Another Reason that Fall Out Boy is Not Ok

"Our job is to put out records and tour and make music. What are we gonna do? Sit at the plant and watch everybody? Some guy working minimum wage, why would he care how it affects us? It's a multi-pronged thing.

This could be the worst leak in the history in music, if you think that every year computers, iPod, internet music grows exponentially and we're probably one of the biggest bands in rock music on the internet."

So says Pete Wentz, lead singer of Fall Out Boy and sod extraordinaire, regarding the recent leaking of the band's new album. Fine, fine. So your album leaked. I understand being upset. But to go on a masturbatory, ego-maniacal tantrum, degrading the people who actually work and live off minimum wage (which heretofore Wentz regarded as pure legend, before the dirty curs backstabbed him), is a bit much. I bet this guy pirated music back when Napster was free, and I bet he didn't give a shit. But then he had to climb his high throne of pop-punkdom and pull this garbage. Get over yourself, seriously. If you were mature about the situation, you first wouldn't whine to the internet who is currently enjoying your new album (let me make it clear that I am one of the people who is waiting to buy the album before pissing on it; I don't want to ruin my computer otherwise.). Second, you wouldn't point fingers, and you wouldn't aggrandize your worthless, plastic (s)hitfactory of a band in the process. It might make you feel better, but it's turned previously benign nonlisteners such as myself into sarcastic haters, it's probably alienated some fans, and did I mention it made you look like a total rotter? I understand now the title of your b-sides collection, My Tongue is the B-Side to My Heart. Such must be easily possible when your head is located that far up your ass.

Rolling Stone wrote an amusing article on this topic as well, about the 5 Stages of Post-Album Leak Grief. Check it out:

http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2007/01/26/pete-wentz-confronts-the-five-stages-of-post-album-leak-grief/

Until next time, friends.

Tea Partay

So this is the real reason I moved to New England. These are my people.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=PTU2He2BIc0

Re: the iPhone

Turns out the iPhone is immensely more useful than currently advertised.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xXNoB3t8vM

UNRELATED: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHzdsFiBbFc

Thought Dexter would like this, for more Ghostbusters-... bullshit.

From the webcomic 'XKCD.' Good stuff.

Crank

Have you ever thought about doing cocaine? Don't watch Requiem for a Dream or the Basketball Diaries to sway yourself out of it. No, instead rent the movie Crank, then use that as a base (heheh) from which to make your opinion. Friends, I have just witnessed cocaine in cinematic form.

You may know the premise: hitman is injected with a drug and must fight, fuck, and ingest numerous drugs in order to keep his adrenaline running and thus stay alive. Sounds ludicrous. And indeed it is. But perhaps even more ludicrous is just how much further over the top the filmmakers push this. My expectations were for this movie to be a dumb, albeit quirky action movie. Well, there is no doubt about it, this movie is dumb. And it is full of buckets of glorious, nay even unnecessary ultra - violence. But making the deal that much sweeter and really defining the movie is just the string of absurdities that construct the plot. I mean, it pretty much opens with Jason Statham smashing his plasma television, and five minutes later he's driven through a shopping mall, there has already been a gratuitous boob shot (of which there are tons in this movie - including a few of Amy Smart's), and you're still not entirely sure what's going on. You're completely addicted by that point. Even if you hated the movie and wanted to stop it, you couldn't without professional help. And that's not even the start of it. The film moves at a breathless pace, hardly ever giving you time to rest, layering increasingly ridiculous scenes one on top of another. The direction is inventive, hallucinogenic, and nearly seizure-inducing. By the conclusion, you feel strung out, your teeth itch, and your nose may even be bleeding. Somehow you become Jason Statham. Let me put it this way: Remember that scene in Ong Bak where he knees that guy on the motorcycle in the head and his helmet visor shatters, then the motorcycle crashes into oil barrels and explodes? Remember that part in Boondock Saints where the cat gets shot? Or how about that part when Amanda Peet struts around topless in The Whole Nine Yards? Remember how you felt watching those scenes? Now, just imagine feeling that way for an entire movie. Thus is the essence of Crank. Check it out, but don't watch it with your girlfriend or any minority - the mysogyny and racial stereotypes are pretty thick, yet present in such an obtuse manner that it may be laughable for everyone.

Now If They'd Only Hunt Dagon...

This should be especially delectible for Mr. Marx.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=xXX_HrgX0LQ

The Ghostbusters have to track down the Nekronomikon and fight Cathulhu at Coney Island! WOOOOOOOO!

A few news items + opinions on podcasting

So, Barack Obama today updated his webpage with the announcement that he has formed a Presidential Exploratory Committee- this means he's going to be listening to his supporters and people he meets on tour to decide what his platform would be should he decide to run for President. So, this doesn't mean that he is running- yet- but it does mean that it's very possible. Very. The fact that he is going through this motion at all tells me he isn't stooping to big business or some puppetmaster. Of course, everything remains to be seen- but the man used to be an lawyer of, and then proceeded to teach, Constitutional Law- and I'm pretty sure that this is what everyone hated about Bush. He flogged the fuck out of the Constitution these past six years, and our only alternatives so far have been politicians who play weak opposite games with Bush. I'd vote for him over McCain, easily. God, just think- a woman and a black man may be running for President of the United States soon! This will be a test of how forward thinking we are- though the fact that Bush was reelected is a bit discouraging. I've been subscribing to his podcast, and while I don't agree with everything he has said so far on it, and while the fact that he voted YES for the Patriot Act is scary, I really like what he has had to say. Before this I sort of viewed him as a popstar of politics, but I've begun to take him seriously. Anyway, here is the link to his site:

www.barackobama.com

Speaking of podcasts, I love them. Fuck satellite radio- I get my news from Democracy Now! and the Diggnation podcast, and everything that satellite radio should have, podcasts provide. Hell, most of G4 is posted free for the public from their site. Now, podcasting isn't just for iTunes- there are other great clients for this stuff. My favorite other service for podcast subscriptions so far has been 'Democracy TV'- alot of YouTube is put out on there, at better quality in non-Flash format. Anyway, I've compiled a short list of iTunes store and non-iTunes store available podcasts for you to check out whenever:

-Channel Frederator-
You may remember seeing Frederator logos at the end of alot of Nickelodeon cartoons- this podcast is a full screen video podcast that showcases cartoons from art schools and up-and-coming talent in the animation industry. Pretty awesome, and free, and nice to stick on your portable player.

-This American Life-
Ira Glass' Radio broadcast- one of the last good things about radio- is frequently updated in podcast form. It features short fiction and first-person opinion pieces that deal, well, with America today. It's fucking great. It's only in Chicago. You should listen to it from there.

-Escape Pod and Pseudopod-
Both of these podcasts are put out by the same editors, and both are fucking awesome. Escape Pod is a science fiction podcast of various programs that range from audio readings of short SF stories to reader reviews of the latest science fiction films. It is well into it's 80th episode, and for the most part the core readings- usually an hour long- are updated every week. Pseudopod is younger, as it has been out for only a few months, but so far it's pretty good. The host of the show isn't as good, I think, as Escape Pods- the amazing Stephen Eley- but I have high hopes. It's like listening to Old Time Radio, but a bit less pulp and no static quality.

-Old Time Radio Suspense-
This is awesome- I've discovered alot of strange stuff on here, and alot of awesome stuff I do know. There have been lots of The Shadow episodes, Batman radio dramas, but also really pulpy police dramas and sci fi from the era that boggles the mind.

-Zencast-
A bunch of people talking about Buddhist Dharma. Nice for those of us that try to follow the Buddha.

-MacBreak (video)-
This basically updates you on all the indie developing and nifty features of Mac OS X, as well as news for it. If you own a Mac, and want more to do with it or want to know how to use it better, it's nice to browse through and download some stuff from time to time.

-1UP.com Podcasts-
I've read EGM for a long time because they are the least unbiased, most intelligent video game mag out there. I've been watching 'The 1UP Show' and '1UP.com- Retronauts' for a month or so now, and I really like it. The 1UP show is a full-screen video podcast that acts as an opinion forum shot like a reality show, among various editors and freelance writers for the magazines that Ziff Davis Media puts out. Retronauts is just about old games- but also pretty good insight into the industry, as it has so far proven to be more of an analysis of what is "changing" in the industry. With all the weird crap in consoles now, it's informative.

-The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson-
If you have trouble getting through Emerson, listen to someone read the essays. There are alot up now, and for some reason listening to someone speak speeches just works better.

-Various Open-Source Audobooks-
With the advent of open-source knowledge such as Project Gutenburg and Wikipedia comes fiction in the public domain. I'm about five chapters into Mary Shelley's Frankenstein on here, and there are plenty more.

Thats enough blogging. Carlo, signing out.

Too Good to Be True

They made another Juggernaut video. And it's amazing.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5423422114217396746&q=juggment+day

So amazing, in fact, it's a two-parter. Here's the other half:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6858222096760602927&q=juggment+day

Rejoice.

Your Robot Chicken Zen

http://moviesandmusic.wordpress.com/2007/01/12/what-really-happened-after-the-death-star-blew-up/

I severely recommend that everyone check out this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6i2WRreARo . It just gets me even more pumped about Ghostrider. Honestly.

As long as Apple doesn't want me to put their products inside of me

You knew it would have to happen sometime. The iPhone is pretty much the culmination of everything. And it's too damn expensive. Sigh.

http://www.apple.com/iphone/

So after my Zelda post, I am wondering: how do we do jump-cuts?

Dayum

This isn't really intellectual or geeky by any means, and I may be chastised later for it, but god damn Florida beat the shit out of Ohio State. Christ that was silly. I generally have to hate those gators, but for the first and only time in my life I gladly clap my hands together in a rather crude interpertation of an alligator biting something. Suck it Sam Leatherberry and your god damned Buckeyes. I hope you cry yourself to sleep tonight.

So speaking of the apocalypse...

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/08/austin.birds.ap/index.html

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/08/nyc.odor/index.html


And even the Canadians are worried: http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Science/2007/01/08/3236029-sun.html

Who wants to move to the countryside and smoke pot with Michael Caine? Anyone?

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

Until Twilight Princess, I wasn't really sure why The Legend of Zelda is Nintendo's favored franchise, on a worldwide scale.

I know the story behind the original NES game- a ground-up, revolutionary quest based on game director Shigeru Miyamoto's own boyhood of wandering through rural Japan, and collecting animals and discovering grottoes. What he imagined became reality in this game of his. It had the first save feature, hours of gameplay, and when you were done there was a whole new map to explore.

But games changed, became less accessible, and more specialized. Ocarina was good for this reason. In a time when games were really, really complicated and graphics were so horrendous that imagination was asked for to interpret most of the polygons displayed, Ocarina was good in the same way Half-Life 1 was- it progressed story through exploration because unless you wanted your player to sit through CG movies for cutscenes, you couldn't make affordable systems that didn't look like shit. Noone was ever attached to the worlds of Final Fantasy. I miss, however, running about in Hyrule and Black Mesa. Wind Waker, the next "new" Zelda console title that wasn't based off of the Ocarina engine, replaced wandering with boat action. I was fine with this- Nintendo is treating the Wind Waker storyline almost like a spin-off of Zelda- a DS sequel is due out next year, where sailing involves the stylus. As Star Fox Armada used the stylus almost as good as, say, Elite Beat Agents, I trust it'll turn out okay. Nonetheless, Shadow of the Colossus or Okami captured what Wind Waker didn't- the vastness of a world that is at your fingertips. And consumers loved Ocarina. I was sort of afraid that Twilight Princess would be an expanded Ocarina of Time. By today's standards, that is some stale shit.

The first thing I noticed was the graphics. Let's get this part out of the way, because it is the worst part about this game. Zelda: TP is a Gamecube game, and so it relies on some terrific lighting and filter effects, the crutch of last generation's games. The textures in some parts of the game are beautiful, but other times look, literally, like shit. SHIT. I found myself climbing a wall at one point that looked somewhat like diarrhea. I played this game on the Wii, and it did sharpen the graphics quite a bit- the good Doctor Lecithin will recall what the Wii can do for GC games- as compared to the original version. This may have somewhat aggrevated the problem. Recall the blurry PS2 Metal Gears- using filter effects and low-res to hide the already aging graphic chips in that system, and think of MGS2 or 3 in higher definition. Ouch.

There are two major things- non-Zelda geek things- that make this game great, and which will set an example for every game from now on, as Ocarina tried to do.

The first is something that has been very lacking the past few years in gaming, and what makes the DS so good. This is where Ubi Soft shooters fail. This is where Oblivion fails. This is even where popular Massively Multiplayer games fail. Zelda is the most well-designed game I have EVER played. EVER. Better than Ocarina, better than Half-Life 2, better than Metal Gear 3. It is not without its glitches (I can see the background renders of Death Mountain through mist on my copy) or even without strange physics hiccups. It is simply the fact that this game does not make you feel like you are in a random, "real" world, or that you are stuck in a series of "rooms" passed off as explorable areas. It makes you feel like you are in a world designed for you. You always have everything you need. I never found myself backtracking- even tedious collecting quests were made fun because they involved mini-games or events that were never the same over and over- the game is never boring, because it is always changing. Whether you are experimenting with one of the many "vehicles" in the game (cleverly disguised as items, your horse, or other things which are never toted as a major game feature but simply part of the world), snowboarding, or playing an an on-rails shooting segment, you are always surprised by the way it is designed. This game is tough- if you play it without a guide, I imagine the game to be 70 to 80 hours long- but that makes this Zelda better. Perhaps the greatest microimprovement within the game engine is the fact that I only had to solve two block puzzles. Two. And they were fun because I didn't have to do it over and over again. In fact, perhaps Zelda took a hint from other design ideas like Half-Life's and Resident Evil 4- puzzles are having to do with your environment. For the first time, even, there are enemies which require you to think and strategize instead of slashing at them- without advanced AI promises that never really work on contemporary systems. You always have what you need in Zelda. Always.

The second has to do with the Wii Remote. From what I can gather about other people playing the Wii- take Dr. Lecithin's Dad, for example- the controller not only expands what you can do with game control, but it simplifies it and makes it ten times more accessible. My girlfriend is a PC gamer, and the Wiimote was pick-up-and-play simple on a ten-to-fifteen minute learning curve. While you may think that this detracts from the pixel-perfect game design of the past, then I ask you- play Zelda and then try to snipe something on another game. Shooting just doesn't feel right on any other controller now, except for maybe a mouse. This is because the PC keyboard and mouse combination is probably the parent of the Wiimote and Nunchuck- just changed a little bit, the Nunchuk substituting for the good old "WSAD" controls, and the Wiimote a fancy-ass mouse, with motion sensitivity on the side for more expandion. Perhaps that is why the Wiimote is so familiar on a game like Zelda- it's like you don't feel bogged down by controller framing anymore, or even keyboards for that matter. Whether or not developers will be able to think inside of three dimensional motion with a controller for shooters is another thng entirely. The Wii shows no signs of flopping, however- and with a price drop on the horizon in Summer (rumored) the system will soon be almost as cheap as the previous generation. Let's hope that by then Nintendo can push five-year old hardware out of the door faster.

There is a reason why Nintendo is still around. Every now and then, you buy one of their games, and it doesn't rip you off. Zelda never does.

Carlo out.

Children of Men

There are movies you see, and then there are movies you experience. Children of Men falls into the latter category. Rarely have I been so gripped by a film. Intense is the best way I can describe this movie, which lives up entirely to the trailer that sent chills up the spines of more than a few people I know. The premise of the plot could be hammed up or made entirely unbelievable at the hands of any lesser director, but Alfonso Cuaron manages to make it not only believable, but scarily so. The fact that mankind cannot reproduce is but a part of the apocalyptic world the film captures; the elements that complete the frightening image are realistic extensions of things that already exist today: totalitarian governments, xenophobia, a society dependent on prescription solutions, and pollution. Seeing this movie, most people would probably agree with me that it makes its dark interpretation of the future not only plausible, but probable even. That the camera does not budge for many gruesome scenes, only wobbling a bit as if it were in the unsteady arms of a documentarian, adds to the grit and power of the experience. Imagine then when the viewer is thrust in the midst of frankly terrifying action scenes, following a character in an unbroken shot for several minutes. Several of these occur throughout the film, and they are the crowning moments of Children of Men. The film's climax amidst a war zone leaves one breathless, to say the least. As the movie ended, many people in the theatre remained sitting, commenting that they needed a moment just to take-in what they had seen, to recover from it. I was certainly among these people. It's the kind of film that makes you want a cigarette when it's all over, even if you don't smoke. Highly recommended, just know what you are getting into.

So, in lieu of next to no exciting geek news, I did find this for myself and Mr. Dexter Green here:

http://www.lifehacker.com/software/language/learn-a-language-with-podcasts-225703.php

I have been a fan of the podcast for a long time, since before I got the MacBook at the beginning of last summer. It's a form of media that has been around just long enough and with just enough effort by communities surrounding it to be a very useful resource, not far removed from YouTube but with better ways to sift through the shit you don't care about.

Anyway, I'm particularly excited at finding a free audio French primer for my French class, whcih starts next week...

Sonny and Groovy

Nicccce..... Well apparently David Berkowitz, better known as the Son of Sam killer, is now a reformed Christian! Woooo! Strike another up on that list of desirable elements roaming the faith. If there ever was a selling factor for any religion it would be the dude that thought the satan dog told him to shoot a bunch of people. For information on various topics such as "the light" and "redemption" check out his official site! www.forgivenforlife.com Some how I don't think that name is very popular among New Yorkers.

FIRST!!!11 Here are da goods!