Blather

On Plastic Beach; It’s Some Kind Of Nature

Today marks the release of Plastic Beach, the third album by virtual band Gorillaz. If you’re up to date on your music news, you’ll know that NPR has had a preview of the entire album up on it’s site to give fans an early listen. After about a dozen or so listens, I thought I would share some kind of review for you. Short version: It’s good and you need to go buy it right away.

Slightly less short version: If you’re expecting the same kind of album as Demon Days or their self-titled debut, you might be a little disappointed. There are less standalone singles here than in previous albums. The trade off, though, is that the album feels more connected and flows way better. From first to the last track, it’s an entire experience. Granted, nothing quite to the extent of Girl Talk’s Feed The Animals, but it gets close and you will find yourself going through the entire album more than once without realizing how many tracks have passed.

I have a little bias in this review as I’ve enjoyed Damon Albarn’s band since the beginning and could tell I would enjoy this new album immediately after listening to Stylo when it was leaked awhile back. And the singles on this track are difficult to get out of your head, from the frenetic “Superfast Jellyfish” to the somber “On Melancholy Hill.” It’s a finely crafted album and I heartily recommend you get it at your earliest convenience.

On Broken Bells

I’m going to admit off the bat that I don’t have a lot of experience when it comes to Brian Burton, aka Danger Mouse. The closest I’ve come to anything with his mark on it would have to be Gnarls Barkley and the second Gorillaz album, which still holds up for me all these years later. Well, today is the release date for his collaboration with The Shins’ James Mercer, titled Broken Bells. As with the Gorillaz album Plastic Beach, NPR had a preview up all of last week for fans to sample. I gave this one a rather ridiculous amount of play since I’m a rabid fan of The Shins.

My thoughts? It’s solid.

I read through a few early reviews and the general consensus on them is that the album is “meh” or just for the Zach Braff brand of hipster. Their problems with the album, however, are what I like about it. The album is simple, and Mercer proves that he can still work his vocal wonders while evolving his musical styling at the same time. There are moments here and there where the album gets a little slow, and that’s really the only place where I agree with most of the reviewers out there.

If you like either of these two artists and what they do, you’ll want to pick up this album. Like I said, it’s solid and enjoyable.

On Tim Burton’s Alice

I love the Alice in Wonderland story. In fact, I read the book a few times in high school, watched the old movie, played the hell out of American McGee’s Alice and often thought about how I’d take a stab at the story if I ever got the chance…you know, should I ever pursue a career in writing. Well, thanks to Tim Burton, I won’t have that chance for awhile. He’s gone ahead and adapted my favorite kid’s story into what looks to be a quirky flick about the Mad Hatter and an all out chess war straight from Narnia.

Wait, wut?

There’s a lot to this trailer that intrigues me in terms of direction and style. Everything in the real world is a drab caricature of Pride and Prejudice, and has enough gray tones to make you instinctively yawn. Wonderland itself looks dark and demented and all kinds of crazy. So far, so good, but what about the story that’s hinted at? A war? Alice in armor? Chess pieces clashing together like this was Middle Earth? Granted, this is only a trailer and I shouldn’t be so quick to judge, but I’m already on amber alert here. I’d really like to enjoy this film when it comes out (count me there on opening night), and I hope Burton’s silly love affair with Mr. Depp doesn’t detract from the world that I know and love. But with a trailer like this, it’s hard to be all out enthusiastic.

At least they HAVE a Cheshire Cat. Yeah, that’s right, SyFy’s Alice!

On New Years Resolutions

Jon on the run!

Jon on the run!

Last year I wrote up a post about my new years resolutions. Out of the 20 I posted, I ended up completing only one. So this year I decided to re-think the resolution thing and come up with more attainable goals so I feel less pathetic when the 2011 rolls around. Although, I have a feeling that history will repeat itself like it usually does and I’ll be writing a post similar to this one next year. Yay for New Years Resolutions, eh?

Anyway, here’s the list in all it’s listy glory.

  1. Finish a final draft of Year of the Con, my nerdy road-trip comedy.
  2. Acquire an Agent and a Manager to help sell my script and future ones I write.
  3. Complete writing of two web series I want to produce.
  4. Get at least one of the web series produced.
  5. Write a third screenplay.
  6. Get Photoshop CS2 and Flash 8 back on my compruter. Srsly, the newer ones blow.
  7. Write every day.
  8. Find either a better-paying job or a second job.
  9. Start up my old webcomic.
  10. Go to more shows.
  11. Go to a rave.
  12. Go to at least 2 nerdy conventions. Dress up for both of them.
  13. Go to comic con.
  14. Write a sci fi novel.
  15. Complete Script-Frenzy this year and do NaNoWriMo again!
  16. Write a spec script for a sitcom, hour-long drama, procedural, and whatever you call the ooey gooey goodness that’s on HBO and SHOWTIME these days.
  17. More dates. Some blind dates perhaps.
  18. Do one of those speed dating things and have at least as awkward a time as Steve Carrell did in The 40 Year Old Virgin.
  19. Drink more cranberry juice. So delicious.
  20. Get a suit. I’ve got the pants. Just need to get the rest.
  21. Co-write a film script with someone.
  22. Hang out more with friends and be less of an anti-social bitch. God, srsly.
  23. Do two things I would never otherwise do.
  24. Get my toon to level 80. God, srsly. I’m such a terrible nerd.
  25. Visit at least 2 Friendfeed people. ROAD TRIP!
  26. Take Killer (my cat) to the groomer. Be able to afford that.

Here’s to the new year!

If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Remake It

The HORROR! THEY'RE REMAKING WHAT?!

The HORROR! THEY'RE REMAKING WHAT?!

I’ve got a rather novel idea that I’d like to share with the world, something which I think everyone can agree with on some basic level. Something, which when I say it you’ll say “amen” under your breath. Ready for it?

We don’t *need* remakes.

I was looking at some stills for the upcoming movie remake The Karate Kid and suddenly this revelation hit me in all it’s clarity and wisdom. Why was this remake needed? What wasn’t told with the original story that needed to be re-told? What other kind of spin could anyone actually put on this to make it suitable for a new generation? Last I checked, the original source material still holds up and isn’t that painfully dated. And it’s not the casting that bothers me about this remake, it’s that the best option was to just re-do everything and call it a Karate Kid movie.

What if instead of remaking everything under the sun people decided to just take the basic story structures from these older movies and make something new entirely? A young, troubled boy finds an outlet for his untoward behavior in karate, thanks to a sage neighbor. Why does it have to be called The Karate Kid, and furthermore, what’s so important with it being a remake? Is it just to bring in the nostalgic moviegoers? Is it because remaking already established properties is fiscally safe?

How about this? Let the basic story stand on it’s own feet and trust that audiences that like that type of story will come in and see it. Since there’s nothing new under the sun, it’s not like you’re going to get sued for having a similar story type to the Karate Kid. If that were the case, I highly doubt a lot of “original” properties wouldn’t exist today.

Just something to think about. If it ain’t broke..

On NaNoWriMo

I R A WRITER NAOW

Dudes (and Dudettes), I totally frickin’ did it!

I wrote a 50,000 word novel. That’s about 93 pages using your standard Times New Roman font and the basic margins set up by Microsoft Word when you open a blank document. Seven more pages and I could use one-fifth of a ream of paper to print out my novel. Reading my words would take a few trips if you took the public transportation here. So, now what? What happens now that I’ve done the unthinkable (or at least have done what I thought to be unthinkable..or doable)?

I dunno.

I think I’m going to take the next month or so and let the project simmer so I can get a feel if I want to actually do more with it or if it’s going to remain merely a means of cheap therapy. There’s not really that much of a plot to speak of, since it’s based loosely on me and my life after graduation. And every few thousand words I throw in something fictional to spice things up and make it readable on some level. But for the most part there’s a lot of incoherent ramblings about the craft of writing, which perhaps works well with the crazier parts of the story as one would have to be a bit nutty to fictionalize themselves.

The process of writing out this monstrosity was kind of interesting as I forced myself to write at least 2,000 words on average every day. On days I took off, I made up for it by doubling and in some cases tripling the word count. By the fourth week, I started to feel the strain of the deadline and let myself get a little looser in what I allowed on the page. But what I didn’t expect was that all this writing would spark my creative juices in such a dramatic way. I started going back to my other projects and re-examining them, planning on what I would do when I finished my novel. On one particular day, I even planned out another novel that I want to write. I imagine that there will be a NaJaWriMo or something in my future.

This fire to continue writing hasn’t stopped since I passed the 50k word limit. In fact, I wrote two short scripts on Sunday and outlined another project. And as you can tell, tonight I decided to blog a bit.

If I could impart some advice from what I’ve learned doing this whole project it would be that you just need to write. Don’t get hung up on whether it’s good or not. Tell your story and save the validity of it for draft two. Be as raw as you can be and you’ll find that the words come quite naturally.

But fuck poetry, because that’s just stupid. :P

Putting the Rant Pants On

ORDER! ORDER! HE made the internets stupid!

ORDER! ORDER! HE made the internets stupid!

It’s been too long since I’ve updated this blog, internets, but I don’t really plan on apologizing for that today. Instead, I’m going to don the rant pants and do some serious bitching. Here’s the short version: Facebook is stupid, twitter isn’t worth squat, and Hulu is about to get one less user. Whew. Now onto the long version.

Facebook is still hard to use. They’ve added a new feature where you can have a live feed roll down the page in “real time,” except it’s not real time. As a fairly adept internet user, I’ve usually got a minimum of four tabs open, one for each service and then random site hopping. If you are on another tab, the facebook timeline doesn’t update. You have to actually go back and make sure the site is the focus before it will do anything. You can tell that the idea of the “live feed” came from the Friendfeed guys, but it looks and feels like the Facebook guys are the ones who implemented it. Granted, the Friendfeed guys ARE the Facebook guys now so I’ll rephrase: Good idea, shitty implementation.

They’ve also removed cities from networks. So I guess the only networks I *can* have are schools or jobs? I question the usefulness of networks now, especially now that friend lists are becoming a big deal. Also, what good are networks in a twitter-ized environment anyway?

I heard somewhere that Twitter was worth billions. I kind of wish *I* had thought of a service with poor uptime and a shitty API so I could be worth billions too. Oh yeah, they’re coming out with lists, a feature that every other service has had for some time now. Hell, even twitter clients have list-like features.

You’ll remember a blog post I made awhile back bitching about users who couldn’t be bothered to pay the small fees from Pandora. Yeah, those people are still tight asses, but there’s some news that might make this “pay for online content” debate a little bit more complicated. Hulu is expected to charge for their content by 2010. I think this is a fairly retarded decision, considering the fact that the service isn’t out of it’s infancy yet (my opinion). Also, for a service like hulu to start charging, it needs to change the way it’s delivering it’s content. First of all, to me, pay for online content means zero advertising. It also means the service (like the article says) needs to extend beyond the website and extend *reliably*. Also, this eight day delay between episode air date and hulu release would have to stop. In fact, I would say that Hulu should just release the episode as soon as it airs.

Now, there was mention that there could be a tiered pricing scheme, which would make this into a less-sucky idea. But I’m going to put it out there that there won’t be much to the free tier. Sorry, but at this point, I see no reason to move to Hulu from Cable, or to even pay for both. Cable sucks, but at least it’s reliable and it won’t buffer if your connection isn’t as stellar.

Ugh.

Let the Busy Times Roll

Hey all, I’ve been fairly busy the past week or so with extra work, which is why I haven’t updated this thing or ranted about some inane topic that you probably don’t care about. So, I thought I would just give some twitter-like blurbs about various things throughout the past week.

– Patrick Swayze died. Add this to the list of reasons why ’09 sucks.

– Kanye West decided that he wasn’t douchey enough and humiliated Taylor Swift during her award speech. But hey, that’s what the voice of a douchey generation does.

– I made it to level 30 in WoW. I hope I can get caught up to the newest expansion so I won’t feel so left behind when Cataclysm changes everything.

– Social networks continued to be social.

– The diet coke of Facebook was released. It reminded me of what I liked about the older iterations, namely the simplicity.

– I didn’t see any movies in the theater.

– I started watching This American Life, the tv show.

– I thought about working on my comic, but got distracted with the internet instead.

And there you have it. I’ve been busy.

On Fraud and Credit Cards

Via The Consumerist:

Enter Merchantfraud, a group of well-intentioned but foolish outlaws who advocate having customers ask them for stickers identifying the companies as violators, then sticking them on offenders’ storefronts.

I agree with the author of this article to an extent. Calling business establishments robbers and thieves is a bit over the top, but at the same time I am a little bit miffed that stores can get away with this. I remember coming across this problem in a bar a few years back. I had just ordered a drink and was about to pay with my card when the bartender told me that I would have to spend at least $20 before she could ring it up. Since I had already consumed about half of the drink already, there really wasn’t any way I could go out and seek out an ATM somewhere, of which there wasn’t one to be found (I know because I looked later that night and it was blocks away). So, naturally I drank $20 worth of booze and got way more blitzed than I planed. This would have been a different story if this were the Hopleaf, but I digress.

Point being, it kind of blows to find that stores can get away with this, especially if it’s “prohibited” by the credit card companies themselves. But I don’t think I care enough to go around defacing store-fronts with stickers.