Christmas Gifts Received 2010

Onto the receiving portion of Christmas. Although I wasn't exactly like this growing up (at all), I've honestly gotten more into giving presents than receiving them. Still, this year's set of received presents was kinda a letdown, not because I didn't get good stuff, but because, unlike most years, I couldn't use any of it on Christmas day itself (or even the week after), largely because most of my presents either required my TV (which was broken...and still is) or because the only present I could have used w/o electronics, a special 7-sided V-Cube I had asked for, was misordered (i.e. I already had the version they gave me and had no use for it). Whatever: I'm an adult, I dealt with it (though I probably sound like a spoiled brat right now). It should be noted though that the highlight of my Christmas was giving Suzi my DIY present, easily overwriting any of the disappointment from the unusable presents.

Anyway, as usual, I mainly asked for a combination of Xbox 360 games, CDs, and the odd miscellaneous item. I'll list games and CDs below, but on top of that, I got the single volume Bone graphic novel compilation, a set of improv tickets for Suzi and me to join Jaclyn and Ryan at the nearby Village Theatre, the prerequisite clothes, a couple random gift certificates, a Family Guy version of Monopoly (which I still haven't managed to play), and the aforementioned misordered V-Cube. Also, many of my clients generously gave me various forms of gifts, ranging from straight-up bonuses (can't really complain there!) to gift certificates, candy, and even a shirt.

[Note: Somehow I forgot to list Dave's presents! He gave me Patton Oswalt's documentary of comedians on the road called The Comedians of Comedy, and he gave me the first trade paperback installment of Grant Morrison's revered New X-Men storyline, both of which I watched/read very soon after Christmas. They're great presents, and I'll be posting about them soon!]

As far as Suzi's gifts were concerned, she gave me a Tetris-piece-shaped ice cube tray (since we both got back into Tetris recently), a salt and pepper shaker set resembling Rubik's Cubes, and a colorful brainteaser game called 36 Cube (which I still haven't been able to completely solve). But then she went and splurged on a designer watch from NYC-based watchmaker NOOKA that probably cost WAY too much (looks cool though!). I've only been dressed up enough to wear it once thus far (on our fancy-ish night out in San Fran), but hopefully I'll be able to show it off again soon. Definitely some very thoughtful gifts. =)

Anyway, onto the games and CDs

Games:
Alan Wake [from M&D]
Fallout 3 (Game of the Year Ed.) [from Jaclyn]
Rock Band 3 (w/keyboard controller) [also from M&D]

CDs:
Chilly Gonzales - Ivory Tower
Janelle Monáe - The ArchAndroid
Jason Mraz - We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things.
Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
My Chemical Romance - Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys

Christmas Gifts Given 2010

Another Christmas has come and gone, and sure enough, each year it does so with less magic and more stress, but that's not to say it wasn't a good one. In fact, as far as celebrating with a girlfriend is concerned, this is easily the most special Christmas I've ever had. The gifts given this year were pretty typical of those in recent years, with one big exception: a DIY project I spent a lot of time working on for Suzi's main gift, but seeing as this deserves its own post, I'm going to save it for later.

As for the other presents, I gave Dave the Daft Punk Tron: Legacy Soundtrack and a Wii game (Muramassa: The Demon Blade), I gave my long-term/non-store students each a $15 gift certificate to Borders (or for one student, a Rock Band 2 TAB book for our lessons), and I gave my hairdresser Erin and my vocal coach Dionne Christmas bonuses. My parents got a pair of tickets to see Burn The Floor (a sort of variant on ballroom dancing similar to Dancing with the Stars, which they love), Jaclyn got a couple Glee CDs, Ryan (her husband) got a book about philosophy as seen through the eyes of a mechanic with a PhD in philosophy, and my cousin's kids (for our extended family gift drawing) got a gift certificate to Hanna Andersson.

As for Suzi's non-DIY gifts, I bought her a Domokun-themed board game called Roll Domo Roll, a quasi-health-related book, a graphic novel by the creator of TV's Bored To Death called The Alcoholic (totally up her alley!), and I gave her one of my recent GPS units since she had expressed interest in it, offering to buy new parts if she needed them.

4th Annual Walton HS Orchestra Holiday Party

If you've been reading this blog long enough, you might remember that last year's orchestra reunion party was a bit of a letdown, featuring our smallest group of people yet and a sense that continuing the tradition might not be all that worthwhile, especially if my old roommate and orchestra social-magnet Evan couldn't be there (since he now lives in Chicago). Well, starting with my classmate Heather's plea at my official high school reunion back in July that I do keep the tradition alive, it started to dawn on me that perhaps there was some hope for this year's party after all. Things looked up for two reasons: first, I now had a neat place of my own in which to host the party instead of taking it to the run-down suburban watering hole we always default to for lack of better options, and secondly, Evan had assured me he would be in town this year, meaning a lot more people might be inspired to come.

To ensure that the party wouldn't end up being a total flop, I invited both the orchestra friends we've always invited AND most of the people I typically invite to my own condo parties here at The Stacks, hoping this would bolster the appearance of a successful party to encourage people to come back. Unfortunately, the combination of last-minute Christmas preparations and my malaise from my sinus infection left me with little time or energy to properly fix up my place for the event, so we ended up moving the party to a neat microbrewery (Five Seasons) situated out of the familiar suburbs but not really in the city proper, making it easier for people to get to while still being more interesting than the local bar.

As it turns out, the reunion went pretty well...there were just under 20 people there, roughly half of which were more-or-less my personal friends (good thing I invited them!), and a number of the orchestra people that did make it hadn't been in at least a couple years. Not all that surprisingly, the very Heather that encouraged me to have the party again in the first place didn't make it (this wasn't the first time this had happened either...). Anyway, we ended up closing down the restaurant/bar (at midnight), so I'd say that was a decent sign of a successful outing. Still, if I do end up doing the party again next year, I think I'll try to go back to my original plan of doing it at my condo, even if only just to mix it up.

Sinus Infection

As I've already written, in the first week of December I came down with a pretty nasty cold that stuck with me for ten days or so...that is, until I stayed up really late one night thinking I was more-or-less better. From what I can tell, that lack of sleep was exactly what my body needed to develop a serious sinus infection, the first I've ever been aware of having contracted, and as such, I didn't go in to have it diagnosed until at least a few days of not having it get much better. While the Z-Pack the doctor at the Walgreens clinic I went to prescribed DID help, evidently sinus infections tend to stick with you for a long, long time, and mine was no different. In fact, you could say that I'm STILL kinda draining, although most of my symptoms are gone. Fortunately, it didn't ruin Christmas or my San Francisco trip with Suzi, and I've been okay to sing for the past few weeks (initially reaching a turning point on Christmas day).

All told, the big cold this Winter was pretty shitty, leaving me messed up for the better part of at least a month (if not five or six weeks), so I've recently been making a number of significant lifestyle changes to help prevent this happening in the future (or at least not for quite so long). I'll save the changes for a later post, but just suffice it to say I feel very happy with the direction I'm taking. =)

Plants vs. Zombies

After I caught up with all of my feature-length Xbox games needing to be squeeze in before year's end, I was lured into a short-time offer to buy two XBLA games for $5 off, planning to save them for 2011. I knew ahead of time that I would be buying the acclaimed Limbo soon enough, so that was my first pick, but to make the decision for my second, I decided to play through a few demos. Well, that didn't get far, as the second game I tried out was Plants vs. Zombies...I ended up fing the game so infectiously-addictive that I couldn't put it down, so I bought it and played for four hours straight that night.

Plants vs. Zombies is a goofy take on the tower defense genre where zombies are trying to get into your house and you protect yourself by strategically-planting a bunch of aggressive plants to slow down/kill the oncoming hordes. Naturally, there are a wide variety of zombies, each with different abilities, so to balance it out, you have an equally-varied selection of plants to choose from, all with different costs and wait times before you can plant another. While the strategy element of the game is certainly what keeps you going, what made it fun was the level of humor found in nearly every corner of the game, including the crazy shop keeper/narrator and a wide variety of mini-games (including bowling for zombies with giant walnuts).

Anyway, it didn't take long before I had played through the game's primary campaign, but the story doesn't end there: in addition to the list of mini-games and a quirky zen garden you can tend to to earn extra cash, you are able to go back through the main campaign again with added challenges with tougher zombies. As my TV broke right as I got into this second round, I'm not sure how many times you need to go through the campaign before it stops changing, but twice through is already more than I was expecting. I'm itching to keep playing the game again once I finally get my TV back.

Overall, Plants vs. Zombies is one of the best games I have ever played (not just on XBLA), and I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone.

The Motorcycle Diaries

To be honest, I didn't really know too much about Che Guevara prior to watching this film about his pre-revolutionary motorcycle journey through South America, and while I'm not certain this film paints the popular anti-establishment icon in an accurate light (often making him out to be a saint), I do feel more acquainted with his story.

As the second of my list of DVDs Pam gave me, and the third subtitled movie in a string of them I watched at the end of 2010, The Motorcycle Diaries was easily the best of the list, also being one of the best movies I saw the whole year. Its strength lies mainly in the acting prowess and chemistry between its two leads (Gael García Bernal as Che and Rodrigo de la Serna as his travel companion Alberto Granado), to the point that by the end of the film, you almost feel like you're saying goodbye to two friends of your own.

Honestly though, I don't have much else to say about this film, as I feel all other commentary would mainly concern comparisons with Che Guevara's actual life itself, of which I know very little. I do know the screenplay was based on both Guevara's own travelogue from the trip and the written account by Granado himself, but too many people have detracting things to say about the man for me to believe he was quite as good as the film makes him out to be. Still, none of this ruined the experience for me, and I highly recommend this movie to any fans of great acting and convincing chemistry between leads.

DSI Prophet '08

I've been putting off writing this post for MANY MONTHS now, all for one simple reason: though I did make a big synthesizer purchase earlier this year that was totally worth writing about, I haven't spent as much time as I would have liked getting super-familiar with it, so I kept waiting until I had. Seeing as I still haven't dug in super-deep, I'm just gonna go ahead and write about what I can so this post will be lumped in with my other 2010 posts (yes, I'm still catching up!).

The synth in question is the Dave Smith Instruments (DSI) Prophet '08, an 8-voice polyphonic top-of-the-line (truly) analog synth. For those that don't know, there are two types of synthesizers out there (analog and digital), and while they both have their pluses and minuses, analog is generally known to be superior for warmth and hands-on control (sacrificing a cheaper price tag and more variety in synthesis types). Although I've always preferred analog-style knob-twiddling to typical digital control options, the bottom line when choosing this unit was that the type of music I'm doing with my band is very inspired by the mostly-analog/vintage sounds of the early to mid-80's, and as such, I simply couldn't have a better on-the-market polyphonic synth.

On that note, a bit of history: the maker of my Prophet '08, Dave Smith, is none other than one of the founding-fathers of commercial analogs, having started Sequential Circuits, the company that made the original synth bearing the name, the (Prophet 5). The Prophet 5 was groundbreaking (and thus expensive for a commercial synth) in that it was one of the first synths with patch memory, polyphonic operation (five voices at a time), and its unique modulation capabilities. Thirty years later, though Sequential Circuits is no longer with us, Dave Smith is back at it again, making durable, award-winning, professional-grade true analog synths to be proud of.

And that brings us to the Prophet '08. Like most subtractive analog synths (those that take a full sound and use filters to subtract frequencies, sculpting it the tone you're looking for), this one features your typical oscillator section (two oscillators per voice), a filter section (either a 2 or 4-pole low-pass filter), and a amp section, all controlled by a total of three envelope generators, four low-frequency oscillators (LFOs), and four 16-step sequencers. Something here that's not necessarily common to all analog synths though is an extensive modulation matrix, through which different parameters are assigned to various controllers, offering you near-limitless options for hands-free parameter movement. There are also a few essential MIDI functions built into the unit (a simple arpeggiator and modern patch and tuning functions being most-important), but this is truly an old-school synth with very little in the way of bells and whistles. In fact, to keep the signal path entirely analog, DSI refused to put any digital effects such as a reverb or delay into the unit, forcing you to use separate, non-DSI effects externally.

Ultimately, owning this synth IS a blast, and its sounds and hands-on tweaking potential are amazing. I just haven't had the right kind of inspiration to be programming a lot on it, largely because the band has been a bit stagnant lately. But, things are starting to look up, so hopefully my Prophet and I will be getting more-acquainted pretty soon. It should be noted that I HAVE used the synth: I've begun making detailed notes on a number of simple preset patch settings, I used it in the Metalhead show I played at the Masquerade, and it's even made it into the studio for a bit of recording. I also found a way to incorporate it into my work, having brought it in to a composition lesson once to teach a student a bit more about analog synthesis. Still, this unit deserves more attention than all this, and I'm sincerely hoping to deliver in the coming months!

SoHo Christmas Party 2010

So, my girlfriend is an artist who works at a company in town that mainly contracts art for hotels, and like most workplaces over the holidays, they had a big Christmas party for their employees (and their dates), so we went. You might be surprised to hear this, but this was actually my very first work holiday party to attend...I guess I just haven't been dating anyone that had one (or that went to it).

Anyway, the party was fun and largely featured Le Suz introducing me to people as her boyfriend. Everyone was nice, and their was certainly some decent people-watching going on. One of the highlights was the do-it-yourself photobooth (seen above with our friends Cori and Ian), which featured lots of props to choose from. Also, there was technically a dance floor there, but not many people were dancing, and I was glad we weren't coerced to do so, especially considering the iPod'ed music wasn't anything special. Oh, and the large selection of potlucked food was pretty solid.

Without going into any of the comments made while people-watching, there isn't much more I can add, but I'm definitely up for going next year, as it was pretty fun. Not a bad introduction to holiday work parties!

Four Lions

[Warning: there's a somewhat large spoiler in the trailer above, but it IS worth watching, so base your decision to do so accordingly.]

As the last movie I saw in theatres in 2010, I was really hoping the British film Four Lions would wow me with its humorous take on Islamist terrorism. Sure, it was kinda a last-minute wild card, seeing as I hadn't heard of it prior to the hours leading up to actually seeing it, but I had high hopes going in...

Unfortunately, the film is of the typically-dry British sense of humor and as such, is actually more entertaining to me in sound bites (see trailer above) and in writing than in actual delivery. Still, the premise is great: four British Muslim radicals want to prove they've got the stones to go through with their own suicidal Jihad, but there's a catch: while one of them is more-or-less competent, one is a total idiot, another is so afraid of dying that he's working on a plot to get crows to deliver the bombs for him, and another is actually just a white British guy who converted to Islam, arguably out of racism AGAINST Muslims (he spends the bulk of the movie trying to convince the others that the best Jihad would be to bomb an actual Mosque, with the intention to frame the non-Muslim population, riling up the afflicted Muslims into a Jihadist fervor). Sounds funny, but the film itself is so dry that it's almost too serious, seeming more like a sad documentary of some fools than a social commentary.

Still, there are plenty of funny nuggets to be found in the film, and I certainly don't regret seeing it. All of the acting was of a high caliber, and the ending is even a bit unexpected, but I would only recommend this as a rent, and just to those who might already be interested in the premise.

"We're Only Human"

Last night, while listening to a song containing the lyric "we're only human", I came to the realization that this phrase only makes sense if the person saying it believes in God (or at least some other form of a higher power).

Why? Because the statement is often used to imply that we're not as good as we're supposed to be, as if we had some sort of Biblical fall from grace. But if you think about it from an evolutionary standpoint, as far as we're aware, we're the best thing out there. Sure, we still rely heavily on our animal instincts and emotions when making decisions, often resulting in a less-evolved/civilized action, but that's not to say that an animal has even close to as much potential for a mature response as we do. No, when someone says "we're only human", they're not comparing us to the animals around us, but rather the made-up God-figure so many of us believe in entirely because we're so much more evolved than animals that we have tried to figure out a rudimentary explanation for why things are the way they are.

By contrast, I feel like the statement "we're only human" should be a point of pride, so if it had to be used in a similar fashion (to point out a flaw), it could only be said as a semi-sarcastic way of prodding ourselves on to an even more civilized state: "after all, we're ONLY the most advanced life form we've ever encountered, so let's live up to the challenge and keep pushing this distinction even further away from our animal kin."

Just a thought...

Zodiac

Although I had seen this movie a few years ago back when I lived in The Netherlands, I felt like it would be a good choice for Suzi and me to watch before going to San Fran, as that's where it takes place and the subject matter is a bit off-color (perfect for Le Suz). If you don't know, the Zodiac killer was a real-life serial killer who terrorized the Bay Area for years, killing a number of people and sending the press odd ciphers that needed decoding, presumably to help the police in finding him (they never did...). Another reason I wanted to see the movie again was because I originally saw it before I realized quite how awesome Robert Downey, Jr. is, and seeing as it was one of his first big roles since his wild years, it seemed like a good idea to check it out.

Well, I'm sorry to report that the movie is far too long and lacks much real excitement (being more-or-less a glorified CSI episode with no resolution), and though the acting is solid by all involved, it's nothing amazing. That said, any of the tenser or more action-filled scenes involving Zodiac were cool, and the chronologically-accurate addition of the old elevated rail on the Embarcadero (which is no longer there) and the awesome digitally-produced timelapse construction of the Transamerica Building were really nice touches.

So, I wouldn't recommend this movie unless you're really into slow CSI-like crime shows that don't feature much action. Yes, the cinematography and acting were solid, but not enough to change my overall impression.

1000th Post

Well, this is it: my 1000th post on this blog! I've been going for over three years straight now, attempting to write one post a day (I've been 89% successful), and though I've been blogging in one form or another since Fall 2004, this is the only single blog to have achieved four digits worth of posts (in fact, even with all the others combined, I only reached 685 posts...).

So, I suppose this is something to celebrate. I want to thank any of you out there who are still reading this blog to this day and hope that you continue to find it worth reading this time a thousand posts from now. =)

Sorry No Ferrari @ 529

As a private music instructor at a music store, it's not improbable that I would end up working with someone who is also either in a band or getting one started, so it wasn't a surprise that Chad, my coworker and fellow guitar teacher at Music & Arts, is in a band that plays around town. As such, one day after work he invited me out to one of his band's shows that evening at 529, and seeing as the venue is right around the corner from where I live, I took him up on it (I think to his surprise).

Anyway, I arrived just in time to see the end of another solid local band's set, This Piano Plays Itself (whom I've written about before). Then Chad's band Sorry No Ferrari went on, and I have to say I was glad to see that he's playing with a quality group. Sorry No Ferrari is essentially a guitar-driven (but vocal-less) modern prog-rock band whose material generally consists of two or three noodley and fast 8th-note guitar counterpoint lines intersecting to form both a sort of harmonic backdrop and a sense of melody simultaneously, all without sounding too pretentious or needlessly flashy (like many instrumental groups).

Seeing as the music was vocal-less, I often found myself humming along a melody on top of their material and commented to Chad afterwards about doing so, to which he asked if I would like to try out as their vocalist... In light of this, I've taken a listen to their material since the show and have tried my hand at adding vocal lines: sometimes this is certainly doable (despite a frequent lack of traditional verse/chorus structures), but otherwise I would probably best contribute by just letting the guitars take over.

If I were to sing with the group, it wouldn't be nearly as time-intensive as working with my own group, as I would only be responsible for the occasional vocal part and its lyrics, and as such, I could probably skip a number of rehearsals, leaning more towards the shows themselves. We'll see what I come up with, but if it just comes down to seeing the band live as an onlooker, I'm okay with that too, as they're a solid group that's doing something more reasonable/entertaining with the whole prog approach.

L'Auberge Espagnole

Sorry for the unsubtitled trailer...I couldn't find one with them after looking for a bit, so I figured it probably wasn't that important. Onto L'Auberge Espagnole (The Spanish Apartment): literally nearly a couple years ago, my friend Pam loaned me four of her favorite foreign-language films on DVD, but I kept putting them off until recently, when she asked for them back for the first time (oops). Well, L'Auberge was the first of these that I watched, and though I've got one left, I have a feeling it's going to end up being the worst of the four.

L'Auberge Espagnole is a mixed-language (but mainly French, Catalan, and English) film about a French kid who ends up in Barcelona doing the very same exchange student program as those kids I was friends with in Holland, called Erasmus. As such, he ends up getting caught up in many scenarios I saw on a weekly basis, the kind that result from a bunch of half-way mature kids (all of whose mother languages are different) cohabiting a small apartment in a foreign city. So, you would probably think I would love this movie, right? Well, despite the interactions of the students being pretty dead-on and certainly reminding me of my time in The Netherlands, the lead actor was EXTREMELY annoying (for example, he played air-guitar every 30 minutes, thinking that was a cool thing to do) and therefore hard to relate to or sympathize with.

Besides this, there isn't too much else I'd care to say about this film. It's no foreign-language classic, that's for sure, but fortunately, the other films Pam loaned me turned out pretty respectable, so at least I'll be able to give her a positive report back after these two years...

Louis C.K. @ Cobb Energy Centre

Although I love stand-up comedy, I don't catch much of it live, as it's often really expensive, comics don't really come to town all that often, and I haven't really gotten into seeing lesser-known comics all that much (not really even that sure where to go...). So, when someone like Louis C.K. (one of my favorite comedians) comes to town, I take notice. Yes, tickets were expensive, and I actually had to choose Louis over another show that night (of one of my favorite bands this year: Fun.), but I like his stuff enough to go for it.

Unfortunately, I was somewhat let down. It's not that Louis didn't do a solid show, but rather that he didn't really leave much of an impression and was kinda hard to see from the somewhat nosebleed-ish seats we were able to get (with no jumbo screen to help out). The opener (Todd Glass) was fine, but his set was honestly a bit too short, especially when compared with Louis', which was two and half hours or so. See, Louis was using our Atlanta show as a opportunity to film for an upcoming episode of his show, Louie, but though this was kinda cool in concept, I would have actually preferred for him to go half as long.

Still, Suzi and I had a nice evening out all-together, and considering I know she wouldn't have joined me for Fun., I'm not totally convinced skipping Louis for that show would have been a better move. So, I guess I'll be a little more wary next time I think about shelling out for a big stand-up comedian's set. Still a big fan of Louis C.K., but I'm happy to keep that interest in the realm of YouTube videos.

Gears of War

If you don't play video games these days, you're probably not aware that there's a huge divide between those players who prefer multiplayer/online games and those who are totally content with just playing a game's single-player campaign (I am very much of the latter persuasion, as I find multiplayer's lack of a true ending/story and douchebag-filled gaming environment unappealing). As such, there are plenty of games on the market that receive very high rankings but would never fully appeal to me, as they received their accolades for their multiplayer components.

Well, Gears of War is one of those games, and as such, the experience left me very cold and wondering what all the fuss was about. Sure, it came out in 2006 as one of the first acclaimed Xbox 360 releases, effectively holding off everyone's manic anticipation for the new Halo installment, and on some level, it wouldn't be fair for me to compare it to more-recent titles (especially graphically). This said, I think most fans of the game would admit that the single-player campaign is WAY too short, lacks a decent story/script, and is particularly underwhelming if you choose to play the game alone (as opposed to the much-touted online cooperative play mode, allowing you to play through the story with a friend), and I couldn't disagree.

If I were to throw in a positive remark or two, I would say that the innovative active reload system (which rewards well-timed reloads with momentary power-ups) and the extremely quick load times between your frequent deaths were both welcome gameplay features. But naturally, these small pluses don't add up to a great game, so I'm gonna file this in the "I assumed it would suck and was right, despite much critical acclaim" bin to help me make my decision next time I'm tempted to buy a mostly-multiplayer game (I'm looking at you Halo...)

Rudo Y Cursi

As the first in a string of foreign-language films that Suzi and I watched nearing the end of 2010, the relatively-recent Mexican film Rudo Y Cursi was a solid start. The film tells the story of two brothers from a small village who end up becoming very famous for their sibling rivalry as soccer players in the big leagues, all while having distractions on the side that ultimately help ruin their athletic careers (Cursi desperately wants to become a pop singer, and Rudo has a very big gambling problem).

The story ends up being pretty cute, and the characters are all pretty lovable. Cursi is played by famous Mexican actor Gael García Bernal, and as such, this was my first time seeing him in a film. Rudo was played by Diego Luna, who played one of Harvey Milk's lovers in Milk, and since that was one of my favorite films of 2008, Luna's roll as Rudo was also well-received.

While the film isn't exactly groundbreaking, it certainly was a solid and enjoyable experience for anyone interested in films with subtitles. In fact, I would go so far as to say that this might be one of the better entry points for someone looking to get into foreign films, as it's lighthearted and professionally-shot, which often isn't the case with the medium outside of Hollywood.

Suzi's Bday 2010

Suzi's birthday this year was technically celebrated over the course of a few different days, but most of the quality time between the two of us was spent on the Saturday before her actual birthday with a day's worth of secret activities I planned ahead of time. The day started with a visit to the awesome Hindu (Shri Swaminarayan) Mandir in Lilburn just outside of town, to which Suzi had never been. The temple there is absolutely amazing, especially inside the Mandir itself (which you're unfortunately not allowed to photograph), and I was happy to see the look of awe on Suzi's face when she found out this was our first event for the day.

Next up was a visit to a couple of the city's big Asian supermarkets, which Suzi is very fond of due to her love for quirky Asian cultural oddities and seeing live animals in tanks to be eaten later that day. The highlight of this part of the day was probably Suzi's purchase of a number of hard-to-find Asian candies, from which we sampled many times over the course of the next week or so.

After getting freshened up, we then headed over to one of her art shows (this time at the Kibbee Gallery) for roughly a half hour, where we caught up with some of her friends. Afterwards, we had dinner at one of my favorite restaurants in town, One Midtown Kitchen, which was good, as always. We finished the night with a little bit of a fashion show with the new clothes I got her and by watching some of our favorite TV show, Summer Heights High, which I gave to her on DVD.

Overall, a very fun day. I'm the kind of person who enjoys giving much more than receiving, and seeing as Suzi seemed to have a great day and felt very special, I felt great too. =)

Assassin's Creed II

Now here's a game that I didn't just fly through, despite trying... In fact, it technically took me three attempts at getting motivated to finish this game to finally beat it, but now that it's over, I'll never have to touch it again. Why's that? Because while Assassin's Creed II is a remarkably-accurate period game set in Renaissance Italy and complete with gorgeous vistas and superb voice acting, its actual gameplay is horribly repetitive and lacking in variety, so by the time you're halfway through this extremely long game, you're practically begging for it to be over, hence me putting it down for months at a time. In fact, the only reason I ended up getting motivated enough to finish it was simply that I'd already put so much time in it already and felt it would be a waste not to just go ahead and play through the whole thing.

If you don't know, the Assassin's Creed franchise is basically one in which you play an assassin trying to get down to the bottom of a big conspiracy spanning multiple centuries (even leading up to the modern day). As such, the game's plotline makes relatively little sense, and [spoiler alert] even features aliens trying to warn Earth of its people's impending self-destruction. Though this wacky story is constantly hinted at, it's easy enough when parkouring your way through Renaissance Italy stabbing corrupt politicians to forget the odd storyline, and it's in these moments of just walking through old Italian cities like Florence and Venice, taking in the scenery, old buildings, and passersby that really make this game special. But once the gameplay and plot start to get in the way again, your special moment is ruined, and you just have to keep plowing on.

I've heard that Assassin's Creed II's successor Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood is a significant improvement over this formula, but since I'm already burnt out on the game, I have a hard time imagining I'll be able to muster the interest to give the franchise another shot. Too bad, as what's good in the game is actually really excellent...

On Illegal Downloading

I got to thinking today about the fact that I literally never download music illegally and almost never receive burned CDs from people, so I started trying to argue with myself as to why this was, essentially playing my own devil's advocate.

First off, a bit of history... I DID at one point download music online (via Napster and some other site I can't recall at the moment), but I believe all that ended once I graduated from my undergraduate degree at UGA. As far as accepting burnt albums from friends, the only two times I did this with any regularity were when I was ripping material off my sister's collection and that of my friend Andrew in The Hague, who was letting me live in his flat while he was in Korea for a couple months. Both of these periods were finished by the time I moved back home to Atlanta in the Fall of 2007.

Now, onto the reasoning. I assume most people would guess that my reason for not downloading illegal music is because I respect the artists and the industry, but this actually isn't the case. Well, I do tend to respect the artists, but it's not why I don't download...the real reasons are much more selfish:

First off, I'm a collector and take pride in my collection of actual CDs, complete with liner notes/album artwork. So, even if I had the option to pay a little less for a downloaded album on iTunes instead of buying the hard copy, I would most-likely go with the hard copy because it looks better in my collection and I feel I get a better impression of the intentions behind an album by seeing the whole package.

Secondly, when first listening to an album to get to know it, I honestly can't take it very seriously if I didn't choose the album myself and then paid my own money to earn the right to appreciate it. So, if someone just hands me an album they love without me checking out clips of it online first and okaying it, I probably won't take the listening experience seriously, prioritizing the albums that I myself chose. The money part comes into play partly because I feel like I need to give to receive, but also because I usually can't get a hard copy without paying money for it.

So, when I tell people I don't download music, it's not because I think I'm better than them, but simply because I have a few basic personal criteria for getting the most out of my listening experiences. So, do I envy people who can download a hundred albums in one night for free? No, because I know that given the way I have to absorb music, there's no way I could possibly tackle that many albums in a reasonable amount of time (it takes me one week per album, so that would take nearly two years!), and since I wouldn't have hard copies or feel like I earned them, I probably would only give each album a casual listen or two and ignore any I didn't immediately respond positively to, which probably ends up shortchanging a number of decent but hard-to-grasp-at-first albums.

This post is starting to border on discussing my process of listening to music, which is another post-worthy topic itself, so I'll stop here. I AM interested though to hear how other music lovers out there like to take in their music...

BP Tidbits @ Riot

Well, with this post I'm finally caught up with all of Erich and my recent Riot sessions, as we haven't done anything since early December due to the holiday busyness and the Great Snowpocalypse. This said, it won't take too long to address what we did in our last session, because it was kinda a short one:

Half the session was spent adding a couple subtle electronic elements to BP. The first was a Tom Sawyer-like filter-swept bass sound we added to the intro sections of two of the verses, and they both really add a lot to the track. The second sound was a clock-like patch we tried to make using my analog synth to be used in the beginning of the dancey bridge section, but we just weren't able to come up with a convincing-enough sound, so we scrapped the idea. If we really want to try this later, maybe we can just grab a sample of an actual clock?

The other half of the session was spent with me trying to nail the toughest (read: highest) vocals in the song, which occur in the chill-out breakdown between the second chorus and the dancey bridge. The first half of this section is lower in my range, so it wasn't that hard to record, but the second half's results were less satisfying, leaving Erich questioning whether or not we should just shoot for a synth part covering that line and having me harmonize with it a tad lower. Not sure which way we'll go with it, but at least this was the only patch of vocals in the whole five-plus minute song that gave us trouble this time around.

So close to being done!

BioShock 2

As you may know, I was a big fan of the original BioShock, being both my first game on Xbox 360 and one of my Games of the Year for 2008. In fact, the original BioShock is thus far the only feature-length (i.e. not XBLA) game for which I've earned all of the Xbox Achievements. So, you can imagine that my hopes were high for the sequel, BioShock 2, which came out in early 2010. Well, as the critical reviews started rolling in, my excitement dropped with each assertion that the game was merely a shadow of it's predecessor (despite not being a bad experience itself), so I put the game on the backburner until the end of the year...

Turns out that my fears were totally misplaced, and that the game is fantastic. Yes, when I first started playing the game I got a strong sense of the "I've done this befores", but once the story got rolling and I adapted to the play mechanics of the game, I was hooked. In fact, the only thing that kept me from starting the game back up again right after I finished it was that I needed to finish another game or two before the year's end to include them in my best-of list for this year.

Onto the game itself. This time around, you play as one of the feared Big Daddies from the first game, and as such, the whole "leveling up" experience has been tweaked to reflect this (the primary difference being that you now escort your Little Sisters around, helping them get the ADAM from dead citizens by protecting them from waves of thugs). Like Mass Effect 2 and DJ Hero 2, this game took the mechanics of the original and streamlined them while adding in a few more to make things interesting. I won't go into details, but basically the gameplay is a lot smoother than before and keeps you in the action for longer. Finally, the story is pretty solid, especially once the game throws a couple unexpected twists at you for a big final act.

If I were to complain about the game, I would say it didn't quite do enough to push the original IP (intellectual property) forward, the zone defense sections with the Little Sisters did seem to happen a few too many times, and the fact that you can't return to previous levels (as in the first game), made the whole experience a little more tedious (trying to get everything in one pass and all). But honestly, these are small gripes: I actually really loved this game and was totally happy to be all caught up in the wonderful Art Deco world of Rapture once again.

The Bridge

Seeing as Suzi really loves movies with at least a hint of something dark about them, and considering that we were planning on going to San Francisco by the end of December, I recommended that Suzi NetFlix The Bridge, a documentary about the surprisingly high rate of suicide attempts (most of which are successful) by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. I believe I first heard about this film while I was in The Netherlands, and after watching the trailer above, I was intrigued enough to store it away in my memory to hopefully be watched later on when it was on DVD.

Unfortunately, the trailer is a more enjoyable experience than the film itself, but I suppose I'm still glad I saw it. Basically, a small team of film makers set out to record the Golden Gate Bridge at a distance from multiple angles over the course of an entire year, hoping to catch a few jumpers on film in the process. Supposedly they didn't catch their first attempt until six or so weeks in, but once it got rolling, supposedly one person jumped off every fifteen days or so. Now, you may be wondering about the ethics of all of this...I mean, shouldn't they be putting their time into stopping people rather than filming it for profit later on (if you could call giving up a year of your life just sitting there with a camera all day just for a small-scale documentary a profit-making enterprise)? Well, evidently the team would radio the bridge police or the coast guard every time they spotted someone making an attempt, but it was usually too late to change anything.

Anyway, the film basically centers around interviews with the families and friends of a handful of the jumpers who jumped that year, mainly discussing their thoughts on what might have led to their loved one's suicide. If this sounds dry and boring to you, that's because it is. Plus, the film fails to really achieve much of the artsy potential it seemed to have from the trailer, so what you are left with is more akin to a cheap PBS special than a full-feature documentary. Easily the best part of the film was seeing a few people jumping (from afar) and their eerie splash in the water below, but these moments were too few and far between to make much of a difference.

The Great Snowpocalypse (Part II)

So, the Great Snowpocalypse has come and gone, and I couldn't be happier about it. Not only was it a pain to get around and food was hard to come by, but I ended up losing roughly half my week's worth of earnings, being unable to do makeups for so many clients. That said, a number of them did agree to let me come in on Friday to teach (being one of my typical days off, since Friday traffic is horrendous), as the ice was finally beginning to recede after four days of virtually no warm weather and/or direct sunlight.

As I mentioned in my last post on the subject, I did end up making it over to Suzi's for both Tuesday and Wednesday nights, but due to extreme ice on the hilly area leading up to her place, I parked a 15 min walk away at the top of the hill in a Publix parking lot, having to make nearly two hours' worth of walking over the course of the next couple of days. Honestly, between this walking and the hour's worth I did getting groceries near my place, it kinda started feeling a little post-apocalyptic, if I may be so over-dramatic.

Anyway, most of the rest of the week was spent with Suzi, with only short periods of time at my place for me to regroup, blog, and shower, and an evening spent picking up my dad from the airport and delivering him to my afraid-to-leave-the-house mom. =) So, Suzi and I watched a couple movies, played a board game, and went to eat at restaurants within close walking distance. Speaking of which, when I was returning with Chic-fil-A breakfast for the two of us one morning, I finally ended up falling on my ass pretty hard on some snowless concrete (I tripped on ice), and that ended up bruising me up for a few days.

All-in-all, this was easily the worst snow storm (with the resultant ice) I've seen since the big "Blizzard of '93", so I hope this is the worst we'll see for a long time.

AT&T Long Lines Building

Otherwise known as THE MOST EVIL BUILDING IN THE WORLD!!! Sitting at 33 Thomas Street in the Civic Center part of Manhattan, this building wowed (and terrified) me ever since I first saw it. As you can see from the photo, this sizable skyscraper is entirely windowless (including the portals along the side, which Suzi and I referred to as soul-sucking vacuums), but for whatever reason, the lack of windows only registered with me on a subconscious level until I got home and looked up the building by Googling "Evil Building NYC". It was through this that I found the Wikipedia article, which filled me in on the rest. I thought we were just being cute saying it was an evil building from whence a tyrannical dictator ruled, but I guess other people feel that way too!

If you read the Wiki article, you'll quickly find out that this building is one of a number in the Brutalist style, which I had no idea even existed and now might be my favorite style... =) As it turns out, the building is windowless because it doesn't house people but telephone long-distance lines owned by AT&T and Verizon! As such, the average floor height is 18 feet, and from Wiki: "[the building] is often described as one of the most secure buildings in America, and was designed to be self-sufficient and protected from nuclear fallout for up to two weeks after a nuclear blast." Wow. In fact, the telephone operations inside the building DID go down at one point:

"On September 17, 1991, management failure, power equipment failure, and human error combined to completely disable AT&T's central office switch at 33 Thomas. As a result, over 5 million calls were blocked, and Federal Aviation Administration private lines were also interrupted, disrupting air traffic control to 398 airports serving most of the northeastern United States."

It's like every piece of information I learn about this building has only made me more fascinated with it. I guess Manhattan's so congested with skyscrapers that the only way they could build a giant telephone facility was to build up? Awesome. Anyway, as it turns out, the hotel I just happened to choose for Suzi and my trip to San Fran was built by the same firm as the Long Lines building and bore a similar Brutalist style (although not without windows). In love with these buildings!

Tim & Eric Awesome Tour Great Job Chrimbus Spectacular 2010

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Ha! Comedy Club

Probably my favorite night in NYC was our first night there, one which went smoothly and was fairly eventful despite getting off to a late start and having planned very little ahead of time. Initially, it was supposed to just be a simple get-out-of-the-hotel-after-flying excursion to get food, but since our goal was to see Times Square at night in the process, we ended up picking up a few extra things to do.

The highlight of our first night out was more-or-less accidentally seeing a comedy show at Times Square's Ha! Comedy Club featuring three stand-up comics (not counting the MC). I say "accidentally" because we didn't even know the club existed prior to being accosted by one of their employees hocking the show out on the street, and even then, we just took notice of it and headed in to dinner. It wasn't until after we left our amazing Cuban-restaurant-of-choice that we ended up saying, "Hey, if we see that comedy show guy again, we should totally just go do it."

Well, of course we did see another one of their street guys again, and despite nearly missing the show and initially getting worried that we would be the only people there due to not seeing anyone in the lobby of the club, we had a great time. I wish I could remember which comics we saw: despite looking over their regular comedian roster online just now, the only one I recognize was Kenny Ortega. As it turns out Kenny was definitely the funniest of the three, but the opener (a skinny, 40's-ish black guy) was probably second best, though the heavier white guy in the middle wasn't as convincing.

Overall, it was a good time and a great start to our trip, so I would totally recommend people go check out the club if they're looking for something low-key to do in Times Square away from the masses.

NYC Thanksgiving w/Suzi

Slowly catching up! For Suzi's Thanksgiving break off work this year, we decided to take advantage of it and take a slightly bigger trip than we're used to. Seeing as NYC is the kind of place that you can't really see too well over a two night trip, we used the three nights we had available to make a dent in the multitude of things we could have done there, with the plan to eventually return to knock out a few more. Anyway, we left Thanksgiving morning, technically skipping our families' Thanksgiving meals (but actually celebrating with my parents a week earlier since my sister and her husband would be out of town for the holiday as well).


Let's start with the Facebook albums:

NYC Trip w/Suzi (Part I)
NYC Trip w/Suzi (Part II)

Overall, while it's always nice taking a trip with Suzi, I hate to say it, but NYC was actually quite underwhelming. Everyone makes it out to be amazing, but it just didn't have that much to offer me, at least not as a tourist. Sure, I bet living there is a totally different thing all-together, but I just found it kinda depressing, uninspiring, and lacking when it comes to things to see. I mean, how many skyscrapers can you look at before they all start to run together?

To be fair, a large part of my negative feelings towards the city were augmented by the fact that the subway system kicked my ass (largely due to line closures and poor signage), and the weather was a tad too cold to be enjoyable for my type of touring. But let me focus on some positive aspects: the food there was incredible (perhaps the best I've had on a trip in recent memory?), our view of Ground Zero from our hotel room was priceless, the whole Christmas vibe there was pretty neat, and the NYU area was really cool to see in an otherwise super-urban landscape.

Yes, this was probably my least favorite of Suzi and my larger-scale trips, but I'm totally willing to give it a second chance when we hopefully return with improved weather. Again, I think it would be a great place to live, but I've yet been convinced (with my experience from this trip plus those of the two brief music-related trips I took a few years ago) that it's a good place to visit as a tourist. Thoughts?

Two Art Shows

As you might be aware, my girlfriend Suzi is an artist who mainly paints hotel art and other similar commissions, but occasionally she ends up getting her work featured (amongst that of others) in various art shows around town. Thus far, I've been to three of these shows, the first two of which I'll talk about here.

The first show, the MOCA Pin-Up show, was a sort of arts organization fundraiser featuring the work of tons of artists, the main criterion being that any piece submitted has to be light enough to be able to be hung with only thumbtacks. Being the first show Suzi let me come see (roughly six or so months into our relationship), she picked a piece to submit that she was really proud of... Unfortunately, by the time we had gotten there, the piece had already sold and had been taken away! Fortunately, I did get to meet a lot of Suzi's artist friends, all of whom kept talking about how well Suzi's art always sells and that she should have known to arrive earlier! Anyway, it was a fun night and a good first impression of Suzi's world of art shows and related friends.

The second show was another fundraiser, this time by lawyers who support the arts (kinda strange, right?). While Suzi got in for free, she paid for my expensive ticket (something like $55), which basically got us free wine (I think) and finger food in addition to the art. Although Suzi's piece DID sell this time as well, because it was an auction, the piece wasn't taken away until the auction was closed, so I got to see it (a somewhat impressionistic portrait of three men...if I'm not mistaken: it's been a tad). Once again, it was fun chatting with a colleague or two of Suzi's, and the event was nice (though arguably not worth the entry price!).

Overall, going to Suzi's art shows is really fun for me, as I love art, and it's nice having my girlfriend being the one who has events to support, for a change. Looking forward to more!

mc chris @ Drunken Unicorn 2010

Where do I start with mc chris (yes, he prefers his name to be written in lowercase)? In a handful of ways, his music has kinda become a big part of my life lately, but all kinda by accident. The short version is that he's Suzi's favorite rapper and she wanted me to come to one of his shows with her, but somewhere along the line I realized that I already knew a little about him: Dave and I used to get down to his cartoon persona of MC PeePants's song "I Want Candy" back when we lived in 805. Anyway, then Suzi and I went to the show (more below), after which I started preparing a DIY Christmas present for Suzi in the form of a mash-up album of tracks off one of mc chris' albums, thereby making his music a huge part of my life, even to this day (I'm still working on the mash-ups, though I did give her one for Christmas...I'll blog about them in due time).

So, for those that don't know, mc chris is a short white rapper with a very high voice whose songs are all more-or-less about nerdy stuff (for example, he has several songs about obscure Star Wars bounty hunters...). Anyway, his show featured two opening acts that were also in the NerdCore genre: Shäffer the Darklord and MC Frontalot, of whom I certainly preferred Schäffer the most, as his music was more interesting and he wasn't overwhelmingly nerdy (like Frontalot). My biggest complaint about having two other NerdCore rappers opening for mc chris was that it all started to run together, and the tedious nature of all this wasn't helped by how packed the venue was (other than perhaps the Passion Pit show, I've never seen the Drunken Unicorn so full).

Anyway, mc chris was definitely the highlight of the show, but I kinda wish I had gone to see it after having become a true fan with much more exposure to his music. Perhaps my favorite part was hearing his comedic conversations with the crowd in-between songs, as he's definitely got a natural gift for improvisatory comedy. All-in-all, I'm really glad I got to go to the show, despite developing a bad neck/headache and being overwhelmed by the other acts. Definitely looking forward to catching mc chris at his next show in town, probably next year. (Oh, the song above is my favorite of the ones I own...no video, but it's a cool tune nonetheless).

Xbox To-Do List

As I enter what I believe is my fourth week of not having a working TV and therefore not being able to play any video games without spending the night at my parents' (which I prefer not to do), I find myself wanting to play almost any of my games, not just the newer ones that I got for Christmas. So, here's my current laundry list of games I would like to revisit sooner than later:

- Dead Space: Its sequel is coming out in a week, but I feel like I shouldn't buy it until I've played through the original to get back into the spirit.

- Mass Effect 1+2: I still haven't played enough of the sequel, and it would be nice to play through the first again with a newly-created character (this time female) to be taken into the new game.

- Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe and Pure: Two late 2008 purchases that I never ended up formally beating due to being skill-based games that kinda lack an ending...

- Mirror's Edge, and Ghostbusters: The Video Game: A couple virtually-untouched titles I want to give another shot at before reselling them at GameStop.

- Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Tales of Vesperia: Two RPGs I've gotten pretty far in but still haven't fully beaten due to their scope.

- DJ Hero 2: Still haven't fully mastered this game, despite loving it and already putting in plenty of hours. I'm sure they'll keep adding more DLC too, which only increases the urge to replay it.

- BioShock 2 and Gears of War: Two games I squeezed in late in 2010, only having time for a single playthrough. The former especially deserves to be replayed.

All of this is on top of the neglected XBLA games I mentioned in a recent post, the three new games I got for Christmas, and the list of new games I would like to pick up this year for consideration in the eventual 2011 Top 5 list, so I've got quite a hefty list to work through... Hopefully my replacement TV will be delivered early this week.

Pink Terror

Quick one here. Found this cool slow-motion video set to some electro house and a Stephen Hawking interview on one of the blogs I keep up with, www.geekologie.com. Generally, I find Stephen Hawking fascinating, and although I've seen enough slow-motion destruction videos, the music combined with the ski masks and color schemes for each shot really struck me. Cool stuff.

Blogging Word Counts

I've been a tad worried that my posts have been far too long as of late, so I decided I would average out the word counts of my last ten posts to see how accurate this impression actually was. As it turns out, of my last ten posts, the average word count is 335, leading me to believe that I'm not as bad off as I feared. The highest word count of that sample was 649 and the lowest was 76, but barring a few of the more atypically-short posts in the group, I think I average out around 400 or so, which doesn't seem that bad.

That said, if you think my posts are far too long, please let me know. Note: smart-ass remarks by friends will be ignored... ;)

All this said, it should be noted that I've been concerned/have-written about the length of my posts before, so maybe this worry just comes in waves? Either way, here's one one the shorter side (at 168 words)...

Top 40 Cover Band

The most recent side project that I've been somewhat involved with is this Top 40 band for which I was asked to play keys. It all started the night Suzi was at this cast party for the upcoming Jennifer Aniston/Paul Rudd film Wanderlust (they weren't there though, so don't get too excited). As the party was winding down, I went over to CosmoLava (the club where it was being held) to meet up with Suzi and her friend John Cook, and as had happened once before when trying to go to that club, I ended up getting in free due to having been high school classmates with one of the bouncers (named Jeremy, not to be confused with the Jeremy from my band). Knowing that Jeremy was a drummer as well, I mentioned to him that we were still looking for someone to fill that position in our band, to which he changed gears and countered with the assertion that I could help him out instead, as this new cover band he was forming was without a keyboardist.

The idea of the band is basically to only play the big Top 40 R&B, Hip-Hop, and Pop Dance hits live, hoping to land us a number of paying gigs over town. It makes sense, but unless we were just amazing and drew a crowd ourselves, I have to imagine that it would generally be better to just hire a halfway-decent DJ than to pay for the six or so people in our group we would need to make it work. Still, I was kinda intrigued, so I learned our first handful of songs and joined the group for our first (and thus far only) rehearsal. Jeremy somehow managed to assemble a group of well-trained musicians largely through Craig's List and the like...a guitarist, a bassist, a female R&B vocalist, Jeremy on drums, and me on keys. There was supposed to be a rapper guy there as well, but he didn't show up.

The rehearsal, featuring tracks by Katy Perry, Rihanna, Jay-Z, B.O.B., Ke$ha, and Lil Wayne, was fun and went decently enough for our first time, as everyone came in pretty well-prepared. Though I only heard most of these songs for the first time the night before while learning the chord progressions, I ended up bringing some of my directing knowledge to the rehearsal, which was fun, as it's been a long time. In fact, probably the best thing about being "involved" with this group is getting to learn a bunch of tracks I thought I had no interest in up until giving them a shot, finding out quickly that some of them are pretty damn-good guilty pleasures.

All this said, the group hasn't had a second rehearsal since (roughly two months ago), despite a couple attempts by Jeremy to arrange something, usually for it to fall apart fairly close to being a reality. One time, I even got as far as learning the next batch of songs for the rehearsal the next morning, only to find that it had been called off. Evidently part of this trouble is from having a hard time finding a reliable rapper (is it wrong of me to say "go figure" here?...not sure), and of course, it's hard getting a bunch of working adults on the same schedule.

Anyway, I'm kinda torn about how I feel about this project. Yeah, it's exposing me to some neat music that I would never care to search for otherwise, and it's fun to play, but weekly rehearsals with a group that's not my main project kinda scares me, and having to give up my weekend nights to play gigs isn't really worth the potential money for me (especially since I have to pay $10 per rehearsal for my share of the rehearsal space we'd be renting). So, we'll see where it goes...I'll keep you up-to-date.

Dorkly Bits

Not much to say about this set of YouTube clips except that they're pretty funny if you know a little bit about a few games. "Street Fighter Meter Maid" was definitely my favorite (see above, but watch in a separate window), but here are a few others that elicited a solid laugh out of me:

Yoshi Loves Birdo
Link Didn't Get Sword
Moonwalker Henchmen Love MJ
Yoshi Hates Mario
Pac-Man Family Problems

Ah, nerd humor. Decent work, Dorkly Bits guys.

Midtown Bowl w/Erich

Not too long after having gone bowling with Suzi, my buddy Erich and I ended ended up finding our way over to Midtown Bowl as well. After we finished dinner at the Italian restaurant we went to, we were thinking about our options, and bowling came up. Now, though the alley was really close to us at that point, Erich said he brought his bowling ball in his car (which he parked all the way back at my place), but I thought it was so cool that he had his own ball that we just decided to go grab the ball and come all the way back.

Anyway, we played for an hour, squeezing in perhaps three and a half games, and although Erich did beat me for a couple of those, I didn't do so shabby myself. In fact, in one of our games, I got my second-ever turkey (bowling three strikes in a row), which of course makes the evening pretty awesome in-and-of itself. Erich also kinda showed me how to bowl more light-handed and thus more-controlled shots, which definitely helped my game overall. So, good times. Mr. Netherberg and I will have to hit up bowling again sometime sooner than later.

Bram Stoker's Dracula

In general, I like vampire films when I see them (though I haven't really seen that many). I still consider the first two Blade films worth seeing, I own the original Universal production of Dracula (with Bela Lugosi), and I've always been under the impression that both Interview With The Vampire and the movie reviewed here, Bram Stoker's Dracula, were worthwhile films. So, you can imagine how surprised I was upon finally viewing the latter that it wasn't really all that it was cracked up to be...

Sure, Bram Stoker's Dracula was directed by Francis Ford Coppola and featured the likes of Gary Oldman, Anthony Hopkins, and cult-favorite Tom Waits, but the movie somehow still managed to be a flop, in my opinion. First off, it should be said that while I do like that they stuck pretty close to the original story, the original story IS a bit boring and doesn't make a lot of sense, so no matter how many effects and good actors you throw at it, it's still going to feel dated. Speaking of those effects, this movie often looks less like the work of a genius director and more like that of a collegiate film student...it's just plain unprofessional-looking in many spots, which totally takes you out of the already hard-to-connect-with storyline.

Finally, while the film DID feature a few distinguished actors, it also inexplicably features Winona Ryder as Mina and Keanu Reeves as Mr. Harker, and as expected, they ruin the movie nearly by themselves. Also, while Anthony Hopkins is usually a pretty well-respected actor, he didn't bring that quality of work to this film, partly due to horrible directing and a goofy script. Yes, Gary Oldman's Dracula, both in appearance and delivery, was fantastic; Tom Waits as Renfield was unexpectedly perfect; and some of the art design for the rest of the film was pretty unique and memorable; but this is definitely one film to skip if you haven't already seen it. Hopefully Interview With The Vampire deserves its hype much more...

Oh, one more thing...both due to how bad this movie is and how fun it is to say, Suzi likes to call it "Bram Stroker's Jackula"... =)

Chomp & Stomp 2010

Unbeknownst to me until days before this year's event, one of Atlanta's biggest festivals takes place right here in my backyard of Cabbagetown. Chomp & Stomp is Atlanta's big indie chili cook-off and bluegrass festival, and seeing as it's only a short walk from my door and that one of my friend's bands was set to play, it made sense for Suzi and I to check it out. As it turns out, neither of us were really in the mood for chili, which was totally fine, as we got there after it had all run out, but we did enjoy having a beer and watching Rurik's bluegrass group Smokey's Farmland Band. There were actually a few stages going for the event, but we mainly stuck to the main stage, so as to not miss Rurik's show.

Ultimately though, the festival happened to be on an unexpectedly chilly day (no pun intended), so we came a bit too lightly dressed and ended up taking off shortly after Rurik's show, pussing out. Definitely a fun day though...I certainly plan on going back next year, weather permitting.

The Great Snowpocalypse (Part I)

I'm currently nearing the end of day two of the Great Southern Snowpocalypse, and I'm growing tired of it by the minute. As many of you know, the southern United States recently got hit by a big snowfall and some fairly serious icy conditions, all much worse than usual for us. While everyone was freaking out ahead of time, raiding the grocery stores for milk and more, I was pretty chill, as the news stations always make a sensationalist story out of snow here that never really amounts to anything.

Well, I was wrong this time. Big time. I've already lost two days of work and have been stuck in my condo without an operational TV (i.e. no video games or movies). So, I did my taxes... Yeah, I'm bored out of my skull. I've only made it out of the place a couple times: once last night to grab a beer alone at the only open bar within walking distance of my place, and once today to make a trip to a somewhat distant CVS for more supplies (no milk though...gonna have to stick with oatmeal). After having seen so many people successfully driving over this last trek, I finally managed to get the ice off my car and tried driving around my complex to make sure I could get around alright. So, I'm about to try driving over to Suzi's place to have some company while watching a movie.

I'm starting to go a tad crazy, so hopefully this thing will blow over sooner than later. That said, the temperature isn't expected to get over freezing much at all this week, despite no more snow or cloudy conditions. I'm essentially going through a forced week of no pay, as I can't really make it up to the suburbs to be teaching. I might be able to make up some of these lessons over the next few days, especially if school continues to be canceled, but no guarantees.

More than anything, I'm kinda mad at myself for not having taken my mom up on letting me stay at my parents' place before the snow really hit hard. I just thought this was going to be a small thing like it usually is, but oh well. Guess I wouldn't have gotten so much work done on my taxes if it weren't for having nothing much better to do with a broken TV and all. And hey, at least the power didn't go out!

Hopefully this is the last one of these we have for a long while. Fingers crossed...

Holy Rollers

What might easily be my favorite movie Suzi has shown me thus far, and quite possibly in my Top 5 for the year, Holy Rollers is the true-story of a few Hasidic Jews who got caught up in a drug-smuggling ring, only to have it turn their world (and that of their families) upside down. Although seeing Jesse Eisenberg play a somewhat similarly socially-awkward role to that in The Social Network, thereby making me think he wasn't exactly acting in either film so much as just being himself, he did do a fine job in this film, and it really wouldn't be the same without him.

In fact, the entire cast really adds a lot to this film, especially the people involved in the drug ring itself. Also, the music for the film (or at least the main theme), surprisingly fits the spirit of the film perfectly, despite being entirely electronic. Finally, when comparing this film to the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man (another film focusing largely on Jewish culture), Holy Rollers easily takes the cake, being all-around a more enjoyable experience.

I definitely recommend this one if the premise interests you. I've got my eye on Jesse Eisenberg now, as I have a feeling he might have quite a solid career ahead of him.

Country Piano for Nic

2010 was one full of miscellaneous side projects and one-off gigs, everything from school and wedding gigs to playing live with a band, working with a cover group (to be blogged about later), and what I'm posting about here: recording piano for a friend of a Jeremy's (many of these invitations to help out fellow musicians come from my guitarist Jeremy, who knows a lot of people trying to get projects off the ground).

Anyway, Jeremy has another friend, Nic, with whom he used to play in another group up in NYC before they both returned to Atlanta. Now, while they don't work together all that much anymore, Nic needed someone to come record a piano track for his countryish material he's been working on, so I agreed to come by and give it a shot. Nic's house is a really nice ranch-style one-story house, complete with a studio room that was pretty well-stocked, all things considered.

Once we got settled in and Nic showed me the track in depth, we started doing take after take of keyboard parts, trying for a mix between simpler parts with a wide range and higher, filigree lines. The idea was that since Nic could only play some basic piano parts, he wanted someone with a more idiomatic touch to come in and spice it up. Unfortunately, I've heard through Jeremy that Nic wasn't all that happy with what I had to offer, saying it was "too busy". I'll be the first to admit that I don't really know how to play country-style piano, but I didn't think it was that bad. Besides, Nic recorded everything with MIDI, so it would be easy to go through and delete some of the complexities. Oh well.

Easily the most interesting part of the night was hearing Nic sing some of his other tunes. Though this was more of a one-man concert than a show-and-tell between the two of us (regarding my material as well), it was still neat to see his approach to things, the way he inflected his voice to make it sound more country, and just how single-mindedly focused he seems to be with his own material.

Anyway, it was an interesting evening, and I wouldn't mind recording some more for Nic if he were to ask me, though it's looking like that might not happen. Still, it wasn't a paying gig, so I guess that's no sweat off my back.

Ra Ra Riot/Givers @ The Masquerade

The second show I went to within a short time span to help bolster the list of professional rocks shows I saw in 2010 was Ra Ra Riot at the Masquerade, but for the first time since possibly 2005's fateful 311 show in Cincinnati (the time when my car got broken into), I went to a whole professional rock show alone (but not for lack of trying to the contrary). Now, while this did put a little bit of a damper on the evening, it didn't prevent this show from making my future Top 5 list for the year, as both the headliner and the opening act were really solid.

The name of the opening act was Givers, a Louisiana band whose style wasn't all that different from that of Ra Ra Riot, but perhaps with a stronger hippie edge. Though this isn't usually my cup of tea, their arrangements (in particular, their aux perc parts and lead guitar player's slidey fretwork) were fantastic, and their songs all made a lot of sense live. That said, I've had their EP on my radar ever since, but I haven't been as convinced by the recordings that this is something I would like to pick up. Still, it was a solid set, and I would love to catch them again live.

Onto Ra Ra Riot... As I've mentioned before, I got really into them at the tail end of Q3, eventually picking up both of their albums within six weeks' time. Now, while I am happy to report that their performance as musicians was top notch and certainly matched what they put on the record, their energy live wasn't as convincing. So, I more-or-less just closed my eyes and sang along, being (mostly) content just to hear the music live surrounded by a bunch of other fans. And, if I'm not mistaken, they played pretty much all of my favorite songs, which is all one could really ask for, right?

Overall, it was a great night, despite Ra Ra Riot's lack of stage presence (to be fair, this is kinda how they are in their live videos as well). Oh, one more thing: I've been complaining a lot this year about seeing shitty shows at the Masquerade, but I would like to clarify that this sentiment only pertains to their upstairs venue (Heaven). By contrast, the downstairs venue (Hell) is where I caught this show, and the experience was perfectly fine.

Pac-Man Championship Edition DX

Yes, time for another solid XBLA experience, albeit one with a much-longer title. Seeing as this game is actually a sort of major update of its predecessor Pac-Man Championship Edition, I'll just call it DX from this point on, being the only titular difference between them (I'll call the original C.E.). So... C.E. rewrote the whole Pac-Man experience for most fans, offering better graphics, online leaderboards, and most-importantly, a two-sided course in which each side morphs into a different shape after the completion of the opposite side, essentially allowing for a longer single-game experience due to a much more varied playing field over time.

While this was all a big deal, DX went and bolstered this format with some even more drastic changes... First off, in addition to being followed by the normal ghosts, Pac-Man can now awaken a number of sleeping ghosts as he passes by them, in the process collecting a potentially 30-ghost-long conga line behind him which can then be eaten in quick succession for huge multipliers (and a joyous visual overload the likes of which you probably never thought you'd see in a Pac-Man game). To help Pac-Man out with all these ghosts running around (I've chained together over 100 in a single chomp-fest), you can use a limited number of screen-clearing bombs in a pinch, sending the ghosts back to their starting point in the center of the board and giving you a chance to get away for a bit.

Anyway, there are plenty of other smaller-but-important changes to the game, but I'll just let you experience them for yourselves if you happen to pick up the game. Although all of this is interesting enough to keep you playing the game for weeks, what's going to fuel that fire much more is the immediate feedback the game gives you about how you rank against the rest of the world. The last time I logged in (which, due to my broken TV, was awhile ago), I was ranked in the top three percent! There are different types of boards to compete in: things like seeing how many ghosts you can get in one combo; how fast you can do certain boards; and of course, going for a high score.

I could go on and on about this game, but just suffice it to say that it's easily one of my top XBLA games I've thus far played. Pick it up if your console supports it!

Chattanooga Halloween w/Suzi

Over Halloween weekend, Suzi and I decided to take a getaway to nearby Chattanooga, driving up Friday night and returning Sunday morning in time for me to work that afternoon. So, we didn't have a whole lot of time, but seeing as Chattanooga is only two hours away, it wasn't unreasonable. The trip mainly centered around a couple highlights: touring the North Shore and Downtown areas, seeing Rock City, and hanging out with my bassist's Sublime cover band Wrong Way at their show the night before Halloween.

Here are the Facebook albums:

Chattanooga Trip w/Suzi (Part I)
Chattanooga Trip w/Suzi (Part II)

As far as the Halloween part of the trip was concerned, it's kinda a misnomer to call it a Halloween trip, as we didn't end up dressing up (despite bringing our costumes from Cassy's toga party), largely because it technically wasn't Halloween yet and it was pretty chilly out, especially for Suzi's costume. Still, all of Doug's band members were dressed up (as the Beastie Boys, largely from the "Sabotage" video), and a number of people from the audience came in costume, including the obnoxious fill-in drummer for the professional band Filter, who was set to play the same venue the following night.

Overall, the trip was a pleasant little getaway...definitely my favorite of our three smaller-scale trips we've taken thus far. Chattanooga is still one of my favorite driving-range cities to visit, so I wouldn't be surprised if we found ourselves up there again in the future.