And they're going to come to life tonight...

Never ever undervalue the feeling that comes with Fridays, if you have the knowledge that won't be working for two straight days you feel damn near invincible. The feeling that weekend is right around the corner isn't even enough to bring me down despite waking up in the middle of the night with a painful Charlie Horse in my leg.



Other than springing up out of bed and hobbling around my room while the muscle stopped freaking out, I stumbled over a pile of clothes which is a reminder that I need to get my shit together and do those two weeks worth of laundry. A room my size with that much dirty laundry makes it looks like I have a moat around my bed. Instead of aligators or something like that though attackers are fended off by the smell of man ass.



So doing my usual rounds this morning led me to a trailer for a movie that isn't coming out till October 17th but there's still a trailer online. Lewis Black made remarks about marketing shit that we don't need to know about, I mean five months away is a bit too much of a notice, and I could continue to hate on this movie if I wasn't excited about the premise already. The trailer gives you the basic gist of it, but the amount of viral campaigning that could be done with movies of this ilk (like "Cloverfield" for example) is pretty much endless. The only recognizable face from the trailer was Jennifer Carpenter who has been doing pretty well on Showtime's "Dexter", but seeing her in another Horror flick would be cool in my book. The wheels in my head obviously started turning when I caught a glimpse of a crazed looking zombie type creature so needless to say I'll have to save the date for five months, they may never actually tell us again after all.



At least it's Friday, and I'm a short seven hours away from the weekend. I keep reiterating the point, but have you ever noticed how pictures can cheer you up? Here's one that I want to find a print of and get it framed for my house. A large group of students from the UK broke the record for largest Mento's-Diet Coke explosion. Looks like a good time was had.

A toaster falling out of a six story window and hitting you in the head is a tragedy...

An interesting state to be in is busy. Time tends to move fast, sometimes too fast to the point that gets away from you like sand from your grasp. It's now been nearly a year since I've been working somewhere that can effectively be deemed "a grind". Yes some peoples jobs are tougher or more weighed down by stress, but this is my experience for my tween years and like all the predictions or forewarnings I received, this part of it sucks.

The amount of distratctions I keep as blinders for the mundane nine to five are getting up there, thankfully creating these hobbies/distractions is not something I mind in the least. The most recent one is X-Box 360 Live. Now Call of Duty 4 is the only game I have that I can play against other people, who are no strangers to throwing out ethnic slurs in a somewhat anonymous fashion. I've been rising through the ranks, since CoD4 is what you could deem an RPG FPS where you level up based on completing certain challenges and by earning points in the usual multiplayer fare. I've been having a good time with it, however, being able to maintain a 1:1 kill to death ratio is all I can ever hope to do. At this point, I'm no stranger to getting owned by a 14 year old or younger with an angsty head shot.

I got to watch the film version of the Stephen King novella The Mist. From what I saw, and the premise that the story is based on, it's easy to see how it could've easily influenced video games like Half Life or even Doom. The military totally drops the ball when they screw up the "Arrowhead Project", opening an interdimensional rift in Maine causing a bunch of nasties to spill onto Earth's surface and kill pretty much everything. The creatures range from a swarm of tentacles to creepy spider like creatures that shoot acid webbing and lay eggs inside of people. It was entertaining to say the least, and I enjoyed seeing Thomas Jane (who I'm pretty sure is Aaron Eckhart 's clone or distant relation) beat the shit out of a Pterodactyl with a broom handle. This film's nods to Lovecraft got me interested in another medium that nods to the same thing, Mike Mignola's series of comics, whether it be Hellboy or the B.P.R.D. books.

As I'm pretty sure Baron's in Bridgewater is M.I.A., all of my comic shopping needs are now being met by going directly to the publisher, or random internet vendors of questionable intent that sell through Amazon. One person's perspective on "Like New" after all might be way different than mine, but what can you do. Eventually I'll figure out something where people are cool enough to give me these things for review, a friend of mine was able to get the Tartan Extreme film library under this pretense, hopefully I'll be as fortunate.

I'm still going slow...

Last night was a prime example as to how much useless knowledge I actually have in my head. Knowing who played the main character in both versions of "Get Carter" (Michael Caine and Sylvestor Stallone for the record), and also the dimensions of the Great Wall of China are both facts that I don't forsee contributing to me having a fuller life in any way, but they certainly helped win stuff I can't actually use in my daily life. All it really reaffirms that I would do really well in pubs doing the "Quiz".

Trivia masterness aside, I was able to catch Rogue Wave live on Friday night at the Paradise Rock Club in Boston. They put on a great show, albeit mostly consisting of songs from their new album which of course makes sense. It was a 2:1 ratio of new songs to old songs, I was a really big fan of "Publish My Love" which I got to enjoy them rocking out especially on. I left before their encore just because the club was super stuffy, and I was eager to get back home and crash, but definitely a band worth catching live. I'd be careful about hanging out with people with black "X's" on their hands at places where booze is served as bouncers and security alike will be watching you like a hawk, and will create uncomfortable and awkward situations for you at some point.

Saturday I got to catch up on my movie watching and comic book reading. Getting to read the newest issue of "Dead Space" was one of such catching up endeavors, you can definitely tell that things are going in a pretty crazy direction as people are falling under the sway of the mysterious obelisk, and people are seeing ghosts at random. Religious cults and zealots have a way of bringing up the level of crazy a bit, but to get to the level of insane that the game will have some shit is going to have to get real weird in the next couple of issues. Good thing they still have another four issues to get there.

"City of the Lost Children" finally came in via NetFlix, a movie I had been wanting to see for quite some time. Not necessarily as if I had been building it up in my head, but sometimes you just need to watch something with visuals that try to be different. The last movie I had seen as a point of reference to the type of aesthetic I'm talking about would be the Neil Gaiman film "MirrorMask". The premise of the movie is pretty out there, the antagonist of the film cannot dream so he kidnaps children to try and steal their dreams. In the process of snatching kids, he snatches the character One's (played by Ron Perlman) little brother which leads him on an adventure to go get him back. Complete with talking brains, bionic cyclopses, and a trained flea that injects brain washing toxins into the heads of its victims, it's not really hard to say this movie was strange. It's worth watching, however, just to see these strange visuals. The story was interesting enough, but in terms of fantasy and science fiction films I'm not sure what audience it was aimed at. The first five minutes of the movie having multiple Santa Clauses is enough to give anyone nightmares afterall.

I found a way out of the closing night...

An Evening with Mo Rocca: An Expert’s Guide to Sounding Like an Expert

Last night I had the chance for free to catch former Daily Show correspondent and PBS program “Wishbone” Producer Mo Rocca give a lecture. The theme of the night was not difficult to discern from the slideshow of various photos with commentary from Rocca, that sounding like an expert on things is as easy as learning a few key facts and being able to recite them confidently. He is a noted political pundit and commentator in areas where he has no recognizable expertise (i.e. Iron Chef America, CNN, etc.), but people have valued his opinion on the programs he has been on regardless.

Now I don’t want to read too deeply into this, but it seemed like he was almost saying, don’t trust anyone that says they’re an expert just because they’re being presented as one. Chances are they’re just good at sounding like one as opposed to being one. Ending his lecture with a Q & A, where he was able to name the capitals to countries I have never heard of, you could tell that even though his presentation was meant to be the sarcastic personality that many people recognize from The Daily Show and the I Love the XX’s programs, whenever he was asked a serious question about anything from politics to a possible “Wishbone” comeback he gave a seemingly honest answer and dropped the character for a bit. He is a really intelligent guy, or at least he’s an expert at how to sound like one.

So returning home I have been a fiend of music I haven’t been able to find in stores lately, and being someone that still believes in buying the CD for whatever strange OCD’ness, trolling the ITunes store hurts a little bit when it’s the only place to find a particular album. I’ve had to do this with Milosh’s Meme as well as a few others, including Kate Havnevik’s Melankton.

I found myself passing out to Kate Havnevik’s album last night, the one with all the songs on Grey’s Anatomy. Now having never seen Grey’s Anatomy, I do not know how these songs work themselves into the story, I’m sure during the serious montage type scenes, but it’s very chill for lack of a better word. The album is so chill that I had a dream of listening to my Ipod in bed while I was actually listening to my Ipod in bed. That sounds pretty Zen to me; unfortunately, I woke up in the middle of the night because I was actually lying on my headphones which didn’t feel too great. I give a thumb up for the album though if you’re into Electronica-Pop or whatever the hell genre this happens to fall into.

My NetFlix should be serving me a hot portion of more movies I have never seen before come today or tomorrow. I spoke with my friend Evan who has a subscription to the service and is also into movies to the same degree I am (albeit different kinds). He said that eventually you run out of movies to watch, but at the moment my 70 movie long queue has a ways to go before I have to deal with that life changing event.

I’m looking forward to watching the French film, “City of the Lost Children” because the imagery looks crazy and it’s starring Ron Perlman, a guy who could rival Bruce Campbell in B Movie status had he not been starring as Hellboy in the new series of films seeing a mainstream release. I’m pretty excited to be seeing “City” in the near future, knowing full well that it has influenced many people in different industries where creativity is widely practiced. That’s part of the reason I want to see/read Stephen King’s “The Mist” knowing it played a big part in the story development of such landmark video games as Half-Life and Silent Hill. That fan boy gushing is for another time though.

You're some kind of booksmart devil...

Week Beginning 4/7/08:

I'm not sure exactly what it is about Mondays, but no other day of the week has me dragging ass as bad as today. I wish there was some kind of sordid tale of me being out at all hours of the night, completely pissed drunk and causing random acts of vandalism, but last night consisted of me folding laundry and pondering whether or not the X-Box 360 Wireless Adaptor would be worth $100 (verdict still says, "no").

In Art/Culture:
Now I really haven't incredibly inspired lately, so I am in need of a cultural kick in the ass; an injection of inspiration to get me back on track with designing and writing music again. There are steps I'm taking to remedy the situation, one of which being a long forgotten periodical I always said I would subscribe to but of course bailed out on. I just started up a subscription with Juxtapoz: Art & Culture magazine as a first step, and I am looking for the other publication that I picked up at a Dedham T Station that focuses on design and being proactive about various causes. Seeing the work of others, especially when I know it's something I can do, always seems to motivate me the most over and above anything else.

In Gaming:
In other news, I have been picking up packs of the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game in the hopes that I may never have to play another human being. The fear of being annihilated in a game of skill by someone who is way more socially inept than I have ever been is far from being irrational, but I feel playing the raid deck with someone against what is effectively a Dungeon Master would make me feel a little bit better about it. At least if I go down playing against a DM, I'm taking people with me. I'll attempt to play this at some point in the near future in the hopes that I won't get completely embarassed.


In Comics:

I've also been on the hunt for the newest issue of "The Mice Templar" which was supposed to drop in March but I haven't seen it. The Official website still has Issue#3 listed as the "Current Issue" and even acknowledges that the next issue would be due out in March. The long and short of it being where the hell is Issue #4? The already have the summary up for both Issue #4 and #5 on Oeming's site here. As I have only recently been getting back into Graphic Novels and comics, I'm surprised with the advent of the internet that many publishers do not give the chance to order comics direct, but instead tell you where in your area you can buy their books. They're operating like some kind of strange wholesaler, most likely because being able to buy direct would put many privately owned comic shops out of business, and nobody would like that.