there is one thing this review exists for: to communicate to you that machinarium is awesome. buy it, play it, love it. potentially impregnate it with your children and then spend the next nine months trying to figure out what sort(s) of sustenance a human/software hybrid child needs. it's that fucking grand.
two things that might exempt you from liking machinarium:
1. Do you hate love?
2. Do you hate the nightmare before christmas?
if your answer to either of those is "yes", then you might dislike machinarium. but you might also not be human, in which case HOW ARE YOU READING THIS?
i digress.
here's what machinarium looks like and sounds like.
i can't get over the way this game looks, the way it moves, and, perhaps most surprisingly, how good the music is. i could pulsate subliminally to the soundtrack all day long.
anyway, the game itself is a semi-standard point-and-click adventure game. you have an inventory, but it never ends up holding more than 3-4 things at once. you can stretch your little robot-guy taller or shrink him shorter if necessary. beyond that, you just move from screen to screen and click on things.
now, i should come clean: i hate "adventure" games. nothing seems less like an adventure to me than clicking through a bunch of 2-D landscape paintings strung together by a cliche narrative. i tried to like myst, i tried to like lots of the myst clones that have come out since. none of them worked for me. machinarium works. despite having more in common than not with games like myst, somehow it's significant enough artistically and - yes - emotionally to warrant a full playthrough (i actually played through the entire game in two sittings, and though it's a short game, it still probably took me about 10 hours to figure everything out, so that's a lot of sitting).
somehow, machinarium sidesteps the dullness of the simple point-and-click and experience that so many adventure games seem to boil down to...part of this is due to the simple (but ingenious) touch of making it so you can only interact with objects (or realize that you can interact with them) if your robot is in arm's reach of them. so, every time you enter a new room, you don't just immediately canvas the whole room with your cursor, waiting for it to turn into a clicky-hand. granted, what you do instead is click around to make the robot walk the circumference of the room, and then check to see if you can click on anything...but somehow this little tweak is significant.
the story, told entirely through little thought bubbles that pop up at opportune times, is also oddly significant. the robot is looking for his robo-girl, and there's an especially poignant moment about halfway through the game when you find said robo-girl, but are unable to rescue her as yet. the two of you trade items through the bars of her cell-like room, and it's simultaneously adorable and sad in a way that i've seen few games manage (indie games or fancy full-on 3-D megacorp games).
the puzzles themselves are hard. not impossible, but hard. they require a lot of clicking, obviously. machinarium also includes two levels of sanctioned "cheating"; at any point, you can click a little thought bubble in the inventory bar, and you get a short pictorial representation of how to solve the puzzle closest to where you're currently standing. if you want more help, you can click on the book icon, but the game forces you to play a little side-scrolling shooter game a la gradius before giving you a hand-sketched book page of how to proceed for the next several steps. interestingly, neither of these tricks will blatantly spell out an answer for you, but they do reduce the stymie-ing effect of some of the games puzzles to more simple visual riddles. other reviewers have complained about this, but i think it's absolutely perfect to be made to run through the mini-game before getting any game hints. if you really want to cheat, just look on the internet. if not, the game's going to force you to work for it. that seems fair. also, the hand-drawn nature of the hints you do get, and their presentation (through the metal-ish book creaking open) are just perfect within the steampunk aesthetic of the game.
i have to say, in response to some of the criticisms i've seen of the game's puzzles, that i didn't find anything in the game too hard. machinarium is actually quite a blessing in the sense that the solutions to the puzzles make sense, unlike in a lot of adventure games. even the few times that i accidentally happened upon a solution, it was clearly a solution that i could have thought of myself logically; i just hadn't. only once in the entire game did i hit upon a solution to a puzzle that didn't make any sense (involving scaring a robot with something that i never would have guessed would scare it in a situation where it was completely unclear that you were even supposed to scare it), but even that one i just got through via random clicking. i never used the walkthrough and only used the hint bubbles once...and i'm bad at these types of games.
so yeah. i love machinarium. you do too, even if you don't know it yet.
2010-02-23
2010-02-21
i DO love the indie bundle!
so, as i posted about ad nauseum on facebook and twitter last week, i made an impulse-buy at theindiebundle.com and came away really impressed. the deal was six of the most well-reviewed indie games of the last few years for 20 bucks (the deal's now over, as of yesterday), and while i've really enjoyed the few indie games i've played (mostly world of goo and braid), i bought the bundle more out of a self-imposed professional sense of obligation (i.e. i write about video games for my job, so i should probably check out what's going on in the indie genre) than a desire to really play the games. but i'm glad i did.
first point: "indie games" is a sort of troubling moniker for me. mostly because of the connotations that "indie" has taken on in the last few years. "indie" music and "indie" films, of course, started out at a categorization for music and films made under the radar, for a miniature budget, and outside the constraints of the expectations of big labels or big studios. now, "indie" seems interchangeable with a form of "cool" that implies the kind of anti-establishment chic you can buy at hot topic. "indie" media, by and large, is about as counter-establishment as wearing resin-frame glasses is original at this point (i say this last, of course, with the appropriate amount of tongue in my cheek). but i'm not writing a cultural critique here (and you should be glad for that because i'd probably ramble for the rest of the night and my finally hitting "publish" would break the internet's stupid-ranting filter). all i want to say is that in a lot of ways, "indie" games are still indie. i can say i played an "indie" game without feeling like i'm being disingenuous. and (though this is an unoriginal complaint) most big-budget games nowadays are so starting to look like the regurgitated actionflash garbage that hollywood keeps vomiting out that i'm glad indie games, at least, are still indie. the games i'm going to look at all have their shortcomings, but i'd rather pay 60 bucks for this bundle, warts and all, than pay 60 bucks for another gears of war clone. so yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah!!! SUCK IT, GAME PUBLISHERS!!!
no, seriously. as long as companies can get away with shit like this (and don't tell me that people aren't going to buy assassin's creed 2 anyway; they will), i will continue to seek retribution through pointless, ALL-CAPS tirades. now: on to the games.
osmos
i'm loving osmos. i'm finding it occasionally incredibly infuriating - contrary to the game's claims of zen-like calm inducing-ness - but otherwise i'm really liking it. it has the two quintessential indie game charms: 1) a distinct ambiance/production and 2) a really simple but engaging game mechanic. you're a amoeba-mote sort of thing, and you just click the mouse to fly around. you can slow down and speed up time, but this doesn't necessarily effect the gameplay any further than letting you take longer to make decisions when things are moving too fast, or letting you speed to a conclusion when things are moving too slow. the beauty of the game (non-visually speaking) is the simple physics model. the game, fittingly, starts with the "equal-and-opposite" quote from newton, and that's about all you have to understand to play. when you propel yourself, you shoot off a little bit of your body in order to gain momentum. that little bit bounces around, and maybe gloms on to another mote, or eventually finds its way back to you. the point of the game, though there are a few variations in later levels, is basically to just become the biggest mote by absorbing smaller motes and avoiding larger motes. everything else follows from physics: don't propel yourself too much because you'll eject all your mass and won't be big enough to absorb anything. if you're trying to slow down, don't eject a bunch of your mass into the mote in front of you that you want to absorb, because you'll make it bigger. here's a pretty comprehensive gameplay video:
one thing i don't like about this game is that some of the later levels amp up the challenge in sort of unintuitive ways. when there are so many games (indie and otherwise) out there that really cleverly and gradually introduce new challenges (world of goo specifically comes to mind), it seems like a lot of challenges in the later levels of this game are just "challenges" in the sense that you are put in a potentially impossible situation and maybe 1 out of 10 times you're able to worm your way out of it. for example, a few levels require very detailed awareness of how your mass-ejecting effects the rest of the motes in the level; unfortunately, there are so many motes crammed into some of these levels that you can spend 15 minutes meticulously bouncing around in slo-mo, trying to keep from pushing other motes around to the point where they have the opportunity to get larger than you, only to zoom out and realize that you've accidentally created a huge mote on the other side of the screen that you'll never get bigger than. some of these levels, i think, are supposed to be puzzles, but they quickly degenerate into exercises in frequent restarts, and your final success ends up feeling more like luck than skill or planning. overall, though, this game is unique and worth playing; at least until you get about 2/3rds of the way through...after that, only continue if you're prepared to be seriously challenged.
next ip: machinarium
first point: "indie games" is a sort of troubling moniker for me. mostly because of the connotations that "indie" has taken on in the last few years. "indie" music and "indie" films, of course, started out at a categorization for music and films made under the radar, for a miniature budget, and outside the constraints of the expectations of big labels or big studios. now, "indie" seems interchangeable with a form of "cool" that implies the kind of anti-establishment chic you can buy at hot topic. "indie" media, by and large, is about as counter-establishment as wearing resin-frame glasses is original at this point (i say this last, of course, with the appropriate amount of tongue in my cheek). but i'm not writing a cultural critique here (and you should be glad for that because i'd probably ramble for the rest of the night and my finally hitting "publish" would break the internet's stupid-ranting filter). all i want to say is that in a lot of ways, "indie" games are still indie. i can say i played an "indie" game without feeling like i'm being disingenuous. and (though this is an unoriginal complaint) most big-budget games nowadays are so starting to look like the regurgitated actionflash garbage that hollywood keeps vomiting out that i'm glad indie games, at least, are still indie. the games i'm going to look at all have their shortcomings, but i'd rather pay 60 bucks for this bundle, warts and all, than pay 60 bucks for another gears of war clone. so yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah!!! SUCK IT, GAME PUBLISHERS!!!
no, seriously. as long as companies can get away with shit like this (and don't tell me that people aren't going to buy assassin's creed 2 anyway; they will), i will continue to seek retribution through pointless, ALL-CAPS tirades. now: on to the games.
osmos
i'm loving osmos. i'm finding it occasionally incredibly infuriating - contrary to the game's claims of zen-like calm inducing-ness - but otherwise i'm really liking it. it has the two quintessential indie game charms: 1) a distinct ambiance/production and 2) a really simple but engaging game mechanic. you're a amoeba-mote sort of thing, and you just click the mouse to fly around. you can slow down and speed up time, but this doesn't necessarily effect the gameplay any further than letting you take longer to make decisions when things are moving too fast, or letting you speed to a conclusion when things are moving too slow. the beauty of the game (non-visually speaking) is the simple physics model. the game, fittingly, starts with the "equal-and-opposite" quote from newton, and that's about all you have to understand to play. when you propel yourself, you shoot off a little bit of your body in order to gain momentum. that little bit bounces around, and maybe gloms on to another mote, or eventually finds its way back to you. the point of the game, though there are a few variations in later levels, is basically to just become the biggest mote by absorbing smaller motes and avoiding larger motes. everything else follows from physics: don't propel yourself too much because you'll eject all your mass and won't be big enough to absorb anything. if you're trying to slow down, don't eject a bunch of your mass into the mote in front of you that you want to absorb, because you'll make it bigger. here's a pretty comprehensive gameplay video:
one thing i don't like about this game is that some of the later levels amp up the challenge in sort of unintuitive ways. when there are so many games (indie and otherwise) out there that really cleverly and gradually introduce new challenges (world of goo specifically comes to mind), it seems like a lot of challenges in the later levels of this game are just "challenges" in the sense that you are put in a potentially impossible situation and maybe 1 out of 10 times you're able to worm your way out of it. for example, a few levels require very detailed awareness of how your mass-ejecting effects the rest of the motes in the level; unfortunately, there are so many motes crammed into some of these levels that you can spend 15 minutes meticulously bouncing around in slo-mo, trying to keep from pushing other motes around to the point where they have the opportunity to get larger than you, only to zoom out and realize that you've accidentally created a huge mote on the other side of the screen that you'll never get bigger than. some of these levels, i think, are supposed to be puzzles, but they quickly degenerate into exercises in frequent restarts, and your final success ends up feeling more like luck than skill or planning. overall, though, this game is unique and worth playing; at least until you get about 2/3rds of the way through...after that, only continue if you're prepared to be seriously challenged.
next ip: machinarium
2010-02-20
new music posters, thanks to LD
i just got these as a gift, to use in future music endeavors, and i thought i'd post them because they are FREAKING AWESOME.
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| From Spring '10 |
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| From Spring '10 |
the ben-bear and his mail-order bride.
yes. i bought a 26" tall care bear on ebay for one dollar. because there's something wrong with me.
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| From Spring '10 |
2010-02-13
here's something you don't already know: i'm a fan of wilco!
so partially as a consequence of good timing and needing to go to seattle anyway, i got to see wilco shows #3 and #4 this weekend. they were both fantastic in comparison to wilco shows #1 and #2, which were also fantastic in their own way. so. a little background:
wilco show #1 was in 2008 in spokane, at the opera house. i was in the midst of becoming a wilco fan, but wasn't familiar enough with many of their songs (except the ones on sky blue sky) to really fully appreciate the experience. similar to my first RA concert, appropriately enough, which i hated. well...i didn't hate my first wilco concert, but i certainly liked the fleet foxes (their opening band) much more. wilco #2 was in vienna, va, this summer. it was a solid show, but i was completely exhausted and it was in an amphitheatre, which meant that all of the sonic subtleties that make wilco interesting were obliterated by loud-ass speakers and the fact that i was a football field away from the stage. this week's shows were both in small old-school theatres, both with amazing sound, and one in which i had a seat 20 rows away from the stage, in the center of the room, and the other in which i was literally standing about 12 feet away from tweedy's mic stand. so yeah. that in and of itself made these shows better. but so did lots of other things! joy!
first of all, this band was more energetic throughout the entire show (both nights) than pretty much any band i've ever seen, except maybe picadilly circus in 2004. keep in mind, 5 members of this band are (i think) over 40, and one is almost 55. and they played with an energy that would quite literally but a bunch of coked-out 20 year olds in a black flag cover band to shame. it was amazing.
second, the lighting was amazing. after seeing phish this summer, i was finally made to understand the difference a decent, well thought-out light show can make at a live concert. the lighting for wilco was certainly not chris kuroda-grade lighting (but then again, what is?). but, they had rigged up a really badass textured sort-of-sheet (which you can see in the pictures in my other post) which really interestingly reflected the various types and colors of light back out into the audience all night long. also, there were the weird frankenstein electrodes that were behind and to the sides of the band, that performed all sorts of visual acrobatics for different songs all night. combine this with side-stage lights that threw weird, huge shadows of the band members on the walls of the theatre and an intense fog machine, and it was the best light show i've seen, ever, for a theatre show.
oh, there was also the music, which was good. some highlights:
first night opener = "sunken treasure" > "remember the mountain bed" > "hell is chrome". "sunken treasure" is basically the perfect opener, slow and plodding, but intense, and (in this version) driven by a lonely harmonica during the instrumental breaks. "mountain bed" is (as you might know from previous posts) pretty much my favorite love song ever, so it was great to hear it live, and this version was especially well done. tweedy's voice, especially on night one, was better and clearer than i've ever heard it, and never as much as it was on these first three songs. "hell is chrome" is just chilling, especially with the stage and the front rows of the crowd bathed in undulating red lights throughout.
"bull black nova" was INSANE. the lights were crazy, especially with the electrodes doing an eerie pantomime of an electric chair over the climax of the song while tweedy shrieked "PICK UP!!!" over and over again. the band converted me to a lot of songs from wilco (the album) during these shows, and "one wing" was the first. i've never liked this song much, save for the debut version they played a few years ago, which was a lot more dead-ish, jammy version than what ended up on the album. however, the version they played in portland was absolute, full-on rock and roll. they followed that up immediately with the fastest-tempo version of "shot in the arm" i've ever heard, which ended in an absolute wall of noise and a great visual moment featuring each member of the band cranking out the noise in the best way they could: nels flinging feedback at his amp, pat standing and going at the keyboards ben-folds-style, glenn and tweedy hammering away, and mikael slamming at all his weird sound pads with two huge pillows (yeah, i don't know why either, but it sounded awesome). it was great to hear "side with the seeds" > "at least that's what you said", and later on "far, far away". then they rocked out "sonny feeling", which is a song i unapologetically HATED until a few days ago. now i can at least stand it. both nights they played a run of "sonny feeling" > "hate it here" > "walken" > "i'm the man who loves you" to close their main set, and that was the one part of the show for me that was a little underwhelming. i'm not a huge fan of either of the middle songs, and though "i'm the man who loves you" was excellent both nights, it was sort of an odd run to end the set, especially getting the exact same songs in the exact same order both nights.
as another complaint in that vein, i was really concerned that we'd get essentially the same show both nights, and we almost did. the second night opened with "wilco (the song)", yet another song i didn't like until right that moment, but then we got five songs in the row in basically the same order as we'd gotten them the previous night. they were all great songs (especially, again, "bull black nova"), but it was a little disappointing, considering how many songs the band has in their repertoire. but then we got "radio cure" (!!!) and "pot kettle black" (!!!!!), which made up a bit for it. later, there was also "handshake drugs" and "i'll fight" before the aforementioned four-song run to end the set.
encores both nights were typically intense wilco-rock-encores. scott mcaughey came out both nights (once with peter buck, once with bill frisell) for "california stars". both nights the band opened the encore with buffalo springfield's "broken arrow", and the first night we also got "kingpin" (livin' in...portland...uhhh...oregon..."), and "i'm a wheel" (complete with pat pulling The Who-style guitar windmills). the second night was simultaneously a bit more exciting and disappointing: they played "you never know", then "box full of letters" (upon which i promptly lost my mind), and due to the response of the crowd to "letters", tweedy then said "how'd you guys like it if we played some more old songs?" only to come back a moment later and say "apparently we're out of time". they closed with an amazing "hoodoo voodoo", featuring probably the best moment of the two shows in a guitar duel between pat and nels. so, yeah. fantastic end, but i also would have loved to hear them play a few more A.M.-era songs.
anyway, i continue to be blown away by this band and will definitely be keeping an eye out for any other chance to see them, as somehow they just keep getting better with time.
wilco show #1 was in 2008 in spokane, at the opera house. i was in the midst of becoming a wilco fan, but wasn't familiar enough with many of their songs (except the ones on sky blue sky) to really fully appreciate the experience. similar to my first RA concert, appropriately enough, which i hated. well...i didn't hate my first wilco concert, but i certainly liked the fleet foxes (their opening band) much more. wilco #2 was in vienna, va, this summer. it was a solid show, but i was completely exhausted and it was in an amphitheatre, which meant that all of the sonic subtleties that make wilco interesting were obliterated by loud-ass speakers and the fact that i was a football field away from the stage. this week's shows were both in small old-school theatres, both with amazing sound, and one in which i had a seat 20 rows away from the stage, in the center of the room, and the other in which i was literally standing about 12 feet away from tweedy's mic stand. so yeah. that in and of itself made these shows better. but so did lots of other things! joy!
first of all, this band was more energetic throughout the entire show (both nights) than pretty much any band i've ever seen, except maybe picadilly circus in 2004. keep in mind, 5 members of this band are (i think) over 40, and one is almost 55. and they played with an energy that would quite literally but a bunch of coked-out 20 year olds in a black flag cover band to shame. it was amazing.
second, the lighting was amazing. after seeing phish this summer, i was finally made to understand the difference a decent, well thought-out light show can make at a live concert. the lighting for wilco was certainly not chris kuroda-grade lighting (but then again, what is?). but, they had rigged up a really badass textured sort-of-sheet (which you can see in the pictures in my other post) which really interestingly reflected the various types and colors of light back out into the audience all night long. also, there were the weird frankenstein electrodes that were behind and to the sides of the band, that performed all sorts of visual acrobatics for different songs all night. combine this with side-stage lights that threw weird, huge shadows of the band members on the walls of the theatre and an intense fog machine, and it was the best light show i've seen, ever, for a theatre show.
oh, there was also the music, which was good. some highlights:
first night opener = "sunken treasure" > "remember the mountain bed" > "hell is chrome". "sunken treasure" is basically the perfect opener, slow and plodding, but intense, and (in this version) driven by a lonely harmonica during the instrumental breaks. "mountain bed" is (as you might know from previous posts) pretty much my favorite love song ever, so it was great to hear it live, and this version was especially well done. tweedy's voice, especially on night one, was better and clearer than i've ever heard it, and never as much as it was on these first three songs. "hell is chrome" is just chilling, especially with the stage and the front rows of the crowd bathed in undulating red lights throughout.
"bull black nova" was INSANE. the lights were crazy, especially with the electrodes doing an eerie pantomime of an electric chair over the climax of the song while tweedy shrieked "PICK UP!!!" over and over again. the band converted me to a lot of songs from wilco (the album) during these shows, and "one wing" was the first. i've never liked this song much, save for the debut version they played a few years ago, which was a lot more dead-ish, jammy version than what ended up on the album. however, the version they played in portland was absolute, full-on rock and roll. they followed that up immediately with the fastest-tempo version of "shot in the arm" i've ever heard, which ended in an absolute wall of noise and a great visual moment featuring each member of the band cranking out the noise in the best way they could: nels flinging feedback at his amp, pat standing and going at the keyboards ben-folds-style, glenn and tweedy hammering away, and mikael slamming at all his weird sound pads with two huge pillows (yeah, i don't know why either, but it sounded awesome). it was great to hear "side with the seeds" > "at least that's what you said", and later on "far, far away". then they rocked out "sonny feeling", which is a song i unapologetically HATED until a few days ago. now i can at least stand it. both nights they played a run of "sonny feeling" > "hate it here" > "walken" > "i'm the man who loves you" to close their main set, and that was the one part of the show for me that was a little underwhelming. i'm not a huge fan of either of the middle songs, and though "i'm the man who loves you" was excellent both nights, it was sort of an odd run to end the set, especially getting the exact same songs in the exact same order both nights.
as another complaint in that vein, i was really concerned that we'd get essentially the same show both nights, and we almost did. the second night opened with "wilco (the song)", yet another song i didn't like until right that moment, but then we got five songs in the row in basically the same order as we'd gotten them the previous night. they were all great songs (especially, again, "bull black nova"), but it was a little disappointing, considering how many songs the band has in their repertoire. but then we got "radio cure" (!!!) and "pot kettle black" (!!!!!), which made up a bit for it. later, there was also "handshake drugs" and "i'll fight" before the aforementioned four-song run to end the set.
encores both nights were typically intense wilco-rock-encores. scott mcaughey came out both nights (once with peter buck, once with bill frisell) for "california stars". both nights the band opened the encore with buffalo springfield's "broken arrow", and the first night we also got "kingpin" (livin' in...portland...uhhh...oregon..."), and "i'm a wheel" (complete with pat pulling The Who-style guitar windmills). the second night was simultaneously a bit more exciting and disappointing: they played "you never know", then "box full of letters" (upon which i promptly lost my mind), and due to the response of the crowd to "letters", tweedy then said "how'd you guys like it if we played some more old songs?" only to come back a moment later and say "apparently we're out of time". they closed with an amazing "hoodoo voodoo", featuring probably the best moment of the two shows in a guitar duel between pat and nels. so, yeah. fantastic end, but i also would have loved to hear them play a few more A.M.-era songs.
anyway, i continue to be blown away by this band and will definitely be keeping an eye out for any other chance to see them, as somehow they just keep getting better with time.
new road trip/wilco photos
have a few pictures from wilco/my trip to seattle this week. just because.
the first few, featuring the weirdly calm reflectivity of the columbia river, were taken by LDz:
next few are of the wilco show in portland...i mostly gave up on trying to get good pictures of the band because of the giant-headed dude in front of me; however, i wanted to get a few pics just to show off the band's awesome frankenstein/tesla lighting setup:
the first few, featuring the weirdly calm reflectivity of the columbia river, were taken by LDz:
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| From Spring '10 |
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| From Spring '10 |
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| From Spring '10 |
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| From Spring '10 |
next few are of the wilco show in portland...i mostly gave up on trying to get good pictures of the band because of the giant-headed dude in front of me; however, i wanted to get a few pics just to show off the band's awesome frankenstein/tesla lighting setup:
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| From Spring '10 |
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| From Spring '10 |
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| From Spring '10 |
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| From Spring '10 |
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| From Spring '10 |
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| From Spring '10 |
phish re-review, pt. 2
night two was the awesome. not that there weren't issues, but the overall effect was a lot more positive than night one. which is odd, because i originally remembered thinking the two nights were of pretty equal quality. but through the "magic" of reliving the shows via recording, i've now decided night two was far better. for whatever that's worth.
anyway, i came into night two having felt that the previous night was one of the best concert-going nights of my life, but also wondering if i could physically (and mentally) take 3 more hours of phish again this soon. the band started off with "mango song", which was pretty much the weirdest opener in the universe and it was so confusing that it took me until the next song, "chalkdust torture", to adjust. fortunately, they almost always blow this song out of the water, and they did here as well. kind of feel like they should have switched the order of these two in the setlist...
next was "middle of the road", which is apparently a mike gordon tune. this was a neat little song, and i hate to sound bitchy, but at this point, i was getting a little sick of first-set songs i didn't know or had never heard. i guess after waiting to hear the band live for 8 years and knowing and loving pretty much all of the 250+ songs they play, it was a little frustrating to hear at least 4-5 songs i didn't even know where there were so many songs i wanted to hear.
next was "tweezer", and as much as i usually love this song, after the first few minutes (with the notable exception of the island tour version) it usually devolves into a serviceable but unremarkable jam. no different this time. it was solidly played, but not nearly as exploratory or interesting as a lot of the late-set jams from night one.
next was "driver"...now, i love "driver", but again, i felt the same way i felt about "sleep" the first night. why play this if you're not in a room with 5 people and an acoustic guitar? i felt like i was at a DMB encore, where a solo acoustic performance is considered some sort of reverential occurrence, for some reason. i guess i just don't get it.
next was "twenty years later". another song i'd never heard, and another sort of workmanlike rendition (much like "joy" from the first night). at this point i'm loving the show, of course (it's still my virgin phish experience), but getting a little leery that if things continue as-is song-selection-wise for much longer, i might go home a little disappointed. fortunately, the next two songs are "ya mar" and "it's ice". "ya mar" is a pretty run-of-the-mill song, technically, but it such a fun, bouncy tune (and the crowd was obviously more familiar with it than a lot of the songs thus far that night) that it was just the right song to get everyone bouncing around and screaming and whatnot again. "it's ice" was a perfect counterpoint: a short, but technically complicated and interesting song that led beautifully into...
..."wolfman's brother". where the first night made me a believer in "down with disease", night two was all about the "wolfman". i've never liked this song much either, however, this night changed my mind. a great near-20-minute funk version, complete with the best glowstick war in the universe, and i still can't help but grin when i listen to the tape of this. great, great moment.
first set ended strong with "character zero" > "run like an antelope". the crowd responded to "antelope" like we'd been waiting since the beginning of the night to jump up and down screaming like maniacs when trey demanded that we "run like an antelope, out of control!"
where i liked second night, first set better than first night, first set, the second night second set was part great, part not-so-great (though it ended on a high note). first we got a 20 minute cover of velvet underground's "rock n roll", which was really fun and unexpected. next was "makisupa policeman", which included a jam where trey and mike switched instruments for a few minutes. then came "alaska", a song which i've desperately tried to like time and time again and just cannot. i'm sorry. then there was "the wedge", which is always a nice pop-ish gem, followed (finally) by "YEM". honestly, i was hoping all weekend for "divided sky", so the opening notes of "YEM" were a little disappointing for me. nonetheless; it was a great version of the song, with an excellent five minute vocal jam at the end.
the closing combination of "backwards down the number line > piper > grind" was fun, but at that point i think all the standing, dancing, heat, and contact high was wearing on me and i sort of felt like we were just waiting for the encore. "backwards" is not a high-energy song by any means, and the transition to "piper" was a little wonky. "grind" was cute, but singing a cappella is about as far from rock as you can get :)
fortunately, the encore was a great (nay, perfect!) way to end a two-night stand: "good times bad times" and "tweezer (reprise)". the encore thus made sure that we were all screaming like mad(wo)men by the end.
ultimately, it was a more enjoyable weekend than i had even hoped, and more than lived up to my live phish expectations. was it the best phish show i've ever heard? no, but the fact that i was finally actually there in the flesh more than made up for some of the lacking technical proficiencies. on the recording, things don't stand up quite as well. the high points and the intensity come across a lot less, and the glitchy playing stands out more. i feel like the recordings do a good job (for better or worse) illustrating the semi-episodic nature of both nights: the good and bad seemed to come in chunks...so i suppose in a way having a recording is nice because i can skip the parts i don't necessarily feel like i need to hear again.
i hope they tour again next summer because i'll totally be there...
anyway, i came into night two having felt that the previous night was one of the best concert-going nights of my life, but also wondering if i could physically (and mentally) take 3 more hours of phish again this soon. the band started off with "mango song", which was pretty much the weirdest opener in the universe and it was so confusing that it took me until the next song, "chalkdust torture", to adjust. fortunately, they almost always blow this song out of the water, and they did here as well. kind of feel like they should have switched the order of these two in the setlist...
next was "middle of the road", which is apparently a mike gordon tune. this was a neat little song, and i hate to sound bitchy, but at this point, i was getting a little sick of first-set songs i didn't know or had never heard. i guess after waiting to hear the band live for 8 years and knowing and loving pretty much all of the 250+ songs they play, it was a little frustrating to hear at least 4-5 songs i didn't even know where there were so many songs i wanted to hear.
next was "tweezer", and as much as i usually love this song, after the first few minutes (with the notable exception of the island tour version) it usually devolves into a serviceable but unremarkable jam. no different this time. it was solidly played, but not nearly as exploratory or interesting as a lot of the late-set jams from night one.
next was "driver"...now, i love "driver", but again, i felt the same way i felt about "sleep" the first night. why play this if you're not in a room with 5 people and an acoustic guitar? i felt like i was at a DMB encore, where a solo acoustic performance is considered some sort of reverential occurrence, for some reason. i guess i just don't get it.
next was "twenty years later". another song i'd never heard, and another sort of workmanlike rendition (much like "joy" from the first night). at this point i'm loving the show, of course (it's still my virgin phish experience), but getting a little leery that if things continue as-is song-selection-wise for much longer, i might go home a little disappointed. fortunately, the next two songs are "ya mar" and "it's ice". "ya mar" is a pretty run-of-the-mill song, technically, but it such a fun, bouncy tune (and the crowd was obviously more familiar with it than a lot of the songs thus far that night) that it was just the right song to get everyone bouncing around and screaming and whatnot again. "it's ice" was a perfect counterpoint: a short, but technically complicated and interesting song that led beautifully into...
..."wolfman's brother". where the first night made me a believer in "down with disease", night two was all about the "wolfman". i've never liked this song much either, however, this night changed my mind. a great near-20-minute funk version, complete with the best glowstick war in the universe, and i still can't help but grin when i listen to the tape of this. great, great moment.
first set ended strong with "character zero" > "run like an antelope". the crowd responded to "antelope" like we'd been waiting since the beginning of the night to jump up and down screaming like maniacs when trey demanded that we "run like an antelope, out of control!"
where i liked second night, first set better than first night, first set, the second night second set was part great, part not-so-great (though it ended on a high note). first we got a 20 minute cover of velvet underground's "rock n roll", which was really fun and unexpected. next was "makisupa policeman", which included a jam where trey and mike switched instruments for a few minutes. then came "alaska", a song which i've desperately tried to like time and time again and just cannot. i'm sorry. then there was "the wedge", which is always a nice pop-ish gem, followed (finally) by "YEM". honestly, i was hoping all weekend for "divided sky", so the opening notes of "YEM" were a little disappointing for me. nonetheless; it was a great version of the song, with an excellent five minute vocal jam at the end.
the closing combination of "backwards down the number line > piper > grind" was fun, but at that point i think all the standing, dancing, heat, and contact high was wearing on me and i sort of felt like we were just waiting for the encore. "backwards" is not a high-energy song by any means, and the transition to "piper" was a little wonky. "grind" was cute, but singing a cappella is about as far from rock as you can get :)
fortunately, the encore was a great (nay, perfect!) way to end a two-night stand: "good times bad times" and "tweezer (reprise)". the encore thus made sure that we were all screaming like mad(wo)men by the end.
ultimately, it was a more enjoyable weekend than i had even hoped, and more than lived up to my live phish expectations. was it the best phish show i've ever heard? no, but the fact that i was finally actually there in the flesh more than made up for some of the lacking technical proficiencies. on the recording, things don't stand up quite as well. the high points and the intensity come across a lot less, and the glitchy playing stands out more. i feel like the recordings do a good job (for better or worse) illustrating the semi-episodic nature of both nights: the good and bad seemed to come in chunks...so i suppose in a way having a recording is nice because i can skip the parts i don't necessarily feel like i need to hear again.
i hope they tour again next summer because i'll totally be there...
phish @ the gorge re-review (finally)
last weekend, i finally listened to the tapes of the phish gorge shows that i saw this summer, and since i never got around to doing an "official" review at the time, i thought i'd merge a review of the live experience and the recording re-listen. you know. for the hell of it. because i'm not buried under tons of writing for work. oh, wait. yes i am.
anyway, here goes.
night one started off with "down with disease", which was, a bit ironically, one of my least favorite phish songs. imagine my wry amusement when, after seeing phish walk out on stage live for the first time after waiting for 8 years and through a long hiatus, they start playing one of the few songs in their repertoire that i actively dislike. two minutes later, though, i was converted. it was that immediately that i knew that their "reunion" tour was less a gimmick and more a serious attempt to extend the band's legacy. the whole band was pitch-perfect throughout the song, and my first experience with the phish crowd jumping around and dancing joyously will now always be punctuated by trey's guitar riff during the song's first interlude. i remember being dimly aware that i bounced up and down that i was grinning like a giddy idiot already and that i had approximately 6 more hours of phish to go. clearly, i'm a bit biased towards this particular performance of this particular song, but on the recording, it also sounded great.
next up was "ocelot" and "pebbles and marbles". i'm pretty neutral when it comes to "ocelot". it was a solid performance, but whatever. "pebbles and marbles", on the other hand, is one of my favorite phish tunes, and it was the first of a few moments during the show that i was concerned that the boys might have bitten off more than they could chew by choosing such an ambitious setlist. it was great to hear the tune live, but it was a little rough, and on recording, without the crowd's ambiance and excitement, it's downright painful. the band had a lot of trouble with this one.
"possum", as usual, was energetic and a good, solid, simple jamming song to get things back on track, but then it was followed by "sleep". now, i have nothing against "sleep", it's a great, neat little song. but why play it for thousands of people at an amphitheatre? we had made it pretty clear we were there to rock, and yet we get a lead out of the blistering solo at the end of "possum" into "sleep"?
next was "destiny unbound", which i didn't really know (apparently this makes me not a real phish fan). not much to say about this one. "stash" was great, and included a pretty extended, unique jam. unfortunately, its main riff is so distinct that when the notes get flubbed a bit, it really sort of hurts the song for me (it's sort of like trey biffing the arpeggios at the beginning of "YEM"; it's just sort of naturally wince-evoking). yeah, so that happened. and on tape the band's sort-of struggling with parts of the song is even more obvious. fortunately, next up was "sneakin' sally > cavern", which was one of the highlights of the weekend for me. great vocal jam at the end of "sally", straight into the almost-pop of "cavern". live, at the end of the first set i was still absolutely pumped and ready to hear 10-15 more songs i'd never heard in person. on tape, i'm not remembering the show quite as fondly as i maybe once did. a few great moments, but also a few slip-ups at important points in important songs = pretty mediocre first phish set.
set two started with "moma dance > light > taste", a really great start that alleviated most of my discomfort over certain parts of the first set. "moma dance" was a great way to ease into the second set, getting the crowd grooving and letting the band stretch its jamming legs without taking on anything too orchestrated or convoluted. i love "light", especially when it gets the extended intro treatment like it got on this night, and "taste" is pretty much always great.
we had a few seconds to recover from this run of songs before "fluffhead", which is the one song i really wanted to hear and never expected to get to. the band ripped through this one wonderfully, and it's one of the major highlights for me to have on tape and to be able to listen to over and over again. "joy" was next. this was my first time hearing the song, and it's a cute, schmaltzy phish-pop song. not bad, not wonderful. just a good, solid song.
the closing run of the second set was a long "bathtub gin" and "harry hood", followed by a "slave to the traffic light" encore. by itself, this might not have been anything special, but following on the heels of a set that already featured "fluffhead" and extended takes on "moma" and "light", this basically meant a set two/encore run that added up to a handful of songs and about 2 hours of music. phish brought the jam during this part of the show, and hit all the right notes during the composed bits of "fluffhead", "harry", and "slave". neither of those last two have ever really been my favorite phish songs either, but i was converted, especially to "harry", on this particular night. the second set ending with the band climaxing their "harry" jam by belting out the "you can feel good! good! good about hood!" was a pretty epic, great-concert-memory moment.
the band's intensity and their artistry shows through a lot more on the second set recording than on the first, and at the very least i'll be playing the crap out of the back half of this show for a long time.
i'll do a review of the second night as a separate entry, so as not to prolong the typing madness.
anyway, here goes.
night one started off with "down with disease", which was, a bit ironically, one of my least favorite phish songs. imagine my wry amusement when, after seeing phish walk out on stage live for the first time after waiting for 8 years and through a long hiatus, they start playing one of the few songs in their repertoire that i actively dislike. two minutes later, though, i was converted. it was that immediately that i knew that their "reunion" tour was less a gimmick and more a serious attempt to extend the band's legacy. the whole band was pitch-perfect throughout the song, and my first experience with the phish crowd jumping around and dancing joyously will now always be punctuated by trey's guitar riff during the song's first interlude. i remember being dimly aware that i bounced up and down that i was grinning like a giddy idiot already and that i had approximately 6 more hours of phish to go. clearly, i'm a bit biased towards this particular performance of this particular song, but on the recording, it also sounded great.
next up was "ocelot" and "pebbles and marbles". i'm pretty neutral when it comes to "ocelot". it was a solid performance, but whatever. "pebbles and marbles", on the other hand, is one of my favorite phish tunes, and it was the first of a few moments during the show that i was concerned that the boys might have bitten off more than they could chew by choosing such an ambitious setlist. it was great to hear the tune live, but it was a little rough, and on recording, without the crowd's ambiance and excitement, it's downright painful. the band had a lot of trouble with this one.
"possum", as usual, was energetic and a good, solid, simple jamming song to get things back on track, but then it was followed by "sleep". now, i have nothing against "sleep", it's a great, neat little song. but why play it for thousands of people at an amphitheatre? we had made it pretty clear we were there to rock, and yet we get a lead out of the blistering solo at the end of "possum" into "sleep"?
next was "destiny unbound", which i didn't really know (apparently this makes me not a real phish fan). not much to say about this one. "stash" was great, and included a pretty extended, unique jam. unfortunately, its main riff is so distinct that when the notes get flubbed a bit, it really sort of hurts the song for me (it's sort of like trey biffing the arpeggios at the beginning of "YEM"; it's just sort of naturally wince-evoking). yeah, so that happened. and on tape the band's sort-of struggling with parts of the song is even more obvious. fortunately, next up was "sneakin' sally > cavern", which was one of the highlights of the weekend for me. great vocal jam at the end of "sally", straight into the almost-pop of "cavern". live, at the end of the first set i was still absolutely pumped and ready to hear 10-15 more songs i'd never heard in person. on tape, i'm not remembering the show quite as fondly as i maybe once did. a few great moments, but also a few slip-ups at important points in important songs = pretty mediocre first phish set.
set two started with "moma dance > light > taste", a really great start that alleviated most of my discomfort over certain parts of the first set. "moma dance" was a great way to ease into the second set, getting the crowd grooving and letting the band stretch its jamming legs without taking on anything too orchestrated or convoluted. i love "light", especially when it gets the extended intro treatment like it got on this night, and "taste" is pretty much always great.
we had a few seconds to recover from this run of songs before "fluffhead", which is the one song i really wanted to hear and never expected to get to. the band ripped through this one wonderfully, and it's one of the major highlights for me to have on tape and to be able to listen to over and over again. "joy" was next. this was my first time hearing the song, and it's a cute, schmaltzy phish-pop song. not bad, not wonderful. just a good, solid song.
the closing run of the second set was a long "bathtub gin" and "harry hood", followed by a "slave to the traffic light" encore. by itself, this might not have been anything special, but following on the heels of a set that already featured "fluffhead" and extended takes on "moma" and "light", this basically meant a set two/encore run that added up to a handful of songs and about 2 hours of music. phish brought the jam during this part of the show, and hit all the right notes during the composed bits of "fluffhead", "harry", and "slave". neither of those last two have ever really been my favorite phish songs either, but i was converted, especially to "harry", on this particular night. the second set ending with the band climaxing their "harry" jam by belting out the "you can feel good! good! good about hood!" was a pretty epic, great-concert-memory moment.
the band's intensity and their artistry shows through a lot more on the second set recording than on the first, and at the very least i'll be playing the crap out of the back half of this show for a long time.
i'll do a review of the second night as a separate entry, so as not to prolong the typing madness.
2010-02-07
2010-02-02
teaching and learning
so i'm teaching a sort-of lit class for the first time this semester. and it's been great so far. i got to choose the books, and as per the class requirements, they all had to be books published recently. so i picked a lot of books that i simultaneously thought were interesting to talk about based on their own literary merits and were interesting in a cultural context. now not only do i have a class where we can talk about characterization, plot, setting, ethos, believability, immersion, etc., but also race/class/gender/place AND technology, apocalypse, wilderness, conservation, zombies, home, and all that jazz. so. it's a pretty thematically dense discussion class. and it's so fucking fun my eyes want to pop out. of course, they also want to pop out because it's at 9am and i have to get here three days a week before 7am to get prepped for class (they have to submit questions online every morning and i have to be able to read them all and draw up a class plan around them before class starts that day).
anyway, i'm having a lot of fun, and the students in class who enjoy talking and discussing seem to be enjoying themselves. now that i'm over the initial shock of the joy of teaching something i'm actually directly invested in (teaching comp is fun, but it has nothing to do with what i care about directly, and requires that i have an entire "comp" section in my brain that i switch over to each monday, wednesday, and friday), i'm starting to get that nagging doubt in the back of my head that i get every time i remember that nothing in life is perfect. maybe this is just my latent comp pedagogy reflex taking over my brain, but my fear is that i'm not actually teaching these students anything.
granted, the only real goal of this class as it was explained to me was to talk about reading and talk about how it is relevant and important in today's society (BOOOOOOOM!). and i feel like i'm definitely doing that. i guess i'm so used to the lecture model, the skill-teaching model of a class that i feel like a failure just going in, talking about reading, and enjoying myself. it feels too easy. at times, when i'm being easier on myself, i feel like maybe the learning that's taking place in a class like this is really just less tangible that it might be in a comp class (and that's less than it might be in a science class, and so on). i mean, i'm running this class pretty similarly to some of the seminars i've taken in grad school, and i learned more from the discussions in those classes than i have at pretty much any other time in my life (at least in a school environment).
i certainly lecture from time to time briefly about certain character archetypes, or certain literary techniques, and those kinds of things. but these students are all experienced readers. they infer these things if you hint at them. they don't need to learn what the hero's quest is. they can see it, and talk about it, and understand its value and also the value in deviating if you're a writer. i also have lots of small checks built into the class to make sure they're keeping up on the reading and paying attention in class (and two big checks in the form of a midterm and a final). but it's just strange. i've never taught a class like this, and it's odd to have a class that puts most of its value in discussion rather than lecture and regurgitation/revision. it's odd to think that students will come out of this class having read 8 new books, and that's (largely) it. when teaching comp 101 (and even 201), we sort of have this idea impressed upon us that we're the gateway to our students' ability to write at a college level, which in turn is the gateway to the rest of their entire future success. of course, that's aggrandizing and a little ridiculous in some ways, but i guess what i'm getting at is that with the impression we're giving as budding comp teachers, it's easy to convince yourself that you're doing god's work if you have an off day. there's not a lot of room for crisis of purpose. that's not the case anymore.
that said, we're finishing up talking about Snow Crash tomorrow and we'll be moving on to neil gaiman's American Gods on friday. can't wait.
anyway, i'm having a lot of fun, and the students in class who enjoy talking and discussing seem to be enjoying themselves. now that i'm over the initial shock of the joy of teaching something i'm actually directly invested in (teaching comp is fun, but it has nothing to do with what i care about directly, and requires that i have an entire "comp" section in my brain that i switch over to each monday, wednesday, and friday), i'm starting to get that nagging doubt in the back of my head that i get every time i remember that nothing in life is perfect. maybe this is just my latent comp pedagogy reflex taking over my brain, but my fear is that i'm not actually teaching these students anything.
granted, the only real goal of this class as it was explained to me was to talk about reading and talk about how it is relevant and important in today's society (BOOOOOOOM!). and i feel like i'm definitely doing that. i guess i'm so used to the lecture model, the skill-teaching model of a class that i feel like a failure just going in, talking about reading, and enjoying myself. it feels too easy. at times, when i'm being easier on myself, i feel like maybe the learning that's taking place in a class like this is really just less tangible that it might be in a comp class (and that's less than it might be in a science class, and so on). i mean, i'm running this class pretty similarly to some of the seminars i've taken in grad school, and i learned more from the discussions in those classes than i have at pretty much any other time in my life (at least in a school environment).
i certainly lecture from time to time briefly about certain character archetypes, or certain literary techniques, and those kinds of things. but these students are all experienced readers. they infer these things if you hint at them. they don't need to learn what the hero's quest is. they can see it, and talk about it, and understand its value and also the value in deviating if you're a writer. i also have lots of small checks built into the class to make sure they're keeping up on the reading and paying attention in class (and two big checks in the form of a midterm and a final). but it's just strange. i've never taught a class like this, and it's odd to have a class that puts most of its value in discussion rather than lecture and regurgitation/revision. it's odd to think that students will come out of this class having read 8 new books, and that's (largely) it. when teaching comp 101 (and even 201), we sort of have this idea impressed upon us that we're the gateway to our students' ability to write at a college level, which in turn is the gateway to the rest of their entire future success. of course, that's aggrandizing and a little ridiculous in some ways, but i guess what i'm getting at is that with the impression we're giving as budding comp teachers, it's easy to convince yourself that you're doing god's work if you have an off day. there's not a lot of room for crisis of purpose. that's not the case anymore.
that said, we're finishing up talking about Snow Crash tomorrow and we'll be moving on to neil gaiman's American Gods on friday. can't wait.
2010-01-26
pictures of things i did this weekend
bought these two donuts, which were both larger than my hand.
fulfilled my lifelong dream of owning one of those 3 foot tall care bears.
finally got my turntable working.
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| From Spring '10 |
fulfilled my lifelong dream of owning one of those 3 foot tall care bears.
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| From Spring '10 |
finally got my turntable working.
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| From Spring '10 |
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| From Spring '10 |
2010-01-21
revisiting the gorge
finally sat down today to take a cold, hard objective listen to the tapes from the phish gorge run this summer. i wanted to see how good they sounded when i wasn't sitting amidst thousands of screaming fans while, well, screaming. i learned lots of fun things. however, i need to take notes for work tomorrow right now, so i'll have the full write-up later. i may also (gasp!) have my first mixtape in quite awhile. something about getting a new (used) cd changer and a turntable has gotten me to go back and start listening to all my old albums again.
pics-b-gone
as a way of motivating myself to start taking pictures again, i deleted about half of the photos i have up on my picasa account tonight to make room for new ones (i'm down from 92% used space to 43%!). the downside is that a lot of pics linked in old posts on this and my previous blog may no longer work. i'm going to guess that this isn't going to be a crippling emotional blow to anyone, but on the off chance it is, let me know.
2010-01-12
twitter is hilarious
and here's why. check out my twitter follow notifications for yesterday (you may have to click on the image to get a higher resolution).
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| From Spring '10 |
2010-01-05
nerd alert
i just finished the original Starcraft campaign for what i'm pretty sure is the fifth time (since 2004 or thereabouts). it was as fun as ever, though being so familiar with it makes the last four or five protoss missions (each close to 3 hours long) a bit of a drag. i'm going to jump into the expansion pack and see how far i can get before i have to start work again. it's one of the most (if not the most) ridiculous gaps in my gaming experience that i have never finished Brood War despite being obsessed with the original Starcraft. maybe it's finally time to right this years-long travesty.
checking in
i had thought (mistakenly, obviously) that i would have a lot more time to blog about random, potentially fun things over break.
somehow, i always envision winter break as this wonderful sort of "eye of the storm" moment where i get a chance to recharge before next semester starts and to catch up with everyone in ohio that i don't get to see most of the rest of the year. in reality, it always (ever since WSU shifted their calendar back a week, anyway) ends up being this rush where i get back into town 2 days before christmas, then rush from about the 28th to new year's trying to see everyone that i know in the area outside of canton, then come back home to do all the work i didn't do between christmas and new year's before i fly back to pullman in my last 4-5 days in town.
now, having said that, i've made it all sound much less pleasant than it actually is. it's really great that i'm able to come back home for christmas every year and that i'm also often able to find a lot of time to visit with my friends in the area as well as my family. it's just not what i'd consider a "break". it is what it is, i guess, but it's just always a little disorienting when i get to this point in the break, three days before i fly back home, and realize that i'm really no more rested or calm or relaxed than i was rushing to the airport right before christmas right after turning my grades in.
anyway, it's been a really great break. got to see pretty much my entire extended family over christmas eve and christmas. got to see Avatar again, this time with my parents and brother, and they seemed to like it. i forgot how incredibly huge theaters are here - as in, it actually makes a difference whether you sit in the front or the back. i was spoiled (as usual) by christmas: got a new digitech effects processor pedal, a good starter turntable (can't wait to start buying vinyl instead of CDs), and, mostly importantly, a GPS. like an actual, legit, fancy GPS, not a phone with a GPS unit (though i also got a new phone for renewing my contract). i haven't used it for anything geocache-wise yet; i downloaded a ton of geocache locations for the surrounding area, but then we got a billion inches of snow before i could get out and find any of them. excited to go back and recheck the University of Death caches using it, and to start logging more caches around the pullman/moscow area. there are a lot of 'em.
i didn't get to spend as much time up in kent this break as i normally like to, partially because of the weather and partially just because of what i mentioned before: namely, that i've just been so beat, having fun just hasn't sounded fun...if that makes sense. had a great time over new year's, but after about two days of tromping around kent, it just sounded more fun to sleep in my bed for 12 hours than it did to do anything remotely adventurous. with luck, i'll be able to spend some time up in kent this summer and have a chance to make up for my current lethargy.
somehow, i always envision winter break as this wonderful sort of "eye of the storm" moment where i get a chance to recharge before next semester starts and to catch up with everyone in ohio that i don't get to see most of the rest of the year. in reality, it always (ever since WSU shifted their calendar back a week, anyway) ends up being this rush where i get back into town 2 days before christmas, then rush from about the 28th to new year's trying to see everyone that i know in the area outside of canton, then come back home to do all the work i didn't do between christmas and new year's before i fly back to pullman in my last 4-5 days in town.
now, having said that, i've made it all sound much less pleasant than it actually is. it's really great that i'm able to come back home for christmas every year and that i'm also often able to find a lot of time to visit with my friends in the area as well as my family. it's just not what i'd consider a "break". it is what it is, i guess, but it's just always a little disorienting when i get to this point in the break, three days before i fly back home, and realize that i'm really no more rested or calm or relaxed than i was rushing to the airport right before christmas right after turning my grades in.
anyway, it's been a really great break. got to see pretty much my entire extended family over christmas eve and christmas. got to see Avatar again, this time with my parents and brother, and they seemed to like it. i forgot how incredibly huge theaters are here - as in, it actually makes a difference whether you sit in the front or the back. i was spoiled (as usual) by christmas: got a new digitech effects processor pedal, a good starter turntable (can't wait to start buying vinyl instead of CDs), and, mostly importantly, a GPS. like an actual, legit, fancy GPS, not a phone with a GPS unit (though i also got a new phone for renewing my contract). i haven't used it for anything geocache-wise yet; i downloaded a ton of geocache locations for the surrounding area, but then we got a billion inches of snow before i could get out and find any of them. excited to go back and recheck the University of Death caches using it, and to start logging more caches around the pullman/moscow area. there are a lot of 'em.
i didn't get to spend as much time up in kent this break as i normally like to, partially because of the weather and partially just because of what i mentioned before: namely, that i've just been so beat, having fun just hasn't sounded fun...if that makes sense. had a great time over new year's, but after about two days of tromping around kent, it just sounded more fun to sleep in my bed for 12 hours than it did to do anything remotely adventurous. with luck, i'll be able to spend some time up in kent this summer and have a chance to make up for my current lethargy.
2009-12-30
watch m. ward rock the universe
i'm taking a break from syllabus-writing to watch youtube clips, and came across these two which, while not the same performance that i saw in eugene last spring, capture the essence of that performance quite well. the sound is a little wonky halfway through the second one, but if you like guitar, you owe it to yourself to at least watch the first one.
2009-12-27
2009-12-26
best response to copenhagen...
...i've seen thus far is from ben stewart (greenpeace). it's a sign of the times, i think, that i'm looking to greenpeace for reason, but there it is:
"The most progressive U.S. President in a generation comes to the most important international meeting since the Second World War and delivers a speech so devoid of substance that he might as well have made it on speakerphone from a beach in Hawaii. His aides argue in private that he had no choice, such is the opposition on Capitol Hill to any action that might challenge the dominance of fossil fuels in American life. And so the nation which put a man on the moon can’t summon the collective will to protect men and women back here on Earth from the consequences of an economic model and lifestyle choice that has taken on the mantel of a religion.
Then a Chinese Premier who is in the process of converting his Communist nation to that new faith (high-carbon consumer capitalism) takes such umbrage at Obama’s speech that he refuses to meet – refuses, in fact, to do much of anything beyond sulking in his hotel room, as if this were a teenager’s house party instead of a final effort to stave off the breakdown of our biosphere.
Late in the evening the two men meet and cobble together a collection of paragraphs which they call a ‘deal’, although in reality it has all the meaning and authority of a bus ticket, not that it stops them affixing their signatures to it with great solemnity. Obama’s team then briefs the travelling White House press pack – most of whom, it seems, understand about as much about global climate politics as our own lobby hacks know about baseball – and before we know it the New York Times and CNN are declaring the birth of a ‘meaningful’ accord.
Meanwhile a friend on an African delegation emails to say that he and many fellow members of the G77 block of developing countries are streaming into the corridors after a long discussion about the perilous state of the talks, only to see Obama on the television announcing that the world has a deal. It’s the first they’ve heard about it, and a few minutes later, as they examine the text, they realise very quickly that it effectively condemns their continent to a century of devastating temperature rises.
By now the European leaders – who know this thing is a farce but have to present it to their publics as progress – have their aides phoning the directors of civil society organisations spinning that the talks have been a success. A success? This deal crosses so many of the red lines laid out by Europe before this summit started that there are scarlet skid marks across the floor of the Bella Centre, and one honest European diplomat tells us this is a ‘shitty shitty deal.’
Quite.
This deal is beyond bad. It contains no legally binding targets and no indication of when or how they’ll come about. There isn’t even a declaration that the world will aim to keep global temperature rises below 2 degrees C – instead leaders merely ‘recognise the science’ behind that vital threshold, as if that were enough to prevent us crossing it. The only part of this deal anyone sane came close to welcoming was the $100bn global climate fund, but it’s now becoming apparent that even that’s largely made up of existing budgets, with no indication of how new money will be raised and distributed so poorer countries can go green and adapt to climate change.
Not all of our politicians deserve the opprobrium of a dismayed world. Our own Ed Miliband fought hard on no sleep for a better outcome, while President Lula of Brazil offered to financially assist other developing countries to cope with climate change and put a relatively bold carbon target on the table. But the EU didn’t move on its own commitment (one so weak we’d actually have to work hard not to meet it) while the United States offered nothing and China stood firm.
Before the talks began I was of the opinion that we would only know Copenhagen was a success when plans for new coal-fired power stations across the developed world were dropped. If the giant utilities saw in the outcome of Copenhagen an unmistakable sign that governments were now determined to act, and that coal plants this century would be too expensive to run under the regime agreed at this meeting, then this summit would have succeeded. Instead, as the details of the agreement emerged last night we received reports of Japanese opposition MPs popping champagne corks as they savoured the possible collapse of their new government’s carbon targets. It’s not just that we haven’t got to where we needed to be, we’ve actually ceded huge ground. There is nothing in this deal – nothing – that would persuade an energy utility that the era of dirty coal is over. And the implications for humanity of that simple fact are profound.
I know we greens are partial to hyperbole. We use language as a bludgeon to direct attention to the crisis we’re facing, and you’ll hear much more of it in the coming days and weeks. But really, it’s no exaggeration to describe the outcome of Copenhagen as an historic failure that will live in infamy. In a single day, in a single space, a spectacle was played out in front of a disbelieving audience of people who have read and understood the stark warnings of humanity’s greatest scientific minds - and what they witnessed was nothing less than the very worst instincts of our species articulated by the most powerful men who ever lived.
I will leave the last word to the late Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who would have given voice to the insanity of Copenhagen better than I ever could, and whose poem Requiem is perhaps appropriate at this moment: ‘When the last living thing, has died on account of us, how poetical it would be if Earth could say, in a voice floating up, perhaps from the floor of the Grand Canyon, “It is done. People did not like it here”.’
a downer of a first blog for after christmas, but there it is.
"The most progressive U.S. President in a generation comes to the most important international meeting since the Second World War and delivers a speech so devoid of substance that he might as well have made it on speakerphone from a beach in Hawaii. His aides argue in private that he had no choice, such is the opposition on Capitol Hill to any action that might challenge the dominance of fossil fuels in American life. And so the nation which put a man on the moon can’t summon the collective will to protect men and women back here on Earth from the consequences of an economic model and lifestyle choice that has taken on the mantel of a religion.
Then a Chinese Premier who is in the process of converting his Communist nation to that new faith (high-carbon consumer capitalism) takes such umbrage at Obama’s speech that he refuses to meet – refuses, in fact, to do much of anything beyond sulking in his hotel room, as if this were a teenager’s house party instead of a final effort to stave off the breakdown of our biosphere.
Late in the evening the two men meet and cobble together a collection of paragraphs which they call a ‘deal’, although in reality it has all the meaning and authority of a bus ticket, not that it stops them affixing their signatures to it with great solemnity. Obama’s team then briefs the travelling White House press pack – most of whom, it seems, understand about as much about global climate politics as our own lobby hacks know about baseball – and before we know it the New York Times and CNN are declaring the birth of a ‘meaningful’ accord.
Meanwhile a friend on an African delegation emails to say that he and many fellow members of the G77 block of developing countries are streaming into the corridors after a long discussion about the perilous state of the talks, only to see Obama on the television announcing that the world has a deal. It’s the first they’ve heard about it, and a few minutes later, as they examine the text, they realise very quickly that it effectively condemns their continent to a century of devastating temperature rises.
By now the European leaders – who know this thing is a farce but have to present it to their publics as progress – have their aides phoning the directors of civil society organisations spinning that the talks have been a success. A success? This deal crosses so many of the red lines laid out by Europe before this summit started that there are scarlet skid marks across the floor of the Bella Centre, and one honest European diplomat tells us this is a ‘shitty shitty deal.’
Quite.
This deal is beyond bad. It contains no legally binding targets and no indication of when or how they’ll come about. There isn’t even a declaration that the world will aim to keep global temperature rises below 2 degrees C – instead leaders merely ‘recognise the science’ behind that vital threshold, as if that were enough to prevent us crossing it. The only part of this deal anyone sane came close to welcoming was the $100bn global climate fund, but it’s now becoming apparent that even that’s largely made up of existing budgets, with no indication of how new money will be raised and distributed so poorer countries can go green and adapt to climate change.
Not all of our politicians deserve the opprobrium of a dismayed world. Our own Ed Miliband fought hard on no sleep for a better outcome, while President Lula of Brazil offered to financially assist other developing countries to cope with climate change and put a relatively bold carbon target on the table. But the EU didn’t move on its own commitment (one so weak we’d actually have to work hard not to meet it) while the United States offered nothing and China stood firm.
Before the talks began I was of the opinion that we would only know Copenhagen was a success when plans for new coal-fired power stations across the developed world were dropped. If the giant utilities saw in the outcome of Copenhagen an unmistakable sign that governments were now determined to act, and that coal plants this century would be too expensive to run under the regime agreed at this meeting, then this summit would have succeeded. Instead, as the details of the agreement emerged last night we received reports of Japanese opposition MPs popping champagne corks as they savoured the possible collapse of their new government’s carbon targets. It’s not just that we haven’t got to where we needed to be, we’ve actually ceded huge ground. There is nothing in this deal – nothing – that would persuade an energy utility that the era of dirty coal is over. And the implications for humanity of that simple fact are profound.
I know we greens are partial to hyperbole. We use language as a bludgeon to direct attention to the crisis we’re facing, and you’ll hear much more of it in the coming days and weeks. But really, it’s no exaggeration to describe the outcome of Copenhagen as an historic failure that will live in infamy. In a single day, in a single space, a spectacle was played out in front of a disbelieving audience of people who have read and understood the stark warnings of humanity’s greatest scientific minds - and what they witnessed was nothing less than the very worst instincts of our species articulated by the most powerful men who ever lived.
I will leave the last word to the late Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who would have given voice to the insanity of Copenhagen better than I ever could, and whose poem Requiem is perhaps appropriate at this moment: ‘When the last living thing, has died on account of us, how poetical it would be if Earth could say, in a voice floating up, perhaps from the floor of the Grand Canyon, “It is done. People did not like it here”.’
a downer of a first blog for after christmas, but there it is.
2009-12-11
MIXTAPE: yankee hotel foxtrot demos compilation
okay, so i know i promised a new mixtape this week. and i got piled on by work and lack of sleep and i haven't listened to anything new or started piecing tracks together. but one thing i did do was dig into the demo sessions for wilco's yankee hotel foxtrot for the umpteenth time. for some reason, though, this was the first time it really struck me that within the two or three readily available sessions from the recording of the album, there are nine songs that ended up on the cutting room floor. not only is this an album-length number of songs in and of itself, but the quality of the songs all the way around are good enough that, though they might not stand up to the version of YHF that we actually got, they make a solid "album" on their own.
so i figured i'd pick what i thought was the best version of each of these tracks, put them in the order most beseeming a cohesive album, and upload them. this collection actually includes a few of my all-time favorite wilco tracks: "cars can't escape" and "venus stop the train". i also really, really like "not for the season" and "magazine called sunset". to my ears, a lot of these songs actually strike a better balance between pop sensibility and sonic experimentation than the tracks that actually comprise YHF do, which is funny since that's what that album is known for. then there's "venus stop the train", which just stomps on your guts at the end. i included an alternate version of "alone" as a bonus track just because there are three or four versions, and while the one i included earlier in the playlist is most reminiscent of that YHF sound, the other version is also pretty great.
if you're a fan of YHF and haven't heard any of these demos before, i highly recommend getting both sets of demos (one is a 21-track set and i believe the other is an 18-track set). a lot of the tracks that actually ended up on the album are on these demos in multiple incarnations and some are pretty incredibly different ("poor places" comes to mind).
note: the reason i'm making an exception to my usual rule here and uploading more than one song by an artist is because i've seen the sessions these songs are pulled from all over the place online, including a few very well-known wilco trading sites. so i'm assuming this is kosher. if it's not, of course let me know and i'll remove the link to the files right away.
here's the tracklist:
01. Not For the Season (l/k/a Laminated Cat)
02. Magazine Called Sunset
03. Nothing Up My Sleeve
04. Alone
05. Cars Can't Escape
06. Let Me Come Home
07. The Good Part
08. Won't Let You Down
09. Venus Stop the Train
10. Alone (Alternate Version)
here's the tracks.
so i figured i'd pick what i thought was the best version of each of these tracks, put them in the order most beseeming a cohesive album, and upload them. this collection actually includes a few of my all-time favorite wilco tracks: "cars can't escape" and "venus stop the train". i also really, really like "not for the season" and "magazine called sunset". to my ears, a lot of these songs actually strike a better balance between pop sensibility and sonic experimentation than the tracks that actually comprise YHF do, which is funny since that's what that album is known for. then there's "venus stop the train", which just stomps on your guts at the end. i included an alternate version of "alone" as a bonus track just because there are three or four versions, and while the one i included earlier in the playlist is most reminiscent of that YHF sound, the other version is also pretty great.
if you're a fan of YHF and haven't heard any of these demos before, i highly recommend getting both sets of demos (one is a 21-track set and i believe the other is an 18-track set). a lot of the tracks that actually ended up on the album are on these demos in multiple incarnations and some are pretty incredibly different ("poor places" comes to mind).
note: the reason i'm making an exception to my usual rule here and uploading more than one song by an artist is because i've seen the sessions these songs are pulled from all over the place online, including a few very well-known wilco trading sites. so i'm assuming this is kosher. if it's not, of course let me know and i'll remove the link to the files right away.
here's the tracklist:
01. Not For the Season (l/k/a Laminated Cat)
02. Magazine Called Sunset
03. Nothing Up My Sleeve
04. Alone
05. Cars Can't Escape
06. Let Me Come Home
07. The Good Part
08. Won't Let You Down
09. Venus Stop the Train
10. Alone (Alternate Version)
here's the tracks.
2009-12-09
end of more teaching
today is a weird day: the last day of teaching for me for the semester. usually (and especially my first few semesters of teaching) the last day is sort of momentous. i usually feel (even if my students don't, and most could probably likely care less) like we've all sort of come through this long, complicated, unique journey together and it feels sort of awesome to me to reach the end of it. it helps too that all my classes thus far have been portfolio-based, so even the students who participate the least and miss tons of classes or whatever still end up turning in a hefty, significantly involved packet of papers they've written. it's a nice sort of landmark moment in a way and (i'd like to think) even for them it's sort of an encapsulation of everything that they've gone through to get to the end of the class.
as such, usually at the end of a class, as i leave the classroom for the last time, it's a little hard not to reflect a bit on what i've learned and how things have gone. this probably hearkens back to the first time i finished teaching a class for the semester, in 402 bryan hall, and after i turned the lights off i just stood there in the room for about five minutes, just amazed that i'd actually survived. increasingly, though, and especially today, my inclination was to just speed out of the room and get back to my office to start working on the newest project, or paper, or whatever. and, i'll be honest, i find that depressing.
one of the best things about my "year off" two years ago teaching just comp as an instructor here as WSU was the fact that i actually got to experience teaching. it wasn't something that i had to muscle through while taking seminars and worrying about publication and dissertations and theses and, you know, real-life stuff like relationships and making time to cook food. all throughout my master's program, i had enjoyed teaching, but i was also acutely aware that every moment i spent on teaching was a moment taken away from time i could have been working on my own papers. so it was a really great experience to be able to just teach and know that giving a student an extra ten minutes was just cutting into my TV-watching time (which is, obviously, a pretty easy decision to make if you like your job, which i do) and nothing else. i felt the same way about my summer class this past summer...i had some trouble fitting 15 weeks of class into six weeks for sure, but teaching that class was fucking fun. those experiences gave me the evidence to be able to honestly say that yes, i like teaching and i'm extremely lucky to be able to do it as a job. i could not have said that during my master's program. i never had a chance to think about it.
now, as much as i'm loving the ph.d experience, my one great regret is the backstep i've taken from teaching-as-profession back to student-first-work-second. i'm really looking forward to this changing next semester when i have a little bit more time in general. not less work, of course, but at least more freedom to shift that workload around more.
as such, usually at the end of a class, as i leave the classroom for the last time, it's a little hard not to reflect a bit on what i've learned and how things have gone. this probably hearkens back to the first time i finished teaching a class for the semester, in 402 bryan hall, and after i turned the lights off i just stood there in the room for about five minutes, just amazed that i'd actually survived. increasingly, though, and especially today, my inclination was to just speed out of the room and get back to my office to start working on the newest project, or paper, or whatever. and, i'll be honest, i find that depressing.
one of the best things about my "year off" two years ago teaching just comp as an instructor here as WSU was the fact that i actually got to experience teaching. it wasn't something that i had to muscle through while taking seminars and worrying about publication and dissertations and theses and, you know, real-life stuff like relationships and making time to cook food. all throughout my master's program, i had enjoyed teaching, but i was also acutely aware that every moment i spent on teaching was a moment taken away from time i could have been working on my own papers. so it was a really great experience to be able to just teach and know that giving a student an extra ten minutes was just cutting into my TV-watching time (which is, obviously, a pretty easy decision to make if you like your job, which i do) and nothing else. i felt the same way about my summer class this past summer...i had some trouble fitting 15 weeks of class into six weeks for sure, but teaching that class was fucking fun. those experiences gave me the evidence to be able to honestly say that yes, i like teaching and i'm extremely lucky to be able to do it as a job. i could not have said that during my master's program. i never had a chance to think about it.
now, as much as i'm loving the ph.d experience, my one great regret is the backstep i've taken from teaching-as-profession back to student-first-work-second. i'm really looking forward to this changing next semester when i have a little bit more time in general. not less work, of course, but at least more freedom to shift that workload around more.
2009-12-07
lots of music is available for listening in the world
it's true.
i've been so enmeshed in phish- and wilco-land since early summer (tackling wilco's catalog and live shows with a voracity near that of my once-Cardinals obsession, and geeking out on phish after that transcendent Gorge experience) that i think it's ruining my music life. lately i've hardly been listening to music at all. which is pretty much the opposite of every day of my life for the last 15 years. part of it, of course, is just the business of this semester and the fact that now that i have a lot of friends, i don't spend a lot of time alone in my office. i'm often in my office, but there are also usually seventeen other people in here as well. which is generally awesome. but i feel more bad about blaring music in that case.
i've also realized, though, that i'm in a bit of a musical rut. i haven't been writing, i haven't been listening to anything new, i haven't had (or haven't been making) the time for either. so here i sit, day after day, spinning the same wilco and phish discs over and over again and though they are generally all awesome, admittedly, it's all starting to bleed together. the new mason jennings was a good distraction, and i also actually really like the new norah jones record. the new live gogol bordello disc is great, and all the phish shows from the summer tour are interesting. but i want to hear something i haven't heard before. i'm hoping that over christmas i can spread out a little bit, find out about some new bands. how do you find out about new, unique bands now that "indie" has become mainstream? i don't want to listen to the newest grizzly bear impersonator, i want to hear new, interesting stuff, even if it was written in the 70s.
i'm listening to loose fur right now. it's helping a little. maybe i'll throw on some minus 5 next...
i've been so enmeshed in phish- and wilco-land since early summer (tackling wilco's catalog and live shows with a voracity near that of my once-Cardinals obsession, and geeking out on phish after that transcendent Gorge experience) that i think it's ruining my music life. lately i've hardly been listening to music at all. which is pretty much the opposite of every day of my life for the last 15 years. part of it, of course, is just the business of this semester and the fact that now that i have a lot of friends, i don't spend a lot of time alone in my office. i'm often in my office, but there are also usually seventeen other people in here as well. which is generally awesome. but i feel more bad about blaring music in that case.
i've also realized, though, that i'm in a bit of a musical rut. i haven't been writing, i haven't been listening to anything new, i haven't had (or haven't been making) the time for either. so here i sit, day after day, spinning the same wilco and phish discs over and over again and though they are generally all awesome, admittedly, it's all starting to bleed together. the new mason jennings was a good distraction, and i also actually really like the new norah jones record. the new live gogol bordello disc is great, and all the phish shows from the summer tour are interesting. but i want to hear something i haven't heard before. i'm hoping that over christmas i can spread out a little bit, find out about some new bands. how do you find out about new, unique bands now that "indie" has become mainstream? i don't want to listen to the newest grizzly bear impersonator, i want to hear new, interesting stuff, even if it was written in the 70s.
i'm listening to loose fur right now. it's helping a little. maybe i'll throw on some minus 5 next...
2009-12-05
it's christmas time, bitches!
so, i have a new grain of sand to add to the beach of shameful pop culture admissions i've made on this blog throughout the years. every year i listen to a shitload of new christmas albums in the hope of finding sparkles of brilliance. sure, christmas is a huge, mean, nasty, soulless commercial enterprise, but we all have those warm, fuzzy moments of one christmas or another, either as a child or an adult, or else we wouldn't spend years and money and travel thousands of miles at the most dangerous travelling time of the year every year in hopes of resurrecting those warm, fuzzy moments. right? RIGHT?!
well, most of my warm, fuzzy moments involve christmas music, whether it was the listening to, or the caroling of. and even in the 21st century, sometimes hundreds of years after many of these songs were made, occasionally a version of an old song or even more rarely a completely new christmas song ("all i want for christmas is you", anyone?) comes along that is actually worth listening to. besides, i need something to prop up the leaning tower of my sanity come the end of fall semester each year, and what better way than to listen to a shitload of relaxing christmas music?
so this year, i've listened once again to a decent amount (yes, including bob dylan's christmas album, but i'm not ready emotionally to talk about that yet). not as much as i usually do, but that's okay because early in my survey, i've discovered what is undoubtedly 2009's christmas music masterpiece.
even better, you can download it for free.
this. is. so. awesome.
sure, it's christmas tunes rendered as if through a midi synthesizer or an old NES sound chip, but there are tons of brilliant little moments in here that deserve discovery. this wasn't just thrown together as a sheer gimmick; each song shows a lot of interesting touches and more brilliant little details come out with each listen. check out "god rest ye merry gentlemen" if nothing else. it's ridiculously cool (note for young people: the voice isn't auto-tuned, now get off my lawn!).
also, there's a great, moody version of "greensleeves", which is my favorite christmas song. so that doesn't hurt.
well, most of my warm, fuzzy moments involve christmas music, whether it was the listening to, or the caroling of. and even in the 21st century, sometimes hundreds of years after many of these songs were made, occasionally a version of an old song or even more rarely a completely new christmas song ("all i want for christmas is you", anyone?) comes along that is actually worth listening to. besides, i need something to prop up the leaning tower of my sanity come the end of fall semester each year, and what better way than to listen to a shitload of relaxing christmas music?
so this year, i've listened once again to a decent amount (yes, including bob dylan's christmas album, but i'm not ready emotionally to talk about that yet). not as much as i usually do, but that's okay because early in my survey, i've discovered what is undoubtedly 2009's christmas music masterpiece.
even better, you can download it for free.
this. is. so. awesome.
sure, it's christmas tunes rendered as if through a midi synthesizer or an old NES sound chip, but there are tons of brilliant little moments in here that deserve discovery. this wasn't just thrown together as a sheer gimmick; each song shows a lot of interesting touches and more brilliant little details come out with each listen. check out "god rest ye merry gentlemen" if nothing else. it's ridiculously cool (note for young people: the voice isn't auto-tuned, now get off my lawn!).
also, there's a great, moody version of "greensleeves", which is my favorite christmas song. so that doesn't hurt.
2009-12-03
mother(fucking) nature!
so it's been a really nice, mild winter so far in pullman. and for that, i'm grateful. however, in the last three days, the sudden massive drop in temperature has coincided perfectly with the hours and hours i've been spending outside scouting locations for University of Death...and it's freaking cold. it was coincidental enough that i felt compelled to whine about it. in other news, working on the game is way more fun than working on my other papers/projects. in fact, it's quite possibly my favorite thing i've ever done in grad school. it's going to be fun. hopefully it'll be fun for people to play, too. that's sort of the point.
if you want to check it out, click here.
if you want to check it out, click here.
2009-12-02
tweetblog!
it's oddly foggy tonight. i forgot that happens in winter in pullman. i have sad feelings. mike prewett clone is following me home.
2009-11-30
warcraft 3: the frozen my-ass in the computer chair for a long, long time
so, as i've mentioned a few times previously, despite being mega-busy this year, i've still managed to get some pretty fantastic game-playing done after midnight on the nights i can spare a few hours of sleep. this trend has more recently manifested in my manic consumption of Warcraft 3 and it's attendant expansion pack, The Frozen Throne. Having been a huge fan of Orcs and Humans (ah, the old days), Tides of Darkness (even more fun), and of course Starcraft (which is currently my #1 game of all time), i really can't explain why Warcraft 3 came out in 2002 and i'm just now, seven years later, getting around to playing it.
i think part of the problem was that, at the time, i wasn't even that into Starcraft yet. i was, at the time, more obsessed with civ-building games like Medieval: Total War and shoot-and-destroy games like Unreal Tournament and Serious Sam, and mostly i was completely fucking obsessed with Jedi Outcast. actually, i still am. and why not?!
also, what really made me love Starcraft (at the time) was that the battles were so much bigger (actually, everything was much bigger) than in previous Blizzard strategy games. when the marketing push for Warcraft 3 became basically "this is sort of like Diablo, and sort of like Starcraft with smaller battles", i think i just lost interest. i've never liked Diablo and otherwise it sounded like Warcraft 3 would be a regression.
so in a way, i think it's probably better that i came to it when i did, now that i'm a bit better equipped to appreciate nuance in game design, and especially in RTS games. now that there have been enough RTS games released on the PC to (literally) build a second moon for the Earth out of, i've had time to figure out what makes an RTS really worth playing to me. and generally that means i will play Blizzard-made RTS games and not really much else (though i liked Ground Control and Kohan a lot). i can't really articulate what it is about their RTS games that make them so much more fun than others; it's just an immutable law of life, like gravity.
anyway, i really, really liked both Warcraft 3 and the expansion, and am now looking forward even more than before to Starcraft 2. it's also going to be really difficult to not go back and try to beat both games on the Hard difficulty setting instead of doing the work that will allow me to keep my job. but somehow i will persevere.
for now i'm playing the original japanese non-dumbed-down version of Final Fantasy IV, which has a free downloadable fan translation. it's pretty freaking good. considering it's really the game that solidified my obsession with video games, all those years ago the fact that i find a different version of it even more entertaining almost 20 years later (yikes, i'm getting old) is pretty great.
i think part of the problem was that, at the time, i wasn't even that into Starcraft yet. i was, at the time, more obsessed with civ-building games like Medieval: Total War and shoot-and-destroy games like Unreal Tournament and Serious Sam, and mostly i was completely fucking obsessed with Jedi Outcast. actually, i still am. and why not?!
also, what really made me love Starcraft (at the time) was that the battles were so much bigger (actually, everything was much bigger) than in previous Blizzard strategy games. when the marketing push for Warcraft 3 became basically "this is sort of like Diablo, and sort of like Starcraft with smaller battles", i think i just lost interest. i've never liked Diablo and otherwise it sounded like Warcraft 3 would be a regression.
so in a way, i think it's probably better that i came to it when i did, now that i'm a bit better equipped to appreciate nuance in game design, and especially in RTS games. now that there have been enough RTS games released on the PC to (literally) build a second moon for the Earth out of, i've had time to figure out what makes an RTS really worth playing to me. and generally that means i will play Blizzard-made RTS games and not really much else (though i liked Ground Control and Kohan a lot). i can't really articulate what it is about their RTS games that make them so much more fun than others; it's just an immutable law of life, like gravity.
anyway, i really, really liked both Warcraft 3 and the expansion, and am now looking forward even more than before to Starcraft 2. it's also going to be really difficult to not go back and try to beat both games on the Hard difficulty setting instead of doing the work that will allow me to keep my job. but somehow i will persevere.
for now i'm playing the original japanese non-dumbed-down version of Final Fantasy IV, which has a free downloadable fan translation. it's pretty freaking good. considering it's really the game that solidified my obsession with video games, all those years ago the fact that i find a different version of it even more entertaining almost 20 years later (yikes, i'm getting old) is pretty great.
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