Here's A Christmas

Merry Christmas.  I've got plenty planned for the new year, since I've taken pretty much the rest of it off from doing videos and stuff.  Might as well, eh?  Until then, here's my Christmas Special.

Yknow, IN THE BASE-MENT

Sometimes when my iPod is on shuffle and some song by a band called Ask Me Next Week comes on, I feel really really pretentious.  This feeling intensifies when I crack a smile at the fact that what just came on was something I recorded in the basement one day at practice.  A song like that definitely has an album cover on my iPod, and is outfitted with a name and album title, just like any professional piece of work.  Why does it deserve that?  Chances are, if it came from that CD, it's a super-rough, passable quality jam that four 17 year olds thought up impromptu or were forced into by yours truly.

Prentious, however, is exactly what it was.  I made the band do a "jam" every week in 2009 just so we'd have ideas, and potentially, should fortune ever smile upon us, old, "before they were famous" style tracks.  I was inspired pretty heavily by Rivers Cuomo's "Alone" series of CD, which were a fascinating look at the songwriter's dense and interesting history.  Every little song had a place in his story, and sometimes a story all its own.  As a storyteller and songwriter, that pulled all the right chains in me.  That's how Ask Me Next Week's "In the Basement Vol. 1" came to be.

It was actually pretty funny that I called it "Vol. 1," since at the time I'd assumed there'd be plenty more jams.  As it turned out, the jam we did after I'd made the CD for "Vol. 1" was our last one.  The band broke up in September 2009.  You know, "creative differences."  It seems like the go-to answer for breaking up a band, but I think that was a very honest way to put it without turning it into a 3 hour Lifetime drama...and believe me, there was certainly enough drama for that big of a TV special.  If we took into account the band's four year history, we'd have a nice little miniseries.

We broke up at a seriously inopportune time too, a.ka. right in the middle of recording our seven song EP and coming off of our third show at a very nice place.  That EP was pretty badass too, and to me it always seemed like the missing link between us and the rest of the world.  It featured good quality recordings of several of our original songs, which was a far cry from the typical live records we ripped from my Dad's camera.  If we'd thrown our other two or three original songs onto it, we'd have had a pretty nice first album going.  I guess then we'd be totally legit.

The EP

It's really a joy to hear the songs you wrote come to life in a professional form, especially when the guy on the technical end of it digs everything you're doing (he was my father's age after all, and really could've scoffed at our pop punk sensibilities).  To this day I recognize and respect that the songs are indeed well crafted and well-realized on the EP, and listening to it is always a trip through nostalgia land and what-if country.  That thing was the whole product.  From where I'm sitting I can take it off the shelf and look at the album art and the insert and the back of it, and laugh that I managed to spell my name wrong on the inside of it (this error was corrected on copies 3-25, of course god only knows where they are).  It's a very real piece of work to me and after all these years I can listen to it as "music" instead of just "my music."

Of course, if I want to feel that effect ten times over, I go to "In the Basement Vol. 1."  It never got a physical, handmade form, but it does have album art (seen above), and it does have 19 songs worth of pure, uncut, unedited, unabridged, unadulterated memory on it.  That nostalgia?  Multiplied.  The What If scenario?  Intensified over and over again.  You see, these jams didn't follow the conventions of our "mainstream" originals.  Jams were a wilder, more unpredictable breed, and in some respects much more awesome.  One of the songs on "In the Basement" might feature me attempting to do Screamo vocals, another might have no vocals at all, and others will feature each of us taking jives at one another.  No real Ask Me Next Week song had slap bass in it.

When I miss being in a band, this album makes me feel a whole lot worse about it.  It's not that it's full of excellent jams that'd make the Chili Peppers bob their heads in approval.  In truth, the majority of the tracks are plain awful, and that's if you can hear them past the quality issues.  If I do sing on something that's not a beta version of an AMNW song, it will feature the best lyrics you've ever heard ("Blehleh la yeaah Nanana I won't do what you say").  Attempts to vary the music by anyone during in the jam will derail the awesomeness pretty quickly.  We weren't always together, the four of us, and sometimes two minutes was painfully long (and a few of them went on for quite a bit longer).

So what's the appeal of any of this if it just serves to show off how amateur we were?  Moments.  Single moments.  Maybe it was a single inflection on a note I was singing, or a little guitar riff someone played only once in an eight minute jam, but for a small second, everything just clicked and sparked.  Those sparks could've lit fires (funny story: when AMNW reunited over the summer, there was almost an electrical fire in my basement during our first practice).  But yeah, it's those little moments that make all of the other little disjointed and off kilter moments so worth it.  There's something there in almost all of the jams and tracks.  There the kind of thing that, in a few years, would have looked really really good. 

It was pretty pretentious of me to save all this stuff, and it was probably bossy of me to force a jam on everyone a good few times in 2009, but I am so glad I did.  The little moments I catch in these jams are a very unique kind of fun.  It's not like listening to music that's either good or bad.  It's listening for the things that came together naturally.  It makes me imagine a band like a bunch of lines floating in space: when you're going through a complete song, all the lines run parallel and close to each other, then when you jam, the lines go off in all different waves, some intersecting here and there, and then golden moments when all four or five of the lines meet at one brief point before bouncing all over again. 

Pretentious was just part of my style as a band frontman.  Ask Me Next Week is a band that you can get into.  I've got bootlegs on my old computer of certain concerts, and I have pretty much the whole show chronology on DVDs.  There are something like 30 Photoshop files worth of album covers, 20 jams, a disc called "Ye Olde Ask Me Next Week: Steady As She Goes - Gurly on the Run," a mini biography booklet (I have all the pages as files on my computer), pro pictures, custom gig posters, t-shirts, pins, and 25 handmade EPs.  That's why you shouldn't underestimate or undersell your local bands.  They might have someone like me helming them, doing their damn well hardest to make everything look like a band that had already made it big.  Let's face it, if we had been a big band, "In the Basement Vol. 1" would have been just like Rivers Cuomo's Alone series, and I was absolutely ready for it.  That mythos that I worked so hard to create would not be as complete without "In the Basement," especially since it's actual music.

Now, it just wouldn't be effective if I let you go without an example of something from "In the Basement."  And maybe just as well, since you're not getting anything from it.  Nope, instead you're getting ALL of "In the Basement Vol. 2."  It consisted of exactly one song.  One long, expansive, crazy ass song.  It's called "Blizter Jamb."  It was named that because playing this son of a bitch gave me a nasty blister on my right index finger...though if I remember correctly, it formed about halfway through and I spent the rest of the song trying not to bust it open and get blood all over my bass.  Listen for those little moments when the bass and rhythm guitar mess into a funky groove, when the drums slow down to leave em to it, or when the lead guitars that go on match what everyone else is doing to shift the song from an elevator jam to a Doorsy ride.

And, so that you can start your own personal collection of Ask Me Next Week stuff, here's a link to an album I put together this summer that brings together the EP in its entirety and several other live originals.  The only price I ask is comments.  Ask Me Next Week may be gone, but that doesn't make it not music.
(For you GDC folk, you can do it in my Music thread, called "Ask Me Next Week and Friends."

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=B9WFRV0O

A Saxophone Monday

My Mondays this semester were really interesting.  It was a much different day than the rest of the week.  School was at night, and there was school the next morning too.  I rarely had any work due for my Monday class due on Monday, so it was really a day to do homework, and I used it as such.  Then, even though I didn't always want to, I went to my Monday night class: LGBT studies.  All in all, it was a really pleasant class.  The work was sparing and never really that difficult, and the topic was relevant to the time I'm living in.  Plus, the teacher was the kind you always wanted to have for a teacher.

Then I came home, and a few times, there was homework to do.  I've been really excellent at not procrastinating hard enough to where I had something like an entire paper to do on a Monday night, and that was part of the beauty of having Monday morning to do work.  Still, the papers and stuff were always pretty stressful.  Tonight was kind of the grandaddy of all paperfests, and here I am, something like 30 pages later.

It's weird though.  Despite my triumph of it being 9:54 and all my work being done, the stress remains.  It'll be there until I leave the class that all the work was for at 12:45 tomorrow.  It's like I feel really bad about every paper or non-test assignment that I do.  From the time the file is sent to my big computer for printing, to end of that class, I want the whole assignment(s) to stop existing all together.  I want to disown them until i know they're worthy.  It's a silly feeling, but it's also pretty terrible, and I notice it every time.  I haven't really actually been proud of a paper since my Writing Fiction class last year, and that was a whole different story.

Ah well, this is pretty much the last time for it until next semester.  At least this time when I leave that classroom, it'll be a bigger relief than usual.  That's always kind of nice.  Looking back, it's actually been a pretty good semester.  There wasn't one class that was just a dread to go to or that I felt like I couldn't do well in, and the tests...damn, I still wonder why I couldn't do so well before.  Kamina is so right: It's all about the fighting spirit.  If you believe you can do it, then you probably can.  Once you learn to stop second guessing yourself, you can't lose.  Here's to hoping that attitude continues to take me far.

Another neat thing about this semester is that it's apart of something bigger.  Two classes are continuing into next semester, and that finally means some consistency between time periods.  One of the worst things about college is that the people you're with changes every damn semester.  You try to make friends, and then next semester you won't ever see them.  I guess that's why it'd be nice to be in a really small major.  For everyone else though, especially commuters, it's single serving friends.  I always thought I should've lived on campus.  Hey if you're in high school and definitely want to go to college, go somewhere you can live, or if you're going somewhere local, go somewhere you have a lot of friends.

Anyway, here's to that awesome Monday night class I had this semester, and here's to the fact that this is the last little Monday night I have to spend disowning something I've worked decently hard on.  Honestly though, I like to think I work smarter rather than harder.  And here's to hoping it all turns out well like it has plenty of times this semester.

Hocus Focus

I want to make a mental note here about another entry I was gonna do called "Eat Your Values."  If I had readers, boy would they be pissed at all the little teases I give for future posts.  It's hilarious.  Wasn't I supposed to do one for like, Christmas lights and blink 182 and...what did I call it...oh yeah "Woman Rock."  That's kind of what I want to talk about today.

Seriously though, what is this blog ABOUT?  I've been doing a lot on anime lately, and I've even held myself back from doing a little TOO much of it.  I'm not an anime blogger.  I did the whole movies thing too, largely about Harry Potter, but I don't watch nearly enough movies to claim I'm a movie person either.  Then there's all the social/political stuff...but I'm not that serious.  Here and there are "days in the life" style things too.  Honestly I'm not all that interested in that kind of thing either.  Unless I'm a celebrity or some person of note, I don't really think it's appropriate for me to talk about what I've been doing the past few days.  I'm pretty sure I've already said a bunch of times that if I talked about that sort of thing all the time I'd sound like a broken record.

All that considered, I sometimes worry about my blog having a focus.  If I did have a bunch of followers, I feel like it wouldn't be fair for me to appeal to some of them but not others.  For example, the anime fans would only get a few posts every few months, and the social people would only get something interesting every few weeks.  It sounds simple or trivial, but with every website comes updates that are hit or miss.  Take something like Serebii.net, a site that covers Pokemon.  Some updates are strictly about the games, and others are about the anime.  Obviously, one's going to be more popular than the other.  I guess it's overthinking it, since you can't down a good news site like Serebii.   Overthinking is what I do though...clearly.

It's actually very simple and in truth I've already covered this whole thing about "focus."  Under the name of my blog, there's a line that says "The point is there is no point."  When I put it up there, I just thought it kind of sounded cool and it fit what I was doing.  After two posts about Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann however, I started to wonder all of the above, and then I noticed that little line there again.  It's absolutely right.  The point is there is no point.  It's probably because a lot of the time, I'm not here to make a point.  If you read a lot of my posts, they're really just ramblings without a whole lot of solid, polarizing statements.  I mean, most of them have a thesis, sure, but I'm not attempting to drive something into your brain and totally persuade you of something.  I'm just throwing it out there really.

Waaay back in February, I started Either Way.  It was largely inspired by Foamy the Squirrel, a character from a webtoon called "Neurotically Yours."  Many episodes of the show feature the little foul mouthed squirrel ranting about something...whether it be dieting or bullies.  While going through the series again back then, I noticed that I actually didn't agree with a bunch of the things that he said.  In some cases, he goes a little farther than I'd like with his opinions.  In doing so, however, he brings up good points about the topic at hand, and can be used for great discussions.  If you're ever with a friend and have no idea what to talk about, find a Foamy rant and then discuss it.  He's a good example of how sometimes there's truth in comedy that takes it to the extreme.

That's a great thumbnail.

(No seriously though, when it comes to food, Foamy is truly my lord and master)

So that's really the origin of my blog as a whole.  I really need to do a few more reactions to Foamy videos...which are things I actually had planned to do as entries early on before the "reboot" in August...for my blog that is, not the Foamy series, which actually did get a reboot sometime this year.  He still rants though.

Quick origin story for "the point is there is no point," which I'm pretty sure was not originally said by me.  See, last semester I was in a class called "The Literary Essay," where we wrote basically a bunch of short non-fiction pieces.  One of the assignments was to write about a person, so I wrote about a guy I was in a band with...actually this exact time last year.  Well, I didn't do such a good job on...okay, I got a B, but that was the lowest grade I'd gotten on an essay so far in that class (Piccolo: NEEERRRRRD).  The thing that brought me down was that I didn't make a clear enough point.  When I got to my next class, I wrote in my notebook "Why am I so mad?  Well, I didn't do so well on the Personality Essay and I don't know what "NEEDS MOAR DRAFTS" is.  Seriously, it's Keeth K, the point is there is no point!"  And it was true, I suck at doing drafts of things.  Okay, it's also true that when it comes to Keith, there really is no point...largely because you would have had to have known him since forever to understand a damn thing he was talking to you about.

Keith and I are VERY different people, though he would certainly attest otherwise, so it's ironic I'm using something I said about me to describe myself.  It's really true about me and all of this "focus" business.  I've said this before, but I tend to go through phases with what I'm interested in, and they generally last about two weeks.  To try and talk truthfully about anything else during those two weeks would be...dishonest of me.  More and more I'm realizing I'm more of an "in the moment" person, even if whatever happens to be in the moment isn't action.  I've just got to remember that it's my variety of things that makes me great.  I'm all about broadening horizons, so if you dislike whatever I write before you read it, that's kind of your issue.  I think my rule is simply that I won't ever talk about anything i don't find at least remotely interesting.  My only hope is that I say something on the topic that either hasn't been said before, or hasn't been said in my way before.

Either Way, limitations get no one anywhere.

Also, in case you're interested....Keith is on the left.  I really should just post that literary essay though.

My Real Christmas List

So it's Christmas time.  Woot.  I like Christmas, it's a neat time except that no one in my family besides me ever knows more than one thing they want.  I like giving, I really do, and I like trying to remember something someone said they wanted a while back and forgot about it...that doesn't always happen, but when it does, it's awesome.

This year, I've noticed I have a pretty extensive Christmas list.  That kind of makes me feel like a fatass.  Sad thing is, there's still more I could add to it.  Being me though, I figured that I might as well go all out and post it on the internet.  Some items are real tongue in cheek.  Others aren't.

Dear Santa, please bring me:

1. 9001 Youtube Subscribers - And  not just youtube subscribers, dedicated youtube subscribers who will actually watch my videos and encourage me to stop being lazy and post them on a regular basis.  Might be a little overwhelming, but I've never had 9000 people looking at me at once before.

Yes, and I will make a video of me reinacting that scene.

2. 9001 Blog Subscribers - Same deal.  Okay, I admit, if you don't have 9001...or if I havent been quite that good this year, I'll be good with a little less.  More than 9 would be nice though.

3. Ongaku wa Nihongo- No idea if I translated that right.  Japanese music.  This isn't just for me though.  The whole world needs this music readily available for less than $35 a pop.  When I can buy the entire soundtrack for the same price as the entire frickin series, there's something going on that isn't right.  Please bring me:
      A. Maximum the Hormone - Buikikaesu
      B. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann Soundtrack
      C. Cowboy Bebop Soundtrack
      D. Kingdom Hearts Soundtrack
      E. Pokemon Soundtrack (yeah, pretty much all of them)

4. World Peace - Sounds trivial, cliche even, and it is, but really we have more important things to worry about.  Like why we haven't invented X Wings yet.  Oh hey, that reminds me...

5. An X Wing - Driving sucks.  Traffic sucks.  If I had an X Wing to get to school, I wouldn't even have to blast anyone with its lasers...unless of course you give my ex-guitarist a Tie Fighter.

Where would I park it?

6. A College Degree - Hey, if it's not worth anything, I don't want to take a chance buying it myself.  This is the same philosophy I use for a lot of the more outlandish stuff on my Christmas list.  I wouldn't want to spend thousands and thousands of dollars, not to mention hours upon hours of my time, working toward something that's not worth anything, now would I? hmm...

7. A Brand New Body - yep, this one's kind of old and less sexy than I'd like.  I'd preferably like to be a redheaded chick, but I know they're hard to find so I'll settle for blonde.  Okay, at least give me a body with less hair or something.

8. My Finished Novel from the Future - Yknow, i'm going to finish it eventually, so I might as well go ahead and get it and use it.  All the money from four years from now will be going to the same name anyway.

9. A Girl Who Actually Speaks my Language - There really aren't too many people I can hold a conversation with they way I'd like.  I've met people similar to me yeah...but they're not watching Gurren Lagann at the same time that I am, and that's a bit of a bummer.  Also, make her live within four hours of me...the whole "yelling across the Atlantic" and "sending mindwaves to Canada" thing is getting old.

10.  A Black and White Striped Shirt - This may seem simple, but you have no frigging idea how hard it is to find one of these for a male.  Screw it, if it fits, I'll take it in female, Santa.

11. A Beam Katana - Because a lightsaber is what you EXPECTED me to say.

Yes, even if I have to do this to get it to work.

12. Sperm with a Gene for Green Hair - My children must be special.  And have awesome hair.  Green hair.  Because any other color is pretty much just boring (well, you could make Number 9 have the gene for blue hair or purple hair...)

13. Instant Transmission - Instead of asking for a trip to Canda, Japan, and/or England, I'll save you some money and just ask for you to bless me with the ability to use Instant Transmission.  Just like Goku.

14. A Hammerspace Room - You know...in the vein of the Room of Requirement, Kirby's stomach, Ramona's purse....my room needs to be bigger than it looks.  Sometimes I want a bunch of cool stuff, but stop and think "Damn, I'd have no where to put that because I've got so much more awesome stuff!"

15. All of Dragonball Z- Anime is expensive, and nine 30 dollar DVD sets are going to add up real fast.  Getting only one season wouldn't work, since as soon as I started watching I'd realize there's an episode from another season I really really like.

I'd be really obliged if you brought all of these things in your sleigh on Christmas Eve.  I've been a good little boy this- Okay I can't admit to that with a straight face, but still. 

Merry Christmas, y'all.

Animation Age Ghetto: The Discussion

Ever since I became a fan of the site TV Tropes, I loved finding tropes that applied to my life.  One of my favorites was called the Animation Age Ghetto.  There used to be a picture on that page of a kid who'd gotten a DVD of La Blue Girl for Christmas.  That was mostly likely the gift that kept on giving, as La Blue Girl is a Hentai anime series.  Hentai is the American word for anime that is explicit in nature.  Basically, that kid's porn stash was bigger than mine when I was seven.

I can't remember if I believed I'd still be in love with anime when I was 19 back when I was 12.  I probably did, since the shows run on Adult Swim were supposed to be for people who were 17.  If I did, it's kind of funny, since when I hit middle school I slowly started to turn my back on the world of anime since it was a niche craze that wasn't always approved by the popular kids.  This continued into my high school years, until I dated a girl who liked anime.  She was a fan of one in partiuclar, called Death Note, which I'd heard of and maybe even caught an episode of on TV.  Nevertheless, she had me watch the whole series on Youtube.

There's nothing all that flashy about Death Note, other than some of the more narm worthy scenes (search "I'll take a potato chip...and eat it" on youtube).  There aren't episode long battles between people who fly and pilot giant robots and fight off evil monsters.  There aren't even bright colors.  If I showed it to a 7 year old, they'd probably be bored...or Ryuk would scare them off.  No, Death Note is 37 episodes of psychological, philosophical, and intellectual battles set in a world that is very realistic.  There are mature discussions about the ability to save the world, and what constitutes good and evil.  Above all that, it's centered around a very interesting concept: a book that will cause the death of anyone whose name is written in it.

I'll bet a lot of people haven't seen Death Note...which is a real shame, because it tells a very interesting story, and does it without choosing sides...the viewer is left to do that on their own.  It's a story that would lend itself well to cinema (in fact there are two live action movies based around it) if it weren't so complicated and well thought out.  If it were a Hollywood movie, instead of an anime, it's almost certain that more people would have heard of it...and even more people would recognize its brilliance.  Instead, it's something that not all that many people beyond their youth will look into.

The fact that animation doesn't have to be for kids is one that always gets ignored at my house.  If a commercial for Family Guy comes on, it just doesn't mesh in my dad's head.  He always calls it "disgusting," which in turn never meshes in my head.  I can only imagine trying to argue with him about how cartoons don't have to be for kids, using a bloodier scene from well, anything, and having him respond with the circular "well, why does it have to have blood in it?"  That's kind of when you facepalm and you know you have to take another option...and it's an option it actually takes me a little while to consider.

What people have to realize is that there are freedoms in animation that do not exist in live action films and shows.  In animation, you can design your characters in a precise, overdone way that will tell your audience about them before you they get to know them.  You can do that, in turn, in a way that would look absolutely ridiculous in live action.  See Yoko for an example.  I would dare any filmmaker to put a real person in that, hair and all, and make people really believe in it.  Cosplay shows use time and time again that there are some things you just can't do with real people.  Or at least, you couldn't do it without getting strange looks from the normal people.

I used Yoko on purpose, since it brings me to another point.  If people don't think it's for kids, and this is mostly an anime thing, they think it's porn.  Believe it or not, Yoko over there is actually a pretty decent character and actually does not ever explicitly get laid ever.  It's actually kind of a feminist thing really.  Yoko should be allowed to trot around in whatever she wants and not feel like a sex object.  Just because Japan can poke fun at sexualization and still tell a good story, doesn't mean you have to call it porn.  I mean, why else would they let the Victoria's Secret fashion show go on TV?

But back to the freedoms of animation, which I really could sum up with two words: Dragonball Evolution.  I've never actually seen it, but I can imagine it's issues.  How on Earth do you make a Kamehameha wave look good in live action without it looking like a high school kid's After Effects project?  Maybe that's more of a Hollywood issue, but it's one to consider.  The bottom line is that animation is purely a sylistic choice.  This is something a storyteller knows very well, and an open mind in general can recognize the choice.  Of course, talk to an Xbox fan about the Wii's graphics and you've got a perfect example of how some people just don't get the whole "style" thing.

It's almost kind of unfortunate that the Animation Age Ghetto ends up being such a simple argument.  It's like realizing that there's really nothing wrong with being gay or that gender is a social construct that's entirely manmade.  It's one of those college-enlightenment things that has you unlearn what you've learned, and that's it.  Funny thing is, it all has to do with one simple aesop that you DID learn when you were a kid: Don't judge a book by its cover.

And seriously, try explaining this ORCHESTRA to your parents.

All Scents, No Sense, and No Senses

It's funny, because almost two years later now, the thing I remember most is your smell.  I'm starting to think it's not even your smell I'm remembering.  I think it's just my smell that for whatever reason I hadn't smelled before.  I don't have particularly good senses...see I'm pretty sure I'm slowly going blind, I've probably got permanent ear damage from my rocking days, and nobody actually knows what taste is, since we have so few words to describe it.  I guess I'm the same with smells as I am with songs: I remember little bits and pieces really really well.  Yeah, I think this is my smell anyway, which is good, because I'm always running out of words to spare for you.  And that's fine.

Finally, a short one.

A Drill to Pierce the Heavens - Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann



Recently I've shoved myself into a bit of an admittance: I still really like anime.  This is probably the result, at least in part, of me taking a Japanese class this semester at college.  For whatever reason I seem to be regressing back to a time when I was into Dragon ball Z and secretly stayed up late to watch InuYasha.

In fact, it was DragonBall Z that brought me in range of a series called Gurren Lagann.  On Youtube a video featuring a cross section of an anime girl pulling up her shirt was in my suggested videos...knowing this was youtube and it couldn't be nsfw, I decided to watch it.  It featured a red headed character and a really really catchy techno-y song.  For whatever reason that is long irrelevant now, I decided to have a look at the TV Tropes page for the series, which described it as a giant robot series that didn't take itself seriously.  More importantly it was made by Studio Gainax, who I know for making my favorie anime of all time.

The whole series is, for at least the US, available on Youtube.  In the past, I'd watch a few episodes and then quit and move on...i did this with Trigun over the summer, so I decided to just watch a few episodes.  So on Friday night I watched the first three episodes and delightfully learned that Kyle Hebert voices Kamina, one of the main characters.  What I saw was good, so I decided that the next day, I'd casually watch a few more of the 27 episodes.  Cue me spending almost a dozen hours watching the next 24 episodes on Saturday.  For whatever reason, the show got me hooked and then it was one episode after another...after another.  Honestly, I'm proud that I stuck with something like that.

For those unfamiliar with the show, it's a Super Robot anime, meaning there's going to be lots of...super robots...fighting.  I kind of got over that whole genre sometime after G Gundam aired on Toonami, but something was keeping me with this show.  Okay, I admit, I love Adult Gohan's english voice enough to make jokes every time Kamina opened his mouth, but that was only part of the reason.  That character, Kamina, was more of a badass than about 89% of badasses out there.  He's kind of your standard grade idiot hero that relies on strength alone to get things done...so naturally we watch to see when he'll learn his lesson and be forced to back down from a fight.  The thing is, it's established very early on that Kamina just can't DO that, no matter what, and the fact that he's both arrogant and likeable really makes him effective, particularly along with the idea that he has the same effect on the viewer that he does on the characters around him.

So Kamina's presence is absolutely magnetic, even when he spends the majority of an episode naked, with only a little furry creature covering his crotch.  Even better is that by the end of Episode 7, he has a love interest.  Maybe I don't watch enough anime...or television in general, but it's rare to actually have two characters KISSING on screen like an official ship.  I applauded Gainax's move there...but I did even more so when we learn that Simon was watching from the bushes.  Up until this point, Simon, who's Kamina's heterosexual life partner, has been a quiet character who's admittedly come a long way from his timid beginnings to his fights alongside...err...on top of his "bro" Kamina.  The two were joined by a young girl named Yoko (i havent tried this, but if you Google "hot anime chick" she'll probably be one of the first things to come up I've now tried this, and indeed, Yoko is the third image to come up with that exact search query, there's another picture of her on the first page as well.) and later a Camp Gay mechanic named Leeron (who's also very fun to watch).  Yoko, along with every other female we meet, develops a thing for Kamina, and when she finally gets her moment, we learn that poor little Simon had feelings for her too.  His reaction to the scene is so very well done...and truthful.  This was the beginning of the grander allure of Gurren Lagann: it's characters.

It's hard to talk about what happens next without spoilers, so I'll just elaborate on my last point.  Simon is one of the best realized characters I've ever seen.  He's just written very very well.  From his struggles with trying to be just like his "bro" (he develops a pretty nasty complex over this...which is portrayed wonderfully) to his realization that he can stand on his bro's principles while still being his own person gives him REAL character development.  It's something that normally happens instantaneously with this kind of show, if it all.  No, Simon grows and changes to the point where he's a whole different kind of Kamina.  He's not Kamina, mind you, and Kamina tends to be the one that makes all the catchphrases for the show (WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK I AM?).  Still, by the end of the series, he's gone, even physically, from a little boy to the kind of anime action hero we're very familiar with. 

Of course, this all happens while maintaining a broader cast of characters.  Quite a few of them are easy to lose track of, but others will shine.  Viral is a great example of an ensemble darkhorse who starts out as the first formidable foe Kamina and Simon have to take on, and later shows himself to be the honorable one amongst the enemy ranks.  Rossiu, a young boy from a highly religious and strict village, is another noteable, especially for his stepping up to become a main character after the 7 year time skip that happens in the show.  The way parallels are drawn to his past and his actions make the viewer question right and wrong are proof of his strong character.  Princess Nia, too, came to be someone I cared about, even though in the beginning most of my delight in her character came simply from the fact that her voice actor had done Starfire in the old Teen Titans series.  At the end of the series, she provides the typical confusing (read: maddening) Gainax moment.

Let's talk about the time skip and division of the show.  The first story sees Simon and what comes to be known as Team Gurren taking on the Spiral King (great name), who has driven humanity underground and kept them there with the use of beastmen, who pilot the mechs known as gunman.  The conclusion of that arc sees a seven year time skip, in which humanity has moved above ground and is expanding at a rapid rate.  So rapid, in fact that it attracts the attention of an alien race seeking to prevent further expansion.  The second story arc is very much like a sequel to the first, and I really like that it's there, because it's story and layout are excitingly different from the first arc. 

The story is, at its core, fairly basic, but its elements like Spiral Power and team spirit that keep this series interesting, particularly in the second arc, where things get a lot more science fictiony (read: ridiculous (read: epicawesomegasm)).  Once again though, the real success here is the characters.  I think I watched so vigilantly because I really wanted to know what happened to them in the next episode, in part thanks to the first few being so well crafted.  I really can't stress enough the ways the characters are brought to fruition here.  The second story is really what accomplishes the realization of the characters.  It makes you think "well why the hell is he/she doing that?" and it won't outright tell you all the time...but if you go back into the first story it's all there.  From Rossiu's hard-fisted politics to Yoko's choice of profession...it all has actual grounds within the series.

With good characters comes good tone though, and Gurren Lagann is exceptional at controlling its tone, always getting its emotion through to the viewer.  It's got lighthearted comedy, moments of sheer darkness, moments of pure triumph, dashes of mystery, and of course, plenty of over the top kickassery.  While the action scenes weren't always my favorite things to watch, a lot of them are really, really well done, especially larger scale battles that we see when the stakes escalate.  Art design was used brilliantly here, and its one of the things that makes the two stories distinguishable from one another in a good way.  It too will control the mood in subtle ways. 

Overall, Gurren Lagann is an absolute delight to watch, and takes viewers on an excellent journey.  From the great fun that pervades the first few episodes, to the heroicism of the later parts, and the mind screwing badassery that starts to build up near the end, the show always proves it has something else to show you.  In the vein of the philosophy of Kamina, this show doesn't believe in limits, and screws the rules time and time again.  If there were ever a real reason for the word "epic" to go out of style, it would be because this series is the standard for it.  While I do have a few complaints about the series, particularly bits and pieces of the ending (which I will probably cover in an upcoming post), they're really not what I'm going to remember about this series.  I'm going to remember the awesome characters, the "screw the rules I have Spiral Power" mentality, the quirky story, and the good presentation.  Oh, and of course, Kamina's quotes.

"JUST WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK I AM?"

Just a few sidenotes here: in my reviews, and this is one of them, I won't give a numbered rating.  You should be able to tell what I think from my words.  In most cases, my reviews will be positive, because that's just the kind of guy I am.  Also, I feel like there's a lot more to say about this show, but I tried to keep it a little less long winded this time...which I mostly failed at.  Also, here's this, which for whatever reason, I forgot to mention:

Seriously, Japanese music kicks copius amounts of ass.

Congress' Time Machine

There's been a lot of hype on the internet regarding some bills in Congress, called the Stop Online Piracy Act (in the House) and the Protect IP Act (in the Senate).  I am, once again, certain that my readership is not enough to lend support to the cause of bringing these infamous bills down.  Despite this, I feel that by merely mentioning them once more here, I am empowering the entity that seeks to defeat these bills.  Google is what comes to mind first here. 

Imagine it, the biggest internet-based company in the world, suffers drastic loses due to thousands of sites and links being blocked for copyright infringement.  That affects pretty much everyone, including the elderly of Congress.  All of a sudden they don't have their research prepared because whoever does it for them cannot access it readily.  The more I think about it, the more this goes beyond entertainment.  The education system has only JUST integrated the internet into its systems.  Since I started high school, the use of the internet by teachers and professors has increased tenfolds.  Youtube videos are now regular teaching aids, and quick facts get brought up by wikipedia and Google.  Hell, my college uses Google for its entire e-mail system.  Group projects would get so much worse than they already are...of course, the assignments themselves would probably be drastically different since information can't be exchanged as quickly and easily as it could before.

Contrary to the total number of hours per week I spend on the internet, I am typically for the reduction of internet in our daily lives, or at least mine.  I support people not instant messaging and instead calling on the phone or meeting up.  I support CDs instead of MP3s (even the legal ones).  I support not knowing more than I have to about people I don't love dearly.  I know I spend too much time in cyberspace and my communication skills have suffered for it.  Most of the world's has.  I'd have a lot more free time on my hands if it weren't for people posting twenty seconds clips of Dragon Ball Z on Youtube.  At the same time, however, there are things I've gotten from the internet that I would never dream of giving up.

Last year the fan website Green Day Authority had for download a bootlegged song that the band had played at a soundcheck while on tour.  In order to get it, I had to join their forum, the Green Day Community.  So I did.  For something like 8 months, I was never heard from again.  Just this past February though, I became active on the site, and now, in November of that same year, I can say that I've met some truly amazing people that I had a 0% chance of meeting otherwise.  Some of the friends I've made are closer to me than people who live a few streets over, and they're generally a good few hundred miles away or more (and NAUTICAL miles in some cases).  I will firmly attest that these friendships are as real as any friendships that occured between neighbors in the 1960s.  I love some of those people, truly I do.

They made me think of a friend I'd met over the internet before this year.  Well, my first was a girl named Katie who lived in Missouri, but that's not all that special.  In 2008, a friend from school somehow got me cybernetically introduced to a girl from Canada.  I still have texts on my phone from that girl when the two of them, one in America and one in Canda, were screwing around.  In 2009, that friend from school committed suicide.  I'll never forget the real emotions that I felt from Canada on that day.  I was so moved that when I could, I never failed to speak up on behalf of the people that my friend touched from hundreds of miles away, because for all their pain they deserved no less. 

I'm fairly certain that were I to leave the world in short order, you would hear voices from places that aren't just America.  I'm certain now that I have touched those internet people like they've touched me, for I would certainly cry out for them if they were to leave me alone.  It's truly amazing, when the source of these potentially powerful emotions is a little bootlegged song from a fan website.

In the past year, I've tried to make myself a presence on the internet.  One of the most recent and primary attempts at this occured when over the summer I discovered a Youtube user called NintendoCapriSun.  This user both delighted and scared the daylights out of me.  At 35 years old, he was posting videos on youtube of himself playing video games and talking over top of it.  He wasn't married, had a shitty low-end job, and was not, I admit, too easy on the eyes.  It scared me because I felt like I was on track to become this man.  As I watched his videos however, and laughed with them and at them I realized something.  I realized that being NintendoCapriSun when I was 35 wouldn't be so bad.  i discovered that at 19, I was still learning not to judge books by their covers. 

He's not a special man.  He'd faced struggles like everyone else.  He had to quit smoking at least twice, and both times he did it on Youtube.  You listen or watch his vlogs and you know he really is all that he seems.  He's is a 35 year old video game nerd without everything the world has to offer, but at the same time he's on top of the world.  He harbors hate for no living thing, and despite everything has kept doing the things he loves, and has never faltered in updating his youtube pages consistently.  YouTube is a tough world too, and yet he's brave enough to show his face on it without being Brad Pitt.  NintendoCapriSun is not a celebrity, but he is to me, and a damn respectable one at that.  After watching him I decided to give his type of video a shot, and lo and behold I now have quite a few videos worth of Lets Plays on my youtube channel.  NintendoCapriSun inspired me to actually do something...and he's just a man on the internet playing video games way past the age when he supposedly should have quit.

Then there's this blog, and by extension, my posts on Green Day Community.  I used to have a notebook where I wrote about the day's events and stuff.  I haven't written in it consistently for months.  Why?  It's all here, on the internet now.  It's in the chat windows of the aforementioned friends, in the commentary of my Let's Play videos, and in the entries of this blog.  Instead of keeping all of that bottled up emotion and thought for myself, I've let it go into this infinite space.  I've found a way to express it all in a better way, and I feel better for it.  On the internet nowadays I'm more sociable than I've been in a long time.  I post comments everywhere and have things to say.  I have hope that someday my thoughts will mean something to people in the same way that NintendoCapriSun's do.  The only way that'll ever happen though, is if I put them out there.  Thus began my mostly benign scheme to make myself into a huge presence on the internet that people can engross themselves in and possibly relate to.  Sometimes my words are not my own.  Sometimes I'll express what I'm thinking with a Youtube of a song or scene.  It's all still me though.  Years of surfing the internet have made me into a nerd culture wiz machine, and I reference things so much that it's ingrained into my everyday speech. 

I will freely admit that SOPA and PIPA are some of the scariest things I have encountered in some time, and that's including the economy and the shoddy job market and all that.  I'm afraid to have my friends taken away from me.  I'm afraid to lose a shot at my dreams.  I'm afraid that inspiration will be that much hard to come by.  I'm afraid of losing hours of entertainment.  I'm afraid of having my numerous forms of self expression slashed.  I'm afraid of having a place to talk to people with interests similar to my own foreclosed.  I'm afraid of being denied an understanding of the world we live in, good or bad.  I'm afraid of losing touch with the people in my life faster than I could ever dream.  I'm afraid my life being forever changed by the absence of something that changed my life forever.

What Congress has in its hand is a time machine.  Unlike the literary time machines we are used to, Congress' time machine works on all of us.  The Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act will send us all almost ten years into the past, back to a time when those obscure songs and shows you loved as a kid and desired to relive were just memories, and back to a time when communities existed only within the boundaries of a full tank of gas.  The internet is a great and powerful beast, untameable by any one entity yes, this is true.  It is a chaotic neutral that does its share of both good and bad.  By creating it, we humans have created our very own world inhabited not by us ourselves, but by our ideas, visions, and imaginations.  I understand that this world gets abused, much as we abuse the Earth, but introducing something like the SOP Act would destroy the beauty of human conciousness that has come to exist within the internet. 

As the platform of human advancement, the internet is one of man's greatest creations, and has been at the forefront of technological advancement for some time, and thus much effort has been put into making it a better place.  Much of that effort has come from normal guys...like Andres Martinez (owner of GDA) and Timothy Bishop (NintendoCapriSun) who have made something of their passion, and watched is it evolved into a den of human activity and communication.  Without people like this, the internet would because sterile and soulless.  The work of millions of people would be in vain and all that they have created would be in danger of destruction at the whim of a government agency or corporation.

It all seems so surreal to me, that such a bill could exist.  How could something...anything be THAT powerful?  How could ANYTHING be so threatening to the internet on which I thrive?  Beyond that, how could ANYONE think that something like this is a GOOD idea?  That is what truly appalls me.  Those who seek to pass this bill seem, to people like you and me, to have no idea what they're getting themselves into.  Their Google would never be the same, and our everything else would be threatened.  I often wonder if my view on this matter is exaggerated and overdramatized...but if I don't remember the brighter side to what's at stake here...I can't help but feel scared by any degree of threat.

Update In My Head

What I really need is a "record" button on my dashboard, because god damn I say some really neat things while driving.  Today, for example, I had a great discussion with myself about why a 19 year old and a 15 year old would have issues dating, and how there are some passions for which there are no real jobs, among other things (this was of course in between bouts of being terrified of the night and rain at the same time...the government REALLY needs to give someone a job fixing the streetlights on my highway).  If I had a record button, i could've put the whole thing on here as the equivalent of a podcast.

Instead, there's this sorry few paragraphs explaining that I really haven't thought about anything good to talk about as a blog post for a good week now.  Even this little entry is going to be (or rather, should be) cut short by the fact that I should be studying for a test tomorrow, whether I'm confident or not.  Either way, it feels weird not to have written anything in a while, but I've dipped into one of those awful stretches of time where nothing comes out.  There's nothing going on creatively in my head.  I predict that it'll be brief, but it's still pretty annoying.

Generally, though, when it comes to blogging, I try to stay off of a few subjects.  Feeling lonely or something?  Yeah, I try to stay away from it.  About a girl?  Yeah no, that'd be silly.  I've been there.  More rants about college/daily life?  Eh, only if something sticks out and I can form an argument around it.  Fetishy/sexy time?  As much as I could give you empassioned speeches about all of that stuff, yeah, it's not all that appropriate here. 

It's certainly not the case that I'm just not thinking about topics, heavens no as we saw above, it's just that sometimes I don't develop them enough to write about them, or I don't feel like writing about it, or it's just not timely.  I've been wanting to write about the evolution and history of my written journal and how slow I've been at updating it, which is a good topic, but since I thought of it this weekend, I just haven't found the time to sit down and put it all together.  I actually did a fair job of keeping myself busy this past weekend, and that was cool.  Only one more day of school this week and then it's Thanksgiving break...which reminds me of another post I wanted to write about a status update someone made about Christmas decorations.  So it's not about a lack of ideas sometimes....usually the reason for a break in the new posts is about a) me forgetting the topic by the time I'm actually in the mood to write something, b) me jerking off and not putting it all together in my free time or c) and this affects both a and b, something school-related is clouding my mind and halting all productive activity whatsoever.

So now that I've offered about fifty explanations about why I haven't done anything, I'm going to leave it there.  I'll get down to writing some stuff when school's over tomorrow...of course, I have a bunch of papers and speeches and crap due after break...

*- actually, I had a blog post ready last monday, but I decided I wanted another person to look at it before I posted it and....basically we started chatting about other (very pleasant in fact) things and I never got it finished...so the gap between updates looks smaller to me than it does to you.  If you're curious, it was another post about Harry Potter.

Potter and Pirates: The Predecessor the Battle of Hogwarts

It's interesting to me how the world of Harry Potter and the world of Pirates of the Caribbean seem to be similar, and maybe someday I'll get around to writing that fanfiction where Lord Voldemort apparates through time at the last second to find the Fountain of Youth.  Actually, I'm supposed to be writing MageBoy about now, but I've taken a time out to browse through a few things on MuggleNet, a fan site the caliber of which every series should have.  In doing so, I've decided to write down my thoughts on something I couldn't help but notice while watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 tonight on Blu Ray.  Consider this my review.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 is a great film, full of adventure and enough action to ensure that it will never grow boring.  Walking into the theatre to see it however, was a bit different than going in to see any other movie.  This was the end of a journey that spanned ten years and would serve as the final film in a series that was destined to be one of those things synonmyous with my generation.  As such, expectations ran high, and part of that was due to the fact that this movie was a huge sandbox for the filmmakers.  The battle of Hogwarts must have been a special effects designer's dream job once Star Wars had run its course.  When you read the book, you just know that this is the kind of thing that is just meant to impress you with its visuals, and movies have the advantage of being able to show every single little detail, and adding quick things in that books will leave out for pacing (as George Lucas once said of the script for Revenge of the Sith "There's a lot of 'they fight.'").  Naturally, this was going to be one epic battle to close out the series.

Of course, this concept seemed a little familiar to me.  The most epic, large scale, effects driven battle I'd seen up to that point had to be the one in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.  I'd drawn parallels between the two series since they started coming out together (you can only imagine how much fun I have with Rufus Scrimgeour every second he's on screen in DH1), but this one was huge.  In theory, it was very much the same scenario: one huge ass final battle.  You can look at the reviews all you want, Pirates 3 had one epic finale.

I first began to wonder about how the last Harry Potter film would run when I listened to its soundtrack.  On it, there were no sweeping battle themes, no scenes that screamed "something huge and fast is happening here" and no 11 minute suite that carried the most potent themes from the entire series.  The soundtrack itself was kind of disappointing in that way, and while I understand that Alexandre Desplat had to try and leave his own mark on the series, it was a shame to see that only a few themes were used from older films.  It's a huge missed opportunity that there was no theme for Voldemort.  There are moments in the film, such as when he's punishing his underlings for their failures at Gringotts and when he's taunting his enemies over Harry's dead body, that could have intensely benefitted from Emperor Palpatine's ominous and evil theme.  Interestingly enough, Voldemort had a bit of a theme in the first movie...and with Desplat doing his best John Williams impression in a lot of places in this score, you'd think some semblance of it would be remembered.

The soundtrack alerted me to something about the movie that caused some unrest in me beyond the lack of revisited themes.  There were no battle themes.  There was nothing that screamed "Maelstrom."  I had a hard time imagining a battle like the one at Hogwarts taking place to this music.  There seemed to be an emphasis on drama over the action itself, and that worried me a little bit.  How serious and dark was this film going to be?  Is it really going to give me that same final battle feel that I got from At World's End?

It turns out these convictions were absolutely correct.  There was a lot more going on in terms of drama in the movie, rather than fast paced action.  I remember very vividly placing "Battlefield" into the movie when it appeared.  I never imagined it would be accompanied by the images that went along with it.  There was so much action going on...and it was happening to music going in slow motion.  This of course, was one of the few glimpses of the scale of the battle that we actually got.  In the book, the battle was meticulously crafted to include every character it could, and more than a few of them got a line or two.  Here it didn't come together quite so well.  We didn't see Hagrid at all until later, and an important bit of banter between some of the Weasley boys was infamously cut.

It was things like that that made the battle of Hogwarts seem rather impersonal.  I mean, look at Arthur Weasley's face when he's spell-locked with an oncoming Death Eater.  He looks like a ghost.  We got plenty of nice lines and expressions from characters before the battle, but in it, they all seemed to become stiff and serious.  In the book you couldn't help but smile when someone like Trelawney shows up and starts kicking ass, and you knew that Kreacher leading the house-elves into battle in the name of Harry Potter would be a cheer worthy moment.  I mean, Fred's death means nothing without him getting his last laugh.  Some of these funnier, quirkier moments seem out of place in a movie as dark and serious as this one, but as the drama was amped up, some of the characters were lost.

This continues into Round 2, where a large account of battles in the Great Hall are forgone for a duel between Voldemort and Harry.  Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved that they allowed Harry and Voldemort to show off their wizarding chops, but the only other characters we got to see besides the rest of the trio and Neville were Molly and Bellatrix, in a moment that the fans would have mutinied over were it not included.  One of my favorite parts of this battle in the book was that Slughorn went from having his whole house led out of the castle to duelling with the big bad himself alongside Kingsley and the newly redefined Professor McGonagall (who was another character we didn't get to see quite enough of after her chain of Crowing Moments of Awesome). 

And then there's the very end, where Harry and Voldemort go mano a mano.  This, I think, was one of the more universally nitpicked things from this movie.  No one was watching as Harry finished off (and told off, gloriously) Voldemort.  Everyone missed it, and because of that, it seemed, there was no celebration afterward.  Really.  They needed to befriend the Ewoks here, who play a rousing tune using the heads of their enemies as drums.  I wasn't particularly a fan of how Voldemort perished either.  It was too quiet, and for whatever reason Lily's Theme played in the background.  Was Voldemort actually Lily Potter in disguise?  The soundtrack kind of made me think so.  Voldemort, in my opinion, deserved no less than an explosion set to background music composed of thundering trumpets and strings and an insane scream of disbelief.  Of course, it never gets any louder either, as pretty much no one cracks a smile at Harry in the Great Hall after the battle.

This is the perfect point for me to connect this all to Pirates.  One of the larger flaws of the Maelstrom battle was that there a few dozen other ships around that did absolutely nothing.  However, at the end, all of these people cheered, creating a very satisyfing sense of victory.  In Harry Potter, there's none of that.  I mean, not even Harry's girlfriend is with him after the battle.  Considering that was the point at which it was determined they could be together again, you'd think they'd be so.  Of course, Harry and Ginny's relationship is an essay in and of itself.  It makes it clear that the rebels in Harry Potter are the only ones that don't know how to party.

The Battle of Hogwarts, epic though it was, could have learned a thing or two from the battle it stole the title of "most epic final battle" from.  One place where the Maelstrom sequence succeeds is that all of the characters have their moments, and each one is spent how we know them best.  Marty's handling firepower bigger than he is, Barbossa's having the time of his life, Jack is just looking to run away, and Will is determined to do the right thing until the very end.  This battle is serious business too, for if the pirates lose, it means the British government will charge some really nasty taxes on everyone.  Oh, and they'll have control of the sea forever...that's a bit more fitting.  Our heroes are faced with impossible odds and locked in battle with one of the most legendary ships of all time.  You know, it also took two movies to get here.

Maybe Pirates' sense of humor simply stems from the fact that it's a Disney film and I'm giving it credit where something is naturally occuring.  Still, At World's End provided us with a spectacle of a battle all the while keeping its realistic special effects intact (and yes, a lot of that water was animated too) and having plenty of PG-13 style things going on.  Then there's still the story to consider.  You've got Will and Elizabeth getting married and defending each other (Ron and Hermione's kiss need to take a panoramic, mid battle lesson from them), the key to the Dead Man's Chest crawling around all over deck, Bootstrap Bill destined to come into contact with his son, Barbossa defending his keep as captain, Davy Jones filled with rage over his lover's newest betrayal, Jack the monkey helping everyone out, and of course, Captain Jack himself, still deciding whether or not he has the face for tentacles while facing down a heartless captain to whom he owes his soul.  It's not like we're not dealing with two people here, there's a whole plethora of characters that need to be and are addressed.  They even parallel Harry Potter somewhat by keeping the arguable big bad, Lord Cutler Beckett, out of the majority of the battle.

The action of the Maelstrom sequence doesn't really slow down either, at least not until its most dramatic moment when most of our main characters are facing each other down.  It never sacrificed drama for a coral-covered minion stumbling overboard after having been stabbed in the chest, or a witty one liner from Jack Sparrow (oi! my pistol!).  No, in the end, all the characters were represented and accounted for (even Murtogg and Mullroy, the two dim-witted naval guards from the first film), they all had a rousing moment of fun, all of the plot points came to a head, and everything felt as intense and as grand as it should, minial slow motion used.  Add in an extended version of "I Don't Think Now is the Best Time," and you've got a good looking final battle.  Hans Zimmer's score here is excellent and exciting.  When listening to it, I knew exactly what to expect, and the movie delivered.

Again, Harry Potter and Pirates of the Caribbean are still vastly different series, so there's no way their final battles could have been similar in too many ways.  There are quite a few parallels, however, much like how At World's End and Return of the Jedi are very similar (again, another essay in and of itself).  It's a big battle that's been built up to over several movies.  All the characters are here.  Not all of them are going to make it out alive.  The future of the world will be altered.  That's all stuff we know about any final battle.  What makes the difference is the characters, the presentation, and the subplots.

Harry Potter has every right to be different from Pirates of the Caribbean in terms of characters and subplots, but as far as the presentation goes, there was something very very basic missing from its final battle sequence.  I think that thing was straight up action, followed by personality.  Much of the grandeur and spectacle of the Battle of Hogwarts felt obligatory.  If you take away the characters and the relationships they have with one another, it's just a bunch of blue flashes firing all over the place.  Which reminds me, it was really odd to see that pretty much all the spells going on seemed to be the same blue flash instead of a variety of colors and effects.  That was one of the ways I knew that while the creativity here was strong, it wasn't as strong as it could have been.  Certainly there would have been no loss from using a few extra minutes to make sure that the characters in this battle are the ones we know and love.

This Moment is Infamous

It's weird how one-sided the relationship with an entertainer can be.  On one hand, you can learn everything about them.  You watch their shows, hear their musix, and listen to their stories.  You know everything about them.  Yet, on your end, they could not say the same about you.  Though there are endless I Love Yous on both ends, only one end is really visible.  I understand that to know all of your fans as a popular entertainer is damn near impossible, but it's interesting that I can have a dream at night where someone I've never met is a living, breathing person, complete with voice, mannerisms, and signature clothing.  Yeah, it's pretty crazy things your head can do with an image and a voice.

This Moment is Almost Over

Right now, I'm pretty chuffed.  It's funny how I'm feeling accomplished over something I shouldn't feel accomplished over.  See, I made a witty comment on a NintendoCapriSun video on Youtube, and it currently has 56 likes, which is the second most likes out of any comment on the video currently.  I'm excited not only because I love NintendoCapriSun to death, but because his videos are seen by thousands of people.  Now I know that of those 56 people, very few will actually go and visit my Youtube page, which is kind of sad...but did you read my entry from like two days ago?  I'm just happy someone...or 56 someones noticed me, and I've decided to make a momento about it in the form of this blog entry.  If I'm lucky, I will get a few views.  I can also be excited because it means that NCS himself might see my username.  A reply or message from him would be like a reply or message from Billie Joe Armstrong or something.  It might make this whole past week just a little better...it might give me hope for the future and make me continue to work on my own Lets Plays and projects like that.  It might just be the kind of boost to my spirits that I need to make me properly create again.

But that's all hearsay and I can't expect anything like that or get my hopes up.  Or rather, i should get excited and get my hopes up...isn't that what I just said I needed?  This little moment will pass soon enough, I know, and my problems will come back to the forefront, but I'd rather preserve this one stupid little happy moment than all the ones I spent dejected and unhappy.

I figure that even though this blog gets little to no traffic, the least I can do is post the video here.  Hopefully by the time you see it I'll still be a top comment.

Just Like the Flash of a Ghost

It's not fair, i can't put you on a pedestal just because you're not a physical being.

You have exactly the same chance of being like everyone else.

Except you're completely different.  I swear each and every day you had the answer to immortality.  Stay young and pure forever.

Sucks I have to get old.

The World Without a Speed Limit

It's weird how a few entries this week have been about things I saw as a kid vs now.  This one's kind of general, though, as opposed to one little nitpicky thing.  This could just as easily be an entry about driving though...that's a whole rant and a half waiting to happen.

But that's not what this is.  Today I read an article posted on GDC (Green Day Community) about how CDs are (supposedly) going to actually die in the next two years.  That's completely devestating to me, as a connoisseur of jewel cases and a frequenter of the Record & Tape Traders up the street from my college (in fact I fought a Misfits album there on Monday).  Ironically, I'm doing a speech on the very subject, and I'll be persuading people to buy physical.  Hey, sounds like I just got some free evidence.

Scanning another thread, however, I realized that whatever this is is so much bigger than CDs.  In ten years, my whole LIFE could be digital.  The point I want to make is that ten years ago, in 2001, Game Boys were just starting to display more than 12 colors, my computer could only display something like 256, and there were absolutely no images of me on the internet anywhere.  We might have gotten a DVD player the previous Christmas and our TV was this big assed wooden beast that sat on the floor.  I might have JUST gotten a CD player, and if so, the only CD I owned was the Baja Men.  CDs were the shit, and downloading was evil.  Yeah, Napster.  Hell, we'd JUST moved past those blocky polygonal models in video games.

2001 was an interesting year...a lot of things were beginning that are now a million times better and more advanced.  Back then, I spent maybe an hour on the computer a day.  The rest I spent watching cartoons and playing with action figures...or occasionally I'd go ride bikes on my dead end street with the neighbor kid.  It's hard to look at how things have changed when you yourself spent the last ten years changing.  When I was 9, I was a badass.  I didn't give a shit what anyone thought of me because I told myself I was absolutely awesome no matter what.  I was the leader.  Not only was I going to follow in my sister's well behaved footsteps, I was going to surpass her...only I didn't call it that at all.  Back then I was your textbook example of genius.  What this means is that in ten years I managed to have my self esteem stolen and shattered, my head mixed in a kitchen aid, and...well, you get the idea.  Safe to say I wasn''t always a Social Ninja striving for acceptance.

Still, at 19, I can take an hour to stop and look back, and then look ahead.  Goddamn, a lot has changed in me and the world.  It's impossible to put into words really, and lord knows if I were 19 in 2001, I'd have to find another way to do so.  Lord knows I've done a good portion of them by now, so I guess you might call that "keeping up."  One thing I know now is that ten years is a long time.

I'm living as part of a tweener generation.  We're a bunch of kids that don't know what the hell to do, thanks to everyone else.  I'm not the only one who's seen things these ten years.  As I see it, we are a people who can only struggle through the years as the human race is figuring out what to do with itself.  I like to think that there will come a point when people will figure out how to consolidate technology and...real life.  Until then, no one knows what right is.  There is no right.  People make their own ways, none of which are proven to truly work and many of which will lead down paths unknown into less than pleasant fates.  It's fate anarchy out there.  Parents, teachers and counselors try to give us advice that has been proven to work for them, but the fact that it's not working here shows the rules have changed.

This topic is really too big for me to tackle in one blog post so I'm not going to try.  As has been typical of this week, I'm just going to say what's on my mind.  Looking at the last ten years, the next ten years are scary as hell.  What the hell are we going to have then?  Imagine that Skyping is just the BEGINNING of something.  In 2021 we might have that sort of thing built in to everything and in very good quality.  I think we'll have even more than that, but it's impossible to say what.  Looking back gives me certainty that I can't know what I'm looking at looking forward.  My generation's visions of the future are old and outdated...based on visions of the future from the past.  Who in 1980 predicted iPods?  Who predicted that in 2011 games would me controlled with a moveable remote and not a visor and gloves?  Who knew that there could be discussion about HANDWRITING becoming obsolete?

That's what scares me.  I'm a fairly smart guy, but I feel like all that might be lost on the world just a little later on because I spent my whole life keeping up with the times.  On the Internet, there's already way more information than I can handle.  i could spend several lifetimes looking at it all.  I've spent years already and a good portion of it I've found interesting.  In that though, i've missed out on a lot.  Social activities and life experiences that other people had, and certainly my parents and their peers had.  Or did I miss out?  Today it's entirely possibly that I did not miss out on those things.  Those things might be obsolete.  I might be perfectly in line with an upcoming generation.

Look at it: kids are being taught by video games and tablets and electronics.  They learn to use a computer before they learn much else.  These things come naturally to them.  They have cell phones...cell phones that are better than MINE.  They are starting out playing video games with these motion controls and awesome visuals.  They're spending way more time on the internet.  They are the subjects of studies saying that these things are bad.  And that's crazy too...because soon all of it will be normal, and something new and crazier will takes it place.  Then the kids will struggle to consolidate it into their lives...and they'll watch kids get with it like it's no big thing.

In 2021, I'll be 29 years old.  Think of all the things that happen in your 20s.  You're supposed to get your career, find your soul mate, get married, possibly have kids.  I try not to think about that (Woman Rock.  Soon.) but that might just be what happens...well, I kind of  hope it is.  Seriously though, what's going to happen?  What am I going to do?  How much more am I going to get used to?  Is it safe to say that all of the old things I remember doing as a kid will be, at very least, debatably relevant or the fodder of purists?

I'd say I'm sure this is the way it's always been...but I don't think that's true anymore.  My parents never faced changes like this.  The things they knew as children, television aside maybe, took their time getting better. Things didn't go so fast that the world spun a little quicker too.  My generation is like that weird twilight between the colonists and the people of the 1950s.  There's going to be a new old soon.

Social Ninja

I told myself I was in too good a mood to do this post right now, but I'm easily reminded of this fact.  I'm a social fucking ninja.  I am the only person in the entire world who can have negative anything human.

Nothing I do, good or bad, ever seems to amount to anything.  I create things, just like everybody else...i put them out there...and nothing comes back.  It's like thousands of people send thousands of bottles out to sea, and all but mine return.  When I do get a bottle back, it's incredibly encouraging.  The words on the sheet of paper inside are positive.  All is good...but those bottles don't come back.

I sometimes worry about hate.  I worry about people slamming what I do wherever I do it.  But those fears are unfounded.  I don't really get anything.  Okay, that's not true.  I get things occasionally, and I have gotten hate.  It was awful.

Case and point though, I used to have this friend who did really stupid but hilarious videos.  He hated them, he hated the stuff he was putting out, and eventually it all stopped coming and he tried to erase himself from the face of the Earth.  He seemed pretty suicidal for a while there (and those people aren't the ones you need to watch out for) but alas...today it seems he's doing better than ever.  He's doing better than I am.  His videos are being re-uploaded (I can't help enjoying them immensely until...) and are getting views at a better rate than any of mine are.  He's got a woman too, something he always thought he'd never ever have.  He has a circle of friends (no comment on personality, but friends none the less) that have remained loyal to him.  It sounds like I'm ragging on him, and I am, and I don't care because it's unlikely he will ever read this.  And if he or any of his friends does, it's fine, because they've ragged on me before.  Have I mentioned we used to be friends?

I haven't had a Nakama since...okay, well if the band counts, since 2009, but if not then it's probably been since elementary school.  There's only one friend that I talk to intermittently that I've had since way back when.  People always just come and go like I'm a city street.  Like I'm a stranger.  To anyone else, they'd keep their promises and see their oathes swore, but for whatever reason, it's not the case with me.  For whatever reason, i can't be part of a group for more than a week.  I'm not but a bit character that shows up in a random episode only to find that the audience actually doesn't like me all that much.

I'm not the only social ninja out there either.  I know that.  People get left in the dark every day and no one can help them out.  It's one of the saddest things on Earth.  I remember a generic pass along status someone posted one time about people misjudging other people.  It included a teenage mother who'd been raped, an obese man with a disorder, and an ugly man who'd been disfigured in the war.  Yeah, it's tragic, but you've noticed these people.  Social Ninjas?  No, they don't get noticed.  There's no status saying that you should randomly chat someone you haven't in a while...and if that were the exact wording, it's STILL unlikely that a Social Ninja would be the one a person chooses to chat.  Because we're ninjas.  We can't be seen...but unlike real ninjas, this is our curse.

Every time I do the same thing as another person, whatever they do gets more attention.  That's when I swear the only time I'll ever be recognized...like the few people that react to me say I deserve, will be when I'm dead.  It sounds like I'm a little bitch...crying because I'm not getting attention.  What is it then, that I can do?  I put things out there.  I make videos, I twitter, I write blogs, I post copious amoutns of status and express interest in the goings-on of other people.  In this day and age, I can barely be considered isolated.  I'm visible, but I'm invisible.  Or maybe everyone is just blind.  That's a bit more bleak, however.

Still, it annoys the living piss out of me...it's been happening for at least four...five years now.  On this day, November 2, I am reminded of my band because we once had a show on November 2.  It's cringeworthy to think of all the work I put into that band and how little people appreciated that work.  Is it really because they were all stuck in their stupid little minds?  Or was it because there was something figurative on my face?  Well, on behalf of all the bands that never made it, I know I'm not alone there.

That doesn't stop me from believing this is all fate.  Like when I was born everyone was told to ignore the piss out of me at all costs.  A few people broke that creed, and good on them...but most of them are gone and at least one is dead...aka truly invisible.  Or maybe it's the case that most everyone has it in one obscure part of their chromosomes a gene that tells them to not bother with a person of my exact description.  As is the case with all viruses, some people are just plain immune...but they're few and far between. 

I turn to these Fantasyland explanations because I have no logical ones.  (Okay, I do, but those are both lengthy and personal).  It just bothers me that I have so much to say and show, but no one to say and show it to.  I'm as good as any other bard or entertainer out there, I'm certain of it, but in the dark I'm no good.  Conditioned that nothing comes of my work.  It's true, even if the whole world...that is all the billions of people, read this and watched my videos and loved my music, it wouldn't be enough for me...I have nothing to lose by being proven wrong (this is a variation of a good quote of mine "I have nothing to lose by proving them right!"). 

I'm sorry for this rantiest of rants.  Trust me, i hate sounding like a bitter, emo bitch, but that's how I am sometimes.  I know this blog is actually pretty safe from prying eyes...as depressing as it is.  I must leave you with something that serves as both a warning and a sequel hook:  Woman Rock (a.ka. Pink Shit Blues) is coming.  It may not be tomorrow, but it will come because much like my status as a Social Ninja...the Woman Rock never goes away.