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Richard Dansky's LiveJournal:
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| Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 | | 12:21 am |
Details
The rundown: I'm in Montreal, working on Splinter Cell: Conviction. I am very, very busy. I have very limited net access at work, in part because I'm very, very busy. "Very, very busy" generally precludes a lot of email, fantasy baseball roster shuffles, Facebook Scrabble turns, LJ posts, and pretty much anything else not directly approved by the stubble on Sam Fisher's chin. Apologies if it looks like I'm hermiting, but sometimes the day job becomes the evening job, the weekend job, and the night job, too. | | Sunday, July 5th, 2009 | | 6:09 pm |
More Adventures in Swaptree
I listed another pile of books on Swaptree today, as the pre-travel cleaning frenzy rolls desultorily along. Among the titles now up for grabs: Space Vulture, Diamondback, The Devil's Right Hand, and World's End. The one it wouldn't take? A brand new King James Bible. Seriously. You can't make this stuff up. | | 2:37 pm |
Thoughts on Public Enemies...
....Starring Johnny Depp in a wide array of facial hair, a remarkably lifelike Christian Bale puppet, Marion Cotillard, and the soundtrack from Last of the Mohicans.( A brief and disappointed review )The short version: Meh. Some good sequences, some great hats, some fine acting from actors smaller roles (like Steven Lang as a dead-eyed Texas lawman brought in to hunt Dillinger down). But overall, a disappointment. | | Friday, July 3rd, 2009 | | 4:56 pm |
| | 4:55 pm |
Perils of Background Music
Good writing music is important to me. It helps set the mood, reinforces tone, and drowns out the annoying hum of the tiny overworked fan inside my trusty computer. This can lead, however, to some interestingly incongruous moments when working while jacked into an iPod with a rather...eclectic collection on it. One of these involves looking up at the tail end of a four-hour writing jag on a project (yes, I have more than one of those) that involves large guns putting large holes in large people, and realizing that for the last forty minutes, you've been listening to a series of synth-pop Jacques Brel covers. And then carefully going back and rechecking your work to make sure you haven't suddenly decided to set the whole thing in a cabaret in Bruges. | | Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 | | 11:51 pm |
New Book Review
My review of George MacDonald's Phantastes is up over at Fantasy Magazine. Phantastes is one of those books that laid the groundwork for modern fantasy, a sort of transitional form between the old "fairy story" and the modern fantastic fiction approach, and as such it would be interesting just as an artifact. The fact that MacDonald was devilishly good , well, read the review, and if you like it, you could do a lot worse than to read the book. | | 6:16 pm |
| | 11:22 am |
| | 1:07 am |
| | Monday, June 29th, 2009 | | 4:54 pm |
| | 12:28 am |
God Bless the Carolina Theater
We only stayed for the first half of tonight's Blues Brothers/Animal House double feature, but my oh my, it was worth it. There's nothing quite like seeing 200+ police cars piling on top of each other on the big screen - or hearing Cab Calloway do "Minnie the Moocher" in a room that was built for it. And it helps that every line in that movie is so damn quotable. Good times. | | 12:24 am |
You Should All Be Very Proud Of Me
This weekend, I drove right past the Durham library's book sale and didn't stop. Didn't even slow down...much. And certainly didn't come home with six more cartons of books I don't have a place to shelve. The caveat here is that there's still a steady stream of books coming into the house regardless of whether i plunge into a sale. Between the reviews and the intermittent spattering of reading material provided by Swaptree, there's a nice tall pile of "to-read" that doesn't need any reinforcement. That being said, the thought of scrounging through piles of books for hidden gems usually makes me react like Sonny mainlining Coco-Puffs, so this is a step in the right direction. Either that, or I need more shelves. | | Friday, June 26th, 2009 | | 11:48 pm |
| | 1:08 pm |
Worth Paying Attention To
Somewhere in all the coverage of Iran and Michael Jackson, it might be worth taking a look at what's going on in Honduras. | | 11:19 am |
| | 1:52 am |
CDs up for grabs...
Make me an offer. Offer can include "Will show up at your house to take them off your hands" Highlander: A Celtic Opera, by Roger Bellon and Harlan Collins. Yes, it's an opera. Of Highlander. That Highlander. Beat Around the Bush, by Show of Hands. English folk-rock. This is what happens when you're not careful during your Rush-themed google searches Beloved OST, by Rachel Portman. A wonderful album and great writing music. We just have2 copies. Have a Day CD single, by the Polyphonic Spree. 4 songs, including "Soldier Girl". Just not quite my thing. Light and Day music video DVD, also by the Polyphonic Spree. Still not quite my thing. Real to Reel, Marillion. The original British CD pressing Holidays in Eden, Marillion. See above. Even if It Kills Me, Bread Gone Wry. Buffalo local pop-rock band Global Hits 2002. Don't ask. Just don't ask. | | Thursday, June 25th, 2009 | | 1:05 am |
Attack of the Book Meme
From the estimable Travis Heerman, I got this: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. So here goes. Why? Because it's always fun to talk about books, and to throw some of your favorites out there to see if they ring a bell with anyone else. Yes, I included a couple of series as single entries. It's my list. I can do that if I want, and you know what? I throw double live albums onto Desert Island Disc sets, so nyah. Blue Oyster Cult's ExtraTerrestrial Live! for the win! *ahem* In any case, here are my books, in no particular order: 1. Silverlock, by John Myers Myers 2. The Halloween Tree, by Ray Bradbury 3. The Dunwich Horror and Others, by H.P. Lovecraft 4. Songs of a Dead Dreamer, by Thomas Ligotti 5. The Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien 6. The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis 7. All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque 8. Henry IV, Part I, by William Shakespeare 9. Grant Takes Command, by Bruce Catton 10. From the Jaws of Victory, by Charles Fair 11. In the Midst of Life, by Ambrose Bierce 12. The Pliocene Exile saga, by Julian May 13. Wonderful Life, by Steven Jay Gould 14. The Soul of Baseball, by Joe Posnanski 15. H.P. Lovecraft: Four Decades of Criticism, edited by S.T. Joshi Each of these comes with a story, to be told one of these days. I Henry IV was the play that taught me to love Shakespeare, courtesy of the estimable Professor Sherman Hawkins. The Charles Fair I found tucked into my father's sprawling maze of a basement bookshelf, and it was all the more fascinating for being something I'd discovered on my own. The Bierce was a beaten-up old paperback discovered at a yard sale for no reason I could fathom, and I ended up reading it to literal pieces. You get the idea. Close but no cigar to T.J. Bass' The Godwhale, Dan Simmons' Carrion Comfort, Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, Bill James' Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame? and Noel Carroll's A Philosophy of Horror. Wonderful books, all. They just don't have the stories, too. | | 12:24 am |
Want to See A Bear Riding A Unicycle?
During a recent attack of housecleaning, Melinda and I uncovered a Best Buy gift card of uncertain provenance. While there was nothing we particularly wanted at Best Buy, we did end up stopping in at one that happened to be on our route to something else, and spent a few minutes strolling the DVD selections in vague hopes of finding something we'd actually want to take home. The pickings were slim; we have most of the movies we want, most of the ones we don't have aren't out yet for whatever reason, and the few television series we thought might have multiple rewatch value tended to dwell north of $50 per season. (No, we don't own Supernatural. Nor are we going to.) What we ended up with was Freakazoid!, Season 1. For those of you who don't remember it, Freakazoid! was one of a series of Spielberg-presented postmodernist wackinessfests that came out during the 90s, along with Animaniacs and suchlike. It concerned a teenaged nerd named Dexter who accidentally obtained the ability to morph into a blue-skinned, dada-esque superhero called Freakazoid. Draw the line about halfway between The Creeper and The Tick and you'd have it about right, as our multiply personaed hero tried to navigate high school and supervillainy, not to mention the occasional request by the local cop (voiced by Ed Asner) to go see a bear on a unicycle. Melinda and I were quoting choice bits - "I've been to the Green Gourd. You're better off as hostages" and "If this were an afterschool special, you would have paid a bittersweet price", to name two - all the way out to the car. In short, we loves us some Freakazoid! And it was a great show, and a ton of fun, and I'm glad we've got it. Hell, I had no idea they'd even released it on DVD, as I'd assumed all the cartoon love from that era was being lavished on Pinky & the Brain. At the same time, though, I get an odd feeling that the pleasure of the Freakazoid! DVDs is as much in the discovering and the obtaining as it is in the watching. Am I going to watch them? Absolutely, probably twice, and maybe even sober at some point. But there's something to be said for the giddy, nerdy joy of discovering they actually existed, and, by extension, that there were enough people like me out there to make it worthwhile for someone to make them exist. Buying them is as much an act of fellowship in the Great Postmodern Nerd Tribe as it is a manifestation of the (quite real) desire to take them home and watch them repeatedly. And I find I'm actually OK with that. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go see a bear riding a unicycle. | | Sunday, June 21st, 2009 | | 10:34 pm |
Tried to Watch Merlin Tonight...
...or as we were calling it by the first commercial break, "Ye Small Olde Camelotville". It's exactly the same setup as Smallville - aw-shucks black-haired stranger wanders into town with powers he doesn't understand, local rich kid (Arthur) with powerful father (Uther) is his frenemy, there's a Smokin' Hawt Chick TM they're going to fight over (Morgan) and a sassy, not-quite-as-hot female best friend character (Guinivere) to make all the folks who are a little too involved go "But he should be with hurrrrrrrr!" Or, as fans of Smallville would recognize them, Clark, Lex, Lionel, Lana, and Chloe. We didn't make it past the third commercial break. Look, I don't care how thoroughly the script jumps up and down on the bones of Arthurian myth if the variant choices are made for the sake of a good story. God of War, for example, dug up Edith Hamilton's corpse for the express purpose of kicking it in the teeth, but it was a great use of classical Greek mythological tropes and I loved it to tiny shivering pieces. Merlin, on the other hand, seems to have a fatal case of "Oh, and it would be cool if...", which will no doubt lead to us seeing Robin Hood, ninjas, and possibly that weird little alien from the last season of Dukes of Hazzard popping up sooner or later. Well, someone seeing it. Life's too short. I'm done. | | Saturday, June 20th, 2009 | | 4:21 pm |
Out Goes The History
If you work in a nerd industry, you trace your professional path by marking milestones with free t-shirts. You get t-shirts for projects. You get t-shirts for conferences. You get t-shirts for working for a particular company, or publishing a particular book, or what have you. And because all of these t-shirts are wearable memorabilia, you end up with an overstuffed t-shirt drawer, or two, or six. Because throwing out an old t-shirt isn't just throwing out an old t-shirt or cutting it up for rags. It's making a decision on part of your personal history. Today was the great t-shirt purge. When you have trouble shutting your drawer because it's too over-stuffed with t-shirts, mostly black, then it's time to go through them with fire and sword. And so, out they go. Goodbye, original Tim-Bradstreet-art- Nosferatu t-shirt, with cracked and fading image. Farewell, Quest Game 2 staff t-shirt, made for a younger and thinner man. So long, faded and thinning "Timmy" t-shirt from South Park, a gift from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) learsfool back in a different professional lifetime; worn many times on many continents. So much for conference t-shirts, and half the remaining White Wolf collection, and a couple of the Ubi shirts I'm less than nostalgic about. GDC 2007 stays, the Nightshade Books one from WHC 2007 looks better on melindadansky and thus becomes her property, and the "It's the Great Old Ones, Charlie Brown" t-shirt given to me by the estimable Ed Huang at Arisia 1999 is untouchable. Phillies NL Champions t-shirt from 1993? That goes, and hopefully the memories of Joe Carter's homer with it. Rainbow Six: Blackthorn's a keeper, mainly because it's long sleeved, and not just because it was the first external project I worked on. Island Thunder stays as well; we never got t-shirts for Desert Siege, after all. The WW Gencon shirt from 97, with Andrew Bates' cartoon rendering of the staff - I'm on the left side, second row, holding a crowbar - stays, for now. So does Vlad Canis (Origins 99). Other memories...up for debate. But that's really what they are, memories instead of garments. That's why they've stuck around so long, despite being well out of what could be called "the regular t-shirt rotation". The real memories will linger. And they'll probably fit better, too. |
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