Urban Center of Nocturnal Avians

So there was a "free" Owl City concert on Thursday night. I use quotation marks because I still ended up spending 32 bucks on booze and CDs. The first opener, Audiovox, was not even the tiniest bit impressive to me, but the second, Roman Numerals, were just interesting enough for me to drop five dollars on their CD. I haven't listened to it yet, but if it turns out to be noteworthy I'll mention it in a later post.

For those unfamiliar with the group, some basic background. Owl city is not what you would call "high art." They don't deal with serious subject matter, their lyrics are not deep or insightful, and they aren't trying to change the world. For example, I'm currently listening to a song called Dental Care. It's not a commentary on health care, it's just a song about a guy who's afraid to go to the dentist. They're whimsical and fun to listen to, and that's all I'm usually looking for in my music. But I digress...

When I arrived at the show, I saw an enormous line wrapping all around the block. It was an outdoor show with a lot of space, but not everybody got in. A lot of folk were gathered in a nearby parking garage, watching from their apartments, or just hopping over the fence every few seconds to get a glimpse of all the fun they weren't having. However, when I asked if this was the line for Owl City, I was told that if I was 21 or older, I could skip to the front of the line. The good news was that I was definitely getting in and I didn't have to wait. The bad news is that the place was apparently going to be packed with minors. I had no idea Owl City was so popular with the high school crowd. Good thing I'm not one to be held accountable for my tastes.

I smugly sauntered to the front of the line, loudly asked the man at the door if it was alright for me to not wait in line, and walked past all the people who had probably been waiting there for an hour or so. Because seriously, how many times in my life am I going to get to do that?

One look around confirmed my suspicions. The very thick scent of weed being smoked in public. Girls who wore miniskirts to an outdoor show in October bitching about how their legs were cold, more than one kid dressed like a Matrix extra (this one girl did not take her sunglasses off all night) and several parents standing at the outside of the crowd, waiting for the show to end so they could drive their kids home. Yep, I was at a high school party.

I've never actually gone to a concert without bringing a friend along, and that night I learned why. So many times I had something I wanted to say, some comment I wanted to make (see Matrix girl, above) or just somebody to listen to me bitch about the crappy warmup band (see Audiovox, below) but there was nobody around to say it to; being all alone in a room full of people sucks. But hey, at least there's going to be some music to distract me from that, right?

In theory, once the warmup bands get done with there thing, it's about time for us all to hear the band that we all actually came for, but for some reason there was a forty-five minute intermission. After a sound technician came on stage and repeated "check 2" for five minutes without any noticeable change in her mic (If somebody had been with me we would have been making jokes about Waynestock) I began to suspect that they weren't even going to show. I strongly considered leaving, but I ended up hanging around for another ten or fifteen minutes, and when Owl City finally did get on the stage, they made everything better.

Adam Young's on-stage performance looks like something between an orgasm and a seizure. He pretty much randomly flails around, but damnit if he doesn't seem to be having the time of his life doing it; that energy caught on with the crowd, and everybody got into the show. And after all that wait, I was impressed that the group had the decency to play a very large setlist. Usually, when I go to a free show, I expect the headliners to phone it in a little (like Ludo at Rock the Vote last year) because they're not getting paid. they played a lot of stuff new and old, and they saved Fireflies for last. They got the crowd to sing the chorus, and we displayed a remarkable harmony for a quarter past midnight.

Overall, I call it a good night.

Midgets, Jobs, Ninja Cheerleaders and Fireflies

Some inane musings:


A group of midgets have founded their own midget village, in which it is unlawful to reside unless you are under 4'3". Theo, you and I need to dress like Godzilla and King Kong, and wage a battle in this city.



Last night, I was flipping through channels and there was a movie on called Ninja Cheerleaders. The plot seemed to be about a group of ninja cheerleaders banding together to rescue their master from a crime lord, who is holding him hostage until they steal the deed to a strip club that the IRS took away from him. Going from this, I'm fairly sure that this was a porn, but I was flipping between it and Scarface and I either missed all the sex scenes or this was an ultra-low budget version of DEBS. In any event, the bits I did catch were quite entertaining, in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way.

I had an interview this morning, and I think it went well. I also got a response from somebody at Rubin Brown, who I met at an MSCPA function last month. This is relevant because Rubin Brown is hiring for auditors in St Louis next summer, and the firm I interviewed is hiring for a Spring internship. If I get the internship, then get an interview with Rubin Brown, in which I can mention that somebody is already going to give me some basic training for 4 months prior to the summer, and a million other things land juuuust right, I might actually make it back to STL before 2010 is out. My fingers are crossed to a most painful degree.

I've just learned that Owl City is doing a free show about 2 miles from where I'm sitting. Totally going to that tonight.

Thanks for the Memories

So I took the last trip to St Louis that I'm going to be able to afford for a while. Incidentally, I managed to keep myself within budget for the entire weekend, thanks in no small part to a now-wealthy friend with a penchant for spoiling me.

It just so happened that a midnight showing of Serenity was scheduled at the Tivoli, which was a nice surprise. After a thoroughly mediocre tribute band blew out our eardrums with a sound setup that had no business in a movie theater, I watched Serenity start to finish for the first time since learning of the existence of Firefly.

SPOILER WARNING!!!!

It's funny how my perspective changes. Up until Friday night, I had always built Zoe up to be a character that was dead inside. In my interpretation, she had lost everything worth fighting for long before the audience meets her. After the battle of Serenity she, like Mal, continued to exist out of pure spite. During the series, she finds somebody who makes her feel just some tiny spark of life once more, and Joss "I-hate-my-characters-and-want-them-all-to-suffer" Whedon kills that somebody off suddenly and unceremoniously. Shortly after this, Zoe charges headlong into a group of rabid monsters, very obviously trying to get herself killed.

Again, it was always my interpretation that the only reason Zoe was still walking around and hand't simply laid down to die was that she was a warrior to the core, and she couldn't not be fighting something. I thought this theory was supported by the fact that she only tried to kill herself when she could do it while fighting something.

After seeing the movie, having a brief conversation with Evan about it, and thinking it over, I find this interpretation to no longer be supportable. Yes, Zoe is a warrior, but her suicide attempt was a momentary break from her usual self, rather than a culmination of it. Looking back, I can see all kinds of little things that prove this, but none quite so much as the final scene. At her husband's funeral, we see her in a white dress. White is a universal color of hope, and a symbolism of the unknown (and therefore potentially good) clean slate that the future always brings. If the writers had truly intended to portray her as someone who would never again be happy, she would have been wearing black.

END SPOILERS!!

So yeah, my mind was mildly blown as I learn that I was misreading my favorite character in Firefly. Not really interesting enough to be worth the three paragraphs I spent explaining it, but nobody reads this thing anyway, right?

See what I did there? That's irony. It's funny.

I had lunch with Terra the following day, we went to a Thai restaurant. We are both in agreement that, while tasty, their noodle dishes use actual, store-bought Ramen noodles. Then we went to some thrift stores. I found the perfect shirt for three dollars, but it was just a tiny bit too small. I did buy Dreamland, because it has that guy from the Mac commercials ("I'm a Mac, he's a PC, notice that I'm young and attractive while he is old and stupid") and because it was only $3. Also, I want to know how a movie recognized at Sundance could end up in a bin.

That evening, I went bowling with some of Renny's friends and Dre's old college friend Brian. I don't know if it was the Thai food or what, but I wasn't feeling well at the outset of the evening. I should have politely declined the bowling and drinking frenzy that was promised, but it was my last night in St Louis and I wasn't about to be stopped by a little exhaustion/headache/oh-crap-is-this-H1N1!!?!?

So out I went, and I bowled one of the best games of my life. Although that's not to say that I bowled well.

Dre and Brian hadn't seen each other in years, so they spent the whole evening catching up. I didn't really know Renny's friends very well and I have a hard time making impressive introductions when my cranium feels like it's giving birth to Athena, so I ended up spending the majority of the night nursing a drink. Oddly enough, however, I enjoyed it all the same. After we bowled a game, we headed out to a rooftop bar on the strip, and I think I must have spent nearly an hour just sitting by the railing taking in the view. See, I really love St Louis. It may be the friends and the memories that make me love her, but the brick and mortar that make it up have always symbolized them. Since I didn't have any of said friends to hang out with, I just looked at the city I used to call home and happily reminisced with myself about good times. I'm sure it sounds boring, but I had this really nice introspective brood vibe going on, and in the end it was certainly better than staying home.

All in all, it was a fun and eventful trip, and I look forward to the day I can do it much more often.

This has been,
BS

None of these came from Fark.

I have nothing terribly relevant to relate right now, so what follows is some odd news from the past month.

A Frenchman, imprisoned and awaiting trial for the murder of two young girls, escaped prison by hiding inside a cardboard box.

What I find particularly interesting here is that the man has been in prison for five years, and his trial is still not scheduled until some time next year. There is also some DNA evidence that at least one other person may have been at the crime scene, and he continues to profess his innocence. It seems that being Solid Snake may have just been a faster way to get out of prison than being innocent.

I'm calling this one now: he didn't do it, and he broke out of prison to track down the real killer in the action-packed summer blockbuster of 2010.

But seriously, substantial evidence of another assailant and he spends 5 years without a trial. What's the deal, France? We thought you guys were cool...

Recently, scientists discovered a predecessor to the T-rex. Apparently, it is 100% identical to the T-Rex we know and love from Jurassic Park, only really tiny. Relatively speaking, anyway. About 150 lbs. Awesome. Judging from the picture, it was a punk rocker.

A bear mauled 9 people in Takayama, Japan. The Japanese victims, it seems, were not able to fight back with Kung Fu, ninjutsu, or samurai swords. I’m beginning to suspsect that many poorly dubbed movies may have lied to me.

Fortunately, while Japan is slacking in random acts of samurai, America is apparently compensating. A college student defended his home from an intruder by going all Darth Vader on a would-be robber, slicing his hand off with a katana. For extra measure, he proceeded to slash the man across his torso. FATALITY!

And finally, the creator of Shin-Chan is dead. Details currently unknown. Let those of us weep who know why we should.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand we're back!

So I've been maintaining radio silence for nigh on two months now. Why, if you hadn't seen me at the pirates vs ninjas party (and you might not have- I was a ninja) you might be wondering if I was lying dead in a gutter somewhere.

But no, I've just been occupied. Jumping from one full-time semester to another may not be as taxing as, you know, an actual job, but I've been spoiled over the last year so it fits my definition of being very busy. In a couple of months, however, I'll be finishing my last full-time semester. After that, it's just a couple of Spring classes and the CPA exam standing between me and those precious sheets of paper that say "hire this guy, he knows stuff." For those just tuning in, those pieces of paper would be a master's degree in Accounting and a CPA license.

Recruiters are interviewing at my school, and this is a mixed prospect for me. On the one hand, I should be absolutely pumped, because it's the best chance I'll have at a job with a big-name firm in my chosen field. On the other hand, that firm will most likely hire me out of their KC office, leaving trapped for another year or two in the horrible, awful place I call home. To be fair, KC isn't so horrible, but it is frightfully boring, and the people here just aren't as cool.

Speaking of cool people, the Pirates Vs. Ninjas party was awesome. The costumes were awesome, the decorations were awesome, and the people were awesome. I apparently looked a good bit less ridiculous in my costume than I expected (in spite of the frosted hair), but I think I drank enough to compensate. It was great seeing old friends, and it was equally great meeting some new ones. Terra, you are an epic party planner. Every clique of friends needs to have somebody like you.

In other news, the KC RenFest is going on, and there's an open invitation through mid-October for anyone who wants to attend and would like a free place to crash. My family has spare bedrooms and we've been itching for an excuse to use the basement for something festive ever since we remodeled it last century. The weekend of the 17th and 18th is apparently some kind of vampire night, although the friendly KC RenFair staff doesn't seem too sure on the particulars. The flyer specifically advertises it as a night involving vampires, however, so I for one plan to run with that. Anybody know a cheap way to get some fangs molded?

That's about all I wanted to say regarding myself, the rest of this post only applies to you if you own or have access to an Xbox and have not yet played Batman: Arkham Asylum.

Go. Go now, to Blockbuster, and rent Batman. They finally did it right, and it is glorious. This game has stealth, action, exploration, and puzzle-solving, and it's all done beautifully.

The stealth, for the most part, can be taken or left at your leisure. There's none of that Splinter Cell malarkey where somebody sees you and calls in 50 armed guys on his radio. They shoot you, but Batman's a resilient fellow and just so long as you aren't charging headlong into a group of armed thugs, you'll muddle through those segments with minimal effort. If you enjoy it, however you can play up the stealth bit, bypassing any actual combat almost entirely by ninja-ing all over the room, taking your foes out one by one. The fun part about this is that as their numbers dwindle, the enemies grow increasingly frightened. The more you spook them, the more they forget to work as a team. One guy might freak out and break away from the group, giving you a chance to nab him by himself as he rounds a corner; naturally, this serves to further scare the bajeesus out of his comrades, and by the end of the fight they're actually crying as they randomly empty their clips into shadows while you sneak up behind them.

The hand-to-hand combat, as is usually the case, takes a little bit of effort to get the feel of, but once you realize how it works you can seamlessly string together long, intricate combos. The game particularly does a good job of balancing good play control with a cinematic camera. The combat flows well, feels visceral, and looks good.

As the game begins, Batman is the same badass he always was. You can batgun around a room to hide from your enemies, you can fistfight half a dozen men without breaking a sweat, and right from the get-go you feel like Batman. As the game progresses, Batman acquires ever more wonderful toys that, when used properly, give you new ways to explore the game world and reach new areas. Riddler has busted out of Arkham and hidden random trophies for you to find, which gives Batman's new gadgets a number of creative applications over and above a new method of stomping people into the ground.

What might be my favorite part of this game are the puzzles Riddler leaves for you. It's utterly ancillary to the game's storyline and can be completely ignored if you don't like it, but the more intellectual players will have a wonderful time solving his obscure puzzles, especially if you can do a good Adam West impersonation while you're at it.

The game's story starts off with Joker tied up in the Batmobile as he is dragged off to Arkham. He is being dragged there because somebody thought it would be a good idea to take all of the genius, super-powered, villains that Batman fights and shove them all into one complex in the center of a heavily populated city. While the inevitable jailbreak would have made the perfect excuse for Batman to fight every classic villain from his old books in one day, the game's writers exercised a remarkable amount of restraint. Most of the mainstays such as Mr. Freeze, Catwoman, and Penguin have all seem to have high-tailed it while they had the chance in hopes of starring in the sequel.

While several minor (and less fruity) characters factor into the game, Joker is the only headliner, and Mark Hamill absolutely knocks it out of the park on the voice acting. If you've never read Batman comic books, Hamill's performance will give you a good idea why everybody thinks Joker is such an awesome character.

This game's only real drawback is that most people won't find themselves playing it twice, which makes it a little unwise to invest the $60 and shelf space required to own it. I strongly recommend renting it the next time you have a long weekend with nothing better to do.

Where did My Love Go, Metaphorically Speaking?

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Kurt made an interesting point today about the lack of proper application of science fiction on the silver screen. The gist of it, as I interpreted, was that the real meat and potatoes of science fiction is to make commentary about our world by showing us another. Take some philosophy, introspection, or whatever else have you, but instead of telling us the story with "real people," they hand the narration over to space marines, point-eared aliens, or intergalactic wizards.

The mention of wizards segues me nicely into a little rant that Kurt inspired. Incredible amounts of money and talent have been hurled at rapidly developing the sci-fi movie as a genre, but what about Science Fiction's older, hotter sister, Fantasy? Lord of the Rings was an absolute blast, I'm glad we're all in agreement there, but am I the only one who hadn't had his fill after just three dates; especially when, to carry the metaphor too far, we only really got laid on two of them.

Oh, we've met for coffee a couple of times, like Pan's Labyrinth. And we went through that weird let's-save-our-relationship-by-roleplaying phase with the Underworld trilogy; we've since scaled that back to simple dress-up with comic book movies, but frankly those all feel like a different genre altogether. Harry Potter is kind of fun, but it kind of feels like she's just going through the motions there. I miss the relationship I used to have with Fantasy.

Can we ever be together the way we once were? Does nobody remember Willow and Legend? Princess Bride? Big Trouble in Little China? And let's be honest; the only reason Star Wars is called Science Fiction and not Fantasy is because it happened in space.

When will I see a Vampire: the Masquerade movie? When will the words of Terry Brooks spring to life on the silver screen? And do you know I've never sat in a movie theater and seen Merlin on the screen? There's no excuse for that. I want to see knights, sorcerers, dragons. I want damsels and witches. I want people throwing fireballs and lightning bolts.

But, along the lines of what Kurt said, I want all this to be a real story. when I just want the action, I'll play a video game. God knows there's plenty of all this stuff in that medium. With the exception of Pan's Labyrinth, I haven't gotten to see anything in my theater-going life that uses the mythical to comment on the factual.

With all respect to Science Fiction, I generally prefer my outrageous fiction without a soft science explanation trying to explain how all of this was "theoretically possible." When the world clearly doesn't play by the usual rules, it is all the more poignant when the real problems turn out to be the same.

This game Sucks. I loved it.

Ok. So. Been a while. How's everybody been? Hear that shit about Palin? Crazy, huh?

So a large part of why nobody's seen me (at least over the past week) is this lovely little pile of crack-cocaine known as Vampire: The Masquerade. This is a game that came out about 5 years ago, and is now available on Steam for 20 bucks.

Not surprisingly, the game is about vampires. Being adapted from a tabletop game about being a bloodsucker, Masquerade features voice and writing talent that easily meets or beats any game I've ever played. Brace yourselves for blasphemy, children: This might have been better than KOTOR.

Depending on your character build, fights can be won through various means, including stealth, magic, guns, swords, bare fists, claws, shapeshifting into a monster, or by running away like a little girl (a tactic I employed judiciously against an 8 foot werewolf). These things are done well enough to make the combat sequences fun, but in true RPG fashion, it all takes a back seat to the game's story.

The game begins with your vampire character being "embraced" into the ranks of the vampire, and the first few seconds of your new vampire life see both you and your vampire sire staked through the heart (which apparently only paralyzes a vampire) by the vampire police and brought to vampire trial. Did I mention this game had vampires?

Your creation was a violation of what the vampire community calls the Masquerade. The Masquerade is the code of conduct that vampires follow to keep their existence a secret. Traditional law demands the death of both you and your sire, but if that happened there wouldn't be a game so you are given a chance to join the vampiric community. That community, you'll quickly learn, is like the Senate, Congress, and High School all rolled into one, with people stabbing one another in the back left and right as they desperately try to claw their way to the top of the social circle.

The vampire world is one rife with political intrigue, where everyone has an agenda. There are no good guys and there are no friends; there are only people whose goals happen to align with yours. Throughout the game, you have the feeling that you are a pawn in somebody else's chess game, and that no matter what you do you'll be playing into somebody's hands. The story unfolds in a manner quite similar to KOTOR, with a heavy emphasis on dialogue and socializing as a part of the gameplay. There are surprisingly few points in the game where you actually have to do any serious fighting, and while it's almost always an option to just shoot/punch/bite your way through, it can be just as rewarding to talk or sneak past a situation. Some of the largest fights in the game can be sidestepped altogether with the proper application of charisma (or mind control) and a few picked locks.

Also like KOTOR, the game features a moral choice system, but for once it's not the proverbial "Mother Theresa or Baby Eating" choice between good and evil. As I said, there are no good guys, and that includes you, but there are varying degrees of evil. Certain actions, such as murdering an innocent unarmed person, will cause you to distance yourself from what's left of your human soul. This is more of a practical matter than an ethical one, as without that human soul, the demon that animates you can take over, and control your actions. The Masquerade is a double entendre here, because it also refers to the fact that vampires aren't just trying to fool the human race, but also themselves. By clinging to that humanity, you cling to your self control. Rejecting that humanity can cause you to frenzy. Frenzying comes with a marked increase in power, at the cost of any say as to how that power is to be used. You are almost definitely sure to find yourself violating the Masquerade, which will make you an enemy of the vampire and human worlds. Revealing yourself too often will draw the attention of Hunters.

The game will also penalize you for clinging too much to that human nature. Aside from the humanity mechanic, which can be managed easily enough without having to pass up good opportunities (such as stealing a wounded man's wallet) there is no reward or reason for playing the good guy.

The game does have multiple endings, but you're degree of good/evilness does not affect which ending you'll get. In fact, the endings are largely based on choices you make at the very end, but if you haven't politically schmoozed the right people some of those choices might not be available to you. This fact is meant to encourage you to engage in a little political intrigue of your own, as it pays to try and play both sides of a given conflict; if both sides think you're working for them, then you can delay making an actual choice on which (if any) to side with until you have more information.

For a game that is nearly half a decade old, more than a little buggy, and received almost not publicity when it did come out, Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines was a blast. It delivered about 2 hours per dollar I spent on it, and I fully intend to play it through again at some point.

One note: To run this game, it is highly recommended that you find Wesp's Unofficial Patch version 6.3 (released about a month ago, how's that for a dedicated community!) and install it in the steamapps/common/Masquerade folder. It fixes a number of issues, and improves gameplay considerably. It also gets the game to work on Vista.