Cause for Concern

My father-in-law's condition has gotten worse. Ironically, the thing he actually went into the hospital for in the first place is healing wonderfully. The problems are coming from other issues the doctors identified while getting him in the best possible condition for that surgery. Those issues would have eventually developed into more serious problems anyway, so it's probably just as well that they've been identified and are being addressed now, but he's finding it very frustrating and painful at the moment.

One step at a time...

Zodiac

A work friend lent me this movie, which is a long one at roughly two and a half hours. The first hour is a little slow, but the rest of it is gripping stuff, all the more so because it's factually based. I don't know enough to say how much of it was fiction and how much of it was real. Robert Downey, Jr. does his usual good job (and I think is the main reason my friend bought the movie), but he's not really the main character.

The film also provides an interesting insight into our justice system. By the end, it seems clear who Zodiac is, and yet the evidence wouldn't hold up in a courtroom and everybody knew it. Innocent until proven guilty is a good and necessary concept, but situations like this one are enough to make you doubt it, at least for a little while. Almost all of the evidence pointing to a particular person is circumstantial, and yet when there is so much of that circumstantial evidence, it's hard to doubt that it points to the right person.

Definitely recommended, especially the factual basis appeals to you.

The Spanish Prisoner

There were two main reasons that I rented this one. One was to see Steve Martin in a serious role and how well he would do with it. The other was to hear the famous David Mamet dialogue I'd read about.

As for Steve Martin, he was fine, as good comic actors often are when someone gives them a chance with a serious part.

As for the dialogue, I have to admit that I just don't get it. Every example I've ever seen that tried to communicate how well David Mamet writes dialogue sounds just like everybody in this movie, and it simply didn't connect with me. They all spoke with the same speech pattern, which seems like bad writing from my perspective. They were all terse, bland, and repeated themselves a lot, as though the bland things they were saying were profound just because they were repeated. I'm not expecting soliloquies in a film with a modern setting, but even the dullest of real people have some color to their speech. If someone can actually tell me why this is considered good writing, I'd love to understand it. It's certainly economical writing, and it is distinctive, but that's all.

That said, I immensely enjoyed the movie because of the brilliantly twisting plot. I'm very tempted to rent other movies written by David Mamet for that reason, but I don't know if I want to tolerate the dialogue that put me off so much.

Room Service

I've updated the working title for my new Paranoia scenario to "Room Service", and finally found a theme I can use to link the ideas together in a satisfying way, which is what I think has been lacking. Now I can go back to the beginning with the theme in mind and see if it works.

I received a phone message from my friend (and fellow Paranoia fan) John L. that included a brief idea for a new Paranoia scenario that has similarities to something I'd thought of on my own. I should be able to take elements of both ideas and get a good scenario out of it, but that's a project for the future.

Hospital Time

My father-in-law is in the hospital with a serious medical problem, so I may be a little quiet here for a while. Or not, since I'll be spending some time sitting around the hospital waiting for tests to be run, etc., and will bring a notebook with me to possibly do some writing during that downtime.

November Music Project Session

Rob and his lead guitarist friend Joe were supposed to attend this past Saturday's session, which was going to be our first time as a four piece group, but they cancelled out, citing an unexpected obligation on Rob's part that day. We're having some differences of opinion regarding how important it is to play out (Rob is eager to do it and I don't want to unless I think we've gotten to a certain level of quality), as well as musical taste differences (Rob would like to play heavier music than I can sing), but I'd thought we'd worked out those issues and were more or less on the same page. Maybe not...

Jason and I still got together and had an enjoyable (if not particularly notable) session. We played a brief jam with me on bass, then I moved to guitar for the songs we've been working on.

Every time I think we've turned the corner, something seems to go wrong with this project. On the other hand, I've been able to regain my old musical chops and more, so I consider it a success already in that respect. It might be time to change our methodology or format somehow, though, since it hasn't been working out with the existing approach. I'll have to ponder this for a while and see what options we might have.

Three Brief Movie Reviews

"Open Your Eyes" (Abre los Ojos) was the original Spanish film that was later re-made as "Vanilla Sky" starring Tom Cruise. Having the choice between the two, I opted for the original, which is almost always better. As it turns out, I'd actually seen more of "Vanilla Sky" on TV one day than I'd realized and can say that there's actually little difference between the versions. The remake had an obviously bigger budget and gets the edge on acting from what I'd seen, but the difference in results was so marginal that I was just as happy watching the original. While the ultimate twist wasn't really that much of a surprise, it was executed well enough. Recommended if you like your brain bent on occasion.



The musical version of "The Producers", on the other hand, was bad enough that I didn't even get through the whole thing. I was a big fan of the original non-musical version, and the acting in the original was so much better that the difference was startling. The songs were forgettable except for "Springtime for Hitler", which was in the original version anyway. I love most of Mel Brooks' work, but this one fell entirely flat for me.



I also had to turn off "Forbidden Zone" after little more than the first 10-15 minutes. I actually enjoy the right kind of bad movie, but this was definitely not the right kind. I rented it on the basis of Danny Elfman's involvement and reviews describing it as the "Citizen Kane" of bad movies. The best way I can describe it is that they did a live action version of a Betty Boop era cartoon, dropping vulgarities into the mix as quickly as they could think of them. It might be fun to watch with a room full of ripping drunk buddies hooting at it, but I doubt it even then. It's almost worth renting for the amazing awfulness of it all if you have Netflix and all it's going to cost you is time, but whatever you do, don't spend money to see it.



I've probably turned off fewer than five movies ever once I started watching them, and now I've done it with two within a week. I might have to be a little less experimental for a while.

Zenkaikon

My wife and I went to an anime convention in King of Prussia this past weekend. I've been to many game conventions before, and we've gone to science fiction conventions together before, but this was something different. There was a similarity in the nature of fandom, each with their own set of references. The biggest differences were in age and the amount of costuming. We were among the oldest people there, and roughly 20-30% of the crowd was in some kind of outfit you definitely wouldn't wear on the street.


The con was going to have room for 1500 people, so they sold 1300 pre-reg tickets and saved the remaining 200 for people who showed up at the door. By the time we got there (about 9 AM), the line was backed up a good long way, and shortly thereafter the non-reg line was backed up around the side of the hotel. I'd have given up pretty quickly if I had shown up that day knowing the number of non-prereg tickets available, but maybe some of the fans weren't aware of those numbers. It was clear that this con needs a much larger facility in the future, as they turned away at least a couple of hundred people.


So, we spent nearly two hours standing in line, even though we were preregistered. The good thing about that was that it gave us plenty of time to peruse the people in costume. I fully admit to being clueless as to who most of them were supposed to be, but some of them had obviously put some serious time and money into those outfits, and it was fun to watch people trying to achieve the impossible appearance of animated characters. This was starting to get a little old as the temperature dropped, my feet got tired, and the group of teen girls in line behind us started singing Backstreet Boys songs to amuse themselves.


We reached the dealers' room (my wife's main target) shortly after we got in, where I was delighted to find one of my old game convention friends I haven't seen in quite a while, along with his three daughters and wife. His daughters were all anime fans, and the two older girls were in full regalia. I recognized one of the costumes as being from the movie "Princess Monanoke" and I don't have a clue what the other one was. She had long green hair and a black outfit with gold trim. My old friend and I caught up on old times and exchanged introductions to wives, then my wife and the girls got back down to business exploring the dealers' room.


It was no surprise that roughly a third of the dealers' room was devoted to cosplay outfits, and so was of little interest to my wife. She did find a few things, such as a prop watch from the "Full Metal Alchemist" series, but was disappointed that the art room was relatively small and didn't have anything she wanted.


We couldn't make it to any of the panels because I had Mike H's last session to attend at home, but that wasn't much of a problem because the only panels of interest to my wife were either scheduled for much earlier (before we were able to get in) or much later (we would have been disinclined to stay that late anyway). I was very happy to have run into my old friend Delfino and truly didn't mind people-watching while my wife searched for anime treasure. She was delighted that I came along to keep her company, so it was basically a good day all around.

Mike H's FATE Campaign

We finished off Mike H's FATE Dresden-style campaign last night. We had a lot of game time to cover very quickly, since he was ending the campaign abruptly because of a sudden move. Unfortunately, two of the five players unexpectedly had to cancel at the last minute, making it that much harder to bring things to a satisfactory conclusion. However, Mike rose to the occasion and found ways to make it work.

There were several things I've learned from this campaign. I rarely have the opportunity to participate in roleplaying games as a player because I usually GM. I had an interesting concept for a character, but ultimately the character turned out to be more of a plot device than a personality. It's not a mistake I usually make. I felt as though I had a grasp on the character during the first session, but after that I only seemed to have that grasp sporadically. I think that I always had a better grip on the sort of things that I wanted the character to do than on who he was, and I'm usually much better at understanding the internal workings of my characters. That's because I usually closely link the external abilities of the character and the way his head works. In this case, I didn't do that. I conceived of his precognition ability, then had to figure out who the guy was, and those two things never came together the way I'd hoped. It's a lesson for the future.

From a GMing perspective, I learned a few useful things from the way the game was run. I enjoyed the way Mike had each of the players supply campaign elements that he brought together into a reasonably cohesive whole. I know that the methodology wasn't originated by him, but it was the first time I'd seen it and I think he did a good job of implementing it. I found the methodology itself a little mechanical, as those things often seem to me, but the concept of having the players contribute such things is worth keeping, and I think I'll have to use it for my upcoming Cabal campaign.

I'm going to miss having a GM of Mike's caliber around. He was always well prepared (maps, photos of NPCs, etc.) in ways that I've tended to slack off of personally in recent years. He often ended up leading the group when he was playing in one of my campaigns. And I'm really going to miss the post-game conversations, which ranged all over the place subject-wise. Thanks for the gaming, Mike, and I hope we'll continue to cross paths in the future.

Persona Bands

I'm really intrigued by the whole phenomenon of musical groups aimed at extremely specific audiences, such as the Lovecraftian band, Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. Portland, Oregon apparently has a lot of them. I've just become aware of the Klingon death metal band Stovokor (named after the Klingon afterlife, by the way), though they've actually been around for a while. And of course there's the whole Wizard Rock subgenre, starting with Harry and the Potters. I've even seen ads for computer game conventions that include appearances by bands that play music specific to favorite video games. Pre-internet, some of these groups might not have amounted to more than a one shot laugh at a convention or a local oddity, and now some of them are able to go on short tours or release recordings of their music and actually become profitable (if not full time) enterprises. As I understand it, at least one of the Harry Potter themed groups works as a regular cover band most of the time and just changes clothes and material when they're using the other name, which strikes me as a good way to go.

As a musician and a gamer, it's a tempting path to combine the two, which is how Darkest of the Hillside Thickets started in the first place. You still have all of the usual work involved in piecing together a decent band, with the additional restrictions of making your original material stick to your theme and showing at least some thematically appropriate flare, but then the audience is about as likely to be receptive as you could possibly ask. Getting work in a mainstream setting may be problematic, but there's far less competition for the specialty work (at conventions, etc.). And if you're a gamer (or Star Trek fan, or whatever), you'd probably enjoy going to the conventions anyway. You probably won't become famous or rich this way, but I could see it being Big Fun if you have the right people involved and the right mindset.

As for me personally, I don't think I know enough people with the right combination of skill sets and obsessions, but you never know who you might stumble across at a convention, so I wouldn't rule it out if the opportunity arises or I come up with the right concept myself.