April 2006 Archives

I just hit up half-price books and found a graphic novel released a year or so back that collects some of the Silent Hill comics they've had out. I think they have two of these books out so far, but this one is a collection of one storyline whereas the other one is three one-shots. Anyway, I grabbed it and as I was trying to pay for it and leave the disheviled 50's-something man working the register forced me into the following exchange:

(Guy looks at the comic) Oh, so this is off that new movie.
Uhh... yeah, kind of. It was actually out a while ago.
(Looking a little offended about something) Yeah, because this is another one of those where they take a graphic novel and turn a movie out of it.
Well, no, there was a game that was out 8 or 9 years ago, that's actually what it's based on.
(Doesn't want to admit that he's clueless on the subject) Right, because they had a game off of it and then they decided to do a movie off of it later.
Sure. (I pay for the book)
I don't like movies now.
...have a nice day, sir. (turn and bee-line for the door)


The majority of my time is for sure spent working, and when I'm not working I tend to be out and about with friends. As such, over the past two years I've come to the realization that I've pretty much stopped playing video games, even though I still follow the newer titles and can talk like I spend vast quantities of my time with an XBox controller in my hand. I still occasionally make the mistake of buying a game only to realize the next day that I'm never going to make the time to play it. Exceptions to this would be if I'm amongst friends. If I was hanging out at home and Mike asked if I wanted to play some Halo 2? Fuck yeah, I probably would. If I'm in the city and DS's are broken out? I bought one for a reason. But on my own when I think about sitting down to play something I think about the actual investment of time that has to be made and almost always opt to watch a TV show or screw around on one of my guitars instead. This has made the involving games like RPG's impossible for me to even think about playing. Too much time, too little reward.

With that said there are a handful of titles that I can't imagine myself ever growing out of. These include a good handful of old NES titles, such as Mario and Zelda, that will always draw me back into the fold. The Final Fantasy games that aren't online or spin-offs will almost undoubtedly get my attention when they come out every few years. The Metal Gear games have some of the best and most political storylines of any games, even moreso that film and tv I would say, and I'm partial to those. And lastly: the Silent Hill games.

They've gone through a lot of changes in the 4 released, some good and some bad, but Silent Hill is one of the few titles that I expect to leave me befuddled and bemused, and THE only title that has ever creeped the shit out of me. Horror movies don't do it for me. The Ring was pretty intense, I thought, and they can be suspenseful and make you jump, but when you're actually holding the reigns of the character set in front of you and they have you descending into twisted basement boiler rooms and abandoned hospitals... it's a lot more intense. There are a good handful of survival-horror games out there--most notable Resident Evil--and I've liked a lot of them in the past. None of them have ever come close to being as dark or disturbing as Silent Hill. I remember playing the demo of the game back as a freshman in High School and saying to my friend I can't believe they would allow a game like this to exist. Granted in the post-GTA era the shock factor has worn off, but we're talking about a game where the plot is stemmed from an incident where they burned an 8-year old girl to as close to death as she could come and then refused to let her die. And with that aside, as the main character looking for his daughter in an abandoned town you focus solely on that. You obviously know something fucked up is going on but the game isn't about making sense of that; it's about getting your daughter and getting the fuck out. And in this sort of situation it's hard to use a term like realistic but seriously--who would think they could save the day? In your standard game, that would be the goal.

This was the first game to have a warning intro that read something along the lines of "This game contains violent imagery which some may find dark and disturbing". And to top that off the puzzles they give you require intimate knowledge of shakespearian work and musical scales. It's not "Find Blue Key for Blue Door" but rather complex logic, math and word puzzles.

I've already said that if you don't know the games you're most likely not going to enjoy the movie. I'm sticking with that. But check it out anyway. Do it.

I was musing today while driving to work about what my current repetoire of CD's that I actively carry around with me looks like compared to a year ago... two years ago... fuck, two months ago even. I am most certainly a music elitist--as is anyone who actively seeks out new bands or shows--and I constantly try to maintain a balance that keeps me enjoying my shit without suggesting that it's superior to what else is out there. By definition that's nearly impossible to do, as a key requirement of elitism is being able to mock any opposition that may arise. Even so, I've learned to realize that the selection of artists I have to pick from is generally confined at a bare-minimum to a certian genre. Rephrased: I couldn't have a mix cd that took extreme leaps track-to-track, putting NOFX up against Sigur Ros, as an example. With this in mind I've found I usually follow a musical pattern like that of the game Simon. Every few months I'll make a return to the cd books that are collecting dust in my room, pulling out Reel Big Fish and The Starting Line or Nine Inch Nails and Nirvana--whatever catches my eye--and begin an abbreviated version of the musical path that took me to whatever I currently am listening to. I don't do this on purpose, but it happens again and again and when I reach the most recent of groups I almost invariably move on to find new bands. Then repeat.

That's been the healthy pattern for years now. Old Material/New Material. Old Material/New Material. Give and take. The past couple weeks has been of the take variety. I've been acquiring music at such a rate that it would take me literally weeks to get through it all, and that's if I was doing nothing but pouring over music all day long, every day. But, with that in mind, my most recent acquisitons haven't been reinforcing or expounding upon the current ones, as seems to be the rule of thumb with music snobs. I've just been blindly taking, archiving, listening and accepting. Now I haven't been just grabbing at random, but in the past when I would get two discs--one of them heavy and abrasive, the other vocal and thoughtful--I would only be able to listen to one of them right away, and the one that was ignored wouldn't garner any attention until weeks or months later when I would musically shift forward or revert. But as of right now it's like the funnel of what I'm listening to has widened considerably. I still won't just jumble all the shit together and let it go, but as I'm moving band to band I don't have that expectation that they're going to sound kinda like the last.

And I know why this is.

In High School I went through Grunge, I went through Nu-Metal. The latter two years I started to transition out to Punk and Ska and those were my weapons of choice for a good while. I was aware of Pop-Punk but had labeled it "Movie Montage" music as it was always the type of shit you'd hear when hey gang, let's put on a show and save the day! or i'm gonna prove those suckers wrong! and I didn't think it would work outside of such context. I started to come across these bands more and more as I moved out of my range of Reel Big Fish/Rancid/NOFX/Sublime/Save Ferris/ETC and thanks to the advancements in p2p I found myself introduced to the Emo and Indie genres while I was silumtaneously building up my collection of New Found Glory/The Starting Line/Midtown/Sewing with Nancie/Goldfinger... My domestic life at this time was hostile like the fucking Middle East, living 45 minutes outside of Milwaukee while trying to go to UWM, living in an apartment I couldn't afford with a girl I knew wasn't going to work out. And I didn't realize it at the time but I would drive to work or school blasting the upbeat, let's-get-it-done pop-punk bands to get past whatever bullshit argument I was coming from, and then on the way home again I would listen to something mellow and depressing to "get ready", in a way, for the irritation and overall affront against rationality that was to come. So when I moved to Madison and had bands like Lucky Boys Confusion and Fall Out Boy thrust into my view? "I don't want to sit here and say I'm sorry, I just want to drink beer and play Atari?" Hey look at that--gospel truth. "So wear me like a necklace around your throat, I'll wear you down, I hope you choke. You look so good in blue!" Damn straight, I was a vengeful motherfucker.

As such the loop has always been I would become angst-filled and hit the proverbial emo/pop-punk pipe, then gateway-drug myself back into a sense of the emo/indie breed and then take a few baby steps on my own and find some new bands. Inevitably I would regress and "use" the more frowned-upon genres again. But as of late I've been--for the first time in years--fairly angst-free. As such when I'm getting new bands: Bayside Acoustic? Sure. Destroyer? Bring it on. The last Silver Jews release? Great. NOFX has new shit? Well no shit. It's like the cycle's been at least temporarily broken.

In a roundabout way this has led me to a comment utterly devoid of significance: I listened to some Fall Out Boy yesterday. Idly, while I was straightening up. When I take out the xSoxHipxCorex or the bar scene, the MTV or the Best Buy, I have no problem with the band. Their last CD was overly generic and not as good as the two before it. Done. The fact that these kids are all about[s] it because of the beat and lyrics they can't even discern words from irritates me. It really does. It's to the point where hearing the name invokes disgust. And I'm not going to even try to say Well, at least a good band is getting some recognition...because it's just not the case. If Take This To Your Grave had been getting the recognition I might argue that, but the cd that they actually put out? Forgettable at best. But I still don't think I could listen to the old acoustic disc or one of my older favorite tracks and not have a smirk come to my face for explicitly vicious reasons. I then--out of curiosity--pulled up the last Starting Line album. After distancing myself from it for a year? It's good shit. It's a huge step up from typical three-chord-cleverness and it really didn't do so well when it should have.

Also: A good number of the bands I listen to now my old roommate was listening to back at the Prospect apartment. The difference is when he liked a band you would hear about nothing else for a solid week. And I mean like conversations about the lead singers fucking pets. It may be a slight exaggeration but I think there was actually an instance or two where that was the case. As such anytime a band was suggested to me from him I would make it a point to avoid them at all costs and now I'm at a bit of a slow start to some of the groups catching my ear.

My last two comments on being musically-obsessed: I complain a lot about Best Buy and The OC, specifically. Keep in mind I work for Best Buy and I actuall watch The OC. My complaints about these two are not mutually exclusive. My only problem with The OC is that the bands they pick are whored out shortly after, and they pick damn good music. I have no problem with the songs they play on the show and only once or twice has it seemed like shameless marketing. The show mocks itself constantly and has a show-within-the-show called The Valley, which they use to such ends. On one episode they had background dialogue coming from this fictional TV show, making comments about a Death Cab For Cutie concert. An OC character caught it and looked disgusted, remaking Ugh. Death Cab's on The Valley? Guess I'm never listening to them again. Done! The OC called me out, do I get to keep bitching? No, it's time to be a stop being a woman and shut the hell up (You heard me).

Best Buy has been playing a couple songs that kept catching my ears at work, and I could never actually tell who they said the artists were. I heard one of them again today, while driving to work. On one of the CD's I had just downloaded and was really impressed with. Turns out it's The Cribs. Best Buy didn't have any lead-in comments about how they stole this song from X-WB show or any attempts at witty banter--I have no right to complain.

There's no point in all of this, don't look for it. You can bitch about pop-punk and I can bitch about Best Buy and in the end we're all just complete tools.

EDIT: As if on cue, Dance Dance just came on our overhead.

I finally took the time last night to make good on my self-promise to look into something that--for years--has inspired me to utter the words "Huh. Generic South Park Animations that loosely resemble people. That's mildly amusing. I'll have to check it out sometime. When I'm real bored." And until now I've never felt compelled to type "Make Yourself as a South Park Character" into the google bar. And by type it in I mean Mike had it pulled up. I realize entire families are spending hours upon hours painstakingly recreating friends and loved ones, down to every detail, determined as a lemming to recapture precisely that certain presence... one might say the very living and breathing soul of an individual. It posits deep and eternal questions about the Id and the Ego, the Feng and the Shui, the Ying and the Yang, the point to which all previous historical, cultural, educational, political, sociological, imperical and philosophical endeavours have conspired to achieve.

But, y'know. In South Park Form.

Anyway, here's two speculative imaginings of me in ten years:






Or, alternately:





...It's like looking into the grave.

But maybe not in that order.

I saw Silent Hill on Saturday night. It was pretty fucking good, from my point of view, but I'm not expecting it to be the popular opinion. The word that springs to mind the most on this movie is uncompromising. It's a film off a video game for those that have played the games. I don't think there's a big enough audience for it to go for, and I'm surprised they didn't open it up to broader appeal. The people who see this movie are going to be the ones who saw shit like The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Saw II and Wolf Creek and Robots. And, as pointed out by reviews, this is not a movie full of teh scares. You'll be creeped out but I would only expect a couple of jumps, and the storyline and imagery aren't made as clear as they are in something like The Ring so it's going to be a miss there. But if you know the games at all? Have a field day, they managed to wedge in a shitload of locations, references and creatures.

I swung by Southridge Mall on Thursday with no real intent other than I was idly thinking of getting a haircut. I did so at some place downstairs and the guy doing it took his time hardcore, duration-wise it was probably three times as long as when I stop by the low-rung Mastercuts-variety place. In the bullshit conversation that's expected in this situation we talked about different bars and clubs in Milwaukee and when I left and tipped he accompanied my receipt with two guest passes to Silk, left to him from one of the um... entertainers that gets her hair cut there.

...only at a place like Southridge Mall will the guy cutting your hair hook you up with passes to a Strip Club. I've never been to a strip club, although many an opportunity has presented itself via various friends, and I was originally thinking that come July/August when I find myself Vegas-bound that will be the first and probably only time that streak gets broken. However, with Golden Tickets in hand--Who wants to claim ticket #2? Only condition is I get to claim to be Roland Kohl--Herb Kohl's asshole grandson--this time round.

On Friday night I went to Madison and saw Death Cab for Cutie. The show was good--are you surprised?--as it was the first 4 times I saw them. We skipped the opening band to drink at Paul's Club and this involved myself, Chris, Chris's girlfriend Jessica, my buddy Jesse from East Madison and my parents. That's right- My dad had decided Death Cab is his favorite band and he and my mom hit up the show. We got them a little intoxicated beforehand and he couldn't stop talking about how it was the greatest concert he's ever seen afterwards. And this from the guy who's caught Pink Floyd and Rolling Stones. We returned to Paul's Club after the fact and while I was waiting around at the bar I realized my parents were no longer in tow. When I spotted them my mom was over by the door, arguing with the bouncer. She didn't haver her ID and he didn't want to let her in. I had to vouch for my mom to get into the bar. It was kind of hilarious and after showing him my ID and my dad's ID he conceded and let her in.

Sunday night I returned back to Madison again, this time for an invite-only New Pornographers show that Chris hooked me up with a ticket to. It was pretty hardcore as a free event. I don't know if this "Studio No.7" is a Jack Daniels tour series or if they bought out and renamed the High-Noon Saloon in Madison, but Jack Daniels logos are all over the place and it was almost the only alcohol you could get. But again, this was invite-only so there were only 300 people or so at the event and you got two free drinks and they had appetizers and freebies all over the place. I grabbed a guitar pick that I apparently lost. Eh. It was an upscale, trendy-looking place and they had a nice outside area, and with the limit on attendees it was pretty easy to move about. A few Jack-&-Coke's were consumed. This time around I actually knew the music so I could appreciate the show a lot more, although I enjoyed myself quite a bit when I saw them with Matt Pond PA. Of course that time I think I took advantage of the $3 12 oz Spotted Cow's (compared to $6 8oz drops of Miller Lite at The Rave) to a considerable degree.

That's all I'm bothering with for now, just a quick timelined update. I might get bored again later, but I make no promises.

...is the name of the first track on the new Moneen CD, and if you're in with the cool kids you probably recognized it right away as a reference to the show Lost, which I'm known to watch on occasion. You know: Every goddamn week, as soon as I can.

Before I say anthing else: Any thoughts on MP3 players for me? I'll explain in a second.

That said I had a few things to say about Audio. Yesterday I picked up Moneen and the new Punchline, both are good. Best Buy has a bunch of decent CD's for $7.99 right now, the latter being one of them (Fuck-the Moneen disc is only $6 for some reason anyway), and I acquired a lot of CD's through... other... means over the past couple of days too. Bands involved:

The Magic Numbers
Clap Your Hands, Say Yeah!
Saves the Day
The Strokes
The Kooks
Built to Spill (actually I bought that one fair and square)
Belle and Sebastian
We Are Scientists
Tapes 'n Tapes
Band of Horses
Secret Machines
Surfjan Stevens
The Sounds
Brand New (Demo's - OK and I wouldn't expect more, they're rough demo tracks)
Feist
Dresden Dolls
The Liars
Mew
The Concretes
Minus The Bear
Motion City Soundtrack
The Editors
Calexico

...you get the idea. I started burning all of these to CD so I could listen to them via my $10 Portable CD Player that I use when I drive to work because I don't have an actual deck installed in my car, when the idea of an MP3 player started to really strike me as a good idea for the first time. My Cell Phone plays MP3's and can hold 512 MB worth, but that's the ONLY form of MP3 Player I've ever had. And with my tax return on the way...

Well I've been looking at these two: the Cowon iAudio X5 60GB Black and the tried-n'-true Apple 60GB iPod. The latter I probably get a bit of a discount on at Best Buy, but the former is really catching my eye. They're both 60GB, they're both around $400, they both support video. The iAudio plays FLAC and Ogg Vorbis files, and in general supports more file formats than the iPod. FLAC is an extremely high bit-rate file format that you can sometimes find Studio work or concerts recorded in. The file size is bigger than MP3 but the quality differnce is noticable. Ogg Vorbis is a format that's been around for a while but hasn't really caught on yet, it's more compact than MP3 and you lose less data so the quality stays truer to the CD's. The iPod is namebrand and supports online things like iTunes, but really that's all it has going for it between the two.

So: Anyone have any other suggestions, or thoughts on these two? They're both pretty heavy-hitters.

've been on a bit of a 24 kick the past month or so, and as such I'm disappointed that my life doesn't seem to function in continous real-time. There are just... long tracks of time where I seem to be doing nothing but lying motionless with my eyes closed. And you don't see Jack Bauer wasting time like that.

I was sick last week for a few days and as such had trouble sleeping due to coughing and the like, and simultaneously craved sleep even more. I'm expecting that's largely the reason why on Sunday night, upon returning from catching a "few" drinks with my buddy and now ex-boss on his last day at our store, I found myself taking an extended nap before it was even 9:30. I tried to sit down to further satiate my need for anti-terrorism attempts and the drama that follows, but apparently situations that involve deadly biological attacks on US soil put my mind at ease and my brain found itself in what it determined to be a womb-like situation, calmed. Euphoric even. Like a Hindu Cow.

Regardless I found myself waking up at 4:30 in the morning--completely refreshed--and without a moment's consideration reached over and hit that "Play" button on my PS2 controller to delve right back into a comfortable place I like to call Season 3. About 8 AM I finished up the disc I was on and did something I haven't had a chance to do in a long time: Make that trip out to McD's for some cake-hot Hot Cake action. Disappointed is not a term that comes into mind regarding this recollection.

Nearly following suit this morning, then, I found myself waking up of my own accord at just after 9. Seeing as how I worked at Noon I decided I could pull of an excursion to Sussex to visit the Frisbee Golf course. I did so. When I got to the course I was greeted with a large, overbearing sign that read DISC GOLF CLOSED. I was a little upset. But did I let a sign stop me? You tell me.

That would be what I like to call a No. I don't let signs dictate what I do. I've got Banshee Power. My buddy and former co-worker Man DcDonald (That's an alias to protect the innocent) might argue that he's got the source material regarding that particular disc, but personally I don't expect he's going to be able to control that Banshee rage, let alone harness it in frisbee form, so I'm not worried.

All I know is that when by Noon I've gotten a delicious Cafe Mocha, frisbee golfed 13/18 holes, and picked up Schlotzky's before I get to work? Awesome[d].

The sigh.

Closing up shop at Best Buy last night I stumbled across something that looked familiar. I have a chameleon-like ability to mirror the intelligence of those around me, so of course in a setting like Best Buy that Ladder of Smarts I have to work with is either geared towards the good folk of oz or, perhaps, manufactured by Fisher-Price. With this in mind I took a moment to try and make sense out of the strange combination of letters on the package I held in my hands. "Mat esof state," I managed, and then something, somwhere deep in the buried recesses of my mind started to turn and it came flooding back to me. Consonants! Vowels! Enunciation and--oh, wow!--Inflection, too! Words. Motherfucking Words.

Quickly I tried to hide my newfound breakthrough from those around me, in a state of fear that was not unfounded, mind you, so that I would not be caught and brandished a witch for my trespassings. I instead decided to take this object, this Mates of State compact disc, and try to reason how it came to hold a place in the synapses that store valuable information. And my brain was on that shit, if you will, and within mere moments synapses were playing the phone game with other synapses, collecting information and following leads, mapping connections and staging clandestine meetings in the hopes of getting that major breakthrough. The scene was not unlike that of a fully functional CTU.

That's when, suddenly, a lone neuron jumped up excitedly and came running up to deliver his report. He displayed to me a series of data feeds from the previous months, several instances of myself checking the inventory screens at work for this particular CD, taking note of release dates and the constant, overbearing message that there would be no plans to carry said CD at any given point in any location. I was then handed a feed from the week of the release date, a grainy video feed of myself entering Atomic Records. After several moments pass you can see me leave again, this time CD and receipt in hand. It all seemed a little too convenient to me, so I asked for third party verification that this was, in fact, NOT a forgery. And verify they did.

Now- I have no problem with the store I work at carrying good music. In fact I have been known at times to fully encourage it. My only concern is the fact that I'd like to use my discount and if I give it enough time we usually DO get the product in and then I can. The issue here is elusive when the answer seems simple: wait a bit. After careful consideration and a lengthy process of trial and error, I've come up with a complex sociological explanation for why I seem unable to make good on this particular solvent, and it's this: I don't wanna.

From what I understand one of my good friends is actually the go-to guy for what to carry in our region, and he fully abuses this to make sure we're stocking what he wants when it's out so he can use his discount. I think maybe I should be compiling the occasional list of what's on the horizon that I want and slipping it his way, maybe even with a George Washington attached. I'd go so far as to say I should possibly even include a duo of Washington's but, hey- Let's not get crazy now.

Tomorrow night The Appleseed Cast is doing a show in Madison. This is a free show, and as much as I love that word (comma), I'd almost prefer a bit of a charge so I could guarantee my entry, especially with a 90-minute drive prerequisite. I'd also be a bit more excited if I wasn't missing Pitcher & Pizza, and if I didn't have to work a 14-hour day the next morning. Still, Peregrine is a great disc, TAC is a great band that I have not yet been able to catch, and Elver Park is a great place to go disc golfing. And, yes, it's disc golfing. If you say frolfing you should be shot in the face. And once I'm in a political position of power that rule will be passed unto law. Until then- know that I'm taking names.