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zwolanerd

“I guess I just like liking things”

September 6, 2013 The Devil in the White City

Some things that were introduced at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair: the Ferris Wheel, Shredded Wheat, and Juicy Fruit gum

Some things that were introduced at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair: the Ferris Wheel, Shredded Wheat, and Juicy Fruit gum

I read a book! I know it is surprising, since I mostly talk about watching movies and playing videogames. Hey, I was surprised myself!

What happened was the improv group I’m a member of got invited to be a part of our town’s One Great Read, a program that’s been going on for a few years here. The local libraries get together and pick out a book for the community to read, and then host various functions throughout the month that tie in with the book: discussions, movies, presentations, that kind of thing. Our group was asked to be part of the kickoff festivities, so we did games and scenes that were tied to events in the book.  Which could have been a little weird, considering what the book was about…

The book has two main stories presented in parallel: the planning, preparation, and production of the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 and the exploits of H.H. Holmes, one of the earliest known serial killers in America. The stories don’t have much to do with each other, aside from Holmes renting out rooms in his “murder castle” to people who attended the fair, but it’s an interesting contrast.

Yes, I did use the phrase “murder castle” just then. There’s really not much else you can call a place designed by a serial killer for the main purpose of making it easy to kill people and dispose of their bodies. Considering so many architects worked to bring the World’s Fair to life, it’s a twisted other side of the coin.

The murdery story kept my attention much more than the World’s Fair stuff did, I must admit.  I mean, I knew the World’s Fair had taken place, so I knew all that would turn out okay. Who knew where the murder plot would end up?  (Well, I sorta did – as I read more I realized I’d heard about Holmes and his murder castle before. I don’t know exactly where I learned about it, but I had.)

So, yeah, I can recommend the book. It’s an interesting look at history, presented in a way that reads more like fiction than non-fiction. How’s that for a ringing endorsement?

And for those of you wondering how you theme an improv show around a book made up of architects and murderers, well, you kind of go at it tangentially. We have a game called “Interrogation,” where two people try to get a third to guess what crime he has committed by asking him questions that give hints. The tie-in was that Holmes had been interrogated. Most games had a “they had this back then, so we have this thing that is sorta related now” vibe, but it worked okay. I went into it being the most worried about us using murders as a source of humor (one of the murdered girls was actually from our town!), and then I ended up being the only person the whole show to directly reference Holmes. Weird how that worked.

September 5, 2013 TMNT: OOTS Review

"We heard you had pizza?"

“We heard you had pizza?”

Remember back when I found out about this game? Almost six months ago. It finally came out last week and I ponied up for it the day it was released. So how was it?

Pretty, pretty, pretty good. That’s the short version.

The slightly longer version is that it’s good, even though I have some gripes. Here they are:

  • It is glitchy as all get out.  I had to restart some particularly difficult levels after finishing them because it wouldn’t move on to the level-ending scenes after I beat the boss – my Turtles would just wander around.
  • Some of the boss fights are ridiculous and frustrating.
  • The camera needs to be a bit farther out and maybe have some sort of auto-correct to it. When an enemy is about to attack, they get a white circle around them, giving you enough time to hit your counterattack button. Many, many, many times, though, you’ll get attacked by someone you never even saw because they were offscreen.

With those out of the way, let’s talk about the good stuff! First off, it’s got 4-player co-op play, and even though I don’t have three friends who also own it or could all come over to play it with me, I’m hopeful that will eventually happen.  But 4-player co-op is definitely the way to go with a Turtles game, so that’s a good call.

The game is (mostly?) based on the newest Nickelodeon incarnation, and I don’t have a problem with that. The style is definitely cool and the characterizations are right-on. In fact, there are a few changes/upgrades to the characters which helps differentiate them a bit more. I know, I know – what more differentiation do we need than colored masks and unique weapons? It’s hard to say exactly, but they’ve made things ever so much more so. Michelangelo was always “the party dude,” but they’ve given him just a tad bit more of a crazy edge. His portrait in the upgrade screen has him with his tongue hanging out, and it’s goofy but perfect. Raphael is more of a “heavy,” and that also makes sense. He moves a little slower, but is tougher, and he bodyslams bad guys.  It’s pretty sweet. Donatello is still the best, though.

I love the fighting animations! For the most part, the fighting is very close to actual fighting techniques. I mean, sure, occasionally there’s a giant leap that seems a bit much, but who’s to say a 6-foot mutant turtle wouldn’t be able to jump higher than a human? Not me, that’s for sure. The movements on the bo, nunchaku, and swords look fantastic, and Raphael turns his sai around to punch dudes in the face, like you do.  I love watching it in motion.

Shredder shows up, but so do the Kraang (which is how it’s spelled now, I guess?), and Baxter Stockman with his mousers, too. It ties them all together in ways that make sense, which I guess the show is doing, but I have only seen two episodes of it, so I can’t be sure.

April’s younger in this version, and that’s fine. But Donatello has a crush on her, I think? It’s a little weird. But I gather she’s also taking fighting lessons, so even though they do rescue her here, I get the impression she’s not totally helpless, which is a good April. I can’t tell from the game what her job is, if she has one, but she’s most likely not a new reporter in this version.

Once you beat each level, a challenge map version of that level becomes available. When you beat the whole game, a survival mode opens up. Best I’ve done is 9 levels, and there’s an achievement for hitting 20 that I have pretty much figured out I’ll never get. There’s also an arcade version that opens up, which has the new graphics and animations, but plays like the old Turtles arcade games and is pretty fun, but tough. I don’t know how you’re supposed to beat the giant 3-headed mouser by yourself… but maybe you aren’t. I’ll have to scrape together some friends and give it another try some time.

Turtle fans, this is a definite buy. I don’t regret the $15 I spent on it at all.

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September 4, 2013 Better Off Ted S02E12: It’s My Party and I’ll Lie If I Want To

Chet is one of my favorite auxiliary characters on this show. He’s a doofus, but a dangerous one – a boss who is a doofus is still a boss, and a boss can make your eight hours a day pretty miserable if he chooses. Chet is a weird mix of clueless and knowledgeable: matters of personal interaction seem slightly outside his ken, but he seems to know everything about everything at Veridian. Compare him to Dilbert’s Pointy-Haired Boss: they’re both positioned to be the immediate bosses of the groups in question, but PHB is totally clueless about everything, while Chet at least seems to know what he’s doing work-wise. Maybe I’m reading too much into Chet because I enjoy the character.

Regardless, since Chet’s the boss, it makes sense that both Veronica and Ted would want to have an in with him. If I understand the company flowchart, though, the line goes from Chet to Veronica to Ted, so it makes sense for Veronica to be a little worried about Ted have the natural connection with Chet through their daughters. She might like Ted, but she likes he position more, I’m pretty sure. It all leads to more interaction between Veronica and children, which is always good for some chuckles. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating – Veronica can not be trusted to have a child’s best interests at heart.

Meanwhile, Phil and Lem have again read social interactions completely wrongly. Everyone knows that it’s a bad idea to loan money to a friend you want to keep, but these guys are absolutely sure the only way to prove friendship (in this particular situation) is to loan money. [Side note: Linda’s initial refusal of the money leads to Phil and Lem ashamedly bowing and backing away, a bit I absolutely love.] But, of course, it all goes wrong… but not for the normal reasons. This show has a great history of taking standard/normal storylines and tweaking them to great result. Letting us see Linda’s behavior from Phil and Lem’s point of view leads us to the same general conclusion that there’s something not quite right, so we’re ready for there to be more to see, but having it be an intervention that the guys bust in on?  No one saw that coming. Yazoo, indeed.

The lie detector box ties the episode together quite nicely, I feel. Yes, there are the standard “we find out things are different than we suspect”  bits, but those get turned on their heads, too. Phil’s pleas to the box to buzz to save him from embarrassment, to the reveal that Linda still likes these jerks who have messed very badly, to Veronica and Ted reconfirming they’re a good team – all of those are nice little touches, and all from a little black box that buzzes.

Bits and pieces:

  • What’s wrong with Ted’s tie? Linda doesn’t like it. I don’t know much about fashion.
  • “Okay, every day I am incapacitated by fear. I don’t know where the magic comes from and am terrified that one day I’ll wake up and it will all be gone and I”ll end up alone living in my brother’s basement with his trains.” – Phil
  • “Every spring, on a remote island, Sean Connery and I hunt the most dangerous game: man.” – Veronica
  • “I’m able to will myself to believe whatever I say.” – Veronica, in a very character-revealing statement
  • “I’ve gotta get back upstairs and put some more evil into the world.” – Chet
  • “Schmugs Schmunny.” – Ted
  • “Whatever the kid equivalent is… probably something with poop.” – Veronica, on the Kid Mafia
  • “I’m sure he lives in constant fear.” – Chet, laughing
  • “You’re special at screaming really loud.” – Rose, on Chet’s daughter Olivia
  • Ted in jeans, a T-shirt, and a hoodie, with his normal stubble looks a little… hoboish.
  • “If one of us bowls a higher score than the percentage of cheese, then we get blasted.” – Lem
  • That burp Rose does is pretty terrible
  • “I’m going to go grab my lunchbox. When I come back, you try not to be weird.” – Rose
  • “Might I suggest ‘The Veronica-meister’?” – Veronica
  • “Thanks, Linda. You really are a girl.” – Ted
  • I want to know what Ted did to make Phil and Lem start bringing him coffee and a bagel every morning and then stop.
  • Veronica with her hair down at the party looks odder than usual, and I can’t figure out why. I know the normal tight ‘do is so very Veronica that anything else looks strange, but this one looks more off than normal to me.
  • “I put a hat on her face. Hats don’t belong there!” – Chet
  • Linda’s brother’s name is Justin
  • So did Linda’s family all move from Wisconsin? I’ve gotten the impression from previous episodes that Linda is no longer in Wisconsin, but her family still was. Would they all fly to wherever Linda is for this intervention? I need more information on this.
  • “Peanuts, people crying, a priest? That’s a party, baby.” – Phil
  • “Take it off, Father Sexy!” – Lem
  • “I’ve always wanted to tell a giraffe how stupid it looks.” – Veronica
  • “There may be other applications beyond insulting animals.” – Ted
  • “Maybe [Rose] has been murdered.” – Olivia
  • “All this talk of murdering Rose has got me spooked.” – Chet, with a line that made me laugh out loud for more than 10 seconds
  • “We recalibrated the lie detector so not even Veronica will be able to fool it.” – Lem
    “Or any sociopath.” – Phil
  • “It’s weird watching beautiful people fight. It’s like watching the Hope Diamond yell at a sunset.” – Lem
  • Phil, Lem, and Linda dancing is a joyful, strange thing

Commercial:

Veridian Dynamics. Lying. It’s always wrong. But sometimes companies have to say things that aren’t 100% true. Is that wrong? No. When companies aren’t truthful, it’s not because we’re bad. It’s because we understand things that you don’t. Veridian Dynamics. People lie. Companies protect their interests. It’s different.

Ideas/Inventions mentioned in this episode:

  • Lie Detector
  • The Galaxy Omega project, which will change the way we communicate with animals
  • A pill that makes people shop

Coworkers named/seen:

  • Joe, who has muttonchops and is the president of the Virginity Club at his church
  • Chet!
  • Other Joe, who got sent to Nigeria

Next week: S02E13 – Swag the Dog

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September 3, 2013 Tuesday 8: Lists I’ll Never Be Able To Do

Long about 9:30 on Monday nights, I start getting panicky about what list I could do for the Tuesday 10. Sometimes I’ll put a call out on Twitter and get lots of suggestions… but they’re usually something I’d can’t do for one reason or another. Last night this topic got suggested to me, and I liked it, but I kind of have the same problem — I don’t remember all the suggestions people have given me!

So we’ll see how this goes.

 

8. Top 100 Games I’ve Ever Played – Most of these entries are going to have the same root problem: too much to pull from. Quick, name your favorite grain of sand on the Lake Michigan shore – same deal. Add to that my failing memory and It’d take me a week to come up with 100 games I’ve played without looking at some lists.  Which makes me think – my Xbox 360 does keep a list of what I’ve played, perhaps I could choose some from there… hmm…

7. Names I’ve Given My Sims – I always always always name my first Sim “Honkus Pants.” From there the names get more ridiculous, and there really isn’t any sense behind any of them, so it would be a kind of pointless list that you wouldn’t really want to read.

6. Hottest Actresses – It isn’t that I can’t write this list, it’s that I won’t. Most of your big pop culture sites this is kind of their bread-and-butter, and I’m sure those lists get major hits. But a) prurience isn’t really what we go for around here, and b) I’d much rather talk about what roles I like best from what actresses. I have talked to some who say they assume any actress I do a list on is one I find attractive, but that’s on them rather than me, I think. It’s called “projection,” people!

5. 10 Best Pop Culture News Items From the Last Week – My bad memory comes into play here again – I just wouldn’t remember them without making exhaustive lists. And I’m tired enough already.  (hey-o!)

4. Actors who used to ____________ but now are _______________ – What’s more, I don’t understand how sites even write lists like this. Like, “Actors you love who used to be on shows you didn’t know you hated” and stuff like that. I don’t know how you come up with an idea like that and research it. It literally doesn’t make any sense to me, much like macroeconomics in college didn’t.

3. Top 10 Favorite Scenes from [insert whatever movie here] – I would actually love to do stuff like this. Biggest impediment: I don’t know how to edit video, which would be the best way to present something like this. Second biggest reason (I’d imagine): it would take a really, really long time to do.

2. Top 10 Favorite Episodes of Seinfeld/Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Star Trek/whatever else – Here’s another “the universe is too big” list. There are over a hundred episodes of Seinfeld, and if you start adding up all the Star Treks… forget about it! Even though I’ve seen Scrubs all the way through several times, I couldn’t even sit here and tell you a top three episodes. I can talk about scenes I love and I can certainly talk about that Brendan Fraser episode (you know the one), but I like it as a whole and all the episodes together make up that whole.  Jerry Seinfeld answered the “which episode was your favorite” question once with, “That’s like asking which breath of air is your favorite – the next one, right?”

1. Top 10 Favorite Movies – Don’t think I haven’t been thinking this one over the last ten months. It’s partly a “universe is too large” problem and partly a “how can Unforgiven and UHF be on the same list?” problem. So then I have to break it down into genres. But then it all falls apart because what genre does Pulp Fiction fall into – action, drama, thriller, comedy? I just can’t wrap my brain around this one. I could start, I suppose, by seeing what movies I’ve purchased on DVD/BD, with the assumption being that I must love it if I bought it. But that only brings the number down to about 500, which is still a pretty large pool to swim in.  I dunno. I’ll keep thinking about this one, but I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.

 

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August 30, 2013 Ranking Alpocalypse

He's mighty cheerful to be riding with those other guys.

He’s mighty cheerful to be riding with those other guys.

And now we finally arrive at the last (for now) studio album. Alpocalypse was released in June of 2011 and I’m just now realizing that, dang, that was two years ago.  Crazy. The most fun thing about this album for me is that I went to see him in concert several months prior to the album release and he performed the Polka Face polka from the album. It blew me away because the polka/poker thing was so perfect and it hadn’t ever crossed my mind. This is why Al makes the big bucks.

12. If That Isn’t Love – A common theme in these album rankings, I know, but this song doesn’t do it for me because it’s got some gross stuff in it.  I’ve never been a fan of gross humor and I likely never will be.  I blame my germophobia.

11. Whatever You Like – I like the joke of this song – “The economy’s bad, so I’ll still buy you things, they just need to be cheaper things” – but I don’t care for the tune at all. It gets on my nerves. That’s not Al’s fault, but it hinders my enjoyment of this one.

10. TMZ – Less of a joke and more of a “this is how things are now” kind of song.  It’s kind of depressing!

9. Ringtone – The first time I heard it, I enjoyed it. The next few times, I didn’t. Then I generally skipped it. When I listened to the album again in preparation for this write-up, I liked it again.  In fact, I was struck by how his problem could easily have been solved, but he persisted in his destructive behavior. I feel like this could almost be another subset of Al songs: right up there with “food songs” and “relationship songs” could be the “problems that could easily be solved songs.”

8. Craigslist – This is a spiritual successor to eBay of the Poodle Hat album. It out-Doors The Doors, in that it’s got their sound but has phrases that are way more fun to sing than most you’ll find in Doors songs.

7. Perform This Way – If I’d made this list the first month I had the album this song would be higher up. It’s another “make fun of the singer/group” songs, and it’s a great deconstruction of Lady Gaga (who he got permission from to do it… let that sink in a bit). The video for this song is disturbing, as it puts Al’s head on the body of a female model (with the result looking much like Jane Krakowski, oddly enough), but I do like the porcupine that sings “hey hey hey!”

6. CNR – Chuck Norris jokes for the Hollywood Squares fanset.  This is a style parody of the White Stripes and here’s the beauty of a good parody: as a result of this song, I got interested in seeking out some White Stripes music, something I’d not done before (aside from the song in Napoleon Dynamite).

5. Skipper Dan – Another entry in the “dark comedy” category. On the surface it’s this fun-sounding song about a guy at a dead-end job, but you soon realize you’re hearing a story about the death of dreams. Settling has never sounded so pleasant.

4. Polka Face – One of my favorite parts is how he sings the word “tool” from Pink’s “So What.”  He just kind of slides up the scale on it and it happies me every time.

3. Another Tattoo – Aside from a bit of grossness, I really enjoy this very singable description of all the different tattoos the singer has. The rad Boba Fett is playing clarinet, people!

2. Stop Forwarding That Crap to Me – I’ve had the good fortune to mostly shield myself from chain emails by teaching those around me how to recognize them and put a stop to them. The very few that I get stand out even more starkly against the general absence, but I’m willing to deal with that rather than a daily onslaught. Using this song to educate people would most likely have hurt some feelings, but it’s cathartic to listen to in a “yeah, I wish I could say that!” kind of way.

1. Party in the CIA – This song has caused me all kinds of grief. It gets stuck in my head so I’ll find myself whistling it or singing “yeah-eh-ah-eh-ah-eh-ah” outloud and then realizing that people around me now think the 41-year-old guy is listening to Miley Cyrus songs. Thanks for that, Al.

That’s it for the series, but I still have more Weird Al lists in mind, so it’s not the end of the category by any means.

The second week of October I’m going to see him in concert for the third time, and I am pretty excited about it. I’m sure you’ll hear all about it.

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