I won the PSP! I am SO excited! Thank you, Jason at Insomniaradio.net for picking my story! Can’t wait to play Lumines again.
I’m back home after doing a gig for GE in Scottsdale. Really nice resort at the Camelback Inn. On the way out from ABQ, while standing in line at the security checkpoint, I turned around to find Christopher Lloyd standing there talking with his attractive companion. He looked like a really laid back, affable guy. Maybe he was filming a movie here or something.
< geekgasm>
A size comparison chart of every space craft you’ve ever seen in sci-fi.
< /geekgasm >
Tags: Geek
In the dream I climbed aboard the bus-like supertransport. Imagine a combination triple-decker bus and high-speed train. As I walked down the aisle, trying to figure out where I’m supposed to sit, I peered out through the windows, hoping that perhaps She had changed her mind and will come with me to California. She hadn’t. As I near the back of the passenger area, I realized that there weren’t any assigned seats and I could sit wherever I want. There was a seat available next to a very lovely woman. I sat down next to her. She was completely enchanting. Her voice sounded normal, but when I asked her name, these otherworldly syllables came out, as though perhaps she were speaking Elvish. I asked her to spell her name because I didn’t quite get it. I leaned in, ear near her lip, and she spelled her name in letters that weren’t a part of any human language. I laughed, shrugging it off. She said she had an accent because she’s from the South. The dream shifted to us getting off the bus at some street corner in California.
A dream fragment: I am in the corridor of a military spaceship. I seem to be a female officer. While chaos and red lights and klaxxons surround me, I calmly crouch to access an ancient-looking computer terminal in the floor. At the command line I type in “Contact Adama”. Apparently I’ve just had my first Battlestar Galactica dream.
Another dream took place at a really lame high school party. Looked like it was in a YMCA or something. I sat down on a computer and visited my friend Bill’s site. I clicked on a link and a video started to play. It seemed like a strange personal ad, only it wasn’t for a dating service but for readers of Soldier of Fortune magazine or something similar. Like if you needed another commando for your team, you’d check out these ads. Anyhow, there was Bill, only it was this super-buff Rambo version of him. He had shaved his head and had tattoos around each now muscular arm. The video was a rapid-fire montage. He was doing all these funny poses, changing hats from this bike Nazi helmet to one of those hats you wear while exploring the Australian outback. He had a paintball gun in some of the shots. It was funny because it still looked like Bill, with his perpetually-quizzical expression only with a shaved head.
Tags: Dreams, Geek, non serviam
Tags: Geek
My dreams were all over the map early this morning. One of them had to do with some kind of private company’s acquisition of an X-Wing fighter that had crash-landed on Earth. I wasn’t actually in the dream, just sort of watching it. Michael Madsen played this billionaire playboy who owned the company that had retrieved the fighter. They were repairing it and retrofitting it so that it worked kind of like a flying car. There was a scene where he took it for a spin around this parking garage/airstrip just beneath his penthouse apartment. He longed to fly it off the edge of the building and into the sky, but he knew it wasn’t ready yet. In another scene, an engineer presented his findings to his peers, showing how the X-wing solved a few design issues that had been plaguing him on the design of his own plane.
“Don’t waste your time on me, you’re already the voice inside my head.”
I miss everyone tonight.
I miss my friends, even if I’ve just seen them.
I miss how some friends were a few weeks ago.
I miss girls I should never have kissed.
I miss girls I should have but now it’s too late.
I miss my ex-girlfriends.
I miss my lovers.
I miss Cathy.
I miss how my friends were in college.
I miss wine and cheese with Beth.
I miss Neal.
I miss my best friends, separated by distances physical and psychological.
I miss my mom.
I miss my sister and my neices.
I miss my grandmother.
I miss Kevmo and The Airliner.
I miss road trips.
I miss being in love.
I miss church.
I miss God.
I miss the little red haired girl.
I already miss Christopher Eccleston, you fucking heartbreaker.
I miss Buffy.
I miss Serenity.
I miss poetry that isn’t about fear.
I miss Michael Hutchence.
I miss Dumbledore, JK, you cruel woman.
I miss garage sales.
I miss my Apple II+.
I miss floppy disks.
I miss not needing money.
I miss inventing games in the back of the school bus.
I miss recess.
I miss feeling safe.
I miss not knowing.
I miss the way it used to be.
I miss you.
Here’s why I should not be allowed to enter Hastings. When confronted with cool designer magazines and bargain DVDs, my willpower withers like a marshmallow tossed upon flaming coals and I will gladly spend my grocery money on these “necessities”. I was doing some shopping at Hobby Lobby, you know, crafts and such. Upon exiting, I felt the magnetic pull of Hastings, right next door, as though its very structure were composed of oppositely charged Drey particles.
The design section of the magazine sector was choked with slick European graphics magazines, AKA designer porn. I feel as if the mere presence of such a magazine near my computer will substantially increase my mad skillz. And then Cinefex decided to cram Sin City, Constantine, Revenge of the Sith AND Hitchhiker’s Guide into a single issue. Bastards.
I could have just made a break for the checkout aisle, but no, I completed a circuit of the entire store. Near the home stretch they have this new section of DVDs: Buy 2, get 1 for 1 cent. When I looked down, I was somehow carrying a copy of Sideways, The Life Aquatic and House of Flying Daggers (for about $7 each!).
At the checkout counter, I avoided the cashier’s gaze. I might as well have been buying a six pack of dildos and a tub of Vaseline. I then fled the scene, lest the temptation to reserve a copy of Harry Potter overwhelmed me (besides, I already reserved it on Amazon.).
And so it ends. Having seen very little to spoil any part of the movie, I was able to enjoy a Star Wars movie with a fresh perspective. I’ve come to judge these films in a class by themselves, comparing them to each other. For if they were to set foot into the larger realm of fantasy and sci-fi cinema, they are instantly decimated on several fronts by Lord of the Rings, Firefly, any number of anime series, the list goes on.
From a technical aspect, Episode 3 seemed to be about pushing the envelope in terms of scope, speed and detail. Once you have mastered the massive completely CGI set piece, there is little room for innovation. So when there’s an epic space battle, the results are astonishing and no one does it better than ILM. Lightsaber battles have also been perfected in this film and it is difficult to imagine any improvements in this arena. The fights are almost too fast, an impossible blur of flashing light.
From an acting standpoint, I felt that everyone turned it up a notch since Episode 2. Ewan definitely inhabited the role of Obi-wan this time around. Ian was perfect as Palpatine/Sidious. Even Hayden was tolerable, though slightly stiff. A big disappointment was Natalie Portman who was given nothing to work with and was downgraded to Anakin’s hand-wringing wife.
I’ve always felt that Lucas is more of a technician than a director. He has this vision in his head and at last he has the technology to translate that into a film. This visual translation seems foremost in his mind. The transmission of any kind of story seems to be secondary. While his handling of the overarching story is genius, he falters in the details, writing dialogue heavy with exposition, encouraging only passable wooden performances from his actors. If only the writers from Knights of the Old Republic could have had a crack at the script, we could have seen something more elegant. Instead, the story plods methodically towards its inexorable conclusion, words falling from the character’s mouths simply because they have to.
This is not to say that there are no brilliant moments. The seduction of Anakin, the scene at the opera, Obi-wan’s confrontation with Padme, Vader’s first words… these stuck with me. The sense of descending darkness is also effective, culminating in Obi-wan turning his back on Anakin’s charred and mutilated form.
The visual orchestration of this film was also very powerful, with Lucas quoting scenes from the original trilogy, giving moments a deep resonance. Seeing Palpatine seated on the throne-like chair as Anakin and Dooku crossed sabers in that mirror of Return of the Jedi’s Luke/Vader duel gave me chills. So too the scene of Owen Lars gazing into the twin Tatooine sunset…beautiful.
On the whole, it was a good experience which I enjoyed more than the first two films. While technical excellence won out over passion and artful storytelling, the epic themes of Star Wars were made complete in this film. The nature of Anakin’s fall is revealed and his redemption in Jedi is made much more satisfying now that we know the depth of the descent.
I came across this internet archive that stores web sites from years ago, letting you browse back in time. I could go back and look at my web sites as they were in 2001!
Check it out: www.archive.org
Tags: Geek