mad traditions

What drives me?

Just wanted to give everyone a heads up that over the next couple of weeks I'll be writing a series of posts on the things that I feel passionate about in life, and why. I touched on one of these topics (music) a little bit in my Rock Band 2 review, but my idea is that these posts will go into more detail. I'm announcing them here so that I'm more motivated to get off my ass and actually do the writing. Keep your eyes peeled!

Exactly As Much Information As You Require

Last week some friends and I braved the wilderness of Marin County to see John Hodgman read from his new book, More Information Than You Require. Hodgman was joined at the event by his personal troubadour and internet superstar Jonathan Coulton. It was quite an awesome event. Hodgman is always terrifically enjoyable, and we got to hear him do some very funny scripted stuff and some great off-the-cuff Q&A with the crowd. Coulton did some great back-and-forth with Hodgman at the beginning, and also played a few songs: an updated version of the theme song he wrote for Hodgman's first book, an hysterical update of the Battlestar Galactica theme song, and Gambler's Prayer.

After the reading we were lucky enough to speak briefly with both Hodgman and Coulton, and they were exactly as personable and down-to-earth as you'd expect. I was particularly struck by how easy Jonathan Coulton was to talk to; I mean, I know he's a regular guy and making music is just his job, but I'm a huge fan of his work, and I really admire how he's making a living and capturing people's imagination without compromising his integrity. So it was pleasantly surprising to find myself having a regular conversation with him about (you guessed it) Rock Band. He seemed genuinely interested in which of his songs I enjoyed playing more (that'd be this one), as well as what my instrument of choice was, etc. He talked about how honored he was to be asked to be in the game (and how it's up to Harmonix if any more of his stuff gets added. Come on HMX! Make it happen!), and I told him how cool it was that they actually made his songs challenging and fun to play.

We got a few photos of the festivities, which you can check out here. It also dawns on me that I've got a few photos and videos online from Hodgman and Coulton's 2006 San Francisco appearance, on tour for Hodgman's first book. Check those out here.

Zack And Miri Make A Porno

The true mark of any really good movie about romantic relationships is that, at least at one point, something happens between the two characters that makes you really hate one of them. Then you think about that exact same moment 5 minutes later and you totally get why they did that thing you thought was awful, and instead you think the other person was in the wrong. Then 5 minutes later you change your mind again,

Zack And Miri Make A Porno not only handles this kind of tense interpersonal drama with surprising maturity, it's also got poop jokes, boobies and gay Justin Long.

It would surprise a lot of my friends to hear this, but I'm not actually a blind supporter of everything Kevin Smith does. I think a good deal of his early work was quite hamfisted, with a lot of his characters acting as nothing more than mouthpieces for his particular brand of dialogue. Not to say I didn't like his style; it's always been wordy, which I dig, and thoughtful, but too often all of his characters sounded the same. He's done a pretty good job of weaning himself off of that crutch over the years, but at the same time, let's face it: hiring better actors never hurts. Say what you will about Clerks, but those people, bless their hearts, were not actors. With his latest film he's finally found a full ensemble that take his dialogue and makes it their own.

It's the obvious thing to do, but I have to single out Seth Rogen here. Seems like there's a lot of backlash against him right now, which sort of makes sense; the guy's been in like every remotely funny movie that's come out in the last 3 years. But this movie demonstrates why he's great: He's able to take characters that may seem only superficially different and make each one stand on its own. He's now played several different variations on the "schlubby guy who probably gets stoned a lot but has a good heart and a quick wit", but each one has seemed like a totally unique character. That's not an easy trick to pull off.

Jason Mewes surprised me as well. Don't get me wrong, he hasn't suddenly become Laurence Olivier, but he gets to do some stuff in this movie he never got to do as Jay, and it was very refreshing.

There's really not a weak performance in the movie, though. Elizabeth Banks, as always, was drop-dead funny as well as completely gorgeous. Craig Robinson from The Office walked a great line between subtle and over-the-top. And oddly enough, I was impressed by real life porn star Katie Morgan's performance. I wouldn't be surprised if she gets more mainstream work after this.

The plot's a surprisingly timely variation on Smith's own experience making Clerks, feeding off of the current economic climate to excellent effect. If I had any criticism, it'd be that Smith goes to the "I don't like thinking about my girl having sex with someone else even if it doesn't affect my relationship with her at all" well a bit too often for my taste. But that's a minor quibble. Zack And Miri is a solid romantic comedy with tons of very inappropriate laughs, and I think you should go and see it. Then go to your favorite coffee shop afterwards and wonder about what the employees will do after you leave...

Catching Up: APE

So last week a couple of friends and I ventured out to the city to visit the Alternative Press Expo, a terrific little convention devoted to producers of independent comics. It was great to check out all of the awesome talent on display from people doing what they love and having fun doing it. I was lucky enough to meet a couple of people whose work I really like: Jeph Jacques, creator of Questionable Content and Meredith Gran of Octopus Pie. Truly awesome people in all respects, and they even let me give them some money in exchange for their products! Bought a book from Meredith and a sweet shirt from Jeph.

I also finally found a copy of The Great Outdoor Fight! Now that is an awesome book. You've already bought your copy, right?

In addition to the stuff I knew I wanted to check out, it was nice to find a couple of surprises as well. Some artwork caught my eye at a random booth and I ended up meeting Alina Pete, creator of Weregeek, a charming little webcomic about a group of gamer friends. Bought some really fun D&D themed refrigerator poetry from her. Looking back, I really should have bought this shirt too.

Oh yeah, and I came within 6 feet of Matt freakin' Groening. Bwaaaah!

These sorts of cons aren't unique to the Bay Area. Keep an eye out for them when they come to your town, and make an effort to support independent artists!

I'm alive!

Listen, I told you people when I started this thing that I wasn't a very good blogger...

What I realized today, though, was that these posts don't all need to be epic in length. I can definitely make the time to post a short entry here every day or two if I have time to post 78 things to Twitter every hour.

I'm on a break at work right now though, so this will just be a short teaser for my next entry. Some friends and I went to APE (the Alternative Press Expo) last week, saw some very cool art, met some awesome people from the internet, and came out with some pretty awesome shwag. I'm gonna write up a full report on that this weekend. I also want to do a bit of a recap of some of my more recent D&D games (vampires! gelatinous cubes! dismembered people!), and I need to write a review of Zack & Miri Make A Porno.

Expect all of that soon. No foolin'.

Link Dump!

Every so often my browser tabs get too unwieldy to manage. Like today! So here's a bunch of the stuff that's taking up space in Safari on my machine right now. Oddly enough, they're all YouTube videos. Warning: some links may be unsafe for work; all are guaranteed random.

Chico Marx plays the piano.

The many names of David Ryder (from MST3K).

A discussion with Ben Bernanke.

How crayons are made!

I have no idea.

Alice

Sweet Dreams Are Made Of Seven Nation Army

politics politics politics

I don't ever want this blog to get political, but I'll just say this. If you are, as I am, watching the presidential debate right now, the choice you need to make in November should be crystal effing clear.

and that's why i quit

Okay, this would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad. Blizzard has basically come out and acknowledged that some parts of World Of Warcraft are so tedious and boring, you need some additional entertainment while playing... like, say, a game of Bejeweled.

Does nobody else see the irony? WoW has become so much like work, that the people who make it have bought somebody else's video game so you can play it while grinding.

This is an add-on that allows you to play a fun game to take your mind off the boring game YOU'RE ALREADY PLAYING. And PAYING A MONTHLY FEE TO PLAY.

Gaaaah!

Get Better.

If you have a blog of your own or you're thinking about starting one, do yourself a favor. FInd yourself an hour of free time and watch this talk by Merlin Mann. It was seriously one of the most profound things I've watched on the internet in a while, and it's inspired me to take a serious look at what this particular blog is all about. I really do want it to be better, and I want it to be better in case other bloggers I admire ever happen upon it. I want to be proud of my work. SO you might start seeing some changes around here soon. I'm giving a lot of thought to exactly what I want this place to be all about, and I think it'll end up changing for the better.

everyone so intimately rearranged

So if you know absolutely anything about me at all, you know that I've been eagerly awaiting the release of Rock Band 2 since it was announced back in June. The announcement was a bit of a surprise as it's been less than a year since the first one came out (an event I happily stood in line for at midnight in front of a Best Buy in San Francisco). And I'm pleased to report that even though it's not really, technically, a true sequel, it trumps the first in pretty much every way. It almost feels like last year's game should have just been called "Play A Bunch Of Songs With Your Friends", and this game should be called "Rock Band".

Harmonix could probably have just stuck to releasing a new pack of songs every week as downloadable content ("DLC") and never bothered to release a new game on disc. The DLC, by all accounts, has been incredibly popular, and they've kept it interesting over the last year with releases by such diverse artists as David Bowie, The Pixies, Jonathan Coulton, and even Jimmy freakin' Buffett. But Rock Band delivers much more than just a new setlist. Don't get me wrong, the new setlist is impressive. We'll talk about that more later, though.

The game itself has been given a real overhaul as well; not necessarily graphically, but in some other very important ways. Band creation and "touring" was needlessly difficult in RB1. Once you created the perfect guitarist in the character creator, you'd be dismayed to find he'd be stuck with that axe strapped to him forever: characters could not move from one instrument to another. And if the "band leader" was not playing, then the whole band would be stuck in the practice space. Both of these annoyances have been removed in RB2.

Once you went on tour in RB1, though, it was tons of fun. Unique pathways through the game's songs, interesting setlists, surprises along the way... it all combined to really keep you on your toes. The solo game, however, was still stuck back in Guitar Hero land: play a set of 5-6 songs, unlock the next set... lather, rinse, repeat. And what if you wanted to show some love to the unsung anchor of the band, the bass player? No dice, Entwistle. You're stuck in Quickplay mode, where they don't even pretend to reward you for your progress.

The solution for RB2 was dead simple: no more solo tour. There's just the Band Tour now, and it can be played solo or with up to 4 players. And solo players can tour with any instrument, bass included.  If I unlock a new set of gigs playing solo, then I get to play those gigs with the whole band next time they're over. Or I can go on tour with friends over Xbox Live, something you just plain couldn't do in RB1.

Even that single change would have made the touring experience in RB2 far more enjoyable, but then they had to go and add just the slightest smidgen of an RPG element to the mix. Yes, you heard me. See, as you progress through your tour, you not only get the usual roadies, sound guy, etc., you now have the option to hire a staff. Staff members could be a street team, stylist, promoter, tattoo artist... the list goes on. But you can only have one staff member on your team at any time, and the benefits each one offers are different. Your street team might get you more fans, but not as much money. One promoter might give you access to gigs you couldn't book otherwise... but only on the West Coast. In my experimentation, this feature provides far more replayability than the tour had in RB1.

The song selection also seems to have been fixed in RB2. Used to be that certain songs (*ahem*) crept up far more than others in mystery setlists in RB1, but that hasn't been the case for me at all in RB2.

A couple of other tweaks to the gameplay have come along for the ride as well. Guitarists are no longer the only players who can enjoy the thrill of a solo; drummers get 'em now too! They're not as frequent as guitar solos, but still a nice surprise. Vocal recognition seems to have been greatly improved, especially on the "talkie" bits. Initially the thought of stepping up to the mic for "So Whatcha Want" by The Beastie Boys was daunting, but the game picked up my dope rhymes just fine. Yes, I typed that.

There's also been a ton of new customization options added to the Rock Shop. This isn't a huge deal for a lot of people, but I really like being able to change my on-screen avatar's look every so often, and more options is always better than less. Plus it's just plain fun to watch your friends find the perfect look for their character, then take 'em onstage to play alongside you.

Which brings us to, really, the most important part of any rhythm game, and that's the music. I was a big fan of RB1's setlist, but I think RB2's blows it out of the water. It's incredibly diverse, with more than 40 years worth of music on hand. Artists as huge as Metallica, Bon Jovi and Duran Duran appear right alongside such obscure yet worthy indie artists as Sonic Youth, Silversun Pickups and Bikini Kill. The Guitar Hero games have increasingly gone after more and more difficult songs, while Rock Band seems content to pick songs that are fun. Fun to listen to and fun to play. Compare the note charts in Guitar Hero 3 (or the videos that have been released from the upcoming World Tour) to Rock Band 2. In GH3 notes are tossed haphazardly around the chart with almost no bearing on the actual sound of the song. The designers at Harmonix have said that their focus while charting their songs is not difficulty, but making the charts accurate to how the songs are actually played. And even though I've got no experience with a real guitar, I can tell the difference. One of the lead chuckleheads at Activision recently said something along the lines of "of course our note charts are going to be better, we've got a staff of hundreds putting them together!". Sorry, Bobby, but I'd rather have one guy making the charts who actually likes and cares about the music than a huge staff of frat boys who'd rather be making Tony Hawk's Extreme Super Road Rage Crash Jam 9.

And that's not even taking into account the fact that practically all of your existing Rock Band songs can be played in RB2. So you get not just the amazing 84 on-disc tracks, but 55 tracks from RB1 if you own it (and pay 5 bucks to transfer the songs), and all of the DLC you might have bought over the past year. When I fire up RB2, I can choose from about 270 different songs... and I didn't even buy all of the DLC. Harmonix is promising over 500 available tracks by the holidays, with some pretty awesome stuff already announced. And I haven't even mentioned the 20 free DLC tracks that will be available later this fall for anyone who bought RB2.

I haven't even mentioned the Tour Challenges and the Band Battles, which breathe new life into the whole touring concept. I'm sure I'll be talking even more about Rock Band 2 over the coming weeks, but suffice it to say I couldn't be happier with the game. It allows me to geek out over music in a way I can easily share with friends, and that's about the neatest thing a video game can do.

(note: the title of this post is a lyric from one of my favorite songs in the game, Lazy Eye by Silversun Pickups. You should totally buy it.)

*cough*

I've gotten way too behind on the D&D game reports to try and catch up now, folks, Sorry about that! For all the fun details on what we've been up to for the past couple of weeks, check out The Talking Bookcase, Untitled Games, and Nick The Genius. What you can look forward to soon are my first impressions of Rock Band 2, which came out today and which I've been having all kinds of fun playing. More soon!

I'm a bad blogger

So now I'm so late in finishing last week's game report that I need to report on this week's game too! I'll try to get both reports up by tomorrow, I promise.

Game Report: "HEBZWABO!!!"

So our most recent gaming session was a bit of a catch-up, as it had been almost a month since our group had last tossed d20's onto tables. So we decided to take our normal 3-hour gaming session and nearly quadruple it in length. We started around noon on Saturday and played till about 11:30 in the PM, with a couple of breaks for food and Castle Crashers. All in all, it was an extremely enjoyable day of gaming.

When we last left our intrepid band of adventurers, they were heading off to find someone known only as Merc the Drunk. A paladin the group had been traveling with had been abducted by The Blood Caravan, a roving gang of devils, demons and beasties who kidnap the innocent and do all sorts of gross things to them. Turns out the only way to infiltrate the caravan is from the inside - via teleportation. We received word that Merc had access to a teleport pad that could be our ticket in, so we struck out to find him.

We head into the village where we've been told Merc resides, stopping briefly to notice a dried out lakebed nearby. The DM proclaims it to be uninteresting, so of course we say "to the lakebed!". DM says no. We pout. We finish our pouting quickly though, as we soon find ourselves ambushed by hobgoblins. They attack us from a few abandoned buildings along the road, at first just a few archers lobbing arrows at us from a single house. This first fight felt like it was created and paced specifically to get us back into the swing of things, and because of that, it was great fun. At first I split off from the main group to fire off some spells at the gobbies from afar, but a spellcaster poked his head out of a nearby building and began making my day less enjoyable. Less enjoyable to the tune of a two-shot kill, no less. Luckily support was not (too) far away, and our friendly neighborhood cleric was eventually able to get close enough to patch me up but good with his patented healing word "HEBZWABO!"

I should back up a bit and explain that.

A little while back I made this little template that's sort of like a streamlined D&D character sheet. Room for all of your guy's most important info on one side of one sheet. So J the fighter goes to print his up (via our DM's Windows PC) and it goes a little nutty. Fills in all of the blanks with random numbers and letters. And instead of his character's name? "Hbswbo".

Which, it turns out, is funny as hell when screamed at high volumes.

So that first fight goes pretty okay, even though I fell down once or twice. Most importantly, it got us back into the swing of things. After the fight, the DM says something along the lines of "still interested in the lakebed?" and we scurry on over.

The lakebed is described as thoroughly dried out and abandoned, with only a single small boat still sitting in the middle. Our warlord, A, decides it would be fun to run out and sit in the boat. So he does that. And then yells out to us, still on the 'shore', "Hey! I'm in the boat!"

The hobgoblin archers in the boathouse on the opposite shore evidently found it just as funny as we did, and they expressed their delight by putting two arrows in the warlord's chest. The warlord, of course, responds in the only possible way he can: turning the boat over on himself in the dried out lake.

What followed were a few rounds of highly comical combat where each of us spent at least one round hiding behind, or under, the boat. We grew so attached to our life-saving aquatic vehicle we almost brought it with us.

Incidentally, it was right around this time that we all leveled from 3 to 4. I decided to take advantage of the "re-spec" option D&D players get when they level - essentially, pick out one skill or spell you have and swap it out for a different one of equal or lesser value. Well, I had my eye on this spell called Fire Shroud, which deals a ton of fire damage to enemies surrounding me. I gave up my Icy Rays to do this (does more damage but only affects 2 enemies tops), but I didn't think that would be a big deal. Please make a note of my folly for later.

Heading back to Merc's place, we run into a cart topped with many kegs of booze. Well, not just a cart, it was being towed by more hobgoblins. Also some baddies that we hadn't encountered before - the DM tells us they look like dark, tainted dwarves. A few knowledge rolls tells us they are known as Deurgar (and no Google, I did not mean "burger"), a dark race of dwarves with... (wait for it!) a strong resistance to fire! Yay me, a wizard whose spellbook is now currently 90% fire based!

Making a mental note to balance my talents out a bit better upon next leveling, I take aim at the one flammable thing amongst all the enemies... you guessed it! The big barrels full of booze! I couldn't help but feel a little useless for the rest of that fight, though, as my fire was only really of use against the hobgoblins and they burned down pretty quick. As always though, J's sharp tactical mind, M's lances and beacons, and N's "I toss an eldritch blast at that bitch" made short work of the baddies.

At this point, we weren't really sure how Merc would react when he discovered his precious booze was gone, so we entered his place with a bit of trepidation... to find him pissing in the corner. After a bit of back-and-forth, one of us realized we had heard of Merc... back when he was known as Mercurial, the big old, bad ass green dragon. In between N's squees of delight at meeting a for-real dragon, we discovered that Merc was staying in human form and drowning himself in liquor to forget about the days when the forest was a real forest and he pretty much ran things in his neck of the woods. We covered up the fact that we were the ones to waylay his latest shipment and offered to help him out if he helped us. See, he did indeed have the transporter device in question, but it was nonfunctional without a certain key... a key which the Deurgar had taken from him as payment for one of his many booze shipments. The deal we proposed was pretty simple: let us fetch your booze for you, and while we're there, we'll see if we can convince the Deurgar to part with the key. A key which we will gladly give back to you after we're done with it! He seemed amenable, and even "called" ahead to let the dark dwarves know we'd be on our way. And on our way we were... but you'll have to wait till tomorrow for part 2 of this report, as I can already tell it's gonna take me at least an hour to finish writing it up!

yay for visual aids

A few days ago Chris Sims posted a very funny picture to his Twitter stream: What he thinks about during the day. Well, let it never be said that I don't know when to steal good ideas!

What's On Todd's Mind

aspirations

I had this idea for one of the first posts after I opened the doors on this site, where I would lay out what I hoped to accomplish by picking up the blogging (pen? keyboard? hammer?). I never got the opportunity to lay that post out in a way I was happy with, but as always, Merlin Mann has said it better than I ever could. Check out his post on 43 Folders on what makes a good blog. He's spelled out, to my eyes, perfectly, and I hope to live up to these standards as I pursue my blogular activities here.

Yep. Blogular.