Remi's Bloglet - Tuesday 20 February 2007

I had to share this. My game group, the Durham 3, took some pictures of our fully functional gaming fun!

-We're playing HeroQuest!
-I have a great roll, Jason looks on in astonishment!
-Clinton adjudicates the fishy roll
-An argument breaks out!
-Being God-fearing Americans, we are, of course, armed
-We draw down on each other, John Woo stylee. Clinton takes the low-road.
-A game night's not complete until there's a mock execution!
-Friends again. _
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12:07:17 PM, Tuesday 20 February 2007

Oh cool, eMusic just added Luaka Bop, David Byrne's world/americana/bizarre music label. Os Mutantes, here I come. _
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11:26:17 AM, Monday 19 February 2007

My friend Monica was in a performance of the Vagina Monologues this evenings. I had never seen it before and I came away very impressed. Monica was excellent, affirming her easy mastery of humor and her acting chops. The rest of the cast ranged from good to excellent, bolstered by the sharp and energetic words of Eve Ensler, and as a company they came together brilliantly.

I was captivated for the entirety of the show, and have, for one of the first times, been gripped by a desire to see a show, this show, again, with an entirely different cast and production team. Not because the cast I saw was lacking but because it feels like a show that would be impossible to pull off if there were no personal connection. Thus it is a supremely appropriate foundation on which to build multifaceted performances that, despite saying the same words, carry entirely different meanings. _
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11:10:11 PM, Friday 16 February 2007

There are some simple things in life that I enjoy. I am afraid that Ghost Rider is one of them. The guiltiest of pleasures, Ghost Rider is a terrible, terrible movie. Yet I still had a great time. Unlike many of the recent superhero movies (Daredevil, Batman Begins, Superman Returns, and, to a lesser extent, the Spider-man movies), Ghost Rider makes no attempts at being brooding. Sure, the Devil Killed His Daddy, but that doesn't mean he can't have fun punishing the wicked! Sure he's kind've messed up, but that doesn't mean he can't get his kiss on with his best girl.

There are some classic visuals in this movie. Aforementioned best girl is all dolled up and waiting for Our Hero in a nice restaurant, and we cut to Johnny Blaze (get it? BLAZE) making his first skin-melting transformation into the flaming-skulled avenger. Then we cut back to the Best Girl who has, for some reason, hauled out a full-sized Magic 8 Ball gives it a shake, and looks at its prediction dourly. Keep in mind, this is a nice restaurant she's in, tinkly music, white table clothes, finely-dressed folk all around. Best Girl doesn't even seem to have a handbag, yet she can't leave home without her enormous black ball of divinitory power! I admit, I laughed long and hard. The movie is full of this stuff.

And the thing is, after a while, you get the feeling they meant to do it this way. Ghost Rider flips the police the bird as he rides off across the water? NO PROBLEM! Ghost Rider on a Motorcycle & Ghost Rider on a Horse hurry across the desert to confront the Devil's son while 'Ghost Riders in the Sky' plays in the background? AWESOME! The Devil is Peter Fonda? BRING IT ON, MoFos! They wanted a superhero remake of 'Easy Rider' and that's what they got, awkward pauses and all.

Ghost Rider was awesome. Awesomely stupid, but awesome nontheless. It absolutely lives down to the term 'comic book' in a really glorious way. My only disappointment was that Suicide's excellent 'Ghost Rider' wasn't included in the soundtrack as far as I could tell, but it probably would have clashed horribly with the grandiose Old West mythology they failed to capture so nobly. Maybe in the sequel.

(I broke my rule on talking about reviewing movies without consideration because Ghost Rider appealed entirely to the front of my brain, the temporary part that likes Dragonball Z and candy. Also because I need to blog more. I encourage you to go with friends and have a good time with this goofy piece of pop culture detritus. ) _
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04:38:54 PM, Friday 16 February 2007

So it's been a while. How are you?

Last week was the Dirty South Improv Festival. I helped out a bit with that, had a great show with my team, Baby Liberty, and then got sick last Friday and missed the heck out of the bulk of the big shows. Bleck. I've spent the week recovering.

I just watched the two cuts of the new Decemberists video, 'O Valencia', and have to admit that the shorter one is the stronger in this case. Check them out the short one here, and the long one here. Both are worth watching, though. Colin Meloy is a handsome man. _
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09:38:26 AM, Friday 16 February 2007

Michael Caine: Acting in Film
Low-key, fascinating, and useful.
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 6 _
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11:33:35 AM, Sunday 11 February 2007

Andrew Bird appears as Dr. Stringz on the children's show Jack's Big Music Show. Delightful! _
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10:49:52 AM, Friday 9 February 2007

An amazing picture taken from a beach in Perth during Australia Day. Fireworks->Comet McNaught->Lightning _
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09:11:41 AM, Tuesday 6 February 2007

The real question, though, is wheteher I'm going to go see the Wonder Woman movie without Joss Whedon involvement. _
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10:41:36 AM, Sunday 4 February 2007

So Conan O'Briend played (and defeated!) Serena Williams in a game of Wii Tennis on his show the other night. Now, not only was it an excellent bit, but I believe it's the first time I've seen two celebrities play a video game against each other in a way in which the game itself was not the butt of the joke. Can anyone think of other examples? It feels like a shift.

(I'm just going to link to a YouTube search, because NBC is taking down the clip as quickly as it is put up. A shame, this is a classic) _
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05:43:22 PM, Saturday 3 February 2007

After and extremely loose and filthy show, my CageMatch team, The Darkness, went down to challengers Four String Samurai (who put on an extremely accomplished, and highly polished set and absolutely deserved the win). On to a new thing!

Also, the trailer (Is it a trailer? The opening credit sequence, I guess) for Satoshi Kon's Paprika blew my mind. It takes a few seconds to warm up, but once it's there, it has a dreamlike simplicity and logic that's just wonderful. _
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10:47:17 PM, Thursday 25 January 2007

And while I'm at it, check out this crazy-lithe Japanese guy navigating an obstacle course from hell. It's a game show!

[via Ted Hobgood] _
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02:20:12 AM, Wednesday 24 January 2007

Well. Now I've done it. _
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02:17:27 AM, Wednesday 24 January 2007

Posting will be sporadic this weekend, as it is packed to the gills with activities. I just saw Pan's Labyrinth, but I will refrain from commenting too much, because it feels like a movie I need to digest a bit before saying anything about it. Also, I promised I'd try to give things some perspective when I started this whole 'blog more' thing. _
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12:27:08 AM, Saturday 20 January 2007

Nothing today. _
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11:45:06 PM, Thursday 18 January 2007

Speaking of intersecting with my taste: Woo-hoo, George RR Martin's 'Song of Ice & Fire' books may end up as an HBO series! _
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11:25:52 PM, Wednesday 17 January 2007

Tonight I failed to see Scott McCloud through a combination of lost keys, botched timing, and unadulterated laziness.

However, I did get a car charger for my cel phone. _
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08:15:21 PM, Tuesday 16 January 2007

So the first two seasons of Veronica Mars are really satisfying and intelligent television. Plus, it often tips its hat in debt to 'The Big Lebowski', which the show owes a lot to in terms of structure and character handling. The jury is currently out on the third season, though, mostly because they changed the themesong to a downbeat remix of the punchy, energetic original.

I'm glad that there are things on television that don't make me feel dumber for having watched them. I've said in a number of conversations that, in some ways, it feels like a golden age of television writing, with several fully-developed, and excellent, voices all plying their craft at once. Perhaps it's just that the writing has aligned with my tastes. _
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11:11:46 PM, Monday 15 January 2007

Went and saw Harry and the Potters last night. My friend, Autumn, put the show together for the Durham Public Library. It took place in a large space that was formerly a night club. Several hundred people showed up. It ended with bubbles, and hundreds of people pogoing up-and-down, waving a single finger in the air and shouting about the power of love. It was among the most amazing show-closing numbers I've ever seen. Genuine and beautiful and utterly unironic.

Afterwards, I got to tag along with Autumn and her husband (my gaming buddy, Jason Morningstar) and eat falafel with the band and their tourmates, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin. Both bands were full of incredibly nice, laid-back people, and it was a pleasure to meet them. I hope they come through town again. _
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05:15:33 PM, Saturday 13 January 2007

Star Wars IV: A New Hope explained in the light of Episodes I-III. Well-done and hilarious. _
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05:11:08 PM, Saturday 13 January 2007

Wow, 9 days it took me to miss a day. Impressive! _
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05:36:17 PM, Thursday 11 January 2007

I rocked out tonight.

That is all. _
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11:46:14 PM, Tuesday 9 January 2007

Beat box my dwarf-core, dude! _
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10:18:55 PM, Monday 8 January 2007

We got a Crock Pot for Christmas this year. It's a magical thing. Today, Liz put a bunch of veggies and some chicken in it when we left this morning, and when we got home after work, we had tasty dinner. I'm really looking forward to exploring what we can cook with it. _
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10:09:15 PM, Monday 8 January 2007

I dig pop music sometimes.
Lily Allen - LDN

I also dig awesomely dense and raging indie rock
TV on the Radio - Wolf Like Me
[excellent live performance on Letterman, of all places]

I believe I posted this video before, but the song has burrowed into my head as a sort of surf-glam-scifi titan worm. The video itself is great 70's-style sf-kung-fu cheese.
Muse - Knights of Cydonia
[fantastic live version]

I apologize for all the YouTube videos. It's the best way to share this music, easily, without having to put up my own mp3's. The only video that really adds much is the first 'Knights of Cydonia' one, the rest I really intend for you to ignore the video and listen to the song. Is this annoying?

Oh, also, Pitchfork's Top 100 Singles list is excellent. If you can track down a download of the full tracklist, it would be worth your while. About half the songs on the list already have mp3 links, though, and almost all have related YouTube videos. It's great. _
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12:37:40 PM, Sunday 7 January 2007

"Husan" - Bhangra Knights

Just had to share this. Great song. I'd bet it shows up in an American song before too long. _
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11:38:31 AM, Sunday 7 January 2007

Oh, hey! See a guy in a toilet stall get an esoteric threat from two singing, dancing old dudes. An all-time classic!

A great scene from the bizarro low-budget SF movie The American Astronaut. I can't really give it context because there is none. It just sort of happens. Okay, well the scene is really early in the movie and occurs on Ceres Station, where a dance contest is about to be held. Wasn't that helpful?

The Silver Miner's Story is also fun. _
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12:34:31 AM, Saturday 6 January 2007

Speaking of my art. . . ORX: Nasty, Brutish & Short is a humorous roleplaying game about that most luckless of fantasy races, Orcs. I did a baker's dozen of black and white interior quarter page illustrations, and 8 spot illustrations. I'm pretty proud of them, and it's my first major, published product.

I'll have a little gallery of sample illustrations up this weekend. Probably as my next post. Hope everyone has a great weekend!

(Buy ORX, please!) _
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05:54:53 PM, Friday 5 January 2007

So . . . drawing.

Yeah.

I haven't been. I'm still slowly working on a huge project I agreed to do for a (very, very) patient friend. I hope to finish it in the first half of this year, but I need to actually, y'know, start drawing.

I don't really know how to start again. _
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11:17:43 PM, Thursday 4 January 2007

Last year I bought an acoustic guitar. It's a 3/4 size guitar by a Canadian manufacturer called Seagull. I really liked the wiry sound, and I played it a lot last year. I sort of fell off practicing (or, at least, learning new things) in the last month or two, but I've started playing with my improv friend, Austin, who is also a beginning guitarist, and I'm hoping that will become a regular thing. As much as I enjoy playing alone, it's always more of a joy to make music with another person.

I'd really like to be in an informal band. _
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11:49:54 PM, Wednesday 3 January 2007

One thing about my current schedule is that, due to my current employer, I can't really access my blog during the day (or much of anything, including e-mail). So on days like this, where I'm out all evening, I don't really have a chance to blog until just about bed-time.

My sister came to spend the New Year with the family (my parents live around the corner from me, which is very ncie). It was fun, we went to the theater, i.e. the DSI Comedy Theater, for their New Year's celebrations. It was a lot of fun, and there was some excellent improv on display.

I'm in an odd place at DSI right now. My Harold team, Baby Liberty, recently went through a restructuring, trimming the team down and getting a new director. The team never really gelled, and so the restructuring was fortunate. I've also started performing in Comedy Sportz, which is a short-form improv show, along the line of 'Whose Line Is It, Anyway', but with a sports theme ("It's not comedy about sports, the sport is comedy").

However, I'm still very much developing my imrpovisational muscles, and sometimes find myself getting frustrated with my performance and my ability to keep up with, and support, the people around me. I'm looking forward to the next few months, because my hope is that I can use these frustrations to power the growth of my abilities, instead of hindering them. _
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11:14:35 PM, Tuesday 2 January 2007

This is my first post of the new year! In an effort to communicate a bit more with people, and to maintain a constant presence in the world, I will be posting something new everyday on this blog. I hope most of the time it will be clever or interesting. Sometimes it may be a little update on how something is doing. I think this week I'll catalogue the projects I'm involved in, and their general level of completion. _
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09:16:41 PM, Monday 1 January 2007

My favorite film critic, Mark Kermode, interviews one of the great cartoonist/designers of our time, Jamie Hewlett (Gorillaz). Quite spiffy! _
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10:20:50 PM, Wednesday 27 December 2006

My favorite person in the world was born today. I love her more than I can say.

Happy Birthday, Liz! _
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10:40:51 AM, Monday 25 December 2006

Urusula K. LeGuin on the value of children's fantasy literature. _
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04:15:36 PM, Thursday 21 December 2006

So I don't forget. top 50 Videos of the Year _
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11:00:53 PM, Saturday 16 December 2006

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