it's official: i have no taste

There's no question anymore. Earlier, I was yacking about how I had stubbornly insisted that I'd watch the "Dukes of Hazzard" movie before I'd see "March of the Penguins." Well, as of this weekend, I finally sat down and watched both.

And you know what? This is how I ended up rating them both on Netflix:



That's right, bitches. 4 stars for both. They're the same in my book and I admit that probably removes me from anyone's movie recommendation list.

But here's the deal ... "Penguins" is good. Don't get me wrong. But to me, it ended really abruptly. The young penguins jump into the water and that's the end. Am I twisted because I wanted to see some of them have to swim for their lives from the jaws of a waiting seal? Probably. But, I knew that it's something that happens. To me, the story of survival for these things just wasn't quite done yet. Some of them don't make it past that first jump. But, that wasn't in the film and it strangely left me feeling like the end of the movie was a bit rushed and a bit glorified. So, because that's how it ended up making me feel, it gets 4 stars instead of the full 5.

And Dukes of Hazzard ... Well, to be honest, it's not that bad. In fact, it's actually one of the most faithful TV-to-movie translations I think I've ever seen. Charlie's Angels and Starsky & Hutch were radically different. The Dukes, however, was pretty dead on. Insane car chases, exploding arrow-shooting, moonshine running, The General Lee, and freeze frame moments where goofy narration kicks in - all of it is actually done really faithfully to the original show.

And I'll admit it, I liked the show a lot when I was a kid. So, to me, it was like watching a pretty decent tribute to a show I remember fondly. Admittedly, the acting in the original show is much better (Jessica Simpson was really god awful). But I expected total crap and was pleasantly surprised. Giving it 3 stars seemed to say "I was neutral on this." And in the end, I wasn't. So, I gave it 4 stars. Believe me, I've seen much worse.

Anyway, feel free to never ask me for a movie recommendation. My feelings won't be hurt.

totally flattered

Like I said, it was an eventful weekend. Besides camping with vampires, one of the other things that happened was that I got an email from Bart Klepka. Bart is an Australian electronic musician, a gamer, and apparently also a fan of Republic Commando.

Whoever said "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" clearly never had his music remixed. Bart emailed me this weekend to let me know that he had completed a remix of some of my original music from Republic Commando into a new psytrance track called "Vode An (Son Kote Mix)."

First off, it sounds awesome. Bart did a great job giving the Clones a more modern edge than I was ever able to do in the game. I really enjoyed how he took some of the individual elements off of the RC PC game disc and reinterpreted them here for this track. Second of all, how totally flattering is it to have someone say "Hey, you're stuff inspired me to make something new." That's awesome. So frequently composers write music, toss it out in the arena of general consumption, and then never hear anything back. It's really nice to get such nice feedback like this. So, thank you, Bart. It's much appreciated.

Anyway, if you're interested in hearing some great Star Wars psytrance, head on over to Bart's video game remixes page and check out the "Vode An (Son Kote Mix)."

into the woods (and no, it's not more sondheim)

Eventful weekend. The biggest event was our big camping trip to Big Basin Saturday morning. Manda and I joined a handful of people from her work on a night out under the redwoods. For Amanda and I, it was a return to something we did within the first few months of having known each other. Early on in our relationship, we went camping in Big Basin for a week and had a really wonderful time. This time, it was only for one night and ... well, it wasn't quite as wonderful as our last visit.

You see, in the mountains, it's really freakin' cold. No, really. It's true. I know; I was shocked too. Actually, I feel pretty stupid for not having realized just how cold it would be. "We didn't sleep well and I'm tired" is pretty much how the whole story ends. It's not too fascinating of a story, to be honest:

Some friends camped in the woods. It was cold. There were vampires. We came home.

THE END

And yes, I just said that there were vampires. Apparently, our country is in more dire need of Vampire Hunters than even teachers these days. You see, when you pull up to the main Ranger Station of Big Basin, there is a public bulletin board where people can post messages for others joining them letting them know where they are. So, it's full of things like "MARNY & MIKE - WE'RE IN HUCKLEBERRY SPOT #101", etc. However, the very first one when we arrived read:

VAMPIRES

WE'RE AT 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70

So, here's what we learned camping this weekend: apparently Vampires these days feel completely comfortable advertising where they're located and Vampires don't seem to be able to use a hyphen to say "61-70" when enumerating things.

the end of craziness

Next week is E3. That means that everything for E3 is almost done. As always, I'm currently just fielding 11th hour requests.

As of tonight, I will finish the last of the work needed from me. I can't wait to have this stuff out of my (admittedly very short) hair. I think LucasArts is going to have a great showing this year and people are going to be in for some very cool stuff from us.

And, of course, as of next week, I can finally talk about some of the stuff I've been doing for the last few months. : )

Just need to finish stuff up now.

focus grouping

Anxious for feedback as they are, Techno Squirrels, my new favorite electronic artists, are currently uploading their latest track to an iDisk for me to check out and give feedback on.

As they were hanging up the phone from their call for feedback, I heard Lisa tell Ry "Make sure you tell him that - no matter what - he says something nice about it first."

So, in light of that, I can assure you that the new track is like rainbow kittens and unquestionably smells like summer love. I recommend it highly.

EDIT:

Actually, having now heard the track, I can say with all sincerity that it is like rainbow kittens and summer love. It's a beautiful new track and I'm dying to hear the final mix. Ry and Lisa are really incredibly gifted electronic musicians and if you haven't heard any of their stuff, go check it out right now. You won't be disappointed. So, nice work, guys.

I'm excited and annoyed by the fact that you've teased me with the mention of two other new tracks that aren't ready to be heard yet. Can't wait to have the entire album.

fun diversion

I found an online South Park character generator.

It's amusing. Feel free to post links in the comments to your own characters if you want.

tell that to Montana

Yesterday was the Day Without Immigrants day of protests across the country or, as the retahded anchor man on the news labeled it last night, the Day Without Emigrants(idiot). Word was that protests all around the country were going to be happening, so I figured that I'd see some people lined up here or there, maybe a march or two. Maybe a sign or a flyer or something?

I didn't. According to the news, it's because everyone was massing in the center of the City - which I'm nowhere near. Still, that said, I did see something related to the day of protests. Problem is, it was someone protesting the protesters.

It was a plane trailing a long banner that read:

AMERICA
IS FULL.COM WAKE UP AMERICA CLOSE THE BORDERS

That's right. Apparently the disgusting truth of it all is that the big success of the day yesterday was bigotry through airpower. I was bummed. It's really a shame to see that so many people were working so hard to get out what they saw as an important message and then one jerk with some money to blow turned the skies above San Francisco into his own personal hate speech forum.

And they had the jerk behind americaisfull.com on the news last night and apparently he's from New York. You know what? Maybe New York is full, but I can think of plenty of places that have tons of available land.

AND and, this is all just a bullshit issue anyway. I mean, seriously, why doesn't everyone see this as the big smoke screen issue that it is? Nothing changed with the immigration policies in the US over the last few years to warrant this. Sure, new legislation was proposed, but nothing happened yet. Nothing suddenly was any better or any worse for anyone than it was a year ago. The only thing that changed was a giant quagmire in Iraq that got worse and worse until someone decided that we should stop paying attention to the giant suckhole nation building failure we created and bitch instead about people who pick our fruit for less money than morally makes any sense.

I guess that's just my own sense of things, though. Still, it sucked to see that plane flying around yesterday. It really makes me admire the fact that John Lennon used to just put up billboards with nice messages on them for a change.

I wonder how much a "SHUT UP, YOU BIGOTED JERK" sign would be?

i can cross this off of my life's to-do list

I had quite an adventure this weekend. Manda and I accompanied her mom up to the outskirts of Yosemite where her mom has a small cabin/house/mountain retreat that she's been fixing up for a while.

After the long day Friday, I was looking forward to a lot of sleep and some R & R in the great wide north. Turns out, I got lots of sleep and shoveled gravel. Not that I'm complaining. I really had a nice time. A little hard labor is good for a person. Anyway, that wasn't the adventure, though.

Saturday night, we were going out to celebrate the 71st birthday of Manda's mom's neighbor with a big group of people. Between dinner and dessert, we stopped back at Manda's mom's. That's when I decided to excuse myself upstairs and use the Little Composer's room.

Well, as soon as I closed the door to the bathroom, I noticed some shadows flying around on the far wall. I thought "Oh, a moth must be flying around the lightbulb." and looked quickly at the bulb to see what was going on.

No moth. So, confused, I then looked at the shadows. No shadows. Instead, it was a bat. Now, never having been closed in a small room with a flying rodent before, I'm not ashamed to say that it gave me a pretty serious case of the willies. With a polite "how do you do?" I excused myself from the bathroom and let everyone else know what was going on.

Needless to say, no one was too thrilled. I don't really remember the next sequence of events, but somehow I ended up back in the enclosed bathroom armed with a large dust wand and the screen to the bathroom window as I tried to corral the thing outside.

Actual photo:



We went back and forth all over the place for a while. He hung from the ceiling, the walls, the floor (how do you hang from the floor? he did it), my sweater ... Eventually he ended up hanging from my window screen shield. With him on it, I could finally just reposition the thing back in the window and he flew away.

It was fun. I recommend wrestling with a bat to all my friends.

or ... you know ... early morning

So, sometimes things get so late that they're early.

Again, take last night for instance.

Turns out the Big Emergency Thing was running behind. As such, the expected delivery time for stuff to us here in the Audio Department kept getting later, and later, and later. Finally, at 8 PM we were told to go home. They'd call us around 11 PM with an important decision: if there was no call, that meant stay home. If there was a call, that meant I had to head into the office around 5 AM to start the work of the Audio Cavalry.

Well, 11 PM came and no call. Midnight came and no call. I went to bed. The thing is, I kept getting freaked out during the night. I woke up at 2 to make sure no one had called my cell (no one had). I then woke up at 4 to check again (still no call).

But at 5:30 on the dot, my cell phone rang. So, the Big Emergency Thing is now done with a whopping 15 minutes to spare and I'm trying to unwind right now from the stress of the morning. I can feel myself coming down from the adrenaline rush of the past few hours. I need to go get some breakfast and ...

I just realized that I forgot to pack my lunch. That sucks. Amanda tried to remind me, too. Shit. Okay, it's off to the Dining Commons for Meal 1.

late night

If there's a particularly ugly period of time each year that reoccurs across the Games industry, it's March through May. Mid-May is when the Electronic Entertainment Expo (or E3 as it's commonly called) violently jumps up into the face of Retailers, Buyers, and Gaming Press alike with a vicious barrage of lights, sound, and scantily clad booth babes (something the folks who run E3 are trying to crack down on, and a move I support - but that's a whole different issue). Anyway, big new games make their big new debuts at E3 amidst all of the loud, flashing distractions and they tend to make their debuts as largely as possible.

So, each year, the time period leading up to E3 is a time of extreme spit and polish for companies working on anything slated to make its debut. With a good showing at E3 often meaning purchase orders, marketing deals, and uber shelf space in mega-retailers like Target, Best Buy, and the Marts (Wal- and K-, respectively) from deals frequently made a year or more out from the projected release date, making your game kick ass on the Show Floor is a top priority for most companies. If you're showing more than one game, that just means you have to spit shine that much more content to get it all rockin'.

So, we're spit shining stuff. I can't really mention any of what we're doing - not until it actually shows at E3. But, what I can say is that Audio frequently is the last department to the party because everything Audio needs to react to is still being developed until the 11th hour. We frequently get requests for demos, videos, online trailers, website sound effects and music edits - anything you can think of that would sell a game - tossed our way with a ridiculously short turn around time attached to it.

Take tonight for instance. There's something really important being done around here and it's due tomorrow at 9 AM. When did I find out about it? 11 AM today. When will I get to start working on it today? The current projected time is 8 PM. So, it's gonna' be a rough night.

Thankfully, E3 only happens once a year.

i'm a stubborn jackass

Yep. It's true; I am. No, don't try to persuade me that I'm not. Just listen.

See, last year my brother - like everyone else - saw "March of The Penguins" and fell in love with it. He repeatedly urged me to go see it because it was "so good" and "..." .... well, he said other things, but I don't remember because it was a year ago. Point is, he said it was good.

Now, to me, a movie about penguins and would-be fishsticks sounded really dull. Not to mention, it sounded like it was some sort of late-to-the-party attempt to cash in on the success of "Winged Migration." Anyway, I wasn't into a feel good story about birds and brushed off his attempts to get me to go see it.

The problem is, his attempts never really stopped. The more I refused, the more he insisted that I didn't know what I was missing. So, in order to piss him off (and really for no other reason), I decided that I would tell him I'd rather see the worst thing out in the theater at that point than March of the Penguins.

At the time, that was "The Dukes of Hazzard."

So, I told him that I'd rather see The Dukes before I saw Penguins and he told me I was a retard. We went back and forth on this a few times and eventually it became "I swear to you, I will see The Dukes of Hazzard before I ever see March of the Penguins."

Well, fast forward a year. Amanda placed "March of the Penguins" on our Netflix list. Just to continue the stubborn stupidity I started, I went ahead and put The Dukes of Hazzard on the list, too.

And then made sure it was queued up first. So, anyway, that's why I say I'm a stubborn jackass.

frigxhausted

That word's ugly, but that's how I feel. Frigging exhausted. Frigxhausted. Manda and I use that word all of the time, but I've never written it out before.

There's a shorthand that couples develop, a secret language all their own of mangled movie quotes and retahded noises that only hold meaning to each other. Someone at work was talking about this recently with me. It goes beyond pet names for each other. It's one thing to just substitute nicknames for each other's names all of the time.

Instead, I'm talking about the fact that I can say to Amanda "yowm sproing cling!" and we'll both know exactly what the hell I'm saying - and that it oddly is endearing to each other.

I speak these weird words with Amanda so frequently that sometimes they slip out in my regular speech at work. I forget that not everyone knows that the word "zonk" means "zero," "none," or "nothing." I forget that "yawn" is not common conversational shorthand for "Whatever, dude." or "Knock it off."

And that's when I get looked at like the giant dork that I am. And I guess that's fair enough. If you were talking to someone and their only response to you was "Yawn." you'd probably feel like they weren't really worth continuing the conversation with, too.

can banner ads jump the shark as an advertising medium?

'Cause if they can, man, they just did.

Before I get to the actual shark jumping in question, I have to explain just how big of a sucker I am for pretty much any kind of video game.

It doesn't matter what stupid product I'm being promised. It doesn't matter how many obnoxious pop-ups I'm going to be subjected to by actually winning. I cannot turn my back on the new trend of flash animated games where you're asked to participate in order to win a Playstation 9/RAZR docking station/iPod cerebral jack accessory. And they're stupid games, too. I'm talking about the things where you're told "Kill 10 spiders to win everything I own!" or "Race against Paris Hilton and win a toy chihuahua!" I will play every single one of those damn little things until I beat them. It's a sickness really.

The ones that I find weirdest are the politically themed games. There's one where you play as Bush and have to out weight lift Governor Arnold. There's one where you have to box Osama Bin Laden. Etc, etc. They're mind-numbingly pointless, all of them.

Anyway, the one I just saw and the one that - to me - means that these things have jumped the shark:



I don't know what I find more ridiculous about this thing: the giant red "KNIT" button or the fact that it's Bush verses a political enemy that's already been neutralized. Why are they knitting? Why are they wearing grandmotherly hats? Why did someone pay for this ad?

Seriously, why the fuck would Saddam and Bush be knitting together? Why?!

Lots of whys. Not many answers. Still, I played the damn thing until I beat it, so I guess they got what they wanted out of me.

slacktastic

I keep slacking on posting stuff here because of how busy I am in the studio right now. Again, I'm juggling so many things right now ... and just barely managing to keep everything aloft.

What's nuts is just how freakin' busy we are right now in our department in general. We're almost at the point of bickering over studio time. It's crazy. It went from busyLevel=0 to busyLevel=1 in no time flat.

Is that some kind of lame, faux-game scripting joke I just made?

I need to go home...

behind the curtain

There's a new article on the New York Times' website all about LucasArts and our company President, Jim Ward. It's a good look behind the scenes of what we've been going through and dealing with here over the last couple of years. Worth a read if anyone's interested in some of the things I haven't been able to talk about.

You can check it out here.

globalization: 1, me: 0

I'm pissed, but I desperately need a new pair of sneakers and I don't think I'm going to be able to stick to my guns and not buy Chinese-made sweatshop crap.

Union-made shoe shops seem to be limited to a very small group of factories. Many of those don't make sneakers. Many of the ones that do seem to be online "vegan" shoe companies that make Hemp shoes with granola-based adhesives or somesuchshit.

The problem is, my shoes are literally starting to fall off of my feet. The other problem, frankly, is that a lot of the "vegan" sneakers are just plain ugly. So, I find myself wrestling with a question of vanity over a question of conscience.

And yet ... There are so many other things that I'm quickly losing the Globalization battle on. Computer hardware? I don't have a choice. I have to buy stuff from China. Car parts? I have to get the ones that fit my car, so again I don't have a choice.

Are shoes just another one of those things that I give up the fight on? Or do I cling to the notion that I actually do have other options, albeit extremely inconvenient and ugly options.

Shoes are with you every day and I really just want something comfortable. That's my other problem with online shoes. Who the hell knows if they'll even fit? And if they fit, do they even feel comfortable to wear?

This sucks. I feel like I'm trying to justify to myself and the world throwing in the towel and buying a pair of Vans. Especially when I see that Vans are offering a custom shoe offer and I start wondering if I should get my own custom-made Vans.

But, then I realize that I'd be ordering shoes off of the internet and that I should just buy socially-responsible shoes if I'm going to do that.

Am I over-thinking this whole thing?

studio work continues

Still spending time in the studio. It's all going super well and meeting with stunning reviews from those who've heard it so far. I can't wait until next month when I can talk about it.

In fact, I can't wait until next month period. I've recently become the keeper of other peoples' secrets. Everything I'm working on at work? Secret. Personal stuff from one person I know? Secret. Personal stuff from a second person I know? Secret. It's nuts. I don't know what it is about me that seems to say "I'm totally trust-worthy. Please dump the weight of your unmentionables on me."

Actually, that sounds like people are dumping underwear on me.

They're not.

I guess in light of that just having to keep some secrets to myself isn't so bad.

uno, deux, three

Three random things today:

1.) I'm now convinced that our cat is a master of transcendental meditation. Frequently, either Manda or I will walk towards the cat, slowly reach a hand out towards her face while she stares unblinkingly at us, and then try to pet her. 9 out of 10 times, she jumps like she's startled as soon as we actually have physical contact with her. Her being in a meditative trance is the only way I can explain this.

2.) Food labels like this are dumb.



Either that or people are getting way too stupid. If you buy beef stew, you should assume it has chunks of beef.

3.) The older I get, the weirder my typos are getting. I've noticed over the last year that I'm beginning to typo words phonetically. As an example, while writing this post I typoed "physically" as "fisically" and "stew" as "stu." I do this frequently. If I didn't have a spell check, my posts would look something like this:

Tuday I went tu tha mall. It rokd. I rok. Lif is gud. Gud roks.

Or, you know, something like that. The only thing I can say about it is that Ry, you'd better prepare for the onset of this stupid thing. With the fact that you seem to have also developed my late-blooming inability to tell Right from Left, you might want to get used to spellchecking everything. (I just wrote "chek" and "rote.")

I rul.

it happened again

I got pulled over by the fuzz again last night on my way home. Here's the way the conversation went:

Officer: You have a headlight out.
Me: I know. (reaches into back seat) Here's the replacement bulb. I just bought it yesterday. Here's the receipt if you want to see that I really did get it yesterday.
Officer: Oh, no problem. Do you have your license?
Me: Sure. (hands over license. Officer then stares at it for a bit.)
Officer: This is you?
Me: Yep. It's an old picture and I shaved my head.
Officer: Hm ....... yeah, okay. I see it. Alright, well you have registration and insurance, right?
Me: Yeah. Here's my registration. I don't have my new insurance card in my wallet yet, though.
Officer: That's okay. When you were getting out your license, I saw your insurance card in your wallet. Let me just go take a look at your registration to make sure you're not an axe murderer.
Me: Okay! (nervous laughter) (Officer goes to his car and comes back a moment later)
Officer: Okay, boss. You're all set. Get that light fixed.
Me: Will do! (I drive off.)

So, to recap: I got pulled over for having a headlight out and didn't have proof of current insurance. Additionally, I'm completely unshaven, wearing a skull and crossbones t-shirt, 40 lbs heavier and 6 years older making me apparently unrecognizable from my license photo, and the back seat of my run down Camero is so messy that I look like an axe murderer/hermit. Still, my freakin' luck with the Police is such that I drive off without so much as a fix it ticket.

I am very worried that my luck is going to run out soon in a big way. Sooner or later I'm going to lose my wallet and drive without insurance or registration into the middle of a Police funeral and it'll be all over for me.

And when that happens, I don't think any of my friends will feel bad for me. They'll simply feel that I finally got what I deserved.

tuckered

I spent the whole day in the recording studio today. I'm beat. And of course, it doesn't help that Amanda and I were exhausted with boredom yesterday trying to start up Kingdom Hearts II. Shoot over to her blog. She explains it all perfectly.

I was going to write about the story of the Self-Firing Death Star Annoyance that's hanging out in my office; but I'm too tired to talk about it. I'll have to write about it tomorrow when I'm less wasted.

day 2: still doing well

This new studio rocks. We're able to do such cool stuff here. We got a bit of an added outsider perspective when we showed what we were doing to a new colleague of ours today and her reaction was:

"Holy shit, guys ... this is amazing. No other game company has this. This is incredible."

And she's right. What other game company has 1.) a state of the art recording studio built into their facilities, 2.) professional session musicians on-staff who also compose and sound design games, and 3.) in-house engineers that are the caliber of Skywalker Sound?

It's pretty cool and a really great environment to be working in. Tomorrow is day three and we'll be done with half of our work by the end of the session. The rest we tackle next week. Can't wait.

test run 1 complete

We just put our new recording studio here at The Presidio through its paces for the first time and all I can say is ": )".

Obviously, I can't really talk about what we were recording, but suffice it to say that we found out:

- The studio is wonderfully sound-proof. No one was disturbed during regular business hours by our noise.
- The room sounds great. Sound treated as it is, it still sounds really nice through just a pair of overheads.
- People like to hang out in recording studios instead of doing whatever they're supposed to be doing. It was like a slack magnet.

And again, I still found myself prone to the Jesse Harlin Kryptonite that is working in the studio. At one point, I started to fall asleep again. I don't know what it is about recording studios that makes me so freakin' drowsy. It sucks.

At least we weren't setting up to record drums. Waiting to have the right tone .... that's the worst for me.

*boom* ... *boom* ... *boom* ...

"How's that?" "Just a few more, then we'll move on to the kick."

*boom* ... *boom* ... *boom* ... *boom* ...

*zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz*

it's that time of year again ...

That's right. Time for everyone's favorite corporate holiday: Performance Reviews. My department manager is actually really good about them. They're low-stress, informal discussions about the past year, the up-coming year, and anything else on our minds. Couple of nice things happened this review period:

1. My department manager and I are totally on the same page with what to do with me over the next year. He actually suggested to me a number of big suggestions I was going to bring up later in our meeting. So, good news there.

B. I got a raise. Yay me. : )

Third. I got a bonus, too. Double yay me. So, now I have money for when Amanda and I go on our First Annual Hawaiian Getaway Adventure Vacation Extravaganzafest '06.

So, all good stuff. That and I got a free cookie at work today. By the by: strangely one of the occupational hazards of working with Star Wars all the time is that you forget that "cookie" isn't spelled like "Wookiee."

we're the wildest couple this side of Utah

Last night, Amanda and I got considerably less sleep than we usually do. Why? Because we're wild and crazy, baby!! That's right, Manda and I stayed up until 2 AM ... reading books.

w00t!! we R teh roXorz!!!!1!!1one!!1

Yes, Amanda and I have been reading much more these days and last night we both found ourselves nearing the end of our books. As is usually the case with a book, once you're near the end everything just keeps pushing you forward. It was finally 2 AM before we finished them both.

So, what were we reading that was so compelling? I was reading Crossing The Line by Karen Traviss. It's the sequel to a book of hers I just recently finished called City of Pearl and is a great sci-fi book. I'm really enjoying this rich alternate future she's created. She's quickly becoming my new favorite author.

Amanda was deep into Good In Bed by the unforunately-named Jennifer Weiner (Sorry if you read my blog, Jennifer; but it's true. Your last name is "weiner.").

Anyway, being as wild and crazy as we are, I'm beat. So what's on tonight's agenda? Well, after some base-jumping and bear-baiting, we're gonna' go to the grocery story (w00t encore!) and then start some new books, I'm guessing. Moral of the story is: stay out of our way, bitches. We're setting the world on fire.

v for very freakin awesome

Amanda and I had a good weekend. We spent Saturday helping her brothers move into a new apartment. Some moving related math:

two separate aparments worth of stuff + moving them into 1 third-floor apartment with no elevator = stiff and sore Sunday

But Sunday was nice (despite the rain). I got my next article for Game Developer done and out of the way. Turned out well, I'm happy. And later in the day we went to see "V for Vendetta" for free. For a limited time, buying frozen items at Safeway seems to result in free movie tickets. It's all a ploy to get people to see "Ice Age 2" but that movie looks like a turd, so we saw "V" instead.

And man oh man was it good. I loved it. Highly recommend it to any and all interested in a good action/alternative-future flick that'll get your policital blood pumping. I know this will resonate with everyone except for Ry, but it has a very "1984" vibe to it which I really dug. Good, good stuff.

Anyway, it was a good weekend and it now looks like it's going to be a busy week. I have music to implement, cutscenes to score, emails to mail, archives to coordinate, meetings to decline, etc. They sure are keeping me busy these days.

In conclusion, go see "V for Vendetta."

big = art

It's as simple as that. Go into any modern art museum and you'll quickly realize that anything that's over 5 feet tall can be called art. I think it has something to do with a human need to feel dwarfed and insignificant next to the huge stature of our own creations. The Pyramids, the cathedrals and castles of Europe, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the Mall of America ... we've been absolutely transfixed as a species by Big for thousands of years.

So, for those who are looking for a career change, I now present Jesse Harlin's Guide to Becoming a Famous Artist.

1. Get a really large workspace. You're going to need lots of room for all of the big things you're making. Try finding one with lots of windows for natural light and to let out any potential fumes from your paint/ceramic firing/arc-welding/whatever. Try here for large work spaces.

2. Start looking for something small that you can make a large version of. Really anything will do. Like I said, it just needs to be bigger than 5 feet tall. Now, I would actually caution you against going over 12 feet tall since you'll limit the ability to have your big things put in small rooms.

3. For god's sake, put your big things in a city somewhere! Nothing will make you go from hip urbanite up-and-coming artist to crazy midwest kook faster than your massive statue of a coffee pot sitting out in the middle of nowhere.

So, that's it. Do those three things and you'll be famous. Want some inspiration?

- Building blocks? Too small. But, make them big and you have yourself a museum piece, Johnny!

- "Clothespins are small and stupid. I'd never become famous with a clothespin," I hear you say. Wrong!!

- "That stuff's all sculpture, dude. Stop showing me sculpture, you big sculpture-shower." Fine!

You get the point. Big = art. Plain and simple.

six wonderful years

Today is the 6 year anniversary for my girlfriend Amanda and I. They've been six incredibly wonderful years and I'm thrilled that she's a part of my life. To celebrate, we're heading down to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, or SFMoMA (which, when pronounced as a word, sounds like "sss-ffff-moe-mah" and is ugly).

I can't wait.

In fact, you know what? I don't have to wait. She just called to tell me that she's outside. So, I'm off to celebrate how awesome Amanda is with a trip to see pictures many people think they could do themselves, but didn't. ... That doesn't sound romantic. But, anyway, it is. And I'm gonna' go meet her. Bye.

every rose has its rose

Woohoo!! There's another Rose in the world. My great, great friend Ben and his partner Margo have just had a baby.

Ben gets the distinction of being the first friend of mine I know to have had a baby. Congratulations on your successful spawning, Ben and Margo! Post pictures. Now.

cold, cruel truth

You know who doesn't love you and never will, no matter how nice you are to them? Credit reporting agencies. The big three - Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion - get phone calls from people every day who's sole point in contacting them is to complain about why they can't buy a house. Being on the receiving end of a nation's worth of anger and frustration must make you really unfriendly and impersonal.

Why am I talking about this? I took a look at my credit report the other day for the first time. Turns out some bill for $27 bucks had gotten lost among one of my moves from apartment to apartment and I ended up in collections. I had no idea. It happens, I guess. It's part of the difficult nature of moving. Sometimes things slip through the cracks and sometimes those slippery things are important.

Anyway, I wanted to figure out what the deal was and get it resolved so that I could up my credit score. The problem is, the credit report seems to have a limited number of characters it can use when printing out whom you own money to. Mine said:

SOUTHERN CALIFO

?? As far as I could tell, I owed the lower half of California $27. Knowing that that makes no sense, I decided to call Equifax and try to get them to fill me in with a little more info.

And that's when I found out how much they'll never love me. Equifax happens to have the most unfriendly phone system I've ever experienced. There are a couple of numbers you can try calling. If you call one, you get stuck in a phone chain of seemingly irrelevant options. If you press "0" (the international key for "I'm tired of your phone system; just gimme a dang operator"), it hangs up on you. It hangs up on you! It's like Equifax is grumpy and punishing you for trying to outsmart it.

If you call the other number, one of two things happens. Apparently most of the time it plays a recording, tosses you into a phone queue, waits a little bit to see if you'll be answered quickly, and if not - hangs up on you without any explanation. I tried that number 4 or 5 times, each time getting hung up on, before it finally went to a customer service rep on the 6th go. But, seriously ... 6 tries to not be hung up on? And like I said, that's just from that one number. That doesn't count the times I was hung up on at the other number for trying to find an operator.

So, Equifax doesn't love anybody. And fair enough, I guess. They aren't loved in return so why should they? The IRS can hand out lollipops all day. At the end of it all, they're still the IRS. I guess it's the same principle. So, they seem to have decided to take the approach of "If you want to deal with us, then you'll jump through our hoops, you sonuvabitch. If you try to be clever, we'll hang up on your ass. If you do finally get through to someone, THEN you can bitch at us about not being able to buy a house. But you're really going to have to work for it if you want to bitch at us, a-holes."

So, just a word of warning if anyone else needs to go through this.

finally!

I finally beat Resident Evil IV. I'm sure that nobody in the world cares about this achievement but me. But, it actually is a big achievement. I've played a lot of the Resident Evil games and haven't finished a single one so far.

Usually it's been due to the fact that I've rented them in the past. I don't know why because I can count on one hand the number of games I've rented in my life. But, amongst that count are three different Resident Evil games. I'm not sure what kind of innate fear I've had about buying them, but whatever it was, it's led me to rent Resident Evil titles.

So, in the olden days of pre-"No Late Fees!!" Blockbuster, I usually found that I had to return the game before I had time to beat it. Many of them I've gotten pretty close to finishing, but it always had to go back to Blockbuster before I was done. But, I was so far into them that I couldn't justify renting it again, let alone buying it. So, I never beat them. Resident Evil IV, however, was a Christmas present and I've been playing it off and on over the last few months. As of this weekend, I finally beat it.

And you know what? The ending sucked. Chalk it up with Spider-man for the PS1 for "worst ending in regards to gameplay satisfaction" rating I've ever seen with a game. After all of the hours involved in playing through it, I get one very short little cut scene with stupid Anime-style dialogue that seems completely inhuman and nonsensical.

Let me set the scene since I know no one who reads this will ever play the game:

Your character just spent hours, HOURS and HOURS and HOURS, in the most stressful situation of his life shooting zombies with limited ammo supplies, watching his friends die, plucking alien parasites from within his own body, and running for his life more times than you can count.

In the end, a rival agent working for the world's most evil and amoral chemical company steals a sample of the alien parasite and flies off with the intended goal to turn it into a world-destroying bio-weapon.

So, how do you react to all of this? You literally ride off into the sunset on a jet-ski, just moments after escaping from an exploding island, and chat with the girl hanging onto your waist about some other girl who you're "apparently unable to distance yourself from."

Roll Credits.


WHAT??! What the hell was that? Talking about girls as you ride off into the sunset? What about something more appropriate like "HOLY Fucking shit!! The island just blew up and the whole world is going to turn into zombies!! Not to mention I have a million zombie brain bits in my hair and a fucking stress ulcer you wouldn't believe!!!"

Stupid. Just plain old stupid. Maybe I'll just rent the next one.

i was gonna call the article "Michael Jackson is Sitting Ontop of the World"

I was all set to write a post all about how today was the first day this year that I walked outside and smelled Baseball Weather. Instead, I get to share the latest goings-on with my faithful old car, The Green Wind.

I'm a relatively lucky guy. Much of my luck seems to center around my car, much to the annoyance of my friends. When you manage to get out of speeding ticket after speeding ticket through sheer luck, it tends to piss off anyone around you who's ever been to Traffic School.

Still, The Green Wind and I have been driving across the ol' US of A for almost 12 years now and she's holding up well. For those who don't know, The Green Wind earned her name when I was about 19 and my brother and I tried to see if we could drive from upstate Massachusetts to Philadelphia in four hours. After averaging about 100 mph, the only way urban sage Joe McGuire figured I didn't get pulled over was that all the highway patrol had seen of my car was "a green wind."

These days, she's getting to be more of The Green Wheeze. She's old and starting to fall apart in unimportant ways. Who cares that the passenger seat window controls don't work anymore? Who cares that I'm down one fog light? Etc. Etc.

This morning, however, the battery was dead. I had a feeling something weird was going on Thursday night when I suddenly couldn't roll up my power window anymore. With everything else that was breaking, I didn't think it was anything major, though. I was wrong. Friday morning the car was dead and I managed to forget about it until 3 AM Monday morning.

Not able to find someone to give me a jump, I called AAA who sent a truck and got me back on the road with plenty of time to only be slightly late to work. I thanked the guy, drove off, and went on a nice scenic drive around the back hills of San Mateo to let the battery charge up for a while. Problem being, I could only do that for so long since I was critically low on gas and eventually had to turn back around so that I could fill 'er up. When I stopped the car at the gas station, I decided to do a quick check to see if I could restart my car.

Nothing. It was totally dead. The ol Green Wheeze won't hold a charge anymore. Frustrated and imagining money leaping out of my wallet, I went inside the gas station's little snack hut and got some breakfast while I gassed up.

Why did I talk about luck earlier? Because just as I got into my car and opened up my cellphone to call AAA again, who should I see pull to as stop at the stop sign next to me but the AAA guy who gave me a jump start earlier in the day. I stuck my hand out the window and he pulled in, gave me two more jump starts, and finally I was on my way. The Wheeze is now at a service station next to my house while I wait to find out the diagnosis.

So, through a little luck, I still might be able to make it into work for a half day. Fingers are crossed. We'll see how it goes.

i'm a loser, baby ...

Yep. Republic Commando lost its bid for Best Interactive Score for 2005. Who won? "God of War." Congrats, Sony. Congrats, Clint.

So far, with the exception of my car battery dying this morning, GDC's been great. I've been meeting a bunch of nice people and keeping up with the state of the industry, the state of audio technology, and the state of the available pool of audio contractors.

So, good stuff. Tomorrow is the last day and I'm looking forward to a very quiet weekend of hanging out at home and trying to finish Resident Evil 4. That and just rest. Plenty and plenty of rest. Trade shows are tiring.

where game developers go to learn about the current state of technology ...

This is my favorite quote I've heard so far from a floundering speaker at GDC:

"The Web is up on the Net now."


WOW! They got the Web working on the Net now?! Incredible!

Just thought I'd let everyone else know since this may impact some of your work.

turns out, I wasn't eligible anyway

Things happen in cities. Weird things. Things you don't expect.

As I was driving home from work today, I decided to drive through downtown San Fran instead of my normal route along the outskirts of the city. Unfortunately, as I was stopped at a red light, I think I found myself on the receiving end of someone's attempt at a career change.

Like I said, I pulled up to a stop at a red light. To my right was a bus, the general bane of inner city traffic. Usually, the only real danger these behemoths represent is their slow pace if you get stuck behind one. I didn't think there was any danger sitting next to one at a stop light.

I was kinda' wrong.

As I'm sitting there, something very large suddenly smacked into my windshield. Scared the bejebus out of me. When I tried to see what it was, it seemed to mostly be hidden behind my windshield wipers What I could see looked like a complete stack of Post-It notes. When I looked up at the bus next to me, I saw that I was right next an open window - the apparent source of the flying post-it note stack.

Kinda' weirded out by the whole thing, I drove down the street for a bit until I could pull into a parking lot and see what new gift I'd been forcibly given. When I got out of my car, I found I had a stack of flyers explaining about some kind of low-income based Tax Credit that I might be eligible for. It was written in five different languages and looked like something that had been produced by some kind of local government agency.

The first few sheets of this thing had been torn off already, but it was mostly still intact. It was then that I got the sense someone riding the bus had probably take a low-paying gig handing these things out, gave out one or two, and then realized that the best way to be done early was to simply launch the remainder out the bus window.

So, yeah. Weird things happen in cities that you don't expect. And now I have even more reason to fear buses.

wanna Hearst donut?

Amanda and I had a really nice weekend. As mentioned on Friday, we hopped in the car, headed south along CA-1 and made a beeline for San Simeon, CA. Why San Simeon? Because it's the home of Hearst Castle, or as we found out its official name is: Hearst San Simeon State Historical Monument.

Catchy, no?

So, Hearst Castle (for those who don't know) was the weekend getaway built by 1920s gadillionaire William Randolf Hearst as a means of keeping all of the art he collected from Europe out of the rain. Despite my general disgust in gaudy, overly-ornate interior decorating (Trump, I'm looking in your direction), Hearst Castle was actually quite beautiful. Yes, it's full of more finery than you can shake a gold leafed Italian Renaissance stick at. Still, that said, it's largely done tastefully. There's a very successful mixture of American art deco and European everything else that came before. I think I also liked how much carved wooden detailing there was, as opposed to gold ugliness.

I tried to take a bunch of pictures. The problem is that they only allow you to take pictures with the available light (read: no flash photography) which didn't seem to work well with our night tour. Still, there are some nice shots and I thought I'd share:


This is one of the many exterior stairwells that leads all around the grounds. I love the art deco light columns.


Billy Hearst's outdoor pool. Pretty snazzy. Looks like a good place for a music video or a teen sex comedy party scene.


This is part of his large main living room. On the night tours, they have actors portraying visitors in 1930's garb. These were playing poker.


This is either part of the living room again or it's part of the sitting room. I can't remember.


This is a shot of the kind of woodworking found all throughout the castle's ceilings. They're really incredible and they change from room to room. Very impressive. It tends to feel like a gothic cathedral in miniature.


Old Bill's personal library. The lampshades on the lamps are made of sheets of vellum manuscripts, mostly old musical texts.


See? I wasn't lying.


This is maybe the prettiest desk clock I've ever seen. It's just an absolutely stunning piece of art deco design. Gorgeous. Sadly, the picture doesn't really do it justice.


And lastly, our cat Pipsqueak who has recently decided that she likes playing with toys. She now likes to roll around on the floor and mess with various cuddly things. It's pretty freakin' adorable.

So, that was our weekend. I had a great time. Definitely a nice way to get away and chill out before a big crazy week of GDC. I'll blog when I can this week, but I'll be at GDC from tomorrow and don't know what my availability will be like.

up, up, and away

Things just keep moving up in terms of my career which is a really nice thing. Today I had lunch with the editors of Game Developer Magazine. Really nice people. I had a nice time talking games and the industry with them. I've been writing some guest columns for them recently and they've been well received. The point of our meeting was that they've offered me the position of monthly contributing columnist for the Aural Fixation column. This means that each month I'd be writing new columns on Audio-related goodness and talking to people throughout the industry. I'm pretty psyched. It's not a done deal yet, but things look like they're going in the right direction and I have my fingers crossed.

On my way over to the CMP Media offices, I passed a homeless man stationed at a freeway off-ramp. The sign he was holding was one of the more original I've seen. It read:

BET YOU CAN'T HIT ME WITH A QUARTER

I like that approach. It's a fun challenge for me and fiscally good for him. Good thinking on his part. And yet, I bet a GameBoy game called "Beam the Transient with a Quarter" wouldn't pass Nintendo's submission process. Too bad, really.

This weekend, Amanda and I are heading off on a little weekend vacation. The rain is supposed to be subsiding so we're going to head off south along d'ocean and see some touristy California sites we've never seen before. Should be a really good time. I'm looking forward to it.

I'll give details when I get back. And maybe some pictures, too. Who knows.

so confused ...

Last night, I slept like ass. I kept having recurring dreams that confused the hell out of me. It's rare for me to dream relatively mundane dreams (as opposed to the horrific crap I'm used to) and it's even more rare for me to dream about celebrities, a dream market my brother seems to have cornered.

And yet, that's exactly what I dreamt last night. I have no idea how the dream began, but let's just say it went blahblahblahblahblah Jesse lying in bed waking up to the radio. As I was lying there trying to wake up (in my dream, mind you), I was apparently listening to the Howard Stern show. The topic of discussion? Vaz Hoil, the 80s hair band I've been in off and on since high school. Stern et al were talking about how great they thought the album was, how funny the lyrics were, etc. I sat up astonished in my bed, woke up Amanda, and we both listened with amazement throughout the entire conversation. As soon as they were done, I called my brother who was also astonished and we began to plan how we'd get onto the show and play some music live on the air.

Now ... that's all pretty whatever. Where the dream begins to drive me nuts is that I then dreamt that I woke up from having dreamt about the Stern Show. I was very confused (in my dream), couldn't tell what was real and what wasn't, and decided to go Google "vaz hoil" to see what would come up. Lo and behold, there was a bunch of new links all discussing Howard's like for our completely unknown band.

What then proceeded to happen for about 3 or 4 hours was a continual string of dreams in which I would make more progress towards getting Hoil onto the Stern show and then dream that I'd wake up, be confused, and have to start the whole process again.

When I finally did wake up this morning, I had no freaking clue what was real anymore and what was a dream. I was exhausted from dreaming about waking up all night and I had an overwhelming urge to google Hoil again. Needless to say, actual reality eventually set in. Still, the whole ordeal has left me completely fatigued this morning and still more than a little muddled.

I'd almost rather dream about being impaled by gigantic mosquitoes or chased by men who cut their own hands off as a show of just how tough they are. At least then I know when I wake up that it was a dream.

When I was a kid, I remember seeing an episode of G.I. Joe where Shipwreck kept having dreams that he was dreaming and waking up over and over again. I remember being really creeped out by it and thinking that it must be terrible to not know when you were awake and when you were asleep.

I can now say for certain that it's insanely disorienting. I'm gonna start a support group for me and Shipwreck. No COBRA allowed.

nothing's up

Nothing's really going on with me.

Whee.

Gotta upDate Calendar

I need to get off my ass and figure out what my schedule's going to be like next week at GDC. There are two major Game Industry trade events every year. E3 is the big spectacle event where the big new game titles are shown off for retain chains and the new game consoles debut. GDC is more for game developers. For those who've never been, GDC is the big tech-oriented show that consists of three main parts: software and game development tools on display like a typical trade show, panels and discussions on the art and business of making games, and a job fair.

Basically, it's a huge-schmoozefest. As far as Audio goes, the show floor is pretty useless. There's just a whole lot of nothing right now when it comes to 3rd-party game development tools available for audio. What does exist right now is pretty piss poor. Anyhow, there isn't much to see there.

That leaves a week's worth of panels and discussions all about Audio to schedule. So, I'll be sitting in on talks about implementing interactive orchestral music, post-mortems on various games' soundtracks, and meeting with people at GANG events.

I'm not a radically out-going person and for me networking and schmoozing at things like GDC is REALLY exhausting. Beneficial? Yes, but exhausting none the less. So, it's going to be a long week and I really need to figure out where I'm going to be when.

As of right now, I have no idea. I guess I just keep waiting for someone to figure it all out for me, but that's not gonna' happen.

Maybe I need to become rich and get a personal assistant.

we're ridiculous

As of today, Chile now has their first female president. I heard this story yesterday on NPR as I was trying to get ready for work. What seriously bothered me was the fact that about five minutes before the Chile story, they were announcing the results of some new poll that asked Californians if we were "ready for a female President." It's absolutely ridiculous that we even need to ask this question. Let's look at the list of countries that have had female leaders:

Argentina
Bangladesh
Bolivia
Bulgaria
Burundi
Canada
Central African Republic
Chile
Dominica
Ecuador
France
Finland
Georgia
Germany
Guinea-Bissau
Guyana
Haiti
Iceland
India
Ireland
Isreal
Latvia
Liberia
Lithuania
Malta
Macedonia
Mongolia
Mozambique
Nicaragua
New Zealand
Norway
Pakistan
Panama
Peru
The Phillipines
Poland
Portugal
Rwanda
Sao Tome and Principe
Senegal
South Korea
Sri Lanka
Switzerland
Turkey
the Ukraine
The United Kingdom
Yugoslavia

47 countries. And that's not counting any countries that have been ruled by female monarchies. That's just a list of 47 countries that have elected or appointed female presidents or prime ministers. Now, there are 192 countries in the world which means that over one-fourth of the world has been lead by a woman at one point or another.

Do you see what I mean? Mongolia, Pakistan and Rwanda are more socially progressive than the United States. Part of China, one of the main Muslim countries in the world, and a nation that slaughtered millions of its own citizens -- all of them are more progressive than the good ol' US of A.

What is our problem? Who is it in this country that actually thinks we'd dissolve into anarchy with a female President? Don't those people realize that their children are taught by women and that their cities most likely have female city council members? This ridiculous Neanderthal notion that the US has to be run by men is a joke that a fair chunk of the rest of the world seems to realize is outdated. We need to get with the program.

a cultural divide?

We've discovered a weird cultural divide at work. Apparently, Generation Xers are at serious risk of being too old to know what Emo is.

The circumstances behind how it came up are unimportant, but what we've found is that only about 50% of the Xers polled had any clue what emo was. Goth? No problem. Punk? Sure. 100% recognition. But, Emo?

Nope.

And beyond just not knowing, it started to make people get defensive and angry. I was told "I pride myself on being up-to-date on pop culture and I've never heard of emo." as if to say "So, stop making shit up that no one knows but you." And yet, the people who had heard of the term looked at me like I was retahded even asking them about it.

::smirk:: "Of course I know what 'emo' is. How could you not know what 'emo' is?"

Now, I don't think I'm crazy in saying that emo is a pretty common term these days. I think what disturbed the people that didn't know the term is that it was the first sign that they might be getting old and out of touch with youth culture.

Anyway, it's an interesting division and one I thought I'd point out.

I'm not crazy, right? Emo is well-known ... isn't it?

i've been called worse ...

There's a new article about me on MusicOnFilm.net by Justin Bielawa. Called "Commando Composer," it's mostly about my score to Republic Commando, though some of it is just generically about game scoring and some more about working for LucasArts.

Anyway, check it out if you want. Just scroll down to the bottom of the main page and click on my huge, swelled head. I think the interview turned out nicely. Nice work, Justin! And thanks.

TIE fighters at 6 o'clock

When I learned how to drive, my dad decided to draw on my love of Star Wars in order to teach me the threat of other drivers. According to my dad, "when you're in your car, it's just like the Death Star scene in Star Wars. You're the rebels and there are TIE Fighters flying at you at all times. Your job is just to not crash into them."

It was a good analogy for me at the time and I took it to heart. The older I get, the more applicable his analogy seems to get, though, and the broader in scope it seems to become. No matter how much planning you do, no matter how much you think you have everything figured out, there will always be some kind of TIE Fighter headed your way that you didn't count on. The best any of us can ever do is just do our best to not crash into it.

It's like John Lennon said, "Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans." Although, I don't know what he'd think of being likened to TIE Fighter analogies.

Anyway, my point is: things are changing. Quite rapidly, too. Things are work at changing. Things with other people I know are changing in terms of their careers. Right now, the skies over the Death Star are full of a full TIE squadron of different opportunities jockeying for attention.

I'm quickly realizing the retahdedness of this post. Mainly it's due to my superstitious feeling that if I name specifics in terms of these unnamed opportunities, they'll evaporate. And so I'm left with an ambiguous and muddled blog post. But, so be it.

I just feel this afternoon how odd life is. 3 months ago everything felt as though it were stagnating and ruttifying. Today I feel like I'm watching the ends of everything fray and fly apart into unexpected directions.

I don't feel nervous or scared about it all; just ... inquisitive. Anxious to see what comes of everything. When I know more with more certainty, or I dodge some of these TIE Fighters, I'll fill in the specific details. As for now, this muddle of ambiguous mess is all you get.

RIP, my once-beloved SY-77

Today is my three year anniversary with LucasArts and I celebrated with a cheesesteak from The Cheesesteak Shop. 'Twas good.

You know what's 'twas not good, though? Listening to things from my musical past. I burned a CD of old music by my high school band Phenix. On bass: Ben. On guitar: Ry. On drums: either Mr. Googazu himself, Mike Klova or Anthony Sciamanna. And on lead vocals and embarrassingly ridiculous keyboard solos: me. Christ ... why the rest of the band didn't stop me from playing keyboard back then, I'll never know.

Anyway, listening back to this stuff is like looking at an embarrassing school picture of yourself. Only, instead of it being a single photo, it's 15 different testaments to the fact that your lyric writing never really graduated beyond the level of "pretentious ass."

I'm listening to more of it while I write this. Seriously, Ry and Ben, what was with me and freakin' saw wave patches? Gah.

Anyway. I guess I'm celebrating my current musical gig by inspecting my musical past. But, since I have some music to go write, maybe I shouldn't be sitting here making myself feel like I don't know the first thing about music. Yeesh.

number 2 is a jet car

The first thing I'm going to buy if I make enough money to ever be considered ridiculously rich is a private bathroom.

I really don't like public bathrooms. They're dirty. They smell like ... well ... public bathrooms. And you have to share the "experience" with other people. I don't like that. Is there anything more awkward in 21st century daily life than having to pee while standing next to people you know professionally? Urinals completely fly in the face of the concept of personal space bubbles. If that weird little metal divider wasn't there separating your shoulder from the shoulder of the person next to you, you'd be very uncomfortably close to each other - whether you were peeing at that moment or not. It'd be like standing next to people in an elevator while you were all trying to pee. >: P

Where does this weird rant come from? From having just come back from the restroom where I had to listen to someone in one of the stalls.

This poor guy ... As with all bathroom etiquette, I don't actually know who it was due to averting eyes and staring at walls. Still, whomever it was was breathing so hard in there. As far as I can figure, it was either someone who 1.) had just run a marathon, 2.) weighed a metric ton and has trouble breathing, or 3.) was pleasuring himself at work.

It's not No. 1. I feel bad for the guy if it's No. 2. I feel bad for the rest of us if it's No. 3. Anyway, having to listen to this guy gulp for air like a beached trout really seemed to cross some kind of privacy barrier.

Metal shoulder divider or not, his breathing sounds invaded my personal space. I really didn't need to share that moment with this guy.

So, when I'm rich = private bathroom. Day one.

putting the amazing back in the race

Ah, reality TV ... I'm such a slave to your contrived ways ...

The new season of "The Amazing Race" began last night and I'm already hooked. I'm thrilled that it's back to its usual 11-pair format. The Family Edition of The Amazing Race was ass. Pure ass.

First of all, it wasn't much of a race around the world. They raced around the USA, for sure. But I constantly had the feeling they had no idea how long families with little kids would be in the race, so they decided not to risk sending 8 year-old kids into the heart of Indonesia. Instead, they went to strange and exotic sites like Utah (oooooo!!!) and Lancaster, PA (aaaaahhhh!!!). Anyway, the show sucked and I'm glad to see that they've ditched the retahded format change and gone back to what works.

So, what's working for the new series? Well, how about this nice contrast to the Family Edition? Phil (the host, for those who don't know) says "Aaaand ... go!" and suddenly everyone's already off on a race to Brazil. Already I found myself thinking "Yeah!! That's right! Shove it up your ass, Family Edition!! They've already gone further around the world that you, you a-hole!!"

Clearly, I have some issues.

Never the less, the show is pretty good and I already find that I have favorite and least favorite couples that I'm rooting for and against, respectively.

The Good:
- David and Lori, the nerds They just seem like nice people who make me smile. I dig 'em and they remind me of Amanda and I to some extent.
- Wanda and Desiree, the mother/daughter team. They're fun. Good TV to watch. Seem like nice people.
- BJ and Taylor (Tyler? Teylore? Teighlure?), the hippies. Hometown pride, baby! SF representin'! Anyway, they seem good. They seem like what it would have been to have Ry and Jeff on there (you guys should so be on this show).

The Bad:
- Lake and Trophy Wife, the dentist and his assistant/baby machine. This lady has no mind of her own and her husband is a complete tool. I can't wait for them to get eliminated.
- Danielle and Dani, the "cute girl" duo. Bleh. They are so freakin' annoying.
- Jimbo and Mimbo, the future welfare recipients. I can't remember the names of these guys, but they're the guys who have so far disparaged concepts such as Thinking and Working. Way to go, guys. Way to go.

And the ugly:
The Frosties, aka the Glamazons, a pair of middle-aged sisters. Why are they in "the ugly" category? Because of their freakin' shrill voices. I can't stand them and they're always screaming at the top of their lungs. It's so goddamn obnoxious. If they're not eliminated from the show soon, I honestly don't know if I'll be able to watch the whole season. I find them that annoying.

Anyway, The Frosties aside, I'm excited to see that the show is good again. Hopefully it'll just keep getting better as previous seasons have tended to do. I have my fingers crossed, anyway.

trimming the tree

There's an amazing impermanence to everything if you watch long enough. I suppose that's what we all find so magical about photographs and paintings - the ability to pause time and make something permanent.

A few months ago, I blogged about how I had been driving to work and had been moved by the way a particular tree looked with the foggy SF Bay in the background. It was so breath-taking to me that I parked my car, got out, and snapped a picture of the whole scene. Well, Amanda saw the picture I had taken and was also so moved by it that she decided to paint a picture of it. It turned out beautifully and the picture now hangs in our office in our apartment.

Since she painted the tree, I've come to think of it as "Amanda's tree." I look at it every day on my drive into work and smile as I think of her. It's a nice little moment I get to have each day during what is a relatively long commute to work.

Well, last night the Bay area was slammed with a vicious storm. According to the news, San Francisco was hit the worst with ridiculous gale force winds that tore apart powerlines and littered our entire neighborhood with other shattered shards of people's recycling. Unfortunately, I was also really bummed to see that Amanda's tree took a bit of damage from the storm as well.

If you look at the picture of the tree, you'll see that it has some cool lower branches just hanging out below the general mop of its main bunch of foliage (is it right to call that little tuft at its top its 'canopy?'). This morning, it was sad to see that those lower branches were all snapped and dangling limply from the trunk amidst a mess of splintered wood.

It was a bummer to see. But, just as quickly as it was sad to see, it also made me feel really glad that I had decided to take that picture back in September. Now I feel like Amanda and I have taken some sort of special steps to save the memory of a tree that might be blow away into the Bay one day. If it does, we'll still have it around to enjoy through the permanence Manda's art.

It's a nice thought.

quawesome.

Sometimes it seems to me that humanity can be defined as "the daily battle to not look like an idiot in front of other human beings, despite your brain's hardwired propensity for doing just that."

Here at work, we just had a beautiful new Foley pit installed in our beautiful new Recording Studio. It's very nice and will be a tremendous boon to us for audio work going forward.

I mentioned this to a colleague today and started to tell him all about it. Apparently, his brain couldn't make up its mind between commenting with "Cool" or "Sweet."

What I got in response was "Quweet."

At that moment, I held a lot of power over this guy. It was obvious that he knew he'd just said "Quweet." And yet, while he wondered if I had caught it, I had the power to either ignore it, smile, or outright mock the birth of "Quweet" into the English language.

I decided to ignore it. But, man oh man. How we ever manage to get anything done when our freakin' brains work against us so much of the time, I'll never know ...

purdy with a capital "P"

Cirque du Soleil's "Corteo" is staggeringly beautiful. I can't possibly recommend it enough. If you've never been to a Cirque show, it's typically a circus show centered around three main tenets: Amazing Acrobatics dressed in an Imaginative Presentation and set to Live Music. Typically, they tend to rank in importance in that order as well.

However, Corteo was breath-taking. With Corteo, the Imaginative Presentation jumped way into the lead among the three priorities and it left Amanda and I astounded. As a concept, the entire show is done as though you're watching an old Italian clown dream about his own death and how all of his circus friends would celebrate his life. It's a good concept to start with, but the execution couldn't have been better.

What truly amazed me about the experience is just how much the entire experience really does feel like a dream. At times everything makes sense - the Clown dreams of his friends holding a parade in his honor that gets out of control and becomes far too happy for a funeral procession, Angels cart him into the sky and fit him with wings, snippets of memories literally drift in and out of the audiences field of vision. But, at other times, nothing makes sense and the entire three-dimensional canvas of the stage resembles a surrealist painting more than any kind of circus I've ever seen. It was this frequent use of unrelated, almost non sequitur-esque dream imagery that left me feeling so ... childlike.

Bizarre imagery is everywhere. Angels drift through the air constantly - observing, caring for people, taking part peripherally in the events, the head of a horse costume running around onstage without the body, trails of shoes that run across the stage without anyone wearing them as they're protected from nothing by a man carrying an umbrella. At one point during one of the acrobatic routines, I realized that there was a clown walking upside down along the length of a tightrope with a flaming candelabra in his hand.

It was like watching Jim Henson or Stephen Spielberg at their best. I absolutely adore any piece of art that can make me feel completely astounded by the power of Human Imagination and its ability to make dreams reality through technology and talent. It was incredibly inspiring. Watching a 2-hour testament to the beauty of human creativity is the closest I get to having a religious experience.

So, anyway, the moral of this long-winded ramble is "Go see 'Corteo.'" You won't be disappointed.

the 2 minute blog post

I only have two minutes to write a blog post before I have to leave. Amdna and I are going out tonight to see Corteo down in San Jose. it's the new sircyq du soliel pthing they have going on.

This bpost is a mess because I todon't have time for the delete kiey. So this is what it looks like when I make all kinds of mistakes.

Anyeaway,m time for me to tecake off. tomorrow it's car wash and laundry day. tonight, culture.

have a great weekend everyone. you you all get to do something fun.

my brain feels like noodles

I feel like a bit of a spaz right now. Today has been so hectic. I've been running around juggling three different projects all day long. I feel like my phone and email have been nagging at me non-stop all day. Now that it's the end of the day, my brain just feels tired.

I got to show someone at work Vaz Hoil for the first time today. They loved it. It's always fun to share that particular brand of retahdedness with someone new. Tommy Rockum should be proud that his lyrics to Rock Rock Rock (Rock Rock!) got constant laughs throughout.

blah. I'm so ready to go home. I just have to tackle some more crap before I can. A nice night at home and then it all starts again tomorrow.

a war by any other name

NPR was mentioning this morning the Bush Administration's new approach to rename "The War on Terror" to something more stirring, something that harkens back to the good ol' days of The Cold War. Rumsfeld seems to have settled on the Orwellian term "The Long War" which I find to be creepy as fuck.

I've always said that there's no way you can wage war on a noun like Terrorism or Drugs. Wars are fought against people, nations, and organizations. So, at least they seem to recognize that it's not going to cut it to keep calling it something useless.

But, The Long War? Jebus cripes, that's scary. Adios, any hope for a quick resolution. And with that you are effectively plunging a generation of people into hopelessness. It's like the Administration has always done all along: keep the public in a state of fear, remove their rights, and then tell them that it's for their own good.

The thing is, I was thinking about this this morning. The only thing that let's them get away with renaming the "war" (wasn't Congress supposed to vote us into a War, King George?) is that it's coming from a unified small group of people who can all repeat the same message. There is absolutely nothing stopping the general public from getting behind the cause of renaming the conflict to something else. All it takes is a unified effort. If everyone were to start referring to it as something else, then the public holds the same power to change the name of this debacle as it's architects do.

So, anyway, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments. I suggest The Wrong War.

oh yeah ... and this

Somehow amidst all of the anti-flea mania I was going through last night, I forgot to mention my big news of the weekend. Republic Commando was nominated for a 2005 Game Audio Network Guild award for Best Interactive Score of the year.

I'm really happy and honored to be nominated for this award. The interactive nature of Republic Commando's score was a tremendous priority for me when I was working on the project and something that I take a lot of pride in. So, it really means a lot to me to see it recognized by industry peers.

RC is also up for Sound Design of the Year, which rocks. So, yay David Collins as well. My only problem now will be trying to wait calmly until the award ceremony towards the end of March.

just like our founding fathers did

Manda and I spent our President's Day weekend bombing for fleas and watching gay cowboys. As best as we can figure, the recent bout of warm weather we had last month created an explosion of fleas that bombarded our cat, invaded our living room, laid seige to our office, and pretty much just held one massive flea-kegger all over our apartment for a while.

Well, no more, you little blood sucking bastards ...

We've reclaimed the apartment, reclaimed the cat, and reclaimed some semblance of normalcy around here. So, that's awesome. And it only slightly bothers me that I can smell deadly chemicals in the air three hours after the "half hour post-bomb ventilation period" was over.

We also saw "Brokeback Moutain" with some friends Sunday night. It was a pretty good flick. But ... holy hell ... is that movie S..... L......... O.......................... W........................................................ I didn't know much about the movie before I went in (but apparently more than some people did, though; I'll get to that in a sec) but I guess I assumed it was about some kind of summer fling these cowboys had. Nope. The film spans about 20 years and at times seemed like it was going to all happen in real time. Still, a good movie.

Okay, that story I promised. Apparently, the message of the movie, the marketing of the movie, the social dialogue that the entire country is having about this movie hasn't exactly reached everyone yet. When we went to the flick, there were three people in front of us who had all happily plunked down ten bucks to buy a ticket, said the words "three for 'Brokeback Mountain' please" and then marched themselves into the theatre to find seats. However, as soon as the relationship between the two cowboys started to get a little frisky, there was a flurry of conversation between the three of the people in front of us and they abruptly left the theatre - never to return. Who goes to see "Brokeback Mountain" without any knowledge that it's a movie about a gay love affair?

I didn't see it, but apparently the guy in the group must have felt suddenly very threatened by the film. Right before they left, he was seen making it a point to make out very forcibly with his wife/girlfriend/mistress/whateva. Can you say "overcompensating?" We can. And we did.

Anyway, that was our weekend. We're now marching around the apartment like it's V-F day. I'm gonna' go enjoy my new flea-free life here and maybe celebrate with a little ice cream and a cream soda. I hear that's how the French celebrated after WWII.

i finally found my blues name

Alright, well maybe I shouldn't say "finally." It's not like I've really been searching for one. But, I just got a great piece of spam. Among as string of things about enlarging parts of my body herbally, it also contained what is totally gonna be the name of my first blues album, should I ever choose to record one. Plus, as an added bonus, it gave me my blues artist name, too. So, all in all, a pretty useful piece of uselessness.

So, the album will be:

"Prison Music Pride" by Lashawana Dan.

I love it.

won't you come home, bill bailey?

Okay. It's official. It's time to mourn the loss of Guns & Roses. Why now? Why a good 15 years or so since the release of Use Your Illusions 1 and 2? Because it looks like 2006 is actually going to be the release year for the nearly mythical Chinese Democracy album.

For those who don't know, Chinese Democracy is the Guns & Roses album that Axel Rose has been working on for over a decade. He has spent millions of dollars remixing, retracking, reinventing, etc. Axel and Guns had so much potential to really just own all of rock and roll and become one of the greatest bands of all time. But Axel's ego and his own sense of perfectionistic diva-esque mania led to Guns' destruction, his own Brian Wilsonish reclusive hermit status, and flushed all of their promise down the 90s drain.

Well, after an eternity without a new Guns tune, someone finally leaked the first track off of Chinese Democracy. I heard it on our local classic rock station tonight as I was driving home. And you know what? Guns & Rose are dead. In fact, I don't even think they should use the name anymore because this new stuff so seriously tarnishes the awesomeness that is Appetite for Destruction. If they'd like, they can rename themselves Axel Rose Has His Head So Far Up His Ass He Can Smell His Own Lungs. Go ahead, guys; you can have that name. It's my "welcome back" gift to you.

The new song is called "IRS" and, if you want to hear it, I'd imagine it's getting tossed around pretty freely on the peer-to-peer networks right now. Suffice it to say, it's the equivalent of digital ass. Never before have I heard a rock tune that seemed to lack more focus. To all the record producers out there who are having a hard time justifying their jobs, congrats. You just found for yourselves the new "And here's what can happen without a Producer" audio example. It's more like some sort of John Lennon multi-tracking/layering experiment than a focused rock tune. Multiple guitars are soloing around wildly while Axel wails about the IRS and the FBI. He still sounds like he's got the vocal chops, but ... the song writing, guys. The song writing ... what happened? It's just all over the place, like watching someone's house being blown around by a tornado. Sure, you can sorta' see that it was probably a house at one point or another. But in it's current state, things are flying off of it in pieces and it looks more like a mess in motion than anything welcoming and you know it's just going to land in a heap of crap when everything's over.

I just found myself wincing throughout the whole tune instead of really enjoying it like I was hoping I would. So, Guns & Roses is dead. Long live Velvet Revolver. And I can official scratch Chinese Democracy off of my "hope that gets released one day" list.

Such a disappointment ...

age is just a number, baby

When I sewed a Double Dragon patch onto the front of my jacket a few years ago, I figured I'd get a few comments from people who played the game in the 80s and remember it fondly. What I didn't expect were the questions I get from elderly Asian women.

Oddly, this happens more frequently than you'd think it would. There's something about the Double Dragon logo that apparently makes it look like the logo for a Chinese restaurant. I'm frequently stopped by elderly Asian women who always have the same conversation with me.

Old Lady: What is that? "Double Dragon." What is that?
Me: Oh ... it's just an old video game from the 80s.
Old Lady: Oh, okay. I thought it was a restaurant.

See? Proof positive. Anyway, I had the same conversation again this morning when I stopped for gas on my way to work. What I didn't expect, however, was the reaction I got when I told the 60-something woman working at the gas station that it was a video game and not a restaurant.

"Oh! Are you in the games industry? I love video games!" She then proceeded to tell me a story about how she made her grand-daughter cry because she hogged the game console. Her daughter apparently had to comfort the grand-daughter with the very soothing words, "It's okay, honey. Grandma is just like that sometimes."

This nice old lady then proceeded to talk to me about games and about my job at LucasArts. She was so excited to talk games. She also wanted me to know that if we're looking for testers that I "shouldn't let the gray hair fool [me]," she'd love to work as a tester and play games all day long.

So, the lesson for today is: don't let the gray hair fool you. Somewhere in the world right now there's probably a senior citizen making all of the neighborhood children cry with their mad Tekken skillz.

Pet Peeve No. 1

I don't know why, but I feel the need this morning to enumerate my pet peeves. Rather than flumping down a big list of them here, I thought I'd just dole them out one by one as I think of them over time.

First up: Using Movie Quotes in DVD Commercials to Comment on the DVD's Release

I hate this crap. It always annoys the hell out of me. There are - as far as I can tell - two trains of thought when it comes to doing a commercial for a DVD. You have to show footage of the movie and you therefore will most likely be playing a least some dialogue. Now, you can apparently either 1.) play random pieces of dialogue that seem to encapsulate the movie's tone ("I see dead people ..."), or 2.) you can pull random lines of dialogue from the film and intercut it with the narrator to make it sound as if the movie and your narrator are having a conversation.

Approach 1 doesn't bother me at all. But, holy crap in a hat, Approach 2 annoys the bejesus out of me every single time I see it. Mainly it's because the lines of dialogue that are selected are either ridiculously obtuse in how they're "commenting" on the narration or they're so representative of a scene that I recognize that I don't realize it was a comment on the narration and I sit there thinking "Why did they play that clip?" I then sit there thinking about it, have stopped watching the commercial, miss whatever it is they're saying, and then realize what was going on originally. And I get annoyed.

I mean, it's always something like this:

Narrator: This summer ...
[shot of random Disney characters running]

Narrator: a beloved classic comes to your home for the first time in history.
[cut to a shot of non-main character/obscure character]

Obscure Character: I find that hard to believe!

Narrator: On July 24th, Dumbiochio comes home on DVD.
[cut to random action sequence with happy cartoon animals in a bobsled]

Cartoon animals in unison: AWESOME!!

Narrator: Loaded with extra features, posthumous director's commentary by Walt Disney, and an interactive Storyboard featurette, Dumbiochio is sure to endure for generations to come.
[cut to shot of main character looking angrily at another character]

Main Character: I knew you were going to say that!

Narrator: But it's only available for a limited time, so don't miss this golden opportunity to own your very own copy of Dumbiochio on July 24th!
[cut to shot of crowd of happy animals]

Crowd of animals: [cheering wordlessly with whooping and "yays"]

[END]

That is the crap I'm talking about. I can't stands it, I tells ya. I wish they would stop and just show the damn movie instead of feeling like the public demands some kind of creative editing to make the movie comment on its own release.

If you're listening, Disney (which I know you're not), knock it off. It's dumb.

meet the press

As of today, I'm officially a published author. I'm pretty psyched about it. Today at work I got a package in the mail from the Game Developer folks with three copies of the issue containing my Audio article. Well, actually, I suppose it isn't "as of today, I'm published." It was mailed yesterday and was probably printed sooner, so I guess it should be "as of last week, I'm a published author."

Sheesh. Wouldn't want to piss off the Blog Police, again ...

Anyway, I'm happy to see this thing here in my hands and I feel really good about it. It's nice to feel like I'm contributing back to the industry in at least some small way with the things I've learned by working on stuff over the last few years.

Plus, it's cool to now have an "Articles" section on my resume.

I had something else I wanted to say, but I forget what it was. So ... let's just go with "Be excellent to each other."

zero to sixty and old skool science

I just got super busy out of nowhere. After not having much of anything to do for the past few months, I'm now staring down the barrel of 3 simultaneous projects. And after not writing a note of music in a year and eight months, I now have to fire up Logic and start cranking on some new material.

When it rains it pours, I s'pose. Or like the North East just learned, when it snows, it fuckin' dumps it.

This weekend, Amanda and I inherited from her mom a wonderful old book called the New Century Book of Facts. This particular edition was published in 1943 and is a really interesting snapshot into the science, history, and politics of the time. Along with entries which outline the mysterious and "unknown country" of the human spleen, creepy mentions of Eugenics that show a total lack of understanding of how at that very time Eugenics were destroying Europe's Jewish population, and descriptions of how to send a still image via radio waves, there were also mentions of a planetoid called Eros.

Now, this was weird to me because I didn't have any idea what it was talking about when it said there is a large planetoid parked between Earth and Mars named Eros. I thought "well .. wait... how come I've never heard of this thing before?" Well, it turns out that I have and just didn't recognize it when described as a planetoid. Eros is 433 Eros, the asteroid that just recently had some crap of NASA's parked on it. So, today's Science Lesson of the Day is: When you time travel back to 1943, the word for asteroid is "planetoid."

Also interesting to note was that they thought Pluto was larger than Earth, Venus, Mars, and Mercury and that the idea of plate tectonics was just about as fringe a notion as earthquakes being caused "by the Moon's tides effecting the mostly liquid core of the Earth."

That's the funny thing about a book called the New Century Book of Facts. You'd better really know they're facts or else some dork will poke fun at you and your crazy out-dated ideas 80 67 years into the future.

And that's a fact.

UPDATE: In order to comply with my citations from the Math and Blog Police, I've replaced the number 80 as it was originally in my blog. I then proceeded to strike it out and replace it with a fancy 67 (which is large Times Roman fonted and set to the color 3366ff). I then went ahead and added a block of update text at the end describing all of the dumbass changes I've had to make.