WWdN: In Exile

in the heat of the night the animals scream

I know I'm way late to the party on this, but I just discovered the graphic novel Transmetropolitan, on the advice of my friend Ryan. As an added bonus, we saw it in a comic shop with our friend Alan, who it turns out had never read Watchmen or Dark Knight Returns. We convinced him to pick them up and read them, and I was reminded of the excitement and wonder I felt the first time I read Dark Knight, and how profoundly Watchmen affected me the second time I read it, and saw all that stuff you miss the first time through.

In my limited free time this week, I've been re-reading Neuromancer, and all these new (to me) graphic novels that I got over the weekend. There's Transmetropolitan, Proposition Player, and Hopeless Savages, which are all outstanding, and I haven't gotten into Scott Pilgrim, Planetary, WE3, or Ex Machina, yet.

These graphic novels and the trip to the Comic and Game shop (Metro, in Santa Barbara) brought on such a hypernostalgic geek jones, it's sick. I've heard stories of recovering addicts who see a movie about junkies, and feel a throb in their veins, like their arm's longing for the pinch of the needle, and I have some sort of geek version of that.

It's a very tangible longing, an insistent yearning, to sit on Darin's floor in 1989 and play Illuminati, watch Holy Grail, listen to They Might Be Giants, and then paint 40K armies while we argue about plot holes in Aliens before we head off to a comic convention at the Shrine Auditorium, hoping the newest Sandman has come out.

It's watching The Prisoner for the first time, networking Mac II computers using Appletalk to play NetTrek and Spaceward Ho!

It's walking into an empty engineering set on Stage 9 when I was 15, so I can stand behind the pool table, look at the engine lights pulse with their nearly-silent neon click, and pretend that the ship was real.

It's watching a VHS bootleg of Akira, having no idea what's going on, but still loving it and wanting more and more and more.

It's hours and hours of Car Wars and Awful Green Things and 40K and Talisman.

It's listening to The Frantics, Bill Hicks, Bob Goldthwait, Dr. Demento, and Bill Cosby.

It's music, too: Squeeze, Depeche Mode, The Smiths, The Cure, The The, and Oingo Boingo.

It's movies: Batman, Blade Runner, Back to the Future, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, Dawn of, Night of the Living, and Day of The Dead.

It's not talking to girls, but spending an awful lot of time talking about girls.

It's a longing for the uncomplicated simplicity of those years, years which we were convinced were anything but uncomplicated or simple at the time.

I get like this a few times a year. I can never pinpoint the exact reason, and I sort of hope I never do; I enjoy these hypernostalgic trips, even if a certain amount of sadness and longing is the price of admission. If I figured out why these feelings well up from time to time, they probably would stop coming, and I'd lose touch with my formative geek years: the most complicated and uncomplicated -- and most important -- years of my life.

good day, sir!

Anne is on a well-deserved vacation this week, so I'm doing the single parent thing, which leaves me with very little "me" time after work and family responsibilities are met, so not a lot of blogging so far. Wheee! It's actually quite weird to be so tired by the end of the day, I'm falling asleep before 11 each night, and actually staying asleep until my alarm goes off the next morning. This week, I've had incredibly lucid dreams every night, too.

I've been working on this Star Trek Anniversary thing a little bit each day since Friday, and I'm pretty happy with it, but I haven't said all I need to say, and I'm not rushing it out before it's done, which I really hope will happen today or tomorrow. I just found the most important thing to say with it last night while I was walking my dogs, so it should flow out pretty easily and quickly now.

If you're looking to get a complete collection of stuff I've done this week, I have a few things up at CardSquad and Suicide Girls (The SG news links should be considered NSFW. Despite my pleadings, nothing is being done to make the newswire consistently SFW, so take that into account if you're going to click through.) Games of our Lives this week is The Fairyland Story:

The Fairyland Story
When the mid-'80s officially began in 1985, things weren't looking as good as nostalgic specials on VH1 would have you believe. The AIDS epidemic was out of control, 10,000 people were killed when a cyclone hit Bangladesh, and New Coke filled supermarket shelves. People seeking escape from the troubled times often found it in video arcades, and what better place for total escape than in a fairyland story?

Gameplay: In The Fairyland Story, you play a witch named Ptolemy, who looks like a cross between Legend Of Zelda's Link and Orko from He-Man. You're questing through various castles and giant cakes in Fairyland, though you never find out exactly what you're questing for. But it must be important, because a lot of fairy-tale monsters want to stop you, including wizards, dragons, sword-wielding pigs, and, of course, hippos wearing crash helmets.

There's some funny stuff (if I do say so myself) in the full version, so head over to the AV Club and take a look, unless you hate comedy and video games, in which case I say to you, "Good day, Sir!"

The Science Channel is running original episodes of Carl Sagan's Cosmos. It's still awesome, and you should watch it, unless you hate astronomy and turtlenecks, in which case I say to you, Good day, Sir!"

iTunes 7 ate all my purchased music. Awesome.

iTunes 7 is out, and it looks great. It also shared two facts with me that I could have lived without knowing: Nelly Furtado is apparently a promiscuous girl, and not only was sexy missing, but it's been left to Justin Timberlake to bring it back. Great.

Also, the new features in iTunes 7 are really cool . . . if only they fucking worked. I connected my iPod to my laptop just now (with manual management turned on, so it doesn't automatically change my settings or music), and suddenly all of my iTunes Music Store purchases vanished. I can't even synch it to the machine I used to buy those songs, because it's in for service. It also tells me, when I try to authorize the damn machine, that I've authorized five of five machines, even though I deauthoried my old laptops when they were sent back for upgrades. Of course, I don't have access to those machines any longer, so I can't confirm that the deauthorization actually happened, or try to deauthorize them again. So. Totally. Awesome. GregN pointed me to this Apple Help document that shows how to deauthorize all your computers with one click presumably for instances exactly like this one. Thanks, GregN! So. Totally. Awesome!

I love my iPod, and I love all of my Macs, but I've grown to absolutely detest Apple's DRM, and I don't think I'll buy songs from the iTMS in the future, because even though I've given them a dump truck of money in the last year or so, I currently have nothing to show for it except frustration and several empty playlists. E-mails to Apple's iTunes Music Store customer support have never been answered in the past (they still owe me a song from an album I bought last year that didn't download,) so I currently have little recourse or opportunity to get my problems addressed. Great job, Apple! You're taking fantastic care of your customers.

Speaking of music, everyone in the world knows Soft Cell's Tainted Love and Sex Dwarf, but how come we never hear Mug's Game anymore? That's the first Soft Cell song I heard, and remains my all-time favorite.

Oh! Bonus! iTunes is trying to work its way back into my good graces and just decided to play Love Will Tear Us Apart, which brings up another point I've been meaning to make: Interpol and She Wants Revenge should just embrace it, and do some Joy Division covers. We all know what's going on anyway, guys, and it would rule. I'll buy one of your CDs when you do it, but not from the bullshit iTunes Music Store, that's for sure.

Update: Yes, I should backup all of my music, and I have (except for recent purchases) and it's entirely my fault for not making some directory-wide backup. That doesn't make the annoyance of not having access to music I paid for less annoying, because if this is a bug, it's a pretty big one that certainly should have been caught before iTunes 7 was made available to download.

Though the company was unresponsive last time I contacted them about an iTunes Music Store purchase issue, I've sent e-mail to support on this issue, too. However, I'd like to point out that I'm mostly venting here about an instance where DRM created a problem for me, and don't expect Apple to treat me any differently than they'd treat any other customer. It also looks like this made the front page at Digg. Hi Digg. I'm a Digger, too. Welcome. This is, uh, a little more attention than I wanted.

Oh, and for anyone who was wondering, I tried to reverse the polarity on my iPod, as well as modify the navigational deflector on my Powerbook, without any success. I can't find the isolinear optical chips, so I haven't been able to mess with them, yet.

Update Update: I identified this as a DRM issue because the only files that disappeared were ones that had DRM on them. After a day's worth of reflection, however, it's more accurate to identify it as a backup issue -- which has sort of been addressed by the backup your whole library feature in the new version of iTunes. I'm still not crazy about DRM, and I don't like anything that restricts what I can do with what I purchase, but that's an argument that's been run into the ground forever, so on that subject, I'll just say "Abortions for some, tiny American flags for others!"

Happy 40th Birthday, Star Trek

Today, Star Trek turns 40 years old, which means that the Enterprise is totally going to grow a ponytail and start dating younger star ships. Sweet!

As part of my personal celebration of this great show and its history, today I began writing reviews of classic episodes of The Next Generation for TVSquad. They'll run about twice a month, perhaps more frequently if I have time and inspiration. I figured the best place to start would be close to the beginning, so I chose our first hour-long  regular season episode, The Naked Now:

Title: The Naked Now
Original Air Date: October 5, 1987
Written By: John D.F Black and j. Michael Bingham
Directed by: Paul Lynch

Stardate: 41209.2

Synopsis: The Enterprise is on her way to rendezvous with a science vessel called Tsiolkovsky. Tsiolkovsky is collecting data from a supergiant star, which is about to collapse into a white dwarf.

When the Enterprise arrives, the crew discovers that something isn't right on board the Tsiolkovsky, as a woman's voice broadcasts from the ship, "Well, hello, Enterprise, welcome. I hope you have a lot of pretty boys on board, because I'm willing and waiting. In fact, we're having a real blowout here."

A real blowout indeed! The crew hears that great big sucking sound Ross Perot will mention years later during the NAFTA debate, but it takes the crewmembers out into space, instead of jobs out of America.

Geordi, Tasha, Riker and Data make a quick trip to the Tsiolkovsky, where they confirm that the crew had a sexy party which ended with all of them in various stages of undress and death. Geordi examines a sonic shower, and a frozen woman falls into his arms. Geordi doesn't know it, but he's just been infected with the Tsiolokovsky disease. He also doesn't know it, but this is the closest he'll get to holding a woman until season three. Unfortunately, when he finally does, she'll be just as frigid.

In addition to the synopsis, I'll include some memorable dialogue, the obligatory technobabble, and a personal behind the scenes memory:

Behind the Scenes Memory: Paul Lynch, who directed this episode, directed several episodes of TNG over the years. He was an Englishman who was always extraordinarily wound up, red-faced, sweating profusely, and infamous for saying "Energy! Energy! Energy! And, and, and, and, action!" before takes. He did this before every take, regardless of whether the scene actually called for "Energy! Energy! Energy!" or not.

I'll wrap the whole thing up with the bottom line, and a grade:

The Bottom Line: Whether it was the worst episode ever or not probably rested upon the viewer's expectations. Trekkies who were looking for reasons to hate The Next Generation found plenty: the cinematography was very dark and heavy use of wide angles didn't present a very favorable view of the actors. It's essentially a rehash of The Naked Time, and not a very good one (Jonathan Frakes once said that he felt "totally ashamed" by it, and that it was one of the worst things we ever did on TNG. Those are strong words, especially considering episodes like Angel One and Code of Honor) . . . and then there's that whole "annoying smartypants kid who takes over and then helps save the ship" situation.

There's a lot more in my entire story, and I'm actually quite happy with how it came out. It was incredibly fun to watch The Naked Now on DVD while I prepared to do this review, and I'll take any chance I have to spend a bulk of a day at Memory Alpha fact-checking and digging up additional bits of information I may have overlooked or forgotten. It was also quite fun to watch the special features on the Season One DVD, and see the Next Generation that I remember: sets filled with crew and equipment, films of costume fittings, photo shoots, make-up tests, and other things I remember doing. I watched actors hanging around off the set, and interviews with all of us from the late 80s, when the show was new and we were still figuring out who we were and what we were doing. I especially loved (and possibly teared up a little bit) during a segment all about the camaraderie we all felt during production. Everyone looks the way I remember them, and seeing the dressing rooms, make up and production trailers, and art department is the greatest emotional reconnection to those days since I went on Star Trek: The Experience in Dancing Barefoot.

I mentioned earlier this week that I wasn't invited to the "official" 40th anniversary celebration convention. A couple of years ago, I would have been really upset by that, but though I've looked for those emotions this week, they simply aren't there. I think it's partially because there's so much more to my life now than just Star Trek, but mostly because I don't need an "official" platform or convention to celebrate and honor the legacy and memory of such a huge part of my life. I'll have my tribute to Star Trek a little later today.

and your bird can sing

This is a crazy busy week, and it's two days shorter for me, so I'm freaking out a little bit as I attempt to get shit done. In an effort to calm myself down, and escape from the creativity-crushing pressure, a ten minute ramble:

It's the 40th anniversary of Pet Sounds, which is in my top five albums of all-time. A special edition has been released which includes a DVD that's pretty cool. It's neat to listen to the record, read the liner notes, and hear things that I've never heard before, just because I wasn't aware of them.

I've often heard Pet Sounds compared to The Beatles' Revolver, which for some reason I didn't own until yesterday.

Holy. Shit. What an amazing album. I've never liked the song Yellow Submarine, but in the context of this album, it totally works. I am going to hop onto the Intertubes and learn everything I can about this album, so I can fully appreciate it.

There are two sounds that will forever link me to my childhood: The Beatles and Vin Scully.

I wrote a beginner's strategy post at CardSquad for playing a short stack in a multi-table tournament. I'm not sure if it's all that useful, because I'm not a particularly good teacher, and tend to leave out things that I intrinsically know that others may not. I'm interested in feedback (over there would be most useful) from poker players about what I did well and what sucked.

Star Trek turns 40 this week. I was snubbed by the Official Star Trek thingy in Vegas, so I'm working on some of my own ways to celebrate this week. I have some cool ideas that I hope end up being as cool on paper as they are in my head.

The kids started school today. Instead of the usual "thank god they're back in school" relief, I feel a little sad that they're not around all day, every day, and not just because I don't have a good excuse for not getting as much written each day as I want or need to write.

Ryan and I saw Pulse on Sunday night. Wow, what a pile. A good concept, but dreadful direction, over-editing, and horrendous acting did nothing to help a script that never should have gotten past the first pitch meeting. You know you're in trouble when the teenagers in the theater (also known as your target audience) are cracking up during all of the scenes of, uh, character development, because the dialogue is just so lame. I hear the Japanese original is quite good, though, so maybe I'll Netflix that.

Okay, ten minutes are up, so I'm back to work. I'm not especially calmed down, but at least I enjoyed myself for a few minutes.

Thanks for stopping by today; I hope to have some good stuff up here this week.

make me a sandwich

I saw this on boingboing earlier today. It's one of those things that will make some people crack up, and make most people look at those people who are cracking up with confusion and fear.

For some reason, xkcd hasn't been on my radar until today, which is a shame because the artist has some really funny, thoughtful, and insightful cartoons. But it's in bloglines now, for sure.

If you think this comic is as funny as I do, you can buy it on a T-shirt. Sweet.

It's funny. Laugh.

Tonight, I played a little Razz at Poker Stars, and though I made two very expensive second-best hands, I heard a hilarious joke that made the small loss entirely worthwhile.

Courtesy of a player I'll just call "X":

A guy walks into a bar, and orders six shots. The bartender pours them, and he slams them back as fast as he can.

"Woah, buddy!" The bartender says, "why are you drinking so fast?"

"You'd be drinking fast too, if you had what I have," the guy says, gravely.

"Oh," the bartender says, "what do you have?"

"Seventy-five cents."

That totally makes losing 7-6-5-4-A to 7-6-5-3-A when I bricked on 6th and 7th after capping the whole way entirely bearable.

/Okay, not entirely, but it eases the tilt.
//Guinness helps ease the tilt, too.
///Mmmm . . . Guinness
/////slashie

i dance my way, to express that which can not be said!

Meeting went extraordinarily well, and I'd say 5.6 of 8 planets are properly aligned, but details probably won't be forthcoming until sometime next week.

So, as promised threatened earlier, here's a picture of a squirrel with huge nuts:

Have a great weekend, everyone!

in the future there will be robots

Though I was still unable to fall asleep before two-freaking-thirty this morning, I am 95% less cranky than yesterday, mostly due to a lovely dinner with Anne and Ryan (Nolan spent the night with a friend) and some much-needed Vice City mayhem when we got home.

You know, I'd forgotten just how much fun Vice City is, and how rich and alive the game feels when I'm in it. The music and the stories that unfold on the radio are something I enjoyed but didn't really appreciate the first time around; same goes for the story of Tommy Vercetti and all the goons he deals with in Vice City. I also beat that goddamn "blow up the building for Avery" mission in two tries this time, so I turned off the game feeling pretty good about myself, thankyouverymuch.

I have a meeting in an hour to discuss something that could be really, really cool if the planets align and everything works out the way I want . . . something really fantastic that I think everyone who reads my blog (that's you guys, right?) will be excited about, too.

Details -- or at the very least a picture of a squirrel with giant nuts -- later.