Monthly Archives: July 2008

BE A PATRIOT – BE AN INFORMER!

  • Reading time:2 mins read

So a week ago I got my hard copy of The Slip. Almost pointless, except for posterity, yet it is nice to have on the shelf. And it’s a limited edition. (I’m #48,960/250,000.)

With that in hand, I ordered the rest of the recent NIN stuff I hadn’t bought — Year Zero, Y34RZ3R0REM1X3D, Ghosts I-IV. I did pay for the download of Ghosts, back when; again, though, hard copy. That all arrived today, and I notice he’s using the same packaging for everything now. Which is interesting. He must have gotten the digipaks in bulk.

Furthermore… well, his latest three halos, in order:

  • Halo 25: Two discs. Left disc, music; right disc, Garageband files. (This was just before remix.nin.com.)
  • Halo 26: Two discs, both music.
  • Halo 27: Two discs. Left disc, music; right disc, DVD of rehearsals.

I see a pattern forming. Will his next album come with an Xbox game?

Something else hilarious. Up until With Teeth — maybe and probably starting with the leading single, The Hand That Feeds; I don’t have a copy, because none of the singles after The Perfect Drug have been worth it — you have Trent’s standard, hugely elaborate packaging, plus the standard parental warnings and publisher copyright info and vague threats about unauthorized reproduction and whatever.

With Teeth era: really simple packaging, and huge, fugly, obnoxious FBI warnings all over the back cover, that imply anyone who buys the album is a potential criminal.

That’s not from a NIN album; the With Teeth ones are far uglier. They’re just a painfully incompetent piece of graphic design. On Year Zero, that’s still there, if a bit more polished (so it looks like a negative image of the above) — and so is an even bigger parody warning, right next to it, in the same style.

And the disc uses heat-sensitive paint, so your fingerprints are clearly left behind.

After R3M1X3D, Trent is free from his contract, and the album backs… well, here’s what they say:

©2008 NIN
Manufactured and Distributed
in The United States by
RED Distribution, LLC.
79 Fifth Ave, 15th Fl
NYC10003

And there’s a bar code. Then in the back of the booklet, there’s a note that everything is Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial Share Alike. There’s a link to explain what that means. And again, “©2008 NIN”. And that’s it.

Midnight Mulling Moldy Mulder

  • Reading time:3 mins read

The X-Files‘ time really is past. When I was in high school and college I adored it as I had never adored a piece of pop culture — except maybe the Sega Genesis. Between “Shapes” (the werewolf episode, and the first I saw) and the middle of season eight, I only missed two episodes on first broadcast. Then I just stopped, and have never made up the final season and a half. I really liked the first movie, and I’ve got the full set of action figures. Three Scullies, even, in two outfits! Yet I can’t even watch the original show now.

In tone and pacing and theme, the show is such a 1990s phenomenon. A product of the Clinton era (which the new movie seems to wink at), and an age just before people figured out how to write for television. Yes, it helped to bring this age on; that doesn’t make it part of it. And the new movie is an epilogue to the TV show. It’s shot the same way; it uses the same subtitles; it’s got the same ambling Chris Carter pace and tone and cluttered sense of theme to it.

It works as a movie; it works as an afterthought to the TV show. It is distinctly not a relaunch of the franchise. It’s tired, and it makes no attempt to be current or vital, or even to reach outside its core audience. It’s basically just saying goodbye, and wrapping up some character threads. After an hour and a half of genial if not particularly interesting story, the best part is hidden after the credits. In context especially, it alone is near worth the admission — provided you care for the characters.

I went to the 9:45 showing at the Grand Lake. They had free popcorn, and a balcony! And flirtatious concession stand women. I think there were three other people besides me, and none who stayed through the credits for the Cracker Jack prize. One of the ushers came in toward the end and sat in the rear corner; when it was over and I stood up, he bade me good night. And… it was 11:40 exactly. It’s a twenty-minute walk from the theater. I walked in silence. Though I had my mp3 player, midnight in Oakland is no time for clouded senses.

Quiet is never so loud as when there is no noise.

I think work is progressing…

Purple Clothes

  • Reading time:2 mins read

On that note, I have recently begun to dress myself. That is to say, as I near twenty-first century adulthood (at thirty) I have begun to actively seek clothing that I think will flatter me — compared with wearing whatever may fall into my possession. This has mostly come out of the sudden realization that I am an attractive individual. Or as someone recently described me, “tall, dark, and very handsome”. Not at all photogenic, to be certain. It’s like a rock concert; you have to be there. Just add a dash of the confidence of ownership, and bingo. Instant sexpot.

I’m calling my new look “glam fop”. I hope it doesn’t catch on, as I don’t often get this creative anymore.*

These days, half my mind is taken up with angst about things I can’t possibly change and another quarter with hope that I can change them anyway. It seems the only way around that is to say to hell with everyone. If I’ve only got so much energy, I might as well focus on bringing myself as much joy as I can. I’m so unused to paying active attention to what I want, and what I need. For me, life is like standing up after several hours of frustrating work and realizing you’ve had to pee since two o’clock, and that’s what’s been making you so cranky. Then finding the toilet is backed up.

At least now I look gorgeous while I’m doing it.

*: I’m strongly in the market for a pocket watch with a built-in mp3 player. I’d call it an “iFob”.

Portrait of Rumination

  • Reading time:2 mins read

You know, having initially dismissing Portrait of Ruin — I only played for maybe half an hour before rejecting it; hadn’t played it in a year and a half — I went back to it the other day. And… it’s actually pretty good, once you’re past some of the initial tedium. Thanks to Mr. Koshiro, the music is the best since Harmony of Dissonance. It controls really, really well. The animation is pretty good, actually. A lot of the enemies are redrawn — though there’s a big disparity in style between the new ones and the recycled ones. The new ones all look like they’re by the Circle of the Moon guys, and the old ones are so clearly Sorrow carry-overs.

There is actual, legitimate level design in places — which is novel. More of it than in Dawn of Sorrow, in fact! It’s just, 1/3 of the real level design in DoS was right at the start, whereas in PoR it doesn’t come in for a couple of hours. (Until then it’s a combination of tutorial and convoluted system introduction, against monsters-on-shelves design.)

And it does actually feel different enough as not to just feel like another GBA/DS Castlevania — which is the fate suffered by Dawn of Sorrow.

I’d say this is definitely not the worst handheld Igavania. Harmony and Aria still compete for the best; Harmony for its feeling and Aria for its reason. I’d have to play some more, but I think I’m now enjoying this about as much as Circle of the Moon…

The Threefold Plot

  • Reading time:3 mins read

So at the end of it all, “Turn Left” is pretty clearly the first fifty minutes of a three-hour epic. Though that wasn’t obvious at the time, now there should be no question. Thing is, it serves not only as the setup for Donna’s character arc; in story terms it serves to set up both the nature and the significance of the events to follow over the next 115 minutes. Without it, the final two episodes are just so much aimless bluster.

There’s all the foreshadowing of the supporting cast’s fates, were Donna not involved. Rose’s story is a straight through-line — she spends “Turn Left” righting events so she can get straight to work on the timeline in “The Stolen Earth”. They’ve all gone wrong because Donna wasn’t there to help. Heck, Rose tells her right off that she’s going to die — and that she isn’t talking about in the alternate world (where she is incidentally going to die, however). She means the version of her who travels with the Doctor — as becomes more clear in retrospect, especially with Donna’s meltdown about how she can’t die, because she was going to travel with the Doctor forever.

Ultimately, the biggest reason to connect it is that it gives us a starting place. It shows us who Donna was, and why she was as she was; how little support she got from anyone, least of all Sylvia. And then, the story comes full circle. In the first fifty minutes we saw what she might have been, what she was capable of even if she had never met the Doctor, if only someone had believed in her. Then she’s returned to that situation, and Sylvia is given a second chance to do right by her.

The point of the story is basically that the proposal in “Turn Left” is fulfilled. The Donna whom we leave is a Donna who has in effect turned right. Yet the distinction has been pointed out to all concerned parties. The Doctor put a big bullet point on it. If you think she was better with me, he tells Sylvia, then take care of her, dammit. That’s just who she is, if you’ll allow it. And for such an immense story to basically be about that… As a writer Davies really hammers on this issue of faith, doesn’t he. Though it’s always humanist; about how you treat others.

It’s just so much better and more complete a story, when you take it in full. Even the pacing makes more sense that way, with it getting more and more frenetic as it builds, keeping up the tension, keeping things from seeming like they’re dragging after you’ve been sitting there for a couple of hours already.

As a three-parter, I’ve got to say it has to be the most incredible epic the show has ever attempted — just on an emotional level, never mind the spectacle and sinks (and plungers). The scope is nothing to sniff at, of course. Yet without that episode… it’s just so much wank. There’s no anchor. It all seems so much smaller and more confused.