direct reference to the original series, with them encountering in the logs an encounter Kirk's Enterprise had with a similar infection.

ST:TNG 1.1 Encounter at Farpoint

2011-07-18T11:19:00.000-06:00

Separate the saucer section!
Riker doesn't have a beard!
Picard hates children. AND HE'S GOT AN ACCENT.
Data needs a cat.
Q is a dick.
Wesley Crusher was not thrown out of an airlock.
Lots of high speed character definition.

ST:TNG-quest engaged.

2011-07-18T10:35:00.000-06:00

Planning to attempt watching all episodes of Star Trek:Next Generation in the 2 years that Netflix has it licensed for streaming. Encounter at Farpoint.. begun.

Fascinating bit on Germanic Tyr from Wikipedia

2011-05-24T21:00:00.001-06:00

According to the Poetic Edda and Prose Edda, at one stage the gods decided to shackle the Fenris wolf (Fenrir), but the beast broke every chain they put upon him. Eventually they had the dwarves make them a magical ribbon called Gleipnir. It appeared to be only a silken ribbon but was made of six wondrous ingredients: the sound of a cat's footfall, the beard of a woman, the roots of a mountain, bear's sinews (meaning nerves, sensibility), fish's breath and bird's spittle. The creation of Gleipnir is said to be the reason why none of the above exist. Fenrir sensed the gods' deceit and refused to be bound with it unless one of them put his hand in the wolf's mouth.

Tyr, known for his great wisdom and courage, agreed, and the other gods bound the wolf. After Fenrir had been bound by the gods, he struggled to try and break the rope. When the gods saw that Fenrir was bound they all rejoiced, except Tyr, who had his right hand bitten off by the wolf. Fenrir will remain bound until the day of Ragnarök. As a result of this deed, Tyr is called the "Leavings of the Wolf"; which is to be understood as a poetic kenning for glory.

On rapture

2011-05-24T20:00:00.016-06:00

If you think you can predict the end of the world, what would you accomplish by doing so?

Hoping to get into the afterlife with an 'I told you so'?

If you're spending a hundred million dollars advertising when the end of the world is going to be, you're obviously trying to get some kind of action out of the audience. I haven't seen any kind of exhortation towards accepting God or Jesus in the Camping advertisements, so they must not give a damn about that. Camping has been interviewed now saying "he could not give financial advice to those who spent their life savings in the belief the end was nigh."

Chalking this down to the hubris and desire for attention of an old man.

Microthought - Game of Thrones, Tyrion

2011-05-24T19:00:00.001-06:00

In Norse mythology Tyr is the god of single combat, victory and heroic glory. Taken into account when naming Tyrion? Somewhat ironically, I mean.

Aside - Tyrion is, hands down, the best character in the tv series. Not that I didn't love him in the book, but.. Nailed.

Mississippi flooding near Memphis - May 2011

2011-05-18T07:02:00.000-06:00

I had a chance to film some footage of how the flooding of the Mississippi river looked down near Memphis right when it was about to crest. Not that I was standing around with a camera. No, I attached my camera to the rental car to get some footage of just how long it took to cross the Mississippi's new width.

I'll start off with some before and after satellite pics. I can't claim to have taken these..

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=50549

Then we have the north view off Interstate 40 going from Memphis over to Arkansas:

And the south view off Interstate 40 on the drive from Arkansas to Memphis:

I'll be honest and say that Memphis proper wasn't really affected by the flooding. Memphis is a city on the bluffs. It's the people that bought into the developments down into the river and on shallow islands that got hit more. Over on the Arkansas side, though.. As you can see from the satellite pictures, the land was just swallowed up..

I don't have any footage, because it wasn't very interesting to look at, from down in Mississippi state. I drove down there hoping to find a better vantage. Driving through all these farmed areas with smaller and smaller roads, all of the promising looking roads were closed. So, imagine some dramatic footage of road closed signs. Sorry, I wasn't going to go exploring forbidden areas with a rental Jetta..

Good morning, world.

2011-05-18T06:35:00.001-06:00

OK, so I've got a few things I'm working on. Nothing all that exciting, but I think they'll be neat.

Video reviews of Tiger LCD games - I've unearthed a goodly pile of them. Will be reviewing prior to selling to make room.
Board game instructional movies - I spend so much time teaching people how to play different games, might as well put together a video. Yeah, there's a million of these out there, but.. Don't really care.
Documenting what is actually worthwhile in Indy. Will be trying to track down restaurants that aren't parts of chains. Up first? The very worthy King David Dogs.
OK, I guess that wasn't very many, but it's what I'm actively working on.

Is anybody reading this?

2011-02-22T20:03:00.001-06:00

Just sitting, mildly intoxicated, curious if I should delete this blogspot app.

-- Post From My iPhone

Location:W Twelve Mile Rd,Novi,United States

Places I need to check out in Indy – List 1

2011-01-03T14:43:00.002-06:00

Courtesy Yelp.com – places I need to check out around Indy

Will post as places are tried.

Spendy, unique, American

http://www.yelp.com/biz/recess-indianapolis

Classic lounge – midspendy

http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-ball-and-biscuit-indianapolis

Trashy looking but really well reviewed.. ANTISPENDY

http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-ball-and-biscuit-indianapolis

Wait.. A hot dog place in Indy? WANT.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/gourmet-franks-indianapolis

Oh, I could have used this a few days ago - "Best Warren Ellis Stories Ever"

2010-05-11T16:50:00.002-06:00

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2010/05/10/the-greatest-warren-ellis-stories-ever-told/

What am I playing? Bioshock 2

2010-05-10T20:44:00.001-06:00

I held off on this game until I could get a ‘good price’. A week or so ago it came up as an Amazon Gold Box special for $30 bucks and my brother owed me a bunch of money, so I had him order it for me.

I was so impressed with the opening for the first Bioshock. It was cool enough to the point that I actually showed it to Lauren and others so she could experience it. Hell, it was the game who’s demo blew me away to the point that I finally upgraded past my AMD 3200+ single core processor because it churned my loins so well.

After getting the sequel I was really interested in how cool the opening could be, since the game was supposed to take place about a decade after the first.

Pretty much, you can’t appreciate the opening for Bioshock 2 without having played the first game, so don’t even try. There is none of the splendor of descending down into Rapture for the first time. You just start there and shoot yourself in the head. Literally.

Sure, you get a few moments of a clean Rapture before the civil war in the opening cinematic, but it is so fleetingly brief. Then you’re just inserted into post Bioshock 1 Rapture without context or back story. Sadness.

I hope to play through the game this week, but damn if that opening wasn’t a let down..

Of course, the multiplayer could be the real blowaway part of this game for me as it is supposed to be the civil war in Rapture itself, so you get to see it before the true decay sets in.

Will have more assessment after getting into the game further, but just the opening is a good benchmark, I think.

Iron Man is Tron 2

2010-05-10T08:21:00.000-06:00

I would love the first Iron Man movie so much more if it were just Tron 2 and Jeff Bridges' character is still Flynn but old and busted, trying to ride the coattails of Tony Stark in the meatverse.

Although I could live with it if the movie retained the Uruguay title - El hombre de hierro

What am I watching? GI Joe:Resolute

2010-05-07T16:28:00.000-06:00

I’ll put it right out there – I haven’t watched a GI Joe cartoon since, probably, the late 80s. It never quite obtained that position in my heart that robots in disguise appeared to fit perfectly. I did end up renting that live action GI Joe movie and, while it was definitely another product(toy) placement movie, it felt like it captured the flavor of what I remembered.

On the other hand, since I was a child, I’ve definitely read a lot of crap(as a unit of measurement) by Warren Ellis. At this point he’s been a surprisingly prolific writer. True, he’s no Brian M Bendis, but I believe that Bendis may be a hive mind of writers to be able to helm so many titles simultaneously. Ellis is responsible for one of my favorite Iron Man story arcs – Extremis. His Desolation Jones has left me desolate over its unfortunate demise mid-arc at issue #7. I may be one of the only people to have enjoyed Global Frequency. He’s even one of the main writers for the game Dead Space. That’s all not even considering the massive oversights in my reading experience – Planetary and Transmetropolitan. So, yeah, Warren Ellis. He’s a guy that knows how to bring the weird and bring the brutal storylines.

I had heard the title GI Joe: Resolute previously, but it’s just GI Joe, right? It wasn’t until I recently heard it was actually Warren Ellis was responsible for the series and the fact that people die instead of being seemingly invincible and laserproof that really grabbed my attention. (bring up browser.. netflix.. search resolute.. queue..)

Confusingly, Resolute was 11 episodes, but is only an hour long. It kicks off letting you know the animation is solid – more Cowboy Bebop level than 80s toy commercial level. There’s even the anime feel from the whole package in a few recognizable voice actors coupled with that modern animation. I’d be willing to put money on the same studio animating this as The Animatrix – The Second Renaissance.

Having just finished watching it, it was a nice, tight hour of action. It feels like what I remember the gist of the show being and the action was definitely a little more adult – the opening shot is of the body of a major character, dead. Snake Eyes left a trail of bodies and they were not shy about showing the kills. The storyline was appropriately epic and there were definitely a few cities wiped off the map during the course of the story.

I’m not sure that I really detected Warren Ellis’ fingerprints on the writing. The writing was tight, but not really out there aside from a high comfort level with blowing entire cities off the planet.. It did happen to capture the GI Joe theme pretty well for a non-American who wasn’t even familiar with the source material. We’ll call the writer a neutral aspect.

Some of the sequences could have used a little decompression and the short ‘episode format’ made the combined product feel a little disjointed with the cliffhanger type moments coming every five minutes or so. They also seemed to keep the instances to a minimum of the “20 guys firing full auto at one or two Joes standing there and apparently firing blanks”, but I still needed to reach for a beer during those points.

I’d say if you ever bought a GI Joe toy, you’re ripe for spending a good hour with this movie. I wouldn’t have the patience for this if it were a series, but as a nicely portioned chunk of updated nostalgia, you’re not going to go wrong. Considering that most of the fans of the original series are at least in their 30s now, the update is well targeted.

Be careful with the extra on the DVD where they interview three of the creators. Those are some gushing fanboys to the extent that I was kind of uncomfortable on their behalf.

Now, if they could do something like this for Transformers instead of those abominable movies..

What am I working on? Reading, watching, interviewing.

2010-05-07T08:21:00.001-06:00

Stuff on my plate to watch -> GI Joe:Resolute, Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Oklahoma

Stuff on my plate to read -> Stuff, Bone Omnibus, Watership Down

Stuff on my plate to actually listen to -> She & Him Vol. 2

Stuff on my plate to play -> Dead Space, Bioshock 2

Will be writing on most of these. Resolute is almost done.

Aside from that I mostly have job interviews for the next week. Will have plenty of time for media binging.

Sometimes I remember that burning fire in me that wanted to own a Theremin.

2010-04-25T18:50:00.002-06:00

Hot damn, Nymphoid Barbarians!

2010-04-25T17:04:00.000-06:00

So random that I encountered this, but the shlock (non)classic Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell is on Hulu. Produced, funded, and distributed by Troma - the director resented Lloyd Kaufman with all of his being - in part due to the titling that was forced on him. Much like Chopping Mall has no chopping, Nymphoid Barbarian holds no nymphoids or sexual content whatsoever. Sadly this Hulu presentation does not have the director commentary, which is the true diamond in the rough that the DVD holds.

What am I watching? Chopping Mall!

2010-04-25T11:08:00.005-06:00

Context!

Chopping Mall, aka Killbots - released in 1985, the same year as Short Circuit, one year before Robocop and giving neither movie a run for their money. Jim Wynorski, a director mired in crap 80s horror schlock, destined to make even worse exploitation flicks like “The Bare Wench Project”. I’ve only seen the third in that series, but.. oh.. dear god.. there aren’t enough bare wenches in the world to make that crap watchable.

This was one of those movies that were always forbidden fruit. I’d look at the box art in West Coast Video as I was thinking about what computer game I wanted to rent, dreaming about what it could be about. Cursed to never know what laid on that magnetic tape!

The budget is nowhere near allowing convincing miniatures or full sized animatronics. Apparently these ‘killbots’ consist of moving treads and three points of articulation in a rotating head, rotating torso, and clacking claw. What a far cry from the remote control masterpiece of Johnny 5 (although all the different aspects of Johnny 5 probably belonged to discrete animatronics used for different scenes).

The acting? Not horrible. After catching some stinkers like The Room, and Troll 2, this, in its adequacy, is almost Shakespeare in comparison. Nobody is chewing on the scenery or hamming it up too much.

Things I love about the movie:
- The sporting goods store is well stocked with shotguns, M-14s, Magnums, and plenty of easy access ammo.
- Iranian lessons that sexuality and promiscuity lead, not to earthquakes, but murderous robots that want to set you on fire. A common theme of 80s slasher films, but true all the same.
- This is essentially every Michael Crichton story writ small. Technology is going to turn on us and we’re all going to die! This would have been pretty amusing if it were dinosaurs running amok in the mall.
- Mom jeans used to be in fashion!

Disappointment in this movie:
- No chopping.

The plot doesn’t matter too much. It opens with a demonstration of the state of the art in mall security – “This will be the safest mall in the country!” Although who knows what kind of crime spree must be going on that mall security needs lasers, C4, tasers, and claws. Lightning hits the building and apparently turns the bots ED-209 lethal instead of Johnny 5 loveable. Isn’t this kind of how Robo Rally started?

A teenage after hours party at the mattress store starts to go wrong as the partiers are taken out one by one. Eventually the only ones left are the nerdy new couple that just met that night! To spoil the ending – who survives? THE GUY AND GIRL WHO DIDN’T PUT OUT. This movie has to be huge in Iran.

I feel like I’ve crossed one thing off my bucket list after having seen this. Aside from that there’s pretty much no reason for anybody to watch this movie. Ever.. Ooh, wait! Director and writer commentary! Guess who’s watching this again!

BONUS CONTENT:
Jim Wynorski, the director of this flick has gone on to the fresh new millennium with what have to be a series of further morality plays:
- The Bare Wench Project
- Busty Cops
- The Witches of Breastwick
- Cleavagefield
- Para-Knockers Activity

And a documentary - Popatopolis - made about Wynorski while filming Witches of Breastwick:

What am I playing? The Pinball (Mac, iPhone)

2010-04-24T14:48:00.003-06:00

Pinball, the ancient and mystical art! Some would say it requires a deep and innate relationship with the table to truly do well. After all, how else could a deaf, dumb, and blind kid play such a mean pinball?

I love pinball and have even when the skill involved was completely beyond my grasp, as well as the buttons. Hard for a little guy on a milk crate to reach both buttons! I have even made pilgrimages to what has to be the current pinball Mecca – The Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas.

It’s within that context that I can comfortably blame any dislike on my part towards ‘The Pinball’ to be related to the qualities inherent in the game and not any misunderstanding of the medium myself.

Gameprom has apparently made a name for themselves with three fully 3d, full physics pinball boards on the iPhone. I’ve seen countless rave reviews of these boards to the extent that I was convinced to purchase each of them even after I tried and was not impressed by the Wild West board. Sure, the physics are realistic, but the boards are uninteresting, provide no clear progression of game states, and boring flow.

Gameprom came up with a concept that really excited me at first. They released software for OSX that provided a full screen, full power rendition of their boards. That in itself, not so interesting, but the fact that the game was controlled by an iPod touch or iPhone.. That’s interesting!

While trying out the software I sadly was driven to ask myself ‘why am I doing this?’ I look down in my hands and I have this little interface that I’m mashing the hell out of to play some Wild West pinball, but all I could feel is that I wanted something else. I wanted to reach for the keyboard. I wanted to go to my Xbox to play some Williams Hall of Fame – arguably the best pinball simulator in existence. Instead I’m stuck with the requirement of using an external device for this pinball for a perfectly arbitrary reason.

It may stand to argue that they’re tying the experience through the iPhone app so that all of the board purchases can be handled through the pre-existing payment infrastructure. I can appreciate that. Kind of. But allow untethering after the board purchase!

It boils down to the boards. The free one – Wild West – remains uninteresting, even at higher resolutions. I know the others available aren't that hot either. In the end – try the free board out for the novelty, but don’t get sucked in. Too much hardware required for too little gameplay. Pinball can be magic, but this is almost as far from that as possible.