Meanderings Archived

11/24/06 - 01/01/07



01/01/07 11:44pm


In The Face!

Welcome to 2007. It's been a pretty busy week, good times all around. Last Thursday I accepted an invitation to a Moustache Party at Playland Skate Center, and it definitely lived up its name. Wilby and the Cecils came with. A cheesy oldschool soundtrack and lots of can beer set all our moustaches ablaze with pleasure. Ridiculous pictures.

The royal we and a bunch of the usual suspects spent a fantastic New Years Eve at the Cecils. Adios 2006, you were quite a long-ass year. I think I'll miss the butt-naked Wednesdays the most.

I've been meaning to mention this since I read about it at Penny Arcade - a playable Firefly universe sounds like a pretty good time. Personally I think I'd choose the black (and blackly comedic) Zen assassin class. Go around asking people what they really thought was going to happen, just before kicking their ass in the blink of an eye.

I took an interesting Wiki-ride the other day: Alger Hiss to Richard Nixon to Detente to The Secret War in Laos to the Hmong people, ending up with a disturbing UN report about the current plight of the Hmong.

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01/01/07 10:46pm

A Prairie Home Companion

A Prairie Home Companion (2006)

Steve Buscemi A Japanese "Cammy" Cosplayer
John Steinbeck Satan

Furthermore: I happen to like the radio series, as cheesy as it can be, and Garrison Keillor is a very funny writer, but the second half of the movie concentrates too heavily on the weak plotline and the whimsy gets a little too bold. All the actors do a great job, with the exception of Lindsay Lohan, who stands out like a sore thumb. Personally I liked Dusty and Lefty the best, especially the bad jokes song, but the Johnson sisters were also very amusing. Still, by the time Tommie Lee Jones shows up it's started to list to port, and the gee-golly ending in the diner made no sense to me at all. Whathaveyou.

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12/30/06 7:36pm

Sunken Treasure

Sunken Treasure: Live in the Pacific Northwest (2006)

Steve Buscemi A Japanese "Cammy" Cosplayer
John Steinbeck Satan

Furthermore: Great, intimate film shot over several performances including material from every stage of Tweedery so far. Spare but satisfying arrangements including a drummer and second guitarist on about half of the tracks, well worth watching for any fan. Unfortunately they miked the audience way too much, and you get plenty of the annoying fratboy hollers, coupled with Tweedy's trademark annoying banter that just makes the situation worse every time - ok, nearly every time. Pretty good.

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12/27/06 12:50pm


Hot Lead Coming Through

My latest army, the Tiefwalders 54th Regiment (the infamous "Red Rifles") of the Imperial Guard, is coming together nicely. I decided to sell my old Cadians and their dated heavy weapons teams together with my Witch Hunters, so some time ago I Ebayed a Catachan army box and a bunch of loose special weapon troops (plasmas, meltas, grenade launchers) to replace them. I also picked up 3 more heavy weapons teams that were bundled with a SM Vindicator in a weird package deal that saved me a ton of money. Using regular Catachan foot troops and a bunch of extra 85mm bases, I was able to double each heavy weapons team into a missile launcher team and a mounted gun team, the latter of which can be switched out at will thanks to the wonder of rare earth magnets! The army box also came with a couple of Sentinels, which I magnetized as well and combined with some of the heavy weapons that came with the teams. I'll probably stick with the lascannons because they’ve already served me well that way a few times.

Of the fifty or so models I have to paint, the Sentinels are completely done and all the foot troops have four of the five initial colors. I also spent a lot of time trying to put little extra touches on the tanks to make them consistent with the rest of the army. There’s still plenty of the primer-white visible, but in my excitement I put my pride aside and used them in a few games over the last couple of weeks against Mucky's Chaos and Mackus' Necrons. They've done fairly well, a few wins, a few losses, but most importantly they've performed just like the Guard should: big tanks, a shitload of men and guns, broadside-of-a-barn BS, and the "ability" to break and run after suffering even the most insignificant losses.

Last night's 2000 point match against the Necrons was a very tough game, in which I lost absolutely everything except for the LR Demolisher but still managed to hold a draw. Because my mission allowed no special rules, most of the Tiefwalder magic was wasted - I've designed them to be an ambush force and normally the entire force minus the tanks infiltrates and a few suicide squads even get to deep strike. I tried to set up a long firing line along my deployment zone edge and get as many shots in as I could. In the end, the Necrons made it far into my battle line and it was pretty much open season on the Guard. Luckily a last minute friendly-fire incident and a Wraith killed by my exploding Basilisk denied Mackus his victory. Suck it bud!

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12/26/06 1:25am

Lady in the Water

Lady in the Water (2006)

Steve Buscemi A Japanese "Cammy" Cosplayer
John Steinbeck Satan

Furthermore: a.k.a. Lady in the Crapper. Shamaladingdong sets it up nicely but it all quickly comes unraveled and becomes an arbitrary, self-indulgent mess. Shamada-hey, are you really going to make us play guess-the-archetype again with this Healer, Chorus whatnot? Bitch please, you have to work a little harder to be able to pull that kind of thing off. I liked it the first time when it was called a plausible gimmick in the hands of a decent storyteller! I can usually appreciate his obsession with the crazy moebius strip at the seam of storytelling and reality, but I just feel like he's beat it to death five times since Unbreakable. About halfway through this sleeper, all the hard work I've put into becoming invested in the characters is squandered as Shalamari chases down the details of some elaborate, slippery fable that neither literally nor metaphorically references any established elements of the main storyline, so... it was enough already.

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12/19/06 8:54pm


How Are You Gentlemen

I made it out for the Saturday portion of the Mills Bachelor experience. The day began with some classic games of sport at Stacey Park, including dodgeball and four-square. Local youts were greatly entertained by the sight of silly grown ass men enjoying diversions that they themselves had abandoned many years prior. Mackus inspired everyone to their own feats of athletic excellence by bravely hurling his crotch in front of not one, not two, but three speeding red dodgeballs. This may have slightly impaired his enjoyment of the group’s later festivities, the details of which shall remain undisclosed at this juncture for the sake of prudency. Good day to you.

I said good day.

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12/18/06 6:18pm


Bullypicks 2006

Every year, a certain sacred tablet is brought down from a certain secret mountaintop and shared with a certain humble writer, in order that the words there inscribed may ring forth through the hills and valleys, over the flatlands, beneath the oceans, and so on. Surprisingly, I’m not talking about Time’s Person of the Year, which, though frequently spoofed as an over-inflated gimmick of dubious real value, is actually quite crucial to our understanding of exactly "wha happen" over the preceding year. For instance, this year’s person, "you," is actually not the most cheap, Shooter Mcgavin-bullshit anyone’s ever heard of, but rather a deliberate and thoughtful choice sure to inspire exceedingly productive navel-gazing for a very long time, or at least until the next issue appears in a month.

Anyway, I was actually referring to the 4th Annual Bullypicks, containing my personal favorite records of the year. Witness:
  1. Midlake – The Trials of Van Occupanther - For a year or so I wondered what had become of my SXSW 2003 megapick, but when I got hold of this little gem... I exhaled. So good. And yeah, maybe you hate the fuckin' Eagles, man, but Midlake infused just enough of their sweet syrup in Occupanther to make each and every track that much brighter and catchier, but without the shameful aftertaste. A classic for the ages.
  2. The Sword – Age of Winters - The real bringing sexy back. Sick sick D&D metal with a big dark sound. So good that I didn't even bother listening to Wolfmother, who I understand is a bit similar. Can't wait for the new shit!
  3. Thom Yorke – The Eraser - A nice booster shot from Thom to tide me over until RH gets busy again.
  4. Built to Spill – You in Reverse - I missed the boat on BTS, or so I hear from every aging hipster I've talked to... Well, two tears in a bucket, this record is fucking awesome.
  5. The Black Angels – Passover - Watch out for Charlie in the trees! Dirty nostalgic rock and roll, strongly defying the old played-out Austin Blueshammer sound that should have died with SRV.
  6. Jason Molina – Let Me Go, Let Me Go, Let Me Go / Magnolia Electric Co. – Fading Trails - Harmony onward friends! Jason earns yet another two-fer. Saw 'em at Emos in the fall, great show but they're always too short for my taste, especially considering his immense catalog. And when will I ever get another solo show? Talk to me Devil, again!
  7. Tom Waits – Orphans - A cantankerous, kick-ass box of tunes that I assume he just dug right out of the ground. I hope this isn't the beginning of the end for the old man - quite a big load to drop all at once!
  8. Tool - 10,000 Days - I'm overlooking the serious shenanigans perpetrated in San Antonio (or not perpetrated as the case may be) to put this on the list. Another cool Tool record with great replay value and their best packaging yet, but I's still waiting to hear about the rescheduling, you facks.
  9. Mastodon – Blood Mountain - Another excellent outing from Mastodon, maintaining their bloody sound signature while innovating at the same time. Hopefully the lack of any puss ballads heretofore means they'll stay fresh and hard for a long while to come.
  10. Lady Sovereign – Public Warning - A completely obnoxious lil' brit female grime rapper who, for some reason, had me from the first listen. Provides a nice soundtrack to time spent looking up silly British subcultures on Wikipedia.

Here’s a few other albums I stumbled into, mostly from years gone by:

The Fitness – Call Me For Together
David Bowie – Low, Heroes, Young Americans, Let’s Dance, Lodger, Aladdin Sane
The Talking Heads – Stop Making Sense
Blind Melon – Live at the Palace
Dan the Automator – Nathaniel Merriweather Presents… Lovage

And I'll also take the time to mention the excellent companion CD that came with the fall issue of Oxford American. I'm still listening to this pretty regularly, looking up other material by the featured artists from time to time. Tough to pick a favorite track but the one I turn up the loudest is Gary Stewart's "Single Again." The fuckin' accent on that guy.

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12/13/06 12:27pm

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (2003)

Steve Buscemi A Japanese "Cammy" Cosplayer
John Steinbeck Satan

Furthermore: Speaking of anime, I just finished off the last disc of this series. It was a faithful and satisfying continuation of the movies, with the same mix of futuristic, black-ops action and spirituality/identity crises in the context of widespread cyberization and artificial intelligence. But just like the movies, oftentimes the episodes get a little too deep and concepts like "copies with no original" don’t really make sense or are perhaps lost in translation. Obviously another real possibility is that I just didn’t get it, but I would argue that a lifetime of science fiction fandom ought to have provided me with at least a modest toolkit for deconstructing these kinds of stories. The first 10 episodes or so are expository and self-contained (my personal preference), and then an overarching plot begins to take shape towards the series' halfway point, concerning a government cover-up, a master hacker called "the Laughing Man," and even Catcher in the Rye. Because the details of the political intrigue between their various government branches can get fairly mundane (just like in the movies, no surprise), I actually lost track of why Section 9 is attacked near the end, but those last few shows were pretty awesome. I think it’s worth seeing if you are a fan, and I plan on watching the second season, or "Gig" as it’s called. Oh, and the theme song is a ridiculous mix of japanese and engrish but it's deadly catchy. I think I'll be calling, calling from the depths of longing for goddamn ever now.

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12/10/06 9:32am

Miami Vice

Miami Vice (2006)

Steve Buscemi A Japanese "Cammy" Cosplayer
John Steinbeck Satan

Furthermore: Everyone's so fucking serious in this movie, it made me a little constipated. I didn't see the film in the theater, and renting it via Netflix got me the 2.5 hr Director's Cut edition. Lonnnnng and boring. Colin Farell is ridiculous. His accent is ridiculous. But he's fuckin Toastmasters compared to Gong Li, whose English lines were so far beyond her, they dubbed her half the time and did a monstrous job of matching the dialogue to her lips. There's one line when she's on the way to Havana with Sonny that surely noone watching it in a theater could have understood. It didn't help that they're in a high speed jetboat at the time. Assuring Sonny that they'll have no problems in Havana, she insists "My Gunbling is Dearborne Incisor." We had to break out the subtitles to solve the mystery: "My cousin is the harbormaster."

Heh. Gunbling. I should make an Anime called Gunbling. It'd be about a group of four ethnically diverse yet Japanese-named youths, plus some kind of cyborg or ghost pet, caught up in a post-nuclear apocalypse metropolis where magic has returned to the land just in time to help the tattered remnants of mankind survive an invasion by a fleet of blind but psychic space vampires. The vampires are trying somehow to suck "Gaia" out of the planet. Maybe one of the kids has become some kind of technowarlock, and his powers help his little group turn the tide against the space vampires. They do battle with the vampires in robotic battle suits, which are also used in gladiator-style combat that happened to be the most popular sport event before the invasion. In the sport, each win brought the victor money and spoils - which they used to further kit their machines out, hence Gunbling. Brilliant. And of course one of the main characters will fight in a machine he dubs "Dearborne Incisor."

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12/10/06 9:26am

Nacho Libre

Nacho Libre (2006)

Steve Buscemi A Japanese "Cammy" Cosplayer
John Steinbeck Satan

Furthermore: Boooooringggggggggggggggggg. Boring like the bean dishes he's cooking up for the orphanage the whole time. I think luchadores are a fascinating phenomenon, intrinsically amusing, and I like Jack Black, too. But the Napoleon magic did not rub off on this one, Jared. So slow and boring. Any stars (or circles, I guess) you earned were just because of the twin masked LPs in the second fight.

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12/06/06 7:42am


The Iraq

Heheheh, check it out, I got my own copy. Heheh. The whole group signed it for me. Gonna sell it on Ebay. Heheheh. Maybe check it out when they make the movie.

Sue Sue, where's the nearest dermatologist's office?

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12/05/06 6:45pm

Stop Making Sense

Stop Making Sense (1984)

Steve Buscemi A Japanese "Cammy" Cosplayer
John Steinbeck Satan

Furthermore: Fun, nasty fun. My brother lent this to me several months ago but I just now watched it for the first time the other day. I say the first time because I've gone back and rewatched most of the songs a few more times since then. Because they are awesome. If you are a die-hard Talking Heads fan, then you've already seen it and I've got no new information for you. But if you are just vaguely appreciative of their greatest hits like I was, do yourself a favor and watch this movie. David Byrne is now on a whole nuther level for me. Well, him and Weymouth, who consistently begs your attention with her ridiculous outfits and groovy bass-dancing. The hype about SMS being one of, if not the best concert film ever made, is real. The best song and stage progression I've ever seen. By the time the backup singers are onstage I was totally hooked.

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12/03/06 1:30am


Deep in Cat Junk

Rummy had a surprise waiting for him in our schefflera the other day - the neighbor's cat. Luckily it was accustomed to regular canine harrassment at its own home and thus quite able to tolerate Rummy's anxious bouncings and sniffings. Anytime he got a little too friendly, the cat would give him the ole left hook to the nose and send him skittering. Apparently the cat came over the fence from just next door but could not remember how to climb the fence to get back into its own yard. Eventually the owner came and got him, bringing an end to yet another thrilling adventure in suburbia.

Another step closer to a digital babelfish - at least one thing I'll probably get to check out in my lifetime. Did I just feel a lil timequake there? If this guy is killed under mysterious, cyborg-involved circumstances, I'll know its time to walk to the nearest city playground, get a good grip on some chain link fence, and try to ride out the impending nuclear war. I'll probably just wither and burn though. That's just how it goes.

Spooky. Exxon-Mobil upside yo whole head, kid. We own this shit. All your children are belong to us.

Interesting debate.

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11/24/06 12:54am


What Can I Say, I Love the Bastards

The new Tom Waits triple-disc, Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, and Bastards is very good. Most of the time I put it on full shuffle, let the various flavors that make up each of the three really mix together and breathe, get a nice kooky melange going. My favorite tracks: from Brawlers, I like "2:19," "Road To Peace," and "Sea Of Love"; from Bawlers, "Long Way Home," "Little Drop Of Poison," "Tell It To Me," and "Down There By The Train"; from Bastards, "What Keeps Mankind Alive," "Books of Moses," "Two Sisters" (I can't stop humming that shit), "Home I'll Never Be," and of course the hilariously depressing "Children's Story." Nothing too far off of the Tom Waits trail, but still very enjoyable. Bastards has several spoken word-type tracks which are dark, crack-up, and full of character as usual.

The new Joanna Newsom, Ys, is definitely less accessible than her debut album. That seems like a ridiculous statement considering how strange The Milk Eyed Mender sounded at first listen. Most people I've talked to either really loved the whole package, or were, in their tasteless decrepitude, so turned off by her voice that even her incredible musicianship on the harp was rendered unlistenable. You can probably guess which camp my tent's pitched in. In any case, the new one is very dense, with ornate orchestral arrangements filling in the space between the harpstrings with color and texture. The five tracks are all on the long side, and each is less self-contained than the songs on the previous album, with the same kind of eerily catchy refrains, but the new ones just take a bit longer to sink in.

This seems too good for me not to have seen it before... I dunno if it's been out for a while: the Bro Rape epidemic.

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11/24/06 12:23am


dropPod

Another monthly DL tourney come and gone; here's some pictures. I came away with best army again, although it did come down to a coinflip to resolve a 3-way tie for the award. I wish they would just go to a 1st/2nd/3rd place voting system to determine the winner, because the grading system ends up in ties almost every time. Even if every person voted for their own for first place, which I doubt they would, the person who got second place should and would theoretically win out. I'd much rather lose decisively to a better painted army than randomly win the prize. There were several other cool armies there, notably the Tyranids and the World Eaters, the latter of whom I fought in the second round and by whom I was utterly slaughtered. I used some of my prize money to get some new dice, replacing these old 2nd edition/Heroquest dice that, though they have served me for a long time, have gathered too much negative warp energy, and the 1's and 2's were starting to pile up at exactly the wrong times. We can't have that. So I got some nice blues to match the Wolves army. I played a couple more games with Mucky over the last few days using the same army, and I really like the Drop Pods. It makes the Wolves much more mobile and tactically flexible, and though the arrival times can be unpredictable, I've packed enough firepower and assault whompers into the squads that even one coming in alone can turn the tide. Results against Mucky's chaos were: crushing victory and draw. Very interesting games.

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