Vengeance Is Mine Now...

Vengeance part the first:


More coming, when it comes.

Rotwang is obsessed with my gay sex life

He keeps drawing these comics about Batman and me. Oh, and there's this one about a gay man in love with Dan Marino.



On a completely unrelated topic; Half Life 2: Episode 2 is awesome and definitely worth playing through. I still think Episode 1 was weak, but Episode 2 is solid and has one of the greatest final battles ever. Seriously, if you don't have the Orange Box yet, download Steam and buy it now while it's on sale through the end of the year.

Waldorf Blofeld Synthesizer

"You only ever post about things you hate." - Gemma

All right, then, here's something I like.


After I bought my Moog Little Phatty, I promised myself, and my girlfriend, that I didn't want/need anymore synthesizers. But at that point, back in August, I hadn't heard of the soon-to-be-released Waldorf Blofeld.

It's tiny, it's relatively inexpensive, and it's loaded with all kinds of fun stuff. All the Waldorf Q waveforms, all the Microwave wavetables, all kinds of routing and modulating possibilities including a step sequencer and an appregiator that is capable of having glide on or off depending on what step it is on... I FUCKIN' NEED THAT!!!

Plus, it sounds like this and this. Extreme Drive Curves!!! I NEED that!!!

Of course, all may not be what it is cracked up to be.

Here's a post from "Totty" at the Virus TI Forum:

"First off I haven't had much time to work with it, but yes it does sound good -
The oscs are sharper than the TI but I need to have a closer go on the wavetables. Obviously it may sound very much like a Micro Q, but having never used one I can't say. Very snappy envs, probably more than the TI and the LFOs do go into orbit! Very nice.

I know it's a cliche, but it is built like a tank! Very solid and sits very well next to my Polar.

It seems a little buggy to me as parameters were self editing!!

However the CD with the manual on it won't load on my mac or pc (scratched disc straight out of the box) and the quick start manual is good tinder for the fire this time of year.

Also there is a load of crap behind the screen (dust / dirt) which I am not happy with so I am gonna send it back. Beware if getting in the UK, you get a 2 prong plug and no adaptor. Luckily my left over adaptor from my Virus C came in handy!"

Yuck! Then a few days later, there was this post at Matrixsynth, accompanied by this YouTube video showing off some buggy behavior by the Blofeld:



Oh noes!!!

So the Waldorf Blofeld might be a buggy piece of shit. I already survived through an Ensoniq Fizmo, so I'm not really inclined to rush out and place an order for this thing until either:

a) Once enough people have them, it turns out only the first few shipped were flawed and everything is fine. (unlikely)

or

b) Waldorf releases an update that fixes these bugs and the early adopters say that all the bugs they encountered before the patch are fixed after the patch. (This process could take a few years.)

As far as I know, the Blofelds aren't shipping in the U.S. yet, so hopefully some Europeans are just getting screwed with a bad first run, but I'm going to have to wait this one out before I even think about picking one up.

Update: Breaking News!!!!

It appears the YouTube video linked above demonstrating some of the Blofeld's bugs has been removed, and the YouTube user's account has been "closed." WTF is going on there?!

I should point out that the YouTube user, Porcu68, had actually posted a handful of YouTube vids demonstrating the Blofeld, and all but the "Bugs" one were actually quite complimentary. Wonder if it's someone who got a hold of a pre-release Blofeld and signed an NDA or what...

Portal

There's a holiday sale on almost all the games on Steam going until Jan. 1st. 10% to 50% off. I seem to own all the 50% off games already (Vampire: Bloodlines, Stubbs the Zombie, Hitman: Blood Money, I think), but they had 25% off the Orange Box.

To be honest, I kind of resent the Orange Box. I bought Half-Life 2 in March and Episode One in April. The Orange Box came out in October and has those two games plus Episode Two, Team Fortress 2, Portal and Peggle. It's my understanding there was going to be a Black Box that didn't include HL2 and Episode One for a little less, but Valve didn't do that. Now I have an extra license for those two games that I can give as gifts. Oh boy.

Really, I don't care about Episode Two, either. HL2 was great, but I didn't really get into Episode One. I actually played it to the last big fight, not realizing I was at the last big fight, and then quit playing it for a couple months. Then I kind of said to myself, "Well, might as well finish it," and then *BAM* - done in fifteen minutes. Not so much into Team Fortress 2 either. I've said it before; I hate playing multiplayer online games these days.

So why did I buy the Orange Box? Motherfuckin' Portal. I could buy just Portal for $19.95, or I can get the whole damn thing for $37.45. Since Episode Two is $29.95 and I'll still probably play that through someday, it was worth it. I might play TF2 for about 20minutes before I get sick of all the 13 year olds and neckbeards and 13 year olds with neckbeards. Plus I got Peggle, which I had no idea what it was, but it turns out it is stupid fun that I'll probably get an hour or two of enjoyment out of.

But Portal - damn. If it was full length (10+ hours), it'd probably be the game of the year. It's probably one of the most humorous, entertaining, challenging, well-designed games I have ever played, and I am absolutely in love with it right now. I got sent home from the pork plant early today (Christmas Eve), downloaded it, and played it on and off all night and beat it. I think it took me about four hours in all, and while most gamers would complain about the short length, I fucking love it. I had some spare time, I played the game, now I'm done with it and I didn't get stuck or have to go to gamefaqs or any of that shit. I haven't been happier with a video game purchase in a long time.

I enjoy video games as a side hobby - waaay to the side. I work 40 hours a week, I fuck around with music stuff (even though my production this year has been nil, that's a whole 'nother post) and then I have horror movies and video games. I don't *want* these sprawling, 40 hour video games anymore (Knights of the Old Republic will always hold a special place in my heart, but KOTOR2 I really, really should have never played). But I'm not entirely ready to resign myself to PopCap games only.

All I know is, if Manhunt was only four hours long, it would have been one of the best games ever.

Edit: The Onion's A.V. Club lists Portal as the first of their "Best Games of 2007."

Edit2: An amusing video review of the Orange Box.

Ken Russell's "Lair of the White Worm"

A couple of years ago, Gemma bought me this book:


In case you can't read the title, it's "101 Best Horror Movies You've Never Seen." There are a lot of good, not-quite-famous movies that I was already familiar with in this book and a fair amount of movies that I had never heard of that I got steered towards thanks to it.

The blue snake-lady is from Ken Russell's "Lair of the White Worm," a movie I've been looking at in video rental stores since I was at least 9 years old. For some reason it is a movie that I would always pick up, look at the back of the box, and put back on the shelf. It's like I have a sixth sense for irredeemable, shit movies.

Ken Russell's best known film is probably the adaptation of The Who's "Tommy." I'm also familiar with his movies "Mahler" and "Altered States," and I also saw "Gothic" once about a million years ago, but I barely remember it. "Mahler" is kind of a sugarcoated biopic of composer Gustav Mahler that I had to sit through in music school (despite it having 0% educational value), and "Altered States," is a weird ass semi-sci-fi flick about a scientist who uses an isolation chamber and some, um, science-y type stuff to regress to a primitive state through reverse evolution. (The climatic scene of "Altered States" actually inspired part of A-Ha's "Take On Me" music video, specifically the part where the cartoon guy slams himself repeatedly against the walls to snap himself into the real world. That's just a stupid little nugget I threw in there in case Rotwang is reading.)

Interestingly enough, I also sat through "Altered States" as part of my musical education, because the film's composer, John Corigliano, at one point gave lessons to my teacher, Ronald Foster. Corigliano wasn't really a "film composer" per se, he only did 3 film scores (the 4th on IMDB is just a film adaptation of an opera he wrote), although the third film score was for "The Red Violin," which is actually a really, good movie that you should definitely see if you haven't yet. And while I'm name dropping, I might as well mention that I did have a half hour "masterclass" style lesson with Corigliano, he is one of the nicest men I've ever met in my life, and now I work in a pork plant... Keep that in mind before you let your children go to music school.

Back on topic: Ken Russell. He has this, "I-wish-I-was-art-house" style about his movies, and this is coming from a guy who loves the concept of art house horror, and sees it in the work of directors like Argento and Fulci. (An art house horror flick to check out if you haven't already: "Eyes Without a Face." Absolutely fucking beautiful.)

Russell's films all have these bad, cheesy dream sequences, with obligatory garish and tacky color schemes. For example, in "Mahler," the title character has a dream where a Wagnerian opera lady, complete with a horned helmet, sings a song to the tune of Wagner's famous "Ride of the Valkyries" that chides Mahler for being Jewish, which instantly inspires him to convert to Catholicism faster than you can say, "Eureeka!" (Oh, and I think during the entire dream, Mahler was trying to have sex with the Wagner-lady.)

Another thing I've noticed about Russell's style is that he sets up these nice, wide shots - then ruins them by doing these shaky, fast zooms. It's an effect not completely unlike some dad doing a quick, shaky zoom-in on his son at a little league game with a camcorder. It never looks good, yet he does it, over and over again. Finally, for some reason, with "Mahler," "Altered States," and "Lair of the White Worm," the cinematography has a definite 1970's PBS look to it, kind of like an episode of "Mystery!" or "All Creatures Great and Small." You can argue that Ken Russell may have been working with small budgets for these films, but I don't think that argument holds water when compared to the cinematography of Argento and Fulci in their late 70s/early 80s heyday, which likely involved even smaller budgets.

So - obviously I'm predisposed to not like a film by Ken Russell for various reasons, why did I watch Lair of the White Worm? Well, for one, the Fangoria book steered me towards some really great movies, like del Toro's "The Devil's Backbone," and recommended so many films that I already loved, like Fulci's "The Beyond," and Brad Anderson's "Session 9," that I figured, shit, if they not only recommend it, but also use it's monster as the single most prominent photo on the cover of the entire freaking book, it just HAS to be good, right? And two: it was fucking free, it aired on IFC a few weeks ago (part of their pretty decent "Grindhouse" film series) and I recorded it.

So onto the movie: it is based on a novel by Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, and if the movie could be summed up in one picture, this is probably it:

See that orange crap in the background? That is an abstract, visual representation of this movie. I don't know if this was a poster for it when it was in theaters, or if it was the cover of one of its VHS or DVD releases or what. I do know that this was *not* the cover of the VHS version I saw in video stores as a kid, nor is it the current DVD release's cover, which, features Hugh Grant's face according to amazon.com. He plays the third or fourth most important character in the movie, but, hey, he ended up being famous, so let's have *his* face take up 75% of the cover.

So the movie is about a Scottish archeology student who digs up a giant snake skull on the land rented by two chicks whose parents disappeared. The landlord is a wealthy English noble (played by Hugh Grant), whose ancestor is said to have slain a "great white worm" in ye Olden days; an event which the town - or village or whatever - still celebrates to this day with a catchy folk song, accompanied by flashing disco lights. Seriously. Thank you Ken Russell - may the 70's always be with you.

Well once the skull is dug up, in comes a mysterious, rich new neighbor, a sexy lady whom you can tell is sexy because she wears garter belts to hold up her thigh-high stockings which she manages to show off at every opportunity. And she's part snake and can spit poison that will cause you to have day-glo orange colored hallucinations involving the Crucifixion and nuns getting raped by Roman soldiers if you so much as touch a drop of it. Oh and by the way, her snake lady make-up looks way better in still photos than it does when she's actually moving around and shit.

So the plot of the movie revolves around tying together the skull, the mysterious snake woman, Roman-era paganism and the missing parents, and it proceeds in a somewhat predictable manner, except for a stupid twist ending involving a mix up at the chemist shop. BUT, this being a Ken Russell film, we need all the weird, random hallucinations and dream sequences we can get, so that the director can shoot his wannabe-Fellini load all over the audience's collective face. This is best represented by a sequence in the middle of the movie where the rich landlord guy (Hugh Grant) goes to sleep and has a five minute long dream sequence where he's on a plane and all the female characters in the movie are airline stewardesses, and the women are all wearing garter belts and thigh-highs under their stewardess uniforms, which you can see because they are wrestling each other and inadvertently hiking up their skirts in the process. The dream seems to point to some weird conflict wherein Hugh Grant is going to have to choose between the snake lady and the two chicks, but this NEVER HAPPENS. In fact, the only thing this prolonged dream sequence seems to foreshadow is that one of the sisters wears a ring with a crucifix on it, which ultimately does not end up meaning much in the course of the movie. It's like foreshadowing, without actually foreshadowing ANYTHING!

I should also point out that Hugh Grant's character is *not* the hero of the movie, the archeology student is, because he's Scottish - which, of course, means he not only plays the bag pipes, but also has a set on hand. Not only is *this* plot point *not* foreshadowed, there is actually a scene in the movie where his room is being thoroughly searched for a missing giant snake skull - no bagpipes. And in case you don't get what I'm inferring, bag pipes are important to the resolution of this movie.

In gathering info and pictures for this qausi-review, it appears a lot of people file this in the "so-bad-it's-good" category - the wikipedia article on Ken Russell even refers to this movie as a "Hammer spoof." Maybe it's my bias showing, but the things I hated about this movie I hated about other Ken Russell movies, so whether or not I found it funny seems inconsequential.
Maybe my "funny bone" just wasn't working today, or maybe I'm missing something, but I rate this movie: Crap!

I Can't Stop the Chop

Meraud is far to cuddly for the "Silent Hill" treatment to work.



Here's a more flattering / less lizard-like chop of co-contributor "Gemma."

Dear Meraud,

Step 1: Right-click, Save Image As...


Step 2: Save to disk


Step 3: New Post or Edit Post, select "Add Image"


Step 4: Under "Add an image from your computer," click "Browse" and choose the file you saved to disk.


Step 5: Once the file is chosen, click on "Upload Image"


Step 6: Profit.

Gay Batman

Herr Rotwang drew this. I couldn't possibly imagine where he got the idea for it.

I wonder if it has to do with all that Star Trek he watches.

PS. It sure does look like he worked extra hard on Batman's bulge...