I'm now an official fan of the the RealOne Player. I've been mucking around with it for the past couple of days (since I had to install it to view More again). It has many very handy mp3 databasing and sorting functionalities.
I've all but stopped using winamp altogether this week.
Self-Made Critic tells it like it is.
Despite his Sam Keith-style self-doubt, I really like where Piro and Co. are taking Megatokyo. In the past few weeks, there has been a delicate balance between action and drama maintained that I really have to admire and respect.
A sense that things are going somewhere epic using human-condition sized steps.
Megatokyo has soul in a way that many professionally done comics can't touch.
Because I am weak, I nabbed a copy of Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography today. I begin to wish I thought harder about a list when Andréa dragged me along to 40% off for friends and family and Border's employees day on Tuesday evening.
I have since thought of a number of things that I should have sought out and did not.
Alas, alas. ^_^
The Fullerenes played last night at the Blind Pig. Every time I see them live, I am re-impressed by Ryan's band. Those guys gots the mad skills, yo!
Obviously, they put on a good shoe.
After finishing Rose and sitting around being utterly awed for a while (Charles Vess + Jeff Smith = incredible stuff), I casually read 120 pages into The Bad Beginning last night (which really isn't as impressive as it sounds, it's pretty low-impact reading).
I am in very real danger of becoming a Lemony Snicket groupie.
I am wondering this morning why the human body doesn't produce its own caffeine. It would be much more convenient to have a caffeine gland than to be forced to ingest it whenever borrowed alertness is necessary.
I have acquired A Box of Unfortunate Events. My intent-- to read.
One more thing--
Vanilla Sky. It is not a good movie. But it is weird and creepy almost to the end. It suffers poorly edited movie disease. But I am kinda interested to see the [Spanish] film it was based on.
I finally got around to watching the end of t Boogiepop Phantom this past week. Between the drowsing off, the having my writing on my laptop in front of me and the cooking dinner; I missed a lot of it.
For all of the similarities between Boogiepop and Serial Experiments Lain stylistically, the two anime are completely different animals. Lain is considerably more coherent in many ways. But Lain suffers narratively for it's coherence.
Boogiepop is plotted out like an episodic version of Pulp Fiction. All the episodes go together to tell the story, but none of them are really contiguous, or even chronological. And all of them are self-contained-- most of them could be creepy one-shot anime short stories.
It's not a show to watch while in a post midnight-episode-ii-viewing stupor. ^_^
I have 2 thoughts upon seeing Episode II.
- Yoda can kick ass with a light saber
- Spider-Man was a better movie
Well, one more thought really.
- Ima' tired!
G'nite
People I know who have bands are soon to be performing with them in conveniently nearby venues.
The Fullerenes, Ryan's band, are a swell bunch of guys. You can snag examples of their music from mp3.com before the show to enhance your concert-going experience.
This can also be done with Au Revior Borealis-- Steph's band (who have one of the more clever band names I'm aware of).
The Fullerenes are playing the Blind Pig next Wednesday. Au Revior Borealis playing at a place in Royal Oak I'm unfamiliar with the Sunday following.
Local bands are magic!
Last night before calling home to cheer my mommy on for being my mommy (it was Mother's Day, after all), Chris and I took my newly-acquired Metropolis DVD for a spin.
We saw it in some little Rochester art-theatre with Ed and Steph back in February, but apparently I got something different from it than them.
I know that Metropolis has some grand pop-cultural significance that I'm unfamiliar with, but to me it was a The Fox and the Hound, type story. Many brooding cyber-punk and Otomo-esque things happen in it, but what broke me about the film was Tima and Kenichi.
Best friends from opposite sides of the tracks. Friends who are supposed to be enemies but they don't know better. Friends who fate and others conspire to pull apart.
Metropolis makes me cry at the injustice of life. But it also gives me hope that those imaginary barriers between people can be recognized as just that-- imaginary.
It is the case, that I find Spider-Man to be a very good movie. Movie makers keep this stuff up and I'm going to have to give them some grudging respect for not raping my childhood heroes.
First X-Men and now this.
Wow.
I was lent The Magnificent Defeat (Fredrick Buechner) by a Friend whose opinion I value highly. Let us see how it goes. ^_^
Strings of Fate has once again been updated, I notice.
I find Tony/Meishuu's dilemma is particularly intriguing. What exactly was Meishuu thinking by hiding away like he was. Is he actually a nicer fellow than we've been led to believe? Is it Tony's lot to suffer for Meishuu's crimes? How much of Tony is Meishuu and how much of Meishuu is Tony?
My heart hurts for Mao (for lack of better way to say it ^_^).
I am linked.
Also, I am sleepy and I am happy. Pad Thai Gai has never tasted better than it did last night-- even if they didn't believe I really wanted it spicy.
Yesterday was Wednesday. It was the day when Volume 2 of Jane Irwin's (whom I work with) comic "Vogelein" became available to people who buy comics in Ann Arbor.
Her comic is a pick on this week's Shipping Forecast list on Ninth Art. We all know Ninth Art is to be trusted. ^_^
It's true!
Jane is self-published and she likes Good Music.
How does he do that?! How does he take such fragile and honest portraits of himself and put them on the web for everyone to see?
Every new thing that goes up on Small Stories amazes me.
I noticed today, while working on a project, that I was trying to emulate him. Small Stories does such an excellent job at capturing the confusion and uncertainty of what its like to be human.
Today, Tactics Ogre GBA came out. But I do not have it. I am strong. I don't need that game. No sir. I can let a Tactics Ogre game see release and just not buy it. Because I am a rock! ^_^
This time for real. No on topic posting! ^_^
Chris an I viewed the first bit of GTO (Great Teacher Onizuka) last night and ate Cottage Inn pizza at a pleasant discount. Turns out there's a Cottage Inn just down Broadway.
In any case-- the show (GTO) rocks! It makes me want to be a teacher. To make a difference. To leverage my own eccentricities for a greater good.
Course, it wouldn't work too well given my propensity toward solitude. ^_-
This post should roll my first post off of the front page to become exclusive content of the archives. Celebrate!
Heh. Jude Law. Gattaca.
In any case, there's this little Oni Press book by the name of Kissing Chaos which I like. I glanced at my copies of it in it's eight volume pamphlet form again last night.
I like Arthur Dela Cruz's art for very similar reasons to why I like the art for D101. It's more like art and less like illustration.
Enough comics out there are merely "illustrated."
There. I guess I ended up posting on-topic anyway.