Category Archives: Entertainment

The dream is dead

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In all of my self-deprecating musings, I am not entirely sure if I have ever covered anything I ever did that I was good at. I will remedy that right now.

I decided that I wanted to be a guitarist shortly after my dad died in 1990. There were three albums released within a twelve month period that made me want -need- to become a guitarist. The three albums were Megadeth’s Countdown to Extinction, Metallica’s Black Album, and Ozzy’s No More Tears. Those three albums have some amazing guitar work on them, yet it is also achievable by a relative NOOB. To a point, there are some solos on those albums that I could never touch even in my prime. I did have a bit of a flair for the guitar, a fact I found shortly after dropping 40 bucks on the crappiest piece of shit you could ever lay eyes on (bonus points for that guitar having the brand name “Memphis” while I was using it exclusively for heavy metal pursuits, which was oddly unprepared for).

My ambition to become a guitarist would likely have faded away rather quickly were it not for the fact that one of my best friends decided he wanted to be a drummer. We were instantly half of a band, not a very good one mind you. What we lacked in skill, however, we made up for in dreams and desire. We practiced voraciously. We both practiced a lot on our own, but whenever we got the chance we would actually set up in his mom’s living room and pound out our stuff. Which was damn loud. Another friend, Steve, would join up a lot of the time, he was also a guitarist, thus giving us everything except a bass player (bass the instrument, not the fish, we were not a country band).

For all the dreams and desires we had, we still had something lacking: money. When Steve, Dean, and I would get into a jam session we usually had to rent a second guitar amp. The guitars would both be sporting strings that had been on them for months, often breaking in a heavy riff and stopping the session for an hour or so as we tried to scrape up a buck to buy a new string, then had to go to the guitar store to get it. That said, there was a window where we were actually pretty good.

I would play the guitar for hours and hours every day. I had the guitar in my hand pretty much any time I was not at work, school, or sleeping. I got blisters on my fingers, which eventually turned to callouses. I was getting a lot better on the guitar, Dean was getting a lot better on the drums. In 1992 we got a huge equipment upgrade. I went from playing that piece of shit “Memphis” to playing a Jackson Charvel (fusion model. Can’t find a good link for it). Dean went from a beginner drum kit to a full blown, Double Bass, Tama drum kit (two bass drums, four toms, a floor tom, a top-hat, and cymbals galore. That was a 2,000 dollar drum kit). They say that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, it turns out that our weakest link was the equipment.

The change was instant. My new guitar didn’t just randomly go out of tune anymore, I didn’t have to force the strings onto the frets with Hulk-like force, I was able to actually just play the damn thing. The same was true of Dean’s new drum kit. Where he was previously using some janky double-pedal system to achieve the double-bass necessary for heavy metal, it was often faulty and the second bass hit was never in time. That was all changed by the new equipment. We went from sounding pretty crappy (even to us), to sounding pretty good (even to others) in very short order. In essence (while not quite literally), we went from the garage band that gets the police called on them a lot (which is true, it was damn loud), to the garage band that many other musicians in town wanted to be a part of (which is partially true, we only got the ones that were in the “stoner” demographic).

We still weren’t performing public shows, but the garage doors got opened (though we played in the living room). People would actually show up to watch and/or take a stab at playing a song with us. It was a really good time. The one thing that I can say definitively is that there would be no way that you could tell that we were not actually Metallica had you listened to any of our Metallica covers (that is very literal. I recorded tapes with actual Metallica songs on one track, while I played guitar on the other track (only had a normal tape deck), after adjusting the volume levels of the two tracks, recording it back to a single track, then playing it for anyone, they couldn’t tell the difference. That was just my guitar track, and I was always the weakest link, since I was not really good at keeping in time.)). Cover tunes do not the band make. We needed some orignal stuff.

I can remember the titles of exactly three songs that we created back then, it is probably no surprise that the three are all of my own creation. The first one, titled “Are You Afraid of the Dark”, was a really catchy riff, had a bit of bad poetry in it, and never really came to much. The second one, titled “Dungeon Majyk” (that was not a typo) had a really pounding intro riff, then petered out into nothing. I know I wrote some lyrics for the song but I can’t remember a single word, perhaps I should be thankful. The third one, titled “The Nature of the Beast”, has an intro riff that I can remember to this day, it is was a heavy song that builds up slowly before going completely insane. The one drawback is, I seem to remember that after each verse, the guitars would emulate the sound of the vocals. That is only a problem because the quote “it’s the nature of the beast”, when emulated on the guitar, sounds a lot like the “Oscar Mayer has a way with B O L O G N A”, but only the spelling of bologna part.” At any rate, the first time we played that song, while Dean’s mom was at home, she called up my brother to let him hear it as well.

We weren’t the best thing since sliced bread, but we could play our instruments, we had the cover tunes completely nailed, we could have eventually been the next one-hit-wonder. Sadly, the need of a paycheck can often shadow over the desire to follow your dreams. It is the way of life, I suppose. Had I resigned myself to living in a gutter in rural Oregon, all the while chasing this elusive dream, well, who knows. I would either have found success or failure. Since my actions led me down a different road, I suppose I will never know. Yet, the memories remain precious.

When I arrived in Arizona I tried to keep the dream alive. Not a dream about being rich and famous, just a dream about doing what I loved and getting paid for it. The first few paychecks that I got went on clothing, after that it was all about getting a new guitar (I had no guitar when I arrived here). I bought the first piece of shit guitar that I saw, once I could afford it, and it has gotten much better since then. Over the years I have accumulated more than one guitar, I have exactly three at this point. And these are not low dollar guitars.

A have a Samson 12-string acoustic guitar, I have a Jackson Charvel fusion (three pick-ups and a Floyd Rose tremolo, 24 frets. that thing is the bomb), I also have a Jackson Kelly (Marty Friedman plays the Kelly, though mine is not his signature model) which has 24 frets and sharkskin inlays on the fingerboard, Floyd Rose tremolo as well (don’t buy a guitar if it doesn’t have the Floyd). I also have a Peavy Mini stack (looks just like the two-box, one head stacks that most musicians use, but it is 1/4 the size), a nifty multi-effects pedal, a wireless system, and…Hell, let me just say that I have a hell of a lot of guitar equipment, most of which I haven’t touched in well over a year.

I think the dream ended for me a long time ago. To the right you will see a photo of me playing the guitar, in specific I was struggling with the quintuplets that Metallica happened to throw into the song “Disposable Heroes” (also, that is some nice framing). That is probably the only Metallica song (well, of the good ones, you know, prior to 1993 or so) that I actually couldn’t play all the way through. It just fucking hurts! Your hand was not meant to move that fast, I look like I am in pain because I am in pain, my brother clicked the little camera at just the right time.

I don’t really play the guitar much anymore. I do pick it up from time to time just to make sure that I will be able to remember how to use it, but other than that I really haven’t touched the damn things in several years. I think there is a window of opportunity where you can or can’t make it, I missed that window by, at this point, at least a decade.

My dream of doing what I love (playing guitar for a living) is totally dead. The question is will I ever sell off the equipment that I bought hoping/praying that I would be a musician. As the equipment sits in the disused back room, I just don’t know. What if I don’t have the equipment when the next “it” band is looking for an overweight, thirty-something guy to be their rhythm guitarist? Yeah, I really should cut my losses and call it a career, but I can’t.

Now I am off to make sure that all the dead bovine in the meat case is fresh. That was nowhere on my goal lists in high school.

Finally a lawsuit for The DaVinci Code

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When I saw the headline that read Date set for Da Vinci Code plagiarism trial. I just had to click through to read it. I figured it could only be one of two things. The first that Dan Brown had somehow filed suit against himself for plagiarising his first novel Angels and Demons, which didn’t seem likely, the second being that Dan Brown and his publishers had finally gotten around to suing the people who made the movie National Treasure. It turns out it was neither. It is actually Dan Brown and his publisher being sued (it is short so I will quote it all):

LONDON (Reuters) – Two historians are suing the publishers of Dan Brown’s best-selling religious thriller “The Da Vinci Code” in a case which lawyers said Thursday was due to start early next year. Richard Leigh and Michael Baigent are suing Random House for lifting “the whole architecture” of the research that went into their 1982 non-fiction book “The Holy Blood, and the Holy Grail.”

Lawyers on both sides of the case met Thursday to thrash out technical details, and said a trial date had been set for February 27.

They would not comment on how the trial might affect sales of the hugely successful novel or the distribution of a major Hollywood adaptation which Sony Pictures plans to release in May next year.

Random House said a “substantial” part of the claim by Baigent and Leigh had been dropped as a result of Thursday’s discussions, and added in a statement:
“Random House is delighted with this result, which reinforces its long-held contention that this is a claim without merit.”

A spokeswoman for Leigh said he still intended to pursue his claim against the publishers of Brown’s book, which has 36 million copies in print worldwide and has upset Catholics for suggesting Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had a child by her.

The same theory is put forward in The Holy Blood, and the Holy Grail.
Commentators have pointed out that a major character in Dan Brown’s book, Sir Leigh Teabing, has a name that is an anagram of Leigh and Baigent. A third author of the 1982 book, Henry Lincoln, has decided to stay out of the action.

Ironically, a special hardback, illustrated version of their book, called Holy Blood, Holy Grail has just been reissued by none other than Random House.

In August, Brown won a court ruling against another writer, Lewis Perdue, who claimed The Da Vinci Code copied elements of two of his novels, “Daughter of God” and “The Da Vinci Legacy.”

Perdue had sought $150 million in damages and asked the court to block distribution of the book and the movie adaptation, which features Tom Hanks alongside French actress Audrey Tautou.

That is hardly how I thought this was all going to come down. Of course the fact that I found it in the Odd News section might be an indicator of just how seriously the allegations are being taken. The allegations are pretty ridiculous when it comes right down to it. I don’t know if Brown ever looked at the particular book that they are suing him for plagiarising, but I am damn sure that Brown did a lot of homework on the book to make sure he had everything else (location, pictures, etc.) covered. I bet he referenced tons of non-fiction while he was researching aspects of the plot of the novel. That is what you do if you want people to take this type of a novel seriously.

Trying to sue someone for researching a subject before writing about it is a bit suspect anyway. That would necessarily mean that every college thesis is basically plagiarism. You have to reference dictionaries and reference books to build a base for the project, not to mention newspapers and magazines, yep, you plagiarised them all. Nevermind the fact that you are only looking for actual facts. Hell, I have been plagiarizing math my entire life: at some point I read that 1+1=2, I have written that very statement many times over the years.

What I really loved about the article, though, was this quote: Commentators have pointed out that a major character in Dan Brown’s book, Sir Leigh Teabing, has a name that is an anagram of Leigh and Baigent. First off, the characters name is Sir Leigh Teabing, which is in no way an anagram of Leigh and Baigent. If you were to leave the “Sir” off of his name you could spell Leigh, you could spell Baigent, but where the hell would you get the and? Second, if you were really plagiarising someone’s work, would you make an anagram of their name that only required moving a letter or two? Personally I would at least mix the letters together rather than using the exact name for the first name then barely mixing up the last. I would never use a name like Mark Waint if I happened to be ripping off Samuel Langhorne Clemens Mark Twain. Tim Warnak is the first name that I can quickly anagram from Mark Twain, and, as an added bonus, it doesn’t seem to make it glaringly obvious that it is an anagram.

The lawsuit seems to be claiming that when those two guys wrote a book in 1982, they were the only ones in the entire world that had ever thought that maybe Jesus had actually married Mary Magdalene and fathered a child or children, which is completely untrue. There are even some religious scholars that admit it is a possibility, since the biblical texts are far from a complete and accurate historical document. However, religious scholars are not Priests (or the pope for that matter), therefore the church refuses to accept any possibility the Jesus ever fornicated with a woman (or man. Had to throw that in just to piss off religious zealots). I can see their logic. The bible doesn’t say that Jesus ever married anyone, sex out of wedlock is a sin, Jesus never sinned, therefore he died a virgin.

Thing is that the bible leaves out a lot of important details. Like why God hid a bunch of huge dinosaur bones under the ground, forced them to fossilize, then let modern man find them. Were you to take the bible literally, you would simply have to believe that Noah loaded two of every dinosaur onto his boat, along with two of every other species on the planet (many of which eat wood, which must have sucked. Imagine trying to save all of the species only to find that on your fifth day, out of forty, the insects have eaten the majority of your boat. Sucks to be Noah). That must have been a damn big boat, and a monumental undertaking. I would probably be more inclined to believe the story had the bible started out, “In the beginning, God created a Huge ass boat, knowing he would need it later. Then he created the Heavens and the Earth, which was easy stuff after that boat. God realized that the boat would not actually fit on the face of the earth so, rather than scrapping the boat (he spent some time on that thing, it was all pimped out), he killed all of his pet dinosaurs and hid them way under the ground. God then used his power to shrink the boat to such a point as it would fit on the earth (sail the earth? not so much, it was still big enough that, stern to bow, it was roughly the diameter of the earth). God then killed off many other large species of animals, in the hopes that he would be able to get his boat small enough to actually be able to move around the earth using its waterways. Once God had destroyed hundreds of thousands of species, he got angry and said God Damn It. God ordered Noah to load onto the boat whatever would fit, which was roughly 300 species. Now God had to atone for the sin of using his own name in vain. It took him millennia to figure it out, but he eventually decided on the “Father, Son, Holy Ghost” scam: Pretend to have a son, make the people crucify him (as his son), boom, instant atonement for his sin.”

Makes more sense than the bible.

This has gone a bit off topic though (can you say understatement?). I am gonna call it a post.

More on music

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In a previous post, I was talking about a really cool music service. I ended that post with some offhand remark making it sound like it was about as accurate as astrology (not be confused with astronomy. One is scientific and has data to support their findings, the other is astrology).

I Just googled to find Hitler’s date of birth, which happens to be April 20, 1889. I was thinking that I would make some comments about how many other children were born that day, none of which went on to be the monster that Hitler was, thus proving that astrology is absolute and total crap (which it is). But that search, the one for Hitler April 20 brings up some of the weirdest conspiracy theories I have ever seen (sure other events happened on the same day in history, but come on).

To follow that weird, astrological, imminent doom type metric, I was actually married on the 14th of April in 2001. The 14th of April, it turns out, was a pretty bad day for history. I console myself by noting that while Lincoln was shot on the 14th, he didn’t actually die until the 15th. While the Titanic struck the iceberg on the 14th, it didn’t actually sink until the 15th. Also, the 15th of April is the day that the government demands that you pay your taxes, thus proving that it is the 15th of April that is cursed. The 14th will likely just be a really bad day.

That digression aside, I was talking about music. I actually got a comment regarding it after I made the post, and a phone call from a friend. The friend recommended Yahoo’s version of it (sorry, I can’t bring myself to use any of the services offered by the only survivor of the dot com bust), the commenter recommended Last.fm I actually went to that site, but didn’t download the software (.fm is something I have never heard of), but they do have a search engine that led me to a few more bands that I have never heard of, who, it turns out, kick ungodly ass.

That Pandora site is still the best one that I have found, previous caveats being noted.

Pandora

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My daily surfing routine brought me to this link. At Wil Wheaton’s site, of all places. Now this is a concept! Just type in the name of a band or a song and boom, they start throwing all sorts of shit at you! All similar to the style (I suppose the definition of style is pretty loose) of music that you entered. If you hate a song you can just move on and they will try to find something more suited to your taste.

The type of music that I like doesn’t lend itself to any sort of radio airplay, and I don’t have the time or patience to seek it out on the internet. This little thing makes it a lot easier. Now I sincerely doubt that I will actually subscribe to it, but being that the first ten hours are free I will sure try to find some cool new (no matter how old they are they are still new to me) bands while I am at it.

The service is freakily accurate. I have now listened to ten songs, only once did I actually have to do a WTF and nix the song. Not to mention that about half of the songs that they played are actually somewhere in my CD collection. It puts me in mind of when I started my very first website, which, oddly enough, is still online (if you really want to see it I will email you the link). I put one of those radio stations onto it, this was back when they actually let you select bands that you wanted to be played on the station. The dead link to that web radio station still exists on that website. It turns out that someone (probably Lars Ulrich) got all in a huff about being able to select only certain bands to play, thought it was infringing on copyrights and the such, thus they had to give up on letting you select bands. Those stations still exist, but now you can only select from a genre. What a pile of something.

This Pandora thing has already given me the names of a few bands that I would like to sample additional music from. The first was The Haunted. Man, they do some really heavy stuff. There have been a couple that I have yet to find websites for, but it is hard to find this kind of heavy shit on the radio. I just heard, in succession, a song from Death, followed by one from Metallica (Dyer’s Eve, you know, one of the good ones), now it is playing Slayer.

The one major drawback, as I just found out, is that you can only skip a certain number of songs per hour. That means that if it picks something totally inappropriate and you tell them to skip it, you can only do that a certain number of times. I didn’t count how many I actually skipped, there is still only one that I skipped because I just didn’t like it. I was mostly just skipping past the ones that I already have in my CD collection, trying to find stuff that I hadn’t ever heard. If I would have just listened to all of the songs, which I like anyway, mind you, I would probably not have hit that wall.

Wow! Superjoint Ritual sure knows how to kick some ass! I suppose what I call music wouldn’t work for everyone. But they do have that handy feature that lets you search for an artist or title to start with, then, sort of like playing a game of MasterMind, keep trying new songs until they really find the niche that you are into. It’s the best thing since porn sliced bread.

The best part about the whole deal, again, as I just found out, is that the more artists/songs you add to the “station”, the more likely they are to find more stuff that matches your tastes pretty closely. While you may not like the stuff I do, Dew-Scented being the most recent example (that kicks some ass!), I bet they have some more down to earth genres as well. Hell, when I entered Goo Goo Dolls as a new station, I got a bunch of stuff that sounded pretty much like them.

Since I am not a spokesman for the company, and therefore all I get out of this endorsement is the satisfaction of 10 free hours of their weirdly accurate music selections, I am gonna call it a post.

Or not. Boy, that last selection just sounded like a guy taking a really big dump, through a straw or something (meaning he had to poo through an opening the size of a straw, and tried to ‘sing’ while he was doing it), to hear his voice. Of course, once I said I hated that one it was followed immediately by some Pantera. They know me. Much in the same way that astrologists can say that, since you are a Libra, the sun will rise in the morning and go down at night, now that is some freakily accurate insight.

Seriously though. They played only two songs that I simply didn’t like in a stretch of two hours. There is no way you would get such results from a radio station. Also, they never repeated a song, try getting that from your local radio station. It is a great idea, though horribly over-priced, and I would really like to see it catch on. Perhaps get some legs

The 40-Year-Old Virgin

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My wife had a pair of free movie tickets that had to be used by end of September so we went to see a movie today. While we had decided that we were going to watch The Corpse Bride Which is getting far better reviews than I would have expected, it turns out that the free tickets wouldn’t get us into that movie since it is still considered a “limited engagement”. My second choice was the latest Jodie Foster movie, something to do with an airplane, that would have been nixed anyway since “limited engagement” seems to mean that the tickets will only work on films that are not likely to sell out. I think opening weekend of anything would definitely be out of the question for the purposes of the free movie passes.

As we stood at the window wondering what to do next, since I think we both realized that my second choice wouldn’t be available to us either, my wife asked the woman what else was playing around noon. There were lots of films playing, most of which either my wife or myself just absolutely didn’t want to see. I offered to pony up the cash to watch the movie we had gone to see in the first place, but the wife insisted that we use the free tickets. So we saw The 40 Year Old Virgin today. Oddly, I had tried to get her to go see this movie last weekend but she didn’t want to (she also didn’t want to ge see Cry Wolf, which I would like to see), but when free tickets are at stake sacrifices must be made. We had made it to the theatre a half hour before the movie we planned to see started, but since we had to change the movie we were a good forty-five minutes early. That is a boring forty-five minutes.

I hesitate to call anything I write a review so I will simply say that this is what I thought of the film. First off I was pretty grumpy after having to choose a different movie and wait damn near an hour for it to start. I got over that very quickly.

This movie is just so damn funny that you really can’t be in a bad mood while you watch it. The very first scene had everyone in the room laughing out loud, myself included, and it just kept going from there. There was a lot of potty humor, which blended nicely with the more romantic side of it to keep it all flowing. There was a point about an hour into it that it just crapped out for twenty minutes or so (the humor left completely and made it seem like a Harlequin novel), other than that it would be pretty hard to complain about anything in it. There are some of the best one-liners I have ever heard, some of the best situational comedy I have ever seen, the characters all had very distinct personalities and, most importantly, the characters seemed very real, albeit a bit stereotyped. I know people who act like the majority of the primary actors, as most probably do, and that just made it even better.

I went into the theatre expecting to see a movie that was all about the sexual mis-encounters of a guy who happened to be 40. I assumed that it would be a bunch of low brow humor that would not be appreciated by the fairer sex, yet, since most of the women in the audience were laughing just as often as the men (often at different jokes) it went well beyond that assumption. The fact that it had an actual story line, not to mention an actual love story, was simply beyond (my) belief. If I had a rating system I would give this one 5 beer cans (the very best) but subtract half of a beer can for the dull part in the middle. Still 4.5 out of 5 beer cans is pretty good.

Now for a few spoilers

The opening scene shows the main character with an erection when he wakes up in the morning. As he reaches the toilet he has to bend further and further until you finally hear the sound of the pee hitting the water in the bowl. That is something that every man can totally identify with, though it likely isn’t still happening by the time you are in your forties. When I was a teen I used to take my bath towel into the bedroom with me when I went to bed, not so that I could masturbate though. I just wanted to have something to hold in front of me on my trek to the bathroom the next morning, as my penis seemed to think it was playing a game called “point at the chin”.

The condom scene is simply hilarious. The condom is not really a complicated device. In fact I learned how to use one all on my own, because I didn’t want to have to start the learning process while in the presence of a naked, horny woman. I don’t know how he ended up with a condom on his toe, nor why he covered his entire arm with one, or what the hell he was trying to do when he blew one up before trying to put it on, but that was funny stuff. When the teen boy walks into the room, sees the pile of condom packages, sees the guy pull a condom off of his toe, then says, “Teach me.” I nearly split my gut with laughter.

The movie is just damn funny. If you haven’t seen it, and you like comedy, you should rush out to see it. Keep in mind there is a lot of nudity (well not really a lot, but it does show a couple of scenes from actual porn movies, but they are fast forwarded through and you only see boobs).

Good, good stuff.

Jumping the shark

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I guess I am going to have to show my age a bit for the purposes of this post. It is all about Jumping the Shark. I have always assumed that the phrase came from that episode of Happy Days where Fonzie, quite literally, jumps a shark (I think there was more than one shark actually). The miracle of the internet, as well as the endless information at Wikipedia, seem to prove me right.

However, there is a site called Jumptheshark.com (I linked directly to the Happy Days page since they use a horrible frame format that makes it tough to find anything) that has hundreds of people arguing that the show jumped the shark long before the actual shark jumping episode. That got me to thinking…

Do you remember the theme song? I do, but I remember two different theme songs. A quick google search found me a page that has they lyrics to the theme song, both of them actually, you can see that here.

How in the hell can I remember the theme song that plays during the first season when I was actually born that same year? I have never watched it on Nick at Night or any other old re-run station. Did they actually repeat the episodes that often back in the 1970’s that I am able to remember both of the theme songs? I don’t know, it just seems odd to me that I can remember a theme song that would have only been on the show for less than a year when I would have been less than a year old. In fact it took me a lot of thinking, and the eventual google search, to remember the other theme song, which then came back immediately, come on sing along, “Sunday, Monday. Happy Days. Tuesday, Wednesday. Happy Days. Thursday, Friday. Happy Days. The weekend comes…” But why do I also remember the “one, two, three o clock, four o clock rock…”, and remember it more so than the other theme (the other theme being the one that was on the show for the majority of the show’s run)?

I am thinking that, no matter how small my little brain was at the time, I thought the show started to slide down the slippery slope to crap long before the Fonz literally jumped over the shark. If I remembered any of the episodes with the theme song that played for about nine years I would probably think differently, but come on. I remember the theme song that was scrapped about the same time as my birth, I remember the episodes that were recorded the year of my birth. I must concur that Happy Days jumped the shark long before the shark jumping episode.

I probably didn’t see any episode prior to 1981 or so that was not a re-run, but, in my mind, the ones that have that classic song as the theme are far superior to any of the later ones. That all being said, Happy Days literally jumped the shark, for that we should applaud them. It must have taken a lot of balls to throw away such a lucrative franchise over, arguably, the most implausible plot line in the history of television. If Happy Days hadn’t jumped the shark, we might refer to this action as kicking Chrissy.

Guild Wars again

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I haven’t actually played Guild Wars very much since I purchased it, there is no particular reason for that. There were no pressing time/schedule issues that would have kept me from playing it, no ultimatims from the significant other, I just hadn’t been playing it much. I am pretty sure that the reason I hadn’t been playing it much is that it is one of those games where it takes me a good half an hour to remember my skill keys (for each character) and even longer to figure out what the hell I was supposed to be doing the last time I quit playing. Guild Wars solved that all, damn it.

Guild Wars now has a slick new mission interface that tells you every quest that you have started in any town, listed immediately under a big old town heading. Hard to say you don’t know where you need to go when it tells you which town to go to, then goes further to tell you exactly what you have to do once you leave that town. Still, it doesn’t tell you exactly how to use your spells/skills, but they are easy enough to figure out during the first few minutes of play each time. Not that you really have to learn how to use them, more that you assign different skills to different hot keys based on your character; It would suck to cast a fireball spell when you meant to cast a heal party spell, if you know what I mean.

My wife has gotten into the game far more than I have. Not to the point that she is getting into some sort of weird cosplay fetish (though that might be cool, come to think of it), but she does love to beat those baddies up. We actually tried to start brand new characters ( a couple of months ago) that would play exclusively together, but that idea all went to shit when neither of us was happy with starting at the bottom when we both had characters that could kill everything on the screen without a thought (her characters more so than mine). Today, however, we finally managed to get the game going.

The game starts out with little quests; Wander just south of the city to find my lost ‘x’ and bring it back for reward ‘y’. There are hundreds of those little quests as you wander through the towns. You don’t have to do them but you will end up with better weapons and armor if you do. The game also has ‘missions’. The mission is something that is supposed to move you from one zone to the next. You do the missions to open up new quests basically. You really have to do the missions though, cause at some point you will no longer get any experience doing the quests in the previous area. The missions are a good thing.

The missions can also be done solo at lower levels, though they will require a damn good group of people at higher levels. You could do the missions solo at higher levels, but that would require the A.I. of your helpers to be unbelievably high, I.Q. of 32 or so. That might sound low but if you were the programmer, and you tried to think of every stupid move someone might try to make, and then someone tried to make all of those moves -I’ll call him Jimmy-, you then have to try to account for the best and worst possible move in any situation. The A.I. can only be so smart. The A.I. in Guild Wars is pretty damn good, but sometimes you end up with your mercenary stuck in a corner beating up the air that he breathes.

I ended up playing a bit of Guild Wars with my wife tonight. My wife’s character was 12 levels higher than me, and I had already done the stupid mission in the first place, but it was pretty damn fun to have her playing there with me. Guild Wars is bringing husband and wife together.

Go Guild Wars!

A great year for music

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I was sitting at home yesterday listening to 98 kupd when a couple of songs came on back to back that made me wonder what year it was. The songs were Ozzy’s Road to Nowhere, followed immediately by Metallica’s Enter Sandman. It was like it was the early 90’s all over again.

This got me to thinking about how many songs from that year are still in regular rotation on regular hard rock stations. I am defining that year as being from August of 1991 to July of 1992, a period that saw the release of Metallica’s Black Album, Ozzy’s No More Tears album, and Megadeth’s Countdown to Extinction album. The fact that I just called all of those albums probably dates me a bit, eh? If Pantera had waited a year to release Cowboys from Hell, I think I could really declare this as the best 12 months for music in all of history, of course I like this type of music so YMMV.

Here it is thirteen years after the release of the most recent album mentioned above and each of them still has at least a couple of songs in rotation on the radio. There is no other year that I can think of that has had similar results. It really boggles my mind. It should also be noted that Nirvana’s Nevermind was also released during this same period. So that makes four albums from that year that are still in rotation on rock stations. And this is not a classic rock station, these songs are sandwiched in between all the latest hard rock, though I am hard pressed to remember the names of any of the songs or bands, seems the new stuff doesn’t stick with me like the old stuff does.

Sadly, even if it weren’t for Nirvana’s explosion onto the scene in the early 90’s it seems that the glory days of the other bands was coming to a close anyway. While the albums that Metallica, Megadeth and Ozzy released that year were all excellent, they were also a great departure from the roots of the respective artists. While it was quite obvious with Metallica and Megadeth, Ozzy’s departure was more in terms of his lyrics. No longer so angry and angst filled, now proclaiming “I don’t want to change the world”. Though the song Mr. Tinkertrain was still pretty damn creepy, if you really listen to it.

For fans of Metallica and Megadeth the years after this were pretty devastating. Punctuated by lackluster release after horrible, lackluster release. Metallica’s music began to suck so bad that they assumed the reason for the decline in their sales must be due to piracy, but the fact is that the stuff that was being traded over Napster wasn’t any of their new stuff. Kids just didn’t want to pay 18 bucks for a cd that was released fifteen years ago and had only eight songs on it. I haven’t bought a Metallica cd (they don’t make albums anymore I guess) since they released Load, which is one of the most aptly titled releases ever, so long as you ad of Shit to the title.

Megadeth hasn’t fared much better. While I am pretty sure that I bought all of the cd’s that they released, I doubt that any of them had any staying time in the cd rotation. In fact I really can’t remember the names of any songs after Countdown as I think about it. Well there was Train of Consequences and A Tout Le Monde which were both on the Youthanasia cd, I think. But there were several other cds released. One was called Risk which I know I own, one called The World Needs a Hero which again, I know I own, Cryptic Writings own it too, Rude Awakening yup, collecting dust along with the rest of them. With the exception of Cryptic Writings which was a single on that cd, and Insomnia from the Rude Awakening cd, I don’t remember a single song from any of those four releases. Pretty sad really.

Megadeth did release a cd in 2004 that didn’t suck, it was called The System Has Failed which, of course, I own. It took the music back to the meat and potatoes of what Megadeth once was. The song Back in the Day is a riff tastic tear down memory lane as much for the listener as the band. Many of the other songs also have really pounding guitar and drums but, as I read the lyrics, it seems that Mustaine must have found God, which is a bit disappointing. I always loved the line from Reckoning Day that said, “I like the way that you stand in line And beg salvation from the empty skies.” Not much belief at that point, eh?

I don’t think I will ever hear another cd that hits me the way that Metallica’s …And Justice for All, or Megadeth’s Rust in Peace did, that era is long gone. While my all time favorite Megadeth song remains Holy Wars…The Punishment Due, and my all time Favorite Metallica song would have to be One which were released on the cds listed in this paragraph, it took streamlining their song writing to gain mainstream access and superior staying power.

Also, I don’t feel quite so old when the songs that kids are listening to today happen to be the same songs that I was listening to as a kid. Though I might not have the hair or physique to bang my head like I did back in the day, it is still a pretty comforting thought.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

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I am absolutely incapable of doing an objective review of anything. It is with that spirit that I will now delve into the many mysteries of the HBP. There will be spoilers galore so please don’t read on if you have yet to read the book.

The book seems to have left the entire world with two burning questions, the first being is Dumbledore really dead, the second concerns Snape’s true intentions. I am really up in the air about both.

Rowling has certainly made the books more complex as the series has evolved, but I find it hard to believe that she has added so much complexity to the characters and plot since the first book. While it is true that being wealthy enough to do nothing but work on the novels for the last few years should have given her enough free time to come up with elaborate plots, she hasn’t really done that. The characters have remained pretty static the entire series with only Harry himself appearing to grow in any noticeable way. The only other character growth seems to be in height, as Hermione is still a little bookworm, Ron is still an awkward pansy, Draco is still just an evil little pain in the ass, Ginny, while now having enough charm (read breasts) to attract the boys is still in every way just Ron’s little sister. I suppose Snape could be an exception, but his motives have been in doubt since the first book, he has not changed one bit, though the situations he is placed in may have.

I will address the Dumbledore issue first. The book leaves the possibility that he is still alive pretty wide open. Even before he is killed he is having a conversation with Draco in which he states “Voldemort can not kill you if you are already dead”, or something quite similar. This leaves the possibility that Dumbledore has the ability to fake death an open ended one. Is it possible that Dumbledore knew that he was going to be facing Draco atop that tower and hoped that Draco would not have the nerve to kill him? This would have forced Snape to complete the job as part of his unbreakable vow. But in an earlier book it was explained that the unforgivable spells could only be successful if the one who cast it had enough hatred and desire in them to actually kill. Perhaps Snape didn’t have that desire within him since he is really on Dumbledore’s side, so the spell appears to work yet it is all a clever ruse to keep Draco from performing the act with actual intent? Draco, however much an asshole he is, has still not actually killed anyone and if there is anything that Dumbledore has ever been guilty of it is believing in the good nature of the worst people (Snape for example).

Isn’t it an extremely odd coincidence that Dumbledore decides to take Harry to the cave at the precise time that the Death Eaters are going to come flooding into the castle? Did he just discover the Horcrux at exactly that moment in time? Even if he did what would be the importance of having Harry take his invisibility cloak? He takes it off nearly the second they leave Hogwarts, but he is instructed to put it on before returning, why? Was Dumbledore trying to make doubly sure that his death was witnessed by someone that everyone had to believe (what with no one believing Harry the entire last book even though he was telling the complete truth)?

Dumbledore seemed to know exactly how to get to the the Horcrux that they were looking for. Beyond that he knew that he needed blood to open the door, he knew where to find the chain for the boat, and he attempted to stick his hand into the murky green water without a thought. He then decided that his best option was to drink the strange liquid, knowing nothing about it, but told Harry to force feed him all of the liquid. It seems Dumbledore might now a tad more about that cave than he is letting on. Near the end of the book, when the locket appears next to Dumbledore’s body, the note is signed by R.A.B.. So someone had been to the cave before and taken the initial Horcrux, but Dumbledore said that it would take two people to do it. I am guessing that it was Regulus Black that left the note, but who was his partner, possibly Dumbledore? That would have given him all the necessary information on how to get there and retrieve the locket. But why retrieve the locket if Dumbledore knew it was a fake? To get the note which had been left behind all those years ago, in the hopes that Harry would be able to figure out who R.A.B. was.

The book also leaves open the possibility that, since the Horcrux had already been removed, whoever took it could have replaced the liquid in the bowl with any potion of their choosing. Not to mention that if it really was Regulus Black and Dumbledore that were there to take it in the first place, and Black drank the potion, but died a few days later, it could be that Black is not dead at all, but that he too was able to use the effects of the potion to appear so dead as the wizarding community simply forgot about him (that theory really doesn’t hold any water though, as Kreacher would have had to be loyal to Regulus if he were still alive, yet he was forced to be loyal to Harry). At any rate, Dumbledore could have been in that cave previously, broken all the enchantments and set up some of his own. Dumbledore mentioned that he burnt his hand in search of one of the Horcrux items, perhaps it was this one and it really didn’t require any help to obtain, but the potion he left in its place must be administered, since you won’t drink it of your own free will after the first couple of cups. Then again Dumbledore may have been acting as he seemed to lose so much of his physical capacity, perhaps he thought that Harry would not believe him dead unless Harry saw his slow decay before being finished off by an inferior wizard.

I am not making predictions here, I am just saying that it is plausible that Dumbledore is still alive.

Snape is a completely different issue.

Who is Snape loyal to? Which side is he playing? No one will know until Rowling releases the next book of course, but I have my suspicions. Snape is far too evil to be evil. Wouldn’t make for much of a septology if he was simply evil for the sake of being evil. Harry obviously hates Snape and that hate is clouding Harry’s mind. Dumbledore has said, again and again, that he trusts Snape implicitly. Maybe Snape really is on the wrong side but I doubt that. Snape has had many opportunities to betray the order and hasn’t really acted on any of them. Sure he is harsh on Harry, even knocked him down a couple of times while Harry was in pursuit, but I don’t see him as being the villain that Harry thinks he is.

While Harry is pursuing Snape on the grounds of Hogwarts, well when he catches up to him really, Snape does not allow Harry to actually cast an unforgivable spell. Snape actually says “No unforgivable spells for you, Potter.”, or something very similar. Is Snape trying to protect himself? It seems unlikely given the fact that Harry can’t seem to cast a stone in the water at his feet, let alone a decent spell. Why does Snape then go on to tell Harry that he needs to be better at Legilimency and non verbal spell casting? Perhaps Snape knows that without Dumbledore in the public eye (apparently dead) he, Snape, will not see Harry again until the very conclusion of the conflict. Snape just wants Harry to know what he needs to work on.

Being realistic, Harry is a loser. He has never done a damn thing other than survive an attack that his mother seemed to take the major force of. He has never succeeded without the help of several friends. His sudden potion mastery came from Snape himself, who likely knew that there were attempts being made on Dumbledore and made sure that Harry got the potions book with the helpful hints. All Harry can do is use his invisibility cloak (doesn’t it seem odd that he is the only one in the entire wizarding world that has one of those?) and get caught doing it a good half of the time. He is the chosen one why? Oh yeah. Some witch with thick glasses foretold it, though she wasn’t able to foretell being thrown out of a room seconds before it happened, she was able to foretell the fate of all wizardkind many, many years in advance. I’m thinking that Trewlany and Dumbledore may just have picked the wrong kid: A three year old with a crayon would be a more formidable opponent.

If Harry Potter, the most inept wizard since Rincewind, is actually the ‘Chosen One’ then it is a pretty dark day in the wizarding community. If I were the wizarding gods (if they have them, of course) I would have chosen someone more like Hermione Granger. At least Hermione can perform the simplest of spells, even some of the more advanced ones. Harry, on the other hand, was able to call a Patronus at the age of 13, yet somehow completely forgot how by the age of 16. Harry doesn’t even know how to repair his own bloody nose. How sad is that? If Harry actually defeats Voldemort in the final book it is gonna take a lot of doing, considering the fact that he seems to know about five spells, only one of which is used for offense, none of which have the ability to kill. Unless the grand finale involves Harry standing around singing old Beatles songs, since, All You Need is Love. As luck would have it, that is all that Harry has. No skill, no ability, but he can love…Where was that three year old with a crayon at again?

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

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This started as a comment on a BlackChampagne post. If some thoughts seem more incomplete than usual that is probably why.

I saw the film this morning, luckily for me the children in attendance kept mostly quiet throughout.

I have a completely different take on the movie though, as I watched and loved the original version of it. I have seen it several times in the last five years or so and still really enjoy it. It has a great message and Wilder as Wonka is so eccentric that he might actually be insane.

After having read reviews for the new version I had pretty low expectations. Much to my surprise I actually enjoyed it. While I have never read the book, the fact that both Wilder and Depp played Wonka in the same manner would imply that that is how he is supposed to act. How can you fault an actor for portraying a character as it was written?

The addition of the childhood scenes made this movie better than the original. In the original Wonka was just crazy and there was never a mention of how he got that way. He was a bit darker in the original film also, a quote:

“There’s no earthly way of knowing / Which direction we are going / There’s no knowing where we’re rowing / Or which way the river’s flowing / Is it raining? / Is it snowing? / Is a hurricane a-blowing? / Not a speck of light is showing / So the danger must be growing / Are the fires of hell a-glowing? / Is the grisly reaper mowing? / Yes, the danger must be growing / ‘Cause the rowers keep on rowing / And they’re certainly not showing / Any signs that they are slowing.”

That is damn creepy to a five year old, especially when you hear the tone and building frenzy with which it is delivered. The addition of the childhood flashbacks, and the subtraction of the dark undertones, made a lot more sense. If you could say that anything about it actually made sense, that is.

The new version also removed one of the most ridiculous parts of the old one, which I am gonna spoil right here. In the original movie each child is approached by Slugworth and offered a bunch of money to get him an everlasting gobstopper. Charlie, after being viciously demoralized by Wonka and denied the prize he was due, gave the candy back to Wonka. No one, not even a saint, would have done that. Though it was a necessary plot element in the first film, thus making it all the more ridiculous.

The only thing that I really didn’t like about the new movie was the way it ended. It made it seem as though the grand prize was to be a slave to Wonka forever; he would never be able to see his family again after all. I suppose that was necessary to the plot, but at that point anyone over the age of about six had to have already figured out the last ten minutes. I guess it was included to tie it up as a nice little family film. Much in the way that Disney destroys films by making the endings absurdly happy.

The Cap Alert Guy gave this one such a good review that I am pretty surprised I like it at all. Though I do wonder where he saw a nude statue, why a mannequin in underwear is a sex offense, who he saw drinking, and what was the one use of the 3 or 4 letter word. There was one instance where someone was about to use a profanity but the audio was removed so that all you could see was a child with his ears being blocked. Of course my ears/eyes might not be quite so in tune with the Devil’s handiwork to pick up a passing word. Unless, of course, the use of the word nuts was considered obscene by context, who knows.

Possibly the only thing that was actually worse about the second film was the Oompa Loompa songs. The ones in the first film were cheese-tastic in a way that only a 1970’s film can be, but the ones in the newer version seemed like drug induced adaptations of the originals. Though I really doubt a child today would sit through the old songs, which were basically public service announcements, I also doubt that we will be seeing a spike in the piracy of Oompa Loompa songs onto iPods in the near future. The old songs were cute and cheesy, the new ones are just bizarre.

I am still pretty fond of the first movie, but the second movie tied things together a bit more cohesively. I am now curious to read the book to see which version is closer to it. Probably not so curious as to actually read it though.

Now, just for fun, I offer up my initial comment about the movie, before I saw it obviously

The trailers for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory show exactly what the reviews you are quoting say. I know that not everyone in the world, especially children today, have seen the original movie, maybe it will seem new and fresh to them?

My wife is still creeped out by the performance of Gene Wilder in the original movie. The majority of the creepiness is that Wilder doesn’t try to do an over-the-top caricature for the role, he is just a guy, any guy, who happens to be extremely eccentric. Wilder does have the crazy hair and pale eyes at his disposal which probably makes it easier but, he still looks human.

I can judge only by the trailers as I have yet to see the film but, my guess is that Depp was trying to combine Edward Scissorhands with the smooth clay Gumby figure when he was acting it out. Of course it should also be noted that he might have stolen the teeth directly from Mr. Ed.

I hope that I enjoy it when I do see it, but if the trailers are representative of the rest of the film I really doubt that will be a possibility.

I am glad that I was so wrong.