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7-28-05,
3:02 AM
Stand
back, boy! This calls for some
divine intervention!
 Music:
Amon Tobin - Ruthless (Reprise)
I
may have stated it in the past, but
Amon Tobin's Splinter Cell: Chaos
Theory soundtrack may perhaps be
the best soundtrack for anything
ever. If you have a chance, I
highly recommend checking it out.
A
lot of ideas go through my head as
to what I'd like to create in my
chosen field of study, I've got the
free time to think about it. I would
love to direct an animated series
based on The Ladykiller
Chronicles (Which, I promise,
I will get around to writing again.
This time with a better storyline,
changed characters, darker tone and
hopefully less suck), I would like
to make an old-school 1940's private
eye film noir mystery, a sketch
comedy film, obviously, but you know
what I'd like to do the most? It may
surprise you, but I really would
like the chance to do a travel show.
You may not know this, but I love
travel shows, specifically Dave
Attel's
Insomniac,
Ewan McGregor's
Long Way Round,
Grub Smith's
Travel Sick,
and any one of the many series'
Michael Palin
has done. They're all very
different, the format's pretty
flexible, and all very entertaining.
There's a reason I'd like to do one,
and not just because it's the only idea
I've had that's remotely economically
feasible.
See, I like to drive and explore St.
Louis at night, it's sort of a
hobby. Particularly, areas like
University City, Clayton, Kirkwood
and Webster Groves, sections that
are full of unique shops,
restaurants and scenery, but aren't
a part of downtown. The thought
finally occurred to me a few days
ago, and I'm ashamed to say that
I've been doing this for over a year
and it never struck me before, that
all major cities obviously have
similar sections and I'd love to see
them.
So the format would be a small band
of intrepid (read: foolish)
travelers, a camera, and my jalopy,
crossing this great country of ours,
discovering and meeting the
different and off-beat subcultures
our cities provide and the journey
between them. Yes, Dave Attel
already hosts a similar show, but my
primary focus wouldn't be on
drinking or what happens at night.
I'd do as much as possible to
distance myself from him because
he's infinitely more talented,
charismatic and funnier than I am.
This also entails that I would have
to talk to people I don't know,
which is something that can come as
a great challenge to me, but damn
it, it's something I'm very
interested in and I think it could
be reasonably entertaining. At the
very least it would be better than
Cameron Diaz's televised abortion
Trippin'.
Now,
I wonder if
Matthew Lesko
ever wrote about getting government
funding for such a venture...
-K.
those government fat cats
7-21-05,
11:43 PM
That's
mighty white of you.
 Music:
Eric Clapton - Layla
I
don't know everything, I'll be the
first to admit that, but there are
just some things you think you can
assume to be certain of. Things that
you couldn't possibly be
incorrect about. Well, I was wrong
about something.
When
I wrote the gag at the end of
yesterday's update I figured it
would be safe to assume I was right
about bestiality being illegal. I
mean, I couldn't be wrong about
that, that would just be... Well,
stupid. But I'm a guy who likes to
get his facts straight, even if the
odds of me making an incorrect
assumption on a certain subject are
absurdly impossible.
So imagine my surprise when a quick
Google search for the words
"bestiality" and "Missouri" yielded
several sites telling me the
opposite was true. While in some
states it falls under the same law
against sodomy, there are no clear
statutes against bestiality and/or
zoophilia, so, technically, it's
legal. Meanwhile, gay marriage has
been banned, as well.
So,
that's right, in the state of
Missouri the current score is:
Hound Humpers: 1
Elton John: 0
-K.
god bless
7-20-05,
1:52 AM
You have
to think like a hero merely to
behave like a decent human being.
Music:
Bandini - L'estasi Dell'oro
I
was thinking about making a
semi-serious post today, but since
it doesn't involve current events
but rather something that happened
to me personally several months ago,
I can put it off. This doesn't
necessarily mean it's going to be
funny either, because I'm just going
to reference some recent
announcements that have gotten me
all hot and bothered and hot.
Ritual Entertainment has
announced
that they are teaming up with Valve
to deliver SiN Episodes, a
serialized follow-up to the
underrated Quake 2-powered
shooter SiN. Episodes,
powered by Valve's Source
engine, will be delivered over
Steam, with a new episode popping up
every three or four months,
promising installments of at least
six hours of gameplay for twenty
bucks a pop. Delivering games in an
episodic format is an idea that's
been kicked around for several years
now, but nobody has actually
followed-through with it. The
earliest example of this I can
recall is Quantic Dream's game
Fahrenheit which was announced
several years ago as episodic title.
Today, that game is still in
development and they've long ditched
the episodic style.
Anyway, I have faith with the boys
at Ritual. SiN was an
extremely impressive title for a
developer's first outing, but was
lost under a sea of bugs caused by
Activision's forcing them to release
it a month too early. Also, mere
weeks after it was released, Valve
put the original Half-Life
out and we know how that went.
Six hours might seem a little low
for twenty bucks, but with an
episodic format I take this to mean
they don't have to worry about
adding filler content like some
developers to make a "fuller"
product, meaning what they do
include will be finely tuned and
detailed. So while it'll only be six
hours, it'll be six hours of some
high quality stuff.
Anyway, the first episode due out
this fall and here are some early
shots.
Also, in a recent
Game Art Q&A
on RPGVault, FASA Studios animator
Theron Benson lets it slip that he's
working on a new Shadowrun
game to be released for the XBox
360. In his quote he says it's a
"shooter" but I'm hoping that means
"shooter" in the same sense that
Deus Ex was a shooter.
UPDATE: Apparently I've
been living in some fantasy world
where I wish it was two years ago,
as reflected in how I dated my
posts. This has been corrected. If
anyone relies on me for the exact
date, please note that it is no
longer 2003 and that bestiality is
still illegal. True, it was still
illegal before then, but I think
some things bear repeating.
UPDATE ON THE UPDATE:
No, that last sentence was not
intended to be a pun.
-K.
eat hubris talk radio
7-15-05,
11:26 PM
They're
Russians. They get shot if they
smile.
Music:
Guster - Long Way Down
I
need to be barred from Best Buy, for
my own good. I left to just to get
out of the house and browse the DVD
selection and I leave spending close
to ninety dollars. And I didn't even
get the Akira Kurosawa Criterion
Collection box set, which I should
probably have by now. No, I just
left with the complete series of
The Lone Gunmen and the second
season of Futurama. I spent a
good fifteen minutes being torn
between the Noir Film Collection box
sets, the MST3K box sets, maybe a
season of The Twilight Zone,
the third season of Quantum Leap
and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy mini-series. But they
still didn't have the goddamned
fourth season of Red Dwarf.
There is something extremely
aesthetically displeasing to me in
having a gap between seasons three
and five in my collection.
With
that said it might seem somewhat
hypocritical of me, though being
aware of that hasn't stopped me in
the past, to continue to my next
thought. If you're at one of those
Harry Potter midnight release
parties, and you're reading this,
I'd like to take this opportunity to
say -- Actually, wait, it's almost
impossible you're at one and reading
this at the same time unless you
brought a laptop with you, but I
digress -- You're insane. The sheer
rabidity of the fans is just over
the top, scouring stores and posting
angry missives about their attempts
to secure it one day early being
thwarted. And I'm talking about
adults here. Harry Potter,
though some might not realize it, is
not the be-all end-all of literature
as we know it.
I'm not attending one of these
release parties, but I'm going to
make a wild, shot-in-the-dark guess
at what fans are going to find when
they open the book:
Something goes wrong. The forecast
for Magic is 100%. Harry saves the
day.
I also just have a distaste for
grown men and women who dress up as
fictional characters on one of the
364 days that isn't Halloween.
So, congratulations, you have earned
my contempt.
But,
really, now that I think about it
that's not a hard thing to come by
these days. It's not that I'm an
elitist snob, I place myself in
contempt, nor do I hate
everything, though it may not
seem that way. I like many things.
Things such as big, juicy steaks,
post-apocalyptic video games,
instant oil changes, and... Hm.
I'll get back to you on that.
-K.
thats a
little high
7-13-05,
12:56 AM
Thank
you Gary, that's very touching. Now
get off the fucking stage.
 Music:
Robocop: The
Musical - "Murphy, It's You"
"Never
order pizza when you're very, very
hungry. Inevitably, when it is
delivered, you will immediately
begin consuming a slice of the still
hot pie, quickly searing the flesh
clean off the roof of your mouth.
This is an event that cannot be
circumvented by even those with the
strongest of wills."
-Kyle
Randolph, excerpt from Things I
Should Have Learned By Now, Volume 1
This
very thing took place earlier today,
as it did last week and several
times before it. I really should be
reminded not to destroy my mouth
when I see the Papa John's guy
removing a power cord from the
delivery bag, but, indeed, my
stomach does more to drive my
actions than my brain.
If you
click the link included on the title
of the song you'll find that, yes,
it is real. It is also a work of
genius. I wish Robocop: The
Musical was a full-fledged
production, though, because it would
be a rare piece of musical theater I
would be sure to enjoy.
It's something wrong with me, I
suppose, that I fail to be able to
get my head into the fantasy world
where everyone sings their dialogue
and still be able to take it
seriously. This explains the
negative reaction I had to
Phantom of the Opera some time
ago.
Also,
Fox really must be the brightest
beacon of tact and integrity in the
marketplace of media these days. I
attempted to the watch the All-Star
game today, but was thoroughly
disgusted when the introduction to
the game was a mix of players
interacting with the characters from
Fantastic Four.
To follow this up, Michael Rapaport
appeared in an ad, clutching a
baseball bat, trying to make some
flimsy connection to the game and
his promotion of a new sitcom he's
starring in. Then they played a
scene from the first episode.
Rapaport is a husband and a father
with a house in the suburbs, his
daughter's crazy! She's dating a
black guy! He can't seem to control
his family and their zany antics
with... their... quirks... and...
zzzzZZZZzzzzz...
Oh, sorry, I nodded off there.
Though the problem I have with this
sitcom isn't that it seems to be as
lame and generic as a Rob Schneider
vehicle, it's that the title of the
series is The War at Home and
the ad wizards at Fox decided to set
the premiere for September 11th.
I hope this kind of thing catches
on. Personally, I can't wait for the
Memorial Day marathon of Hogan's
Heroes on the History Channel.
-K.
insidious!
7-3-05,
8:23 PM
The
karma in here is so thick you need
an aqualung to breathe.
 Music:
Guster - Jesus on the Radio
So I
was called upon to deliver an Asian
chicken salad to my grandmother
yesterday, and any visit by me
usually requires a stay of at least
a half hour for labored, stilted
conversation punctuated with long
gaps of very unsettling silence. We
got on the subject of my job and I
mentioned the fairly high turnover
rate of workers in my area of the
warehouse. It's true, I've seen at
least a dozen faces come and go
within a week. There were two guys,
I think it was a father and his son,
who lasted only a single day. My
grandmother starts saying something
to tune of, "Yeah, you get these
kids who want the money but don't
want to put in their time. Think
they can get away with not doing the
work. They're... What do they call 'em...
Slackers."
Inwardly, I cringe, and the irony is
not lost as I remember that I have
not worked a full week for over a
month now, taking a day off here or
a half-day on Fridays.
Also,
when discovering a syringe-shaped
object I hope your first inclination
isn't to pick it up, take it to
someone else, ask "what is this?"
and then apply pressure to the
plunger. This is what my mother did
with a container of thermal compound
and it was pointed in my direction.
A week
or so ago, while my dad was out
mowing the front yard, Asshole came
out of his garage and stood, staring
at my father with his arms crossed.
Apparently he was trying to be
intimidating, I guess he saw it work
on an episode of Walker, Texas
Ranger. My dad waved and smiled
until Asshole decided to go back
inside. It's sort of hard to be
scary when you look like cross
between Yosemite Sam and Heinrich
Himmler.
Finally, I'd like to discuss some
things that are shit hot!
Google Earth
is quite an impressive tool and I
can see it being my one stop program
for directions. It's also just fun
to take a little fiber-optic field
trip across the globe.
I put it up in the What to Think
section some time ago, but I still
can't stop listening to Guster's
most recent album
Keep It
Together.
I challenge you to listen to
"Amsterdam" and be able to resist
listening to it for a second time,
or keep yourself from checking out
the rest of the album.
I haven't mentioned it, but the demo
for
Battlefield 2
hit a couple weeks ago, as has
the full version of the game. It's
just as fun as the original with
enough improvements and tweaks to
keep things fresh, fast and furious.
The modern weapons and vehicles are
a welcome change of pace, and any
game that uses iron-sights aiming
has my support. I have a unique
style of flying aircraft: My
strategy is to fly really low, lose
control and crash into something,
usually the ground or some
structure.
There are some videos of
Alan Wake
and
Enemy
Territory: Quake Wars
up, as well. These two titles are
the ones I was most impressed with
around E3. The boys at Remedy,
makers of Max Payne, bring us
Alan Wake, a third-person
action game where the players assume
the title role of a horror writer
suffering from nightmares and
subsequent sleep depravation since
the loss of his wife. He moves out
to a small river town in the
northwest, only to find that the
creatures that plague his dreams are
starting to appear in reality.
Quake Wars is a new team-based
multiplayer shooter from the folks
at Splash Damage, a kind of
pseudo-sequel to Wolfenstein:
Enemy Territory, and as
the name would suggest, it takes
place in the Quake universe,
with marines waging war against the
invading Strogg forces, each side
getting their own unique weapons,
vehicles and classes.
Lastly, and mostly for Theron,
there's a new
Stubbs the
Zombie trailer up,
and the Australian-made film
Undead
will be hitting the Tivoli for one
week only, starting July 8th.
-K.
prawn takes horsey
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