• 11Jun 09

  Me First! Me First!

  Other than people asking me what I think is the best (insert anything here) EVER, whether I prefer Coke over Pepsi, or what was the last (insert anything here) that I (insert something within Gamespot's TOU here), I think I get asked what was the first (you get the idea) that you (this joke has run its course methinks). Obviously for reasons involving my inability to warp time my choices tend to be dated a bit farther back than most people on this particular board. So for no particular reason I'd thought I'd grab a few of my favorites.

  

  First Anime/Cartoon -

  Back in 1969 other than the excitement of being given a dinosaur pop-up book (conveniently my first dinosaur book) later that year at Christmas, I distinctly remember falling in love with Kimba the White Lion otherwise known as the incredibly famous Jungle Emperor series from Japan courtesy of the legendary Osamu Tezuka. I lived in Pasadena at the time and so our antenna easily picked up the signal but I would be sorely disappointed by my parent's choices of dwellings soon after this as we began a series of moves which tended to put us in fairly distantly located trackhomes in which PBS type channels (which is the channels that aired Kimba) were very hard to receive. So over my childhood years my beloved Kimba and Speed Racer were rare commodities and I treasured every moment that I could successfully grab a signal no matter how fuzzy.

  

  First Comic Book/Magazine -

  As a child I was a voracious reader. I read almost anything I could get my hands on and stories about the Greek and Roman Gods featured big into that equation as they offered up fantastic stories of superhuman feats. Then in one of those book club magazines (Dynamite I believe it was) they often had a feature on comics reprinting the origins of various heroes. I was fascinated by these articles but in those days no comic shops existed and only the occasional grocery store had a spinner rack with comics.

  Unfortunately for me my parents had recently moved to Orange County which at the time was a barren wasteland as far as stores go. No grocery stores had comics and so the only comic happiness I could find were the short features found within magazines. Then in 1974 I discovered a drug store that occasionally got in a few of the Marvel magazines that they were marketing at the time in an attempt to bring in a more adult audience. I picked up an issue of Savage Tales No. 6 featuring Ka-Zar (Lord Plunder to you!) and read it over and over again with much glee! Much to my delight it also featured women in...well sometimes in little to no clothing and since it was John Buscema art it was very...um, well done.

  Soon after that we moved once again to another distant series of track homes in Oceanside and I very quickly located what at the time was an oasis of comic book goodness...A 7-ELEVEN!!! I quickly biked to it as soon as I had the chance and snatched up a comic of my favorite series The Fantastic Four and so finally I had my first actual comic -- Fantastic Four #158! With trembling hands I read quickly through the comic only to find a cliffhanger at the end! I was saddened as I was so use to rarely being able to find issues that I was sure I'd never find another one after that. Luckily the regular deliveries proved me wrong and thus was born my love for comic collecting in 1975.

  

  First movie in a theatre -

  I was a mere 4 years old when I was taken to a showing of the legendary film 2001: a space odyssey. Why my father decided a 4 year old should attend a movie like this I'll never know but I would have to assume he thought it was merely a space adventure movie and there would be lots of color and explosions to keep me occupied. Regardless, see it I did and although I don't have clear recollection of actually being there, I do have very fond memories of growing up with the big deluxe vinyl soundtrack album. I used to play it over and over as I found the very odd tracks by Ligeti to be entrancing and spooky. It could be my natural passion for Hallowe'en as I often played the soundtrack in order to make our house seem more spooky to passer bys.

  

  First vinyl album -

  Throughout most of the '70s I had a best friend that was really into Johnny Cash. I mean really into Johnny Cash. As a result I pushed aside the Led Zeppelin albums littering most people's rooms at the time and mainly listened to Johnny Cash myself over and over again. Late one weekend night I caught this weird rock band wearing outlandish outfits and strange make-up and combining this with big pyrotechnics and a driving rock sound and lyrics. Well that was it for me as after that I was a solid Kiss fan!

  The very next time my parents went out shopping I stopped by the record area and picked up their newest album for $5.99 and just played that sucker to death much to my parents chagrin. I slowly accrued all their older albums and soon started buying any magazine I could afford which featured them.

  Good lord it all seems so embarassing now.

  For the record, my first piece of music that wasn't children's music that I bought was a ABBA 45 single of Fernando! Then my first 8-Track that I was allowed to buy for a long road trip was Steve Miller's Book of Dreams. Luckily the early '80s came along and I developed an interest in music that was a tad less embarassing. My first Compact Disc ended up being Roxy Music's Avalon which I still have sitting on my shelf.

  

  First movie I watched multiple times in the theatre -

  When Star Wars hit the theatre in 1977 I just went nutzo! It was the single most amazing thing that I had ever seen and I somehow managed to convince my parents to attend multiple showings. When I was young I was exceedingly tiny and anytime somebody sat in front of me I really just couldn't see a damn thing. As a result I took to sitting in the very front seats which solved the problem as the seats weren't really all that close to the screen.

  However one particular screening of Star Wars my parents went to some new fangled over-sized theatre and when I sat down I was looking almost straight up at the screen. Let me tell you that opening sequence in which the Imperial Cruisers come slowly flying down from the top of the screen is something I will never forget thanks to that HUGE screen.

  

  My first pet -

  I had an older brother and sister when I was growing up and although we often had pets in our family, the pet was always the family's or my brother's or sister's. While I was living in Oceanside and wandering the surrounding miles and miles of thick fields covered in high brush and railroad tracks I captured a California King Snake! I convinced my parents to let me keep him and despite the reservations of my sisters and mother concerning my ability to keep him caged I at last had my first pet!

  Ah my goodness what a great snake he was too! Wild snakes, once they adapt to their surroundings, are a lot more docile than their raised in captivity brethren as they really appreciate their captivity. They're always in a warm environment, they always get fed, their owner who takes them out is warm and doesn't hurt them -- what's not to love?

  I kept him as long as I could but eventually, as our family did so often, we moved on down the road and I let him go back into the wild. It still makes me sort of sad to think about it as no snake that I've owned after him has ever been as super awesome as that darn snake. I loved you Mr. Snake!

  

  My First Vehicle -

  It took me quite some time in my life before I actually got a car as I had a rather rough entry into the adult world through my own confused non-actions. One thing that my father did do for me however is to buy me this nifty Honda 450CM in order to get around a little bit. It wasn't great to ride on the freeway or anything, but it did allow me to get a job and get around the neighborhood in which I lived. This in turn led me to meeting what would be my first serious girlfriend which was quite a change in my life. Not bad for just a little putt-putt of a bike.

  Well that's a small trip back through a few historic firsts in my life. What are some of yours?

  • Posted Jun 11, 2009 2:29 am PT
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• 8Jun 09

  In Space No One Can Hear You Cry - Movie Review

  Although I posted this elsewhere I get rather tired of seeing my old blogs and just felt the need to push it down further away from my eyes. I also though that there are a handful of folks who I don't see in movie topics and maybe, just maybe, they won't mind reading what I wrote about ye big old blockbuster extremis - Star Trek.

  I also refuse to plan these things out and edit lightly so sorry if it's all arranged a bit haphazardly as my mind kind of fires off at strange moments and I suffer from spasms of lucidity that are uncontrollable. I would warn you not to take the things I say seriously but honestly I don't think anybody I know here is unprepared for the things that I ramble on about.

  

  So one shiny bright day my friend informed me that the hoidy toidy theatre up the street had installed an IMAX system into one of their theatres and just by chance that happened to be the week after the weekend premiere of the new Star Trek film! So off we went with his sister and her wife in tow for an evening of very sharp and quite loud entertainment.

  Star Trek - The future begins

  So Star Trek it was and I was mighty excited to go see it! There had been nothing but good reviews and good word of mouth and I plunged into it fully expecting to be fully entertained with a roller coaster of entertaining 'splosions, witty dialogue, cutting edge effects, great characters, and some rather taut action scenarios.

  Unfortunately I really did not enjoy the film.

  What went wrong? Why did so many people overwhelmingly enjoy this film while I just thought it was a big boring loud snoozefest? It's not as if I have these heavenly standards that can only be met by broadly paced esoteric foreign films. I enjoy watching Judge Dredd for goodness sakes!

  I suppose I should state for the record that I'm not a big Trekkie-type person so I don't have any holy canon issues with the material or the characters. Sure, sure...I enjoyed the series when I was young but it's nothing that I have a deep emotional connection to in any way. The idea of a fresh more visceral approach to the genre sounded mighty fine to me.

  

  Right out of the gate I was fine. Jumping into the chaotic action of the film was a really nice approach and it was nice to see some of that Battlestar Galactic aesthetic jump in there with the mixing of the intensity of the battle with the cold and silent embrace of the surrounding space. Unfortunately that was the moment when things slowly began to spiral downwards for me and I slowly began to lose interest bit by bit.

  I really feel that other than Spock that Abrams just has no idea what drives the characters and doesn't really want to bother to develop them in any sort of natural way. Kirk, instead of being a intelligent wise-ass, is just an ass who seems to demonstrate very little intelligence most of the time and he just seems to run around being a huge ass, running around in a state of panic, or getting the holy hell beaten out of him (really did you notice how often he gets beat down in this film?. When he cheats on the Kobayashi test and is confronted by Spock in front of the conference I expected some sort of great exchange between the two, but instead the moment just faded.

  Also -- Kirk was raised in Iowa right? Where the hell did the Grand Canyon come from that he drove his stepfather's car into?

  I really thought that the framing and many of the action scenes were poorly shot. Abrams still seems to think he's filming a TV show and has too many characters way too close to the camera and then employs the jitter camera quite liberally and as a result actions are at times confusing and hard to follow.

  

  There were a few characters I enjoyed. Karl Urban was bloody hilarious as McCoy and I really enjoyed him a great deal. I thought the Zachary Quinto was scary good as Spock and really enjoyed his portrayal of the character. He conveyed a high intelligence and carried himself with the proper airs, but you could just feel this feral presence in his character and you were ready to him to just explode. The internal struggle between his mind and his heart was a refreshing change from what I felt was a mainly cardboard cast.

  I understand the point behind the reboot. Abrams thought that Star Trek was too wordy and I thought it would be nice change of pace from the child-like humanitarianism that Roddenberry tends to espouse in most of his works. Just take the characters and thrust them into a giant space opera action fest! Sounds good no?

  

  Unfortunately I think he went too far and I really felt that I was watching Star Wars by way of Star Trek. There were these random shots at bars or at station where suddenly you would see a quick shot of a super odd alien thing and then it's gone and off we'd go to another adventure. Then there's always that odd sidekick of Scotty's. It all just seemed terribly out of place despite my love for iconoclasm.

  Scenes just seemed to present themselves for no reason other than the director's desire to create an action scene. Why was Kirk dropped off at a remote ice planet when there are plenty of solitary brigs on their ships? Why did a giant out of place creature that looks like a reject from Cloverfield grab a nice mouthful of a meal and then throw it aside just so it could chase this tiny, tiny human being all over hill and dale?

  And like the serial films that inspired Star Wars it all just seemed terribly shallow and lighthearted with very little real threat behind every situation of terror. Any time a situation arose that would complicate things *bam* some deus ex machina type device, skill, or technology would present itself to fix it all up nice and shiny! All that neat fixin' just took all the tension away from pretty much every scene and it all just seemed rather sloppy.

  Then there's this weird obsession with the need to have giant over-powered ships in science fiction movies. They are fine if explained and introduced properly. But I'm supposed to believe that the Romulans built a mining ship that's the size of a small planet? How could they possible run a ship that size? And how is a mining ship a mere 100 years in the future and retro-fitted with some missles so incredibly powerful that Federation war ships can't take it down?

  

  In the end I just ended up feeling empty and hollow after watching this film. I liked Spock and Bones and I really liked the unexpected dynamic between Spock and Uhura. I was puzzled by her commands to him earlier in the film about what ship she was going to board and then laughed when I realized what was going on.

  But overally I just didn't like the film. Adding a visceral kinesis to what a is generally a rather stoic universe was an interesting idea, but without the conviction that the threats are a real hurdle to overcome in the end it just felt cheap. Much like the serials it is emulating, the revelation of the solution tends to be largely unsatisfying, which is how I felt.

  -------------------------------------------------------------

  

  Cinema Cat promise that Damon will attempt to keep from savaging the newest Pixar film Up if he ever gets the time to attend a theatre again. But said cat also feels compelled to remind the readers that despite Daemon's general disdain for Pixar's overall oeuvre, he really, really enjoyed and was quite impressed with Wall-E so there is hope.

  Also he is still grumpy that he watched every E3 conference and Gamespot show and has yet to receive even a single emblem.

  • Posted Jun 8, 2009 12:24 am PT
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• 11Apr 09

  Drat. He's A Pterodactyl Again

  

  There are times when ordinary, seemingly mundane events happen that can have a dramatic or extraordinary impact in our lives. A random stop by a retailer carrying CDs or DVDs can yield surprising finds, having to retrieve a forgotten item could prevent an auto accident, taking a different path to school could result in a physical confrontation, a conversation with a friend could spark an interest in a passer by -- a myriad of possibilities and conclusions resulting from the most commonplace activities.

  Who knows whether buying that much needed bread after work could lead to their demise! Should I stay in and play it safe or should I leap before I look? Over the last week a couple of random things in my life went forward or were abruptly halted which has resulted in nothing quite so dramatic as all the noisome scribblings that preceded.

  

  I suddenly received a notice at my quiet little email account that some person at Gamespot had suggested me for the role as a new forum moderator. Of course it would have been a minor role as a moderator in training or some such title in which I would no doubt be hazed mercilessly in the form of Nick making me clean his motorcycles or perhaps Hungry Bunny demanding that I create an animated bunny sig a day for a month until my training was complete -- "and they better be damned funny and charming as all Hell as well!!!"

  But we shall never know as I decided to politely decline the offer. I don't have any issues with the job itself and I have no problem laying down the hammer or letting minor shenanigans go unpunished if they are engaged in a polite and/or amusing fashion -- for a little while anyway. But I have a full-time job that has increasingly become very physically and mentally punishing to the point that I find it hard to become motivated about almost anything and so I felt that this just wasn't the best time to be engaging in watching the kids.

  To be honest, I thought it might be kind of fun and help me come out of my Gamespot shell a bit, but it's just not in the cards right now. I still don't know who nominated me but I thank you for thinking of me and perhaps in the future I'll be a bit better off in order to help Gamespot keep from becoming a fetid wasteland of agressive cliques and softcore porn advertising that I've watched so many other boards become. Did I make a mistake in turning it down? Who knows?

  

  Much like the creation of my personal little MySpace site, one very late night during a period of incredible, restless boredom a Facebook page was created by your odd little author. I'm not particularly social and the friends that I do have are loathe to communicate through these popular sources of a social nexus. But I was in one of those moods in which filling out forms and lists which represent your likes and dislikes seem like a fun thing.

  What?

  Anyways...there I was all ready and willing for this big old bad networking site that has seemingly supplanted MySpace's amazing popularity. It was the king of the kings! Every tech show I watch or read about can't go a minute without bringing up the MASSIVE popularity of Facebook and how it's taken over the world! I connected, filled out all my info, added a quick profile pic which, in true Daemon fashion, was not actually a picture of me. Then I stood back and checked out my handiwork.

  What I saw appalled me.

  What?

  This was...it? It couldn't be!

  I started poking around at every option that I could find and nope, nada, nothing. Facebook is just this big empty sheet which has your likes and dislikes in nice clear text and...well that's it folks. MySpace is like having your own web site in which the sky's the limit! You could totally write all sorts of HTML code like crazy and create an animated, media heavy environment, you could plug in movies and videos and songs...well pretty much anything you wanted -- or just leave it nice and plain for your friends with slow 'puters. Again, whatever you wanted.

  Now I know I'm not particularly tech savvy but I see none of this on Facebook. It kind of just looks like I filled out a dating website profile and now I feel a tad foolish and bit dirty for jumping onto this particular bandwagon. It looks like the kind of social website that would've been created ten years before the advent of MySpace and most certainly not the next step. Can somebody explain to me why anybody would use this site over anything else? I just don't get it.

  So there my Facebook sits, just kinda blah and empty. I added a couple of TV shows just to see something there and I guess I could post some pics of paintings I like or some such thing but honestly...what the hell?! But who knows, perhaps something unforeseen will result in this seemingly boring and incredibly underwhelming act. I suppose I shouldn't become too jaded about the small things in my life.

  

  Because you run the risk of making events that are actually amazing and shocking seem mundane and then nothing seems exciting anymore.

  • Posted Apr 11, 2009 1:38 am PT
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