Euroinvasion!

So my brother leaves for Europe tomorrow (along with the rest of my family, though they're only gone for a little over a week) and he and the friends he will be traveling with have started up a blog. So, mostly for my own reference, but also if you're interested, here's a link to the Euroblog

The Thing: The Game

So there's this movie called The Thing; the famous version is from the 80s and was directed by John Carpenter though it's actually a remake of some movie from the 50s. The premise, in brief, is that a bunch of scientists working at an isolated research base in Antarctica accidentally come into contact with an alien that takes over people's bodies. It's like a small-scale Invasion of the Body Snatchers except when the aliens are exposed they turn into giant kickass monster aliens. Also, it's got lots of flamethrower action. As if I need to say it, Aliens + Paranoia + Flamethrowers = awesome.

When I was in high school, I saw the movie and was inspired to design a game based around it. The game is meant to be played in a smallish group and as an ongoing game, which is to say you play it while also going about your daily activities. It works best in a school-like situation where you come into contact with the same people frequently. I also suggest playing it as a gambling game, with something like a dollar or five as a buy-in. This just encourages people to stay in the game and makes it more fun and intense. If you do play for money, I'd say the player who starts as the Thing should break even, as should the second place player. First place gets the rest. Obviously, though, it's up to you.

STARTING/ORGANIZING THE GAME

The game would be best done with a computerized system, but I'm lazy and don't really know how to do that, so I'm sticking to low-tech means. The most high-tech it gets is email, which even my grandmother can handle. To start the game, you gather everyone together and, maybe using a deck of cards, randomly select one player to start as The Thing. It's important that the other players do not know which player is The Thing. Every other player is a Human. Also, one player (not the thing) randomly starts with a flamethrower. Don't worry, it's not an actual flamethrower, just a symbolic one. Use whatever you want to represent it, though it must be something clearly visible, like a bracelet.

PLAYING THE GAME

The Thing can infect a Human by getting him/her alone in a room. When this occurs, The Thing informs the player that he/she has been infected. Any player who is infected immediately becomes The Thing. The Thing who infected the human remains The Thing. Thus, the balance of power shifts, as The Thing eventually overwhelms the Humans. For the purposes of determining whether a Human counts as alone, other Humans and non-players count but players who are The Thing do not.

The Thing may not infect any Human carrying the flamethrower. However, any Human may ask the player with the flamethrower to give it to him/her. The player with the flamethrower must give it up and may not ask for it back for 24 hours. Others may still ask for the flamethrower though. The Thing may not ask for the flamethrower, but if it somehow comes into The Thing's possession, it is rendered useless for the duration of the game.

When a player is added to The Thing, he/she should inform the player who began the game as The Thing. This player should keep a list and pass it out to all players who are The Thing on a regular basis, presumably by email. This player is also in charge of announcing when the game is over. The game ends when only one Human, the game's winner, remains. Other players should congratulate this player on being probably the most paranoid motherfucker on the planet.

And, well, that's it. Go get scared and stop trusting your friends... I mean, have fun!

Culture Blogging again

Um, this is bad news. I'm starting to lose track of the culture I'm ingesting. Wow, that sounds really snobby when I actually put it into words that way. But it's easier than listing everything that I'm looking at. I mean, it just started as "I'm gonna make a list of all the books I read for a year. And also the movies I see. And also the comics I read. And I guess I might as well throw in concerts too. And TV shows... is that even reasonable?" And, well, here we are. Let's see what I can remember.

MOVIES:

I finally saw one! Woo!
-Ocean's Thirteen. While not at all life-changing, this was exactly what I wanted it to be. Fun, funny, pretty.. but I'm sure you know all that. What I'd like to mention is the music. David Holmes has been providing music for the Ocean's movies since the first one--wait, lemme check and make sure he did this one too... okay, he did. So yeah, I think he's one of the poster children for composers that really add a lot to movies without anyone knowing. I bought a copy of the Ocean's Twelve soundtrack and still listen to it a lot. His music is a really brilliant combination of effortless cool and complicated rhythms. He blends jazz and electronic into a music that feels simultaneously retro and futuristic. My point is, he really captures the feel of the films. I think a more traditional score would really ruin the whole thing.
Conclusion: If you haven't seen the movie or are planning on seeing it again, pay a little attention to the music. Trust me, it's worth.

COMICS:

Wow, let me see what I can remember...
-Ed Brubaker's complete run of Captain America up to and past the infamous death issue. It's really fantastic. Brubaker eschews the superhero feel for something a bit grittier, but not in a Punisher sort of way. Brubaker reimagines the Captain America comic as more akin to a supr-hero version of 24. It's less "There's a robot rampaging through Manhattan!" and more "A mysterious bad guy has gotten a hold of the Cosmic Cube. We have to get it back before he levels Manhattan!" There are twists within twists, super cliffhangers, and they manage to break one of the cardinal rules of the Marvel Universe without really offending any of the die-hard fans. Not that it means much to most of my readers, presumably, but that's a pretty big deal. Good stuff.

-The New Avengers. There's a reason Brian Michael Bendis is the most famous comic book writer who isn't Joss Whedon or Stephen King: His dialogue and characterization is just brilliant. His New Avengers really revitalizes the whole idea of the Avengers. The team, which some people have seen as absurd (What? Luke Cage?), works so much better than you'd expect it to and the interactions between the teammates really drive the series. Plus, he writes perfect Spider-man dialogue. They just took a radical direction, in which any of the heroes could be a shape-shifting alien spy. It's like The Thing only with super-heroes!
(Full Disclosure: I <3 The Thing, as a concept even more than the actual movie, even though the movie is excellent. In high school I really wanted to play a full-immersion game based on The Thing where people just carried on with their normal lives. You know... I have a lot of time on my hands today so I think I'll post about it later.)

-Thor: Blood Oath. This was cool, don't have much to say though.

-The Thing: Idol of Millions. Ditto.

-Iron Man: Hypervelocity. Get this: Iron Man builds a new suit capable of uploading his personality in case he should die. He promptly gets attacked and winds up in a coma. The newly sentient Iron Man suit freaks out, goes on the run, and starts upgrading itself to process things at computer speed rather than human speed, while simultaneously fighting off an entire SHIELD helicarrier and a sexy virus that's implanted herself in his consciousness. Its six issues are absolutely crazy, fast-paced (thus the title), and bizarre. Cyberpunk is most certainly not dead.

-Bullet Points. In an alternate universe, an assassin kills the scientist behind Captain America's super-serum a day earlier, as well as his body guard, a certain Ben Parker. This results in a totally backwards Marvel Universe in which Steve Rogers is Iron Man, Reed Richards is the grizzled head of SHIELD, and Peter Parker turns into the Hulk and saves the world from Galactus through sheer anger (and of course, his love of Aunt May). Pretty cool stuff, and I really enjoyed the art by Tommy Lee Edwards (I say that like I know who he is, other than that he did the art to Bullet Points).

Um, I think that might be it, besides random new issues of series I've been following and stuff. I'll add anything else I can think of.

(real) BOOKS:

I finally finished The Children of Hurin, the new Tolkien book. It definitely isn't as good The Lord of the Rings, or The Hobbit, but it has a elegant simplicity to it. That's not to say it isn't simple, but it's not epic and complex in the same way that Lord of the Rings is. It's more character-centric. I do think it would make an excellent movie though. Hmm, now who would play Turin?

TV:

-Last week's episode of Entourage was simply amazing. That's all.

Okay, that's it for now. I didn't do music, cause I'm going to do a seperate Bonnaroo post... well, with any luck I'll do a Bonnaroo post, especially since the New York Times did a blog about it that I Found thoroughly underwhelming despite the nice pictures of the bands that are far better than most of mine.

Adieu for now!

more on the culture-blogging... hope nobody minds that I'm basically using my blog just for reviews of comics I've been reading/

COMICS:
-Thunderbolts... yes, all 114 or so issues. I'd recommend it to anybody with a passing interest in comic books. Though it has its ups and downs like all series that have been running for that long, its premise (villains trying to be heroes) never gets old and neither does its infatuation with weird no-name third-rate villains. It's a lot of fun.
-The first volume of She-hulk. This is better than it ought to be, simply because superhero law is really amusing. Can a ghost summoned by Dr. Strange testify in his own murder trial? What happens when a villain sues a superhero who left him in a full body cast? Is it okay to use comic books as legal precedent? Comic books don't have enough wackiness these days, but this one still does.
-The Sentry: Reborn. Here's the pitch: What if Superman were a paranoid schizophrenic with agoraphobia? The book is kind of a cross between Superman and Memento. Good stuff. Kinda gave me a headache though...

One of these days I'll write a real entry

I read a LOT of comics, okay?

Also:

COMICS:
(This time including commentary for my favorite/only commenter... HI MAX!)


-The complete run of Alias.
Not to be confused with the TV show of the same name. I'd highly recommend this one to anybody. It's about a mediocre superheroine who decided she wasn't cut out for superheroics and became a private eye. So basically she goes around solving weird mysteries, having guy problems, trying to sort out her fucked-up life, and swearing heavily. It's pretty awesome, and self-contained too.

-World War III.
Wow, DC's latest stuff is really leaving me unimpressed. That is, except some random Superman stuff I've read recently. They have Kurt Busiek writing it, and he's really good with hugely powerful heroes. He focuses on the stuff that makes them human, but still manages to write in some kickass fight scenes.
But yeah, World War III turns out to be some dude nobody who hasn't been following 52 cares about killing some random b-list superheroes while Martian Manhunter contemplates. YAWN.

Indulging my Inner Geek

Well, it had to happen. Sooner or later we all knew I was gonna start talking about Magic cards. But this is game theory (well, the theory of games, not that John Nash stuff) so it's not totally geeky... right?

So I was reading a review of a Marvel-based Trading Card Game the other day, in which the reviewer stated straight-up that he did not think that Trading Card Games qualify as real games.

(An aside, for those who I have no idea what I'm talking about: A Trading Card Game or TCG is a card game in which each player collects cards by purchasing packs of randomly assorted cards. The cards have different rules that apply to them. The player then constructs a deck out of the cards that he has in his collection and uses that deck to play against others...)

Back to this review. The guy says TCGs are not games because you can't own the complete game and because you can't see what you're getting before you buy a pack of cards. In short, he thinks this sort of game is a scam that forces you to spend an inordinate amount of money buying things you wouldn't buy simply because the packs are filled with a random assortment of cards. I agree that most of these games are rip-offs, but I don't think that changes their fundamental nature as games.

The thing is, this model isn't that different from, say, Texas Hold 'Em. In Hold 'em, you have to throw down the ante to see the flop. In essence, you are paying money for the opportunity to get cards that will potentially help you win the game, but you pay before you see the cards. The could be useless and you won't know until you've already thrown your money in. It seems to me that the TCG model is really just a version of this same mechanic, only extruded out in a way that is most beneficial to the people making the cards. So yes, when people complain that TCGs favor those with more money to spend on cards, they have a valid point. At the same time, though, there is a precedent. The poker player with more money is at a huge advantage over his opponent(s). It doesn't make Poker any less of a game, just like it doesn't make TCGs any less of a game. All it means is that they're a type of game that involves gambling and gambling with real resources rather than plastic soldiers or chocolate coins. That some people don't find the reward equal to the risk just means that perhaps TCGs are not the games for then.

Culturewatch

I think I've given up on trying to successfully write down all the comics I've been reading. There're just too many, but here we go:

COMICS:
-Thunderbolts (a good portion of the first year)
-Spider-man: The Other
-Batman: The Long Halloween
-Blade: Undead Again
-Every issue of the The Irredeemable Ant-Man
-Various current Marvel comics dealing with the death of Captain America and the Initiative.
-Kingdom Come
-Spider-man Loves Mary Jane, Vol. 3
-Most of the Stan Lee meets... 65th Anniversary series.
-A ton of old Doctor Strange Comics
-The complete run of Spectacular Spider-man

Also, I read the first two issues of DC's new Countdown series, which I thoroughly disliked. There's too much going on, and it's too focused on characters that I've never heard of before. This wouldn't be a problem except that they don't introduce the characters particularly well. You have to have been following along for the past year or so to have any hope of understanding the story. Again, this wouldn't be the problem if they weren't the first two issues of a brand new series. A reader should be able to pick up a new series and be able to follow it from the start. Hell, Spider-man mentions his origin in almost every single issue. So I dunno, trying to keep track of all the different alternate universe Robins and Joker's daughter and such makes my head hurt.

Movie-wise, it's just one lonely entry...

MOVIES:
-Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

I actually really enjoyed Pirates 3. Granted, it was way too long, and the plot was utterly incoherent (hey, remember that Calypso story with no payoff?) but it was silly fun summer entertainment. Still doesn't match up to the first one, though... not even close.

Weekend Update

It's hard to keep a steady blog when you've got a roughly 60 hour work-week, but I'm gonna try. So I present you with two random thoughts:

-If I ever make a Silver Surfer movie, I'd like to have the band M83 do the music.

-The Fuse channel has a show called "Pants Off Dance Off", which is exactly what you'd think it is... and no, that link is not exactly safe for work. This is why flipping through digital cable's channels at 1:00am is kind of dangerous.

And continuing with my culture blog, I'm back home and have started work at Marvel, which means lots of movies and comics.

TV:
Just the newest Entourage and Heroes. Need to catch up on Scrubs.

MOVIES:
-The Descent (Which still freaks me out, even if its scares were occasionally a bit cheap.)
-Brick (which I found somewhat overrated and kind of pretentious.)
-Executive Decision (which still kicks just as much ass as it did when I was 12.)

COMICS (I know these titles won't mean anything to most people besides Max, but this is partially for me):
-Everything related to Marvel's recent Civil War story arc and what's happened since then.
-The House of M.
-Thor: The Ballad of Beta Ray Bill.
-Marvels (Which I'd actually recommend even to non-comic book fans because the art is beautiful and the story is decidedly non-standard super-hero stuff.)
-Spider-Woman: The Origin.
-Doctor Strange: The Oath.
I'm sure they're more but I can't really remember right now. I read a lot of comics at work, y'know.

BOOKS:
Still just trudging though The Children of Húrin.

Well, that's all for now.

Well, There's Always Next Year...

I haven't mentioned this before, which is ironic since I got involved solely because I thought it would make for a good blog entry, but I spent a bunch of time this past school year working on the infamous CTV Soap Opera, The Gates. The first episode was pretty terrible, even with my glorious acting as the sleazy frat boy.

We submitted a shortened version of the second episode to the SoapU contest that SoapNet (the Soap Opera channel owned by ABC) was running. I can tell you objectively that it was better than the first, because we made it to the finals in the contest. We found ourselves shooting a five minute promo for a new show about celebrities and pop culture called The Insiders. I got on board again, mainly to do music, but ended up doing a bit of acting and some oscar-winning boom mic holding.

Anyway, turns out we didn't win, but I still think it's pretty damn impressive. I wrote most of the music without even seeing the scenes I was writing for (or with less than a day left before the final copy was due) so I think that turned out alright and my acting was, well, I'll let you judge for yourself. You can see our promo here or you can watch the goofy 2 minute documentary they made about us. Also take a look at the other entries if you've got some time; I actually think the one that came out on top was really well done.

Which do you want first?

The good news is that the Shake Shack is now open until 11pm. I can now stop by every night on my way home from work, when there isn't any line.

The bad news is that the Shake Shack is now open until 11pm and I can now stop by every night on my way home from work, which is disastrous for both my health and my wallet.

DAMN.

WWWD? (the third W is for Wilco)

Pitchfork has an interview with Jeff Tweedy from Wilco up since their new album comes out next week. I've been listening to the album for a month now and I think it's outstanding, though I doubt the critics will feel the same way, since it has a very subdued, classic rock vibe to it.
Back to the interview, though, Tweedy really nails everything I think is important about pop music. He rejects labels like "experimental" and his response to the question about nostalgia is spot-on:
"There's nothing nostalgic about Wilco. There's nothing nostalgic about anything. I don't find it to be important at all. I would think that what we're talking about and what I'm really describing is more being honest with yourself about language and using it to say who you are."

Anyway, rather than quote the whole interview, I'll just suggest you go read it. He's really smart.

The Times has a pretty solid article on Philip K. Dick today. Still doesn't mention how pathetic the translation was with Next. Oh well.

Cultureblogging 3

Since last we spoke, I finally finished James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon and also saw Spider-man 3 (as if that weren't expected). There will probably be a full entry devoted to Spider-man tonight when I'm "studying" but I'm at work right now so I don't want to write a long post.

Coming up on my list:
This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin and the new Tolkien book, THe Children of Hurin. Woo! Go reading on the subway!

Cultureblogging, Pt. 2

Yesterday...


COMIC BOOKS:
-Justice, Vol. 1, 2 by Jim Krueger, Alex Ross, and Doug Braithwaite.

BOOKS:
-

The Most Dangerous Game is... APARTMENTS!

I'm not sure if I'll ever really have a handle on how to go about finding an apartment to sublet for the summer, but I'm doing my best, mainly with Craigslist. The truth is, though, I don't even know where to begin... prices vs. square footage vs. neighborhoods, etc. And don't even get me started on what it's going to entail once I've found a place. I saw some guide in New York Magazine that mentioned having all sorts of financial information available and ready to go. Right...

Any advice on the topic would be appreciated. I'm looking at you anonymous commenter; you may be the sole reader I have left after my extended absence.