high pitch nine

another weekend got through. my eyes are bleary with sleep. my concentration is compromised (boring TV program on in the background) My already terrible typing skills are a little worse than usual.

tired.. i hoped to get a lot of work done this weekend but i burned out. it's okay, i will handle it better during the week if i am not all used up by the time the week begins.. i am a firm believer in the notion that if you step away from something a little bit, you can enjoy a better perspective on it than when you are lost in the thick of it. Actually, i like that.. it gives me a little new perspective on my life. Not new... i think i remember thinking the same thing as i bought a tom petty CD in central square, cambridge, about 8 years ago...

it was a little bit of a difficult weekend.. alright not really. it was honestly one of the nothing-est, forgettable-est weekends i have had in some time (and i think that would register as a good thing!) But i was in a "make myself feel busy" mood, so i wouldn't say i unwound very much.

feeling a little out of it, anyway. there's been a lot going on in my life, around me.. a lot on my mind. i can feel myself sort of poking and prodding in ways designed to "make things interesting" (whether that's good, or bad.. i can't say) -- but it's part of my program i guess. i like it when things are a pain in the ass, when there's obnoxious problems and unsettling burdensome situations looming just over the horizon to deal with.. exactly what survival advantage is that going to give me? sigh, i would make an excellent astronaut.. why couldn't my parents be teachers (or therapists). Actually if either of those were the case, i'd probably be some boring investment banker, or the manager of some office equipment supply and shipping outfit. yeah, it would be easy, and i would be driving some economy sized sedan and have a dog named skip and an HDTV with Tivo and all of that. I'd probably live in New Jersey with my wife Diane (blonde) and our two buck-teethed children. yep, it would be a different life.

i wish, just one night, my consciousness could slip thru the space-time continuum and trade places with my alternate universe doppelganger, and i would have to spend a day as Office Supply and Shipping version of myself. I'd have to spend a couple of hours getting over the initial shock, but trying not to blow my cover all the while (even though my kids would sense something was wrong). i would end the day realizing that I'd most likely slip back into my proper dimension at the strike of 12 midnight, so i would use the opportunity to act without consequence and wreak havok with Office Supply Ron's life. End up in a brothel, a jail, a horrible truckstop divebar somewhere.. something... get knocked the hell out in a bar brawl and come to back in my proper body.. Hopefully, Office Supply wouldn't have had a similar idea and left me in an equally compromising situation, or then there'd be some honest-to-goodness hot water i would not exactly be too keen to deal with (though i can appreciate comeuppance and karmic universal payback. can't i??)

well.. nah.. no. that is all just a retarded man's fantasy, actually. in all likelihood, the best i could hope for is that somehow space and time itself bent far enough to cross and the electrons that carry the data impulses of my blog posting, immediately after i'd hit the "publish" button (not so named), would be super-transmogrified by sunspots (remember those? 70s) and accelerated to Office Supply's universe and we'd essentially switch blog postings (his would end up in my website, mine in his)

Does any of that make any sense? i'll simplify it.. you know when you play that old video game, Pac-man (yes, it always comes back to pac-man).. when you go in the little "warp tunnel" at the side of the screen, you leave the left side and instantaneously reappear on the right side, or vice versa. BUT! For that one brief second, the pac-man you control exists not in his single blue maze reality, but a shared endless void of oblivion, yes the same oblivion where all things have come from and eventually end up. Yet just as he is on the brink (the millionth of the millionth of a second that his essence dis-registers from the visual plane and registers, relatively, in the non-plane), he immediately is plucked back and reappears at the extreme other end/beginning of the same circular universe.

And then.. all the games of Pac-man being played, in all the videogame systems in the universe (in this reality), in each case all the pac-mans will disappear to the same brink of nonexistence and then reappear.. but they will EACH return to the single proper place, in opposite, from their point of departure.. (are they the "same" pacmen though? are they the same form of energy and matter or are they interchangeable, recycled? that's for another blog post)..

SO!! Then.. in this case.. what if the game is being played, the pacman disappears for the millisecond.. what if the power goes out? what if the electricity shorts.. what then? the pacman has just momentarily lapsed from his existence.. one foot out the door so to speak.. and then his lifeline is BLIP cut out completely? the machine reboots, producing a new fresh pacman, lacking any history.. but where is the displaced, limbo pacman? does he join the other half-formed infinite pacmen from all the other video games who's power has blipped out over the years? do they add up infinitely, in some great conceptual non-nowhere, where all sounds and recipes and thoughts and beliefs and colors overlap ad flow freely and distribute, somehow, back into the collective consciousness of the waking dead, the daily toilers, munching their donuts and riding their subways and combing their combovers.. writing their gay dating articles, drinking their diet redbulls, redesigning their ergonomic keyboards and faux woodpanelled living room walls in scandanavian design, binging on ice cream and sandwich and fondue and flambe' and homo sapiens..

this, this commonly displaced pacman, i am this pacman, he is my thought, my child, my progenitor, my predecessor.. my teacher, my student, my leader and follower, my inspiration, my degradation, the point from which i can not return likewise the goal of my future success (and the cause of my greatest failures). As the pacman eats the dots, as man eats his popcorn, as he sucks the four cheeses off his pizza, as he burns the hanging flap off skin from the roof of his mouth, as he puts a scrapey ice cube in there to cool it off and in also scrapes the roof of his mouth, and his eyes become teary.. and his neck becomes sore, and his ears are itchy, and his thoughts and love, become numb...

and the quarters are fed into the machine, and pacman eats the dots as his machine eats change, and the government produces more quarters, and quarters buy shit which leads to more quarters, and some OCD asshole in georgia or bammer or something somewhere collects them all and organizes in rows of 6s and 8s by dates they were pressed and dates he found them, and cross-referenced by the day of the week (alphabetically) or numerically, number of letters in that day, deciding by -- get this -- a FLIP OF THE COIN, and his family disowned him, his dog even dislikes him, his sister can't understand why he's so messed up and she herself is so normal, and perhaps he was molested as a child or hit by a car or stung by some weird blood-disease-inducing insect (which had no malevolence in it's tiny insect heart, it was just hungry) which was enough to not truly poison or kill him, just enough to destroy his otherwise normal thoughts and way of processing the world.. and in so being his misery is deep and grey and no smell color or taste, like radon, but when he finds his orderly correctness it is appropriate and proper and so right in a way that would never make any sense to anyone else ever, it is a simple singular binary feeling in his way, in his mind, in his proper perspective of the world... and this too he measures numerically, and cross-references with secondary and tertiary methods of measurement, all equally meaningless to anyone but him and especially to him, as he is a hybrid production of not only the normal human way of being and thinking but also this inevitable fucked up and "free radical" endless flowing way of creating and perpetuating new just-as-meaningless-logic, as meaningless to him as anyone else's non-logic wouldn't be to them, either...

and he has his quarters, and his counting, and his days counting down.. and pacman has his dots, and his warp tunnels, and his non-dead-zombie non-pacmans in limbo waiting for all the other pacmen to join them at the end of time, which is the flipped tunnel end of the beginning of time, ironically...

and i have my job and my black keyboard and my jumpy leg, and my bleary contact lenses. and office supply ad shipping ron has diane, and new jersey, and the Tivo. and we will never cross paths for real, for neither of us exist (well, i do, at least, or at least i think i can tell i do because it hurts a little when i hit my arm, to check)

and i have to go to sleep so i can wake up in 5 hrs and drop my car off at the mechanic so he can rip me off and make me pissed of a little bit more in a shitty part of los angeles on monday morning, and then i will go through another week of my life doing the same pointless thing which is all the meaning in the world to me, anyway. Don't swim in your trash. And if you do, don't come up for air, because you can find some between the trash.. in "trashy-air pockets"

Battle of Shoot 'em Up

now THIS is what I am talkin' about. i love the internet, in that you can totally randomly be searching for something and accidently find a crazy website loaded down with tons of goodies that you didn't even know existed.
Here's the latest:
http://projectjapandreames.neufblog.com/shootem_up/wallpapersflayers/index.html

A french site (break out the google translator!) - but honestly i haven't even started with the text just yet. This page is bleeding through with tons of oldschool gaming flyers/promo sheets for various arcade titles from the wonderful 16-Bit era. there was a time, albeit brief, when programmers were lazy and it was easy to churn out game after game after game with nearly identical engines "fly to the right. shoot guns. acquire larger more colorful weapons." hell even
I could program that! But in those days graphics were suddenly stepping up a few levels and that
glitz was enough to get the fans ecstatic (myself included among those numbers). In America it was still a kid's industry, but in Japan it seems like they were taking it a bit more seriously, promotion-wise. These flyers and wallpapers harken back to a time when ultra simplistic gameplay was no sweat, you were just excited to see pretty explosions and abominable biomechanical nigtmare bosses with glowing lifebars deteriorating in their midsections. These
flyers portray some of the funniest engrish you'll ever see, and some of the illos are just bleed-from-your-jaw AWFUL, but it's all totally fun and reminds me of a time "best left in history" - the days of R-Type, Zero Wing, Truxton, and Chelnov. I want to print these all out in high quality and wallpaper a room (i wish!)

drayumkeyast

today for the first time in a while i plugged in a Dreamcast controller and went to tow while i waited for my girlfriend to get her act together so we could have some lunch. I have often said that the DC was the last "cool"system that has been released, at least to my taste in video gaming.

Sega has always been a cool company, in that they were always well known for producing a stable of relatively mainstream-accessible material and yet they'd always support that with a healthy string of somewhat offbeat material. I can't really think of any other developer even approaching their size which would be so well-known for going across the ma as they had. A couple come to mind.. Konamai at times, Capcom, certainly Nintendo... but Sega stands alone when it came to weird risky (flat out crazy-shit) across the board. Hardware, arcade, and generally franchising what they could, to different degrees of success. Ironically, in the end they've never wound up with that "one surefire franchise" which could stand the test of time and the process of evolution. Phantasy Star, Sonic, those are venerable series but they never maintained the integrity overall of Mario, Zelda, Street Fighter, Metal Gear Solid. Perhaps it could be argued in some cases (Virtua Fighter). But no one would argue that it's incredibly hard to maintain ANY franchise over the course of several generations - survival through one is tricky enough.

My roomate at the time and I bought our DC after the thing dropped to @ $100. It hadn't been out for that long (a little over a full season?) it seemed and already it was getting long in the tooth, or rather, short to remain on the shelf. A shame, as it was finding its legs and no matter how you sliced it, what kind of gamer you were, it was shaping up to provide decent support in many categories. In fact I'd say it was one of the final systems to launch with a relatively decent lineup that didn't feel totally rushed out the door (ready to rumble, sonic adventure, hydro thunder, NFL, some others which escape me.. oh yeah Soul Caliber!) Yeah that's not all LAUNCH launch but close enough. Anyway when we picked it up, it wasn't long before I got my hands on virtua tennis - a game i could still have a blast with to this day. Titles like that don't really need several iterations if you ask me, the gfx are already good enough and the play control is completely spot-on.. I am not any kind of tennis fan, but games like that completely nail down for me the pure lighting-in-a-bottle of what is just fun about video games! My roomie and I would unwind at the end of the day with that game, I am one of those who gets very violently into it with the trash-talking and screaming and pretty much pummeling my own opponent with fists and such (on the couch beside me, not merely the screen). Yeah, so online has never been a big deal for me, I confess.

I remember going out to "splurge" on a DC keyboard and a copy of Jet Grind Radio (after seeing it at E3, i knew I had to get my hands on that game!) We never used the keyboard for more than emailing, really (don't ask) though in hindsight I really wish I had picked up Typing of the Dead at some point. JGR proved to be really fun - also great to look at and listen to, even if i never did get terribly far into it (the slippery controls were kind of a buzzkill) but it didn't matter, that stuff was fun.

I never really got much further with my DC, though some years later my buddy in NYC set me a spindle full of burns (oh so illegal). Think of me what you will--I can hear it now "It's guys like you who led to the Dreamcast being oboslete and Sega dropping out of hardware," oh ok let's not get too carried away. I wouldn't have bought anything else for it anyway, beyond what I did (well, maybe about 2 or 3 titles). I picked up American Pro Trucker today, for the first time in like 3 years - such a great idea for a game, even if somewhat sloppily conceived! I don't care. To me, games like that are what define a system - those are themes that SHOULD be made into video games. There's a reason you don't see more offbeat titles like that, and it's a shame. Crazy Taxi is another, a game I always considered to be a decent diversion but not one worthy of generating much fanfare.. for some reason the community embraced it, because it was unusual (same as above, really). Games like these came and went, and they were fun - captivating, if only for a few moments - but they've not left much in the way of an indelible mark on the gaming landscape. To me, that's sad - instead, we get umpteen versons of final fantasy or re-re-re-re-releases of ninja gaiden. Not to knock on the legacy of either such title, but GEEZ, it's not what you would call innovative or -shrug- "weird..."

I would love to see Sega "come back" and toss their hat into hardware once again - I have no doubt that it will never happen, though. Frankly I am amazed they've done so well (and in such a style) as they have with their resulting publisher-only status, and like many I am curious to see what they will evolve into. It is reassuring to notice that they look back on their legacy as far as the types of titles they will continue to put out, anyway. I haven't forked over money for a Sega game in a long time (well.. not a new one) but even a picky gamer like me can find something that they've funded to wrap their teeth around. (If I had a PSP, I would likely be playing Crush right now!!!)

Sega, as a company, is one I have much to say about - we have had a long history together (and presently, I admit they are the ones paying for the development of my current project). I will always hold them in high regard for what they released during the 16-bit years (in spite of the awful CD-Rom and extra-awful 32X nonsense and all of that). Sega Saturn is something i am just coming to appreciate now (better late then never) and I hope they can manage to stick around and maintain their relevance for a long time to come - gaming would never be the same without them!

Try Hard...

so i found a couple of interesting JPN PSone games to check out: UMIHARA KAWASE SHUN and GUNNER'S HEAVEN. The former is a follow up to a Super Famicon title where you control this little girl with a Bionic Commando-style grappling hook in order to maneuver around levels- this one is more of a puzzle game than then "kill the futuristic Nazis" as it's inspiration was. I only played the SFC game briefly but this always struck me as one of those weird little cool games with a nice level of polish. Gunner's is pretty much an unapologetic rip-off of the old Sega Genesis favorite Gunstar Heroes, minus the 2-Player Co-op mode as well as the novelty. It looks like a pretty direct rip-off but honestly, is Gunstar a game that SHOULDN'T be ripped off? It's a little surprising that the Run 'n Gun genre is among the simplest as they come, yet it's never been terribly exploited. Here and there, but not so much as your typical platformer fare has. Anyway this game looks fun, with appropriate 2D love (both games are 2D actually) and I think it's a safe bet for both.

At this stage, I am not gonna ever pick up a videogame out of duty or brand loyalty or any of that - is f it is necessary reference for a project I am working on, then that is obvious, but otherwise I am not really into gaming for leisure anymore. So if I do pick up a game, it's gonna be pretty much for the other value it could give me; that is, what I can glean from it. There's so many knock-offs and sequels and all sorts of yawny bullshit littering the landscape nowadays, but there's also still a fairly healthy back-catalogue of just.. weird, interestingly designed games. Maybe the majority of those won't have the polish and finesse that more market-driven games would have received, but there are often enough cool little elements to make them worth one's time "oh, why didn't I think of making a game like that!" I have a whole rant about the Forgotten and Ignored Conventions of Gaming, but that's going to be more of an undertaking than I wish to sandwich in over here..

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I consider myself to be somewhat savvy of Game-History related matters. I am not a whiz, but I have my share of knowledge. Yet every so often I will come across some morsel of info that will even have me scratching my head. The latest case - while cruising around on wikipedia, I stumbled onto the colorful history of a little company known as America Online (AOL). A minute of reading and I learned that the mega-corporation which helped shape the face of the Internet, began life as a humble obscure videogame download service?! No lie, apparently it was a special service for the Atari 2600 called "Gameline" - a special cartidge you'd plug into the console, which linked up to your phone jack. You could download games on a pay-to-play basis, something like a nickel per play - or something like that. Very bizarre. Anyway the thing debuted too close to the video game crash, and so it never really got too far - but the company which developed it (service and tech) went on to slowly morph into a pre-Internet Service (think of a low-level Prodigy or GEnie or whatever). Then time passed and some weird shady operations occured (don't they always) and it eventually reached mammoth status.. pretty strange.

crashed out to zero

whew, man. wednesday night, i just got back from dinner. behind at work so i am doing a little bit of late hours to catch up. i am really, really anticipating this weekend's arrival - hopefully i won't need to put in much time at the office (if any..) and I can just take a breather and relax a little. bit my nerves feel sort of fried right now.

things are going alright for the most part, since i have returned - and now it's "business as usual." Just trying to slip back into my routine and gt things under way as they should be. getting out of phase was a little weird but it was honestly nice ot be away from the computer for a few days. i am not much for camping, but suddenly the concept is wholeheartedly appealing... or maybe just jail, that might do the trick.

i feel antsy about things. i am coming up on close to 6 months at this job in a little while (another month and change, but the time flies by) and already I can feel myself getting a little nodgy "what's the next thing.." I am not used to being stable with much for any extended period of time after a little while. it's kind of my natural response at this point. it's hard to imagine that a couple of years could pass and all things could stay relatively consistent, but as usual i won't say "let's not put the cart before the horse, alright?" Oh I just realized, that saying is in drastic need of some modernization.

mostly i am realizing lately that things feel sort of out of my control. it's a sinking kind of feeling. the thing about it is that all the control i could want or need is there for the taking, for a guy in my position - at this point in my life, i could just quite honestly pick up and do whatever the hell it was i wanted to. but my superego is the boss, and it says to stay put and just let time pass. surrender to the stability. stop trying to look behind every rock, "steady as she goes." There was a time at Neversoft when I was sort of powered by that same voice, but my motives were different, I had other plans back then. Things are not bad now, but i am feeling kind of aimless. Like i wish i could snap into "autopilot" and just let the time pass me by and then snap out of it a year to two later, when things had sort of progressed as they'd been going. like when this "bas of stability" that i keep referring to was finally established. i'd be out of debt, our game would be released, etc. etc.

I am tired of feeling that way! My personality is characterized by a certain spark that makes me want to live for the moment, be rash, do strange and somewhat compulsive things. i wouldn't say i act without consideration of consequences, but i definitely would do things with more of the "no risk, no reward" mentality. and now i feel myself slipping more into this compromising attitude, "sit back and let things settle." I don't want to live like that! I want things to be different. Maybe I just need to feel more gratification (or appreciation) for the things that are already there. i need some recharge for my perspective, but not in a manner that's a hard slap in the face (like "you see how bad it COULD be?") Life is a series of trial and error, but for me it's so satisfying when things pay off.. little things..

Anyway, I am just rambling. Even if my mood is a bit tweaked it feels better to try to put some words behind it, to verbalize it. i guess that's the benefit of writing in these things.. you see yourself trying to describe what you are feeling.

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Now that I have been back from Boston for a few days, I can feel it relegating to just another memory of an odd period in my life, one that exists out of sequence with the rest of my everyday life. A couple of weeks will pass and then the whole episode will feel like it's been months and months since the whole event. It was a little weird being back in the middle of Summer, I haven't been there during this season in several years. Yikes, i forgot how hot and humid and gross it gets in the Northeast! It never really bothered me too particularly when I grew up in it, and I have always preferred the heat to the cold (even if intense).. but man! I guess I have been spoiled by the Southern California weather, after all these years. Sure it gets hot as all get out here, but it's a dry heat.. not muggy like that place. It was just gross and uncomfortable to stand outside. I wonder if the humid weather has changed at all since i left, even slightly. I know the winters have apparently been getting markedly snowier since I moved away..

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flying back from Boston was interesting - on a flight, I am one of those guys who can either pass out for the entire trip, pretty much, or not sleep a wink at all. it depends on circumstances I suppose. anyway, this return flight to LA, I was awake for the majority of it. I had a nice 1st-class seat (never happened to me before, but i did volunteer to give up an earlier flight seat so they hooked me up) and thus a little super-extendo leg room, but i couldn't seem to pass out quite so easily. that's fine, i'd slept a bit the past couple of days and i really had a lot of things on my mind. it was kind of nice to just kick back and have some hard time to think without much distraction, to digest some of the events of the busy week prior. Yeah, lots of things on my mind.. As it was a night flight, I spent a lot of time staring out the window and trying to comprehend the scenery below me. Flying is such a strange thing, it's such a displaced feeling. Always makes me feel like I am a giant, with a distorted sense of time, scale, and distance. Looking below as we'd pass over different cityscapes and countrysides, I'd try to understand the patterns in what I would see beneath me. Civiliation, all laid out neatly and completely before you, all at once. Everyone's little life, their little community, their little tiny powerlines and roadways and lake-fronts.. their commercial zones, their baseball stadiums, their residential neighborhoods, the freeways.. cloverleaf overpasses.. all laid out neat and flat and tightly connected, intertwined, everything perfectly attached. slowly and steadily carrying out the endless routines of each person's little lives, each in their little radius. The repetition of patterns in nature, lakes and streams look like tree roots and lightning bolt fingers. Industrialized society connected to huge empty plots of farmland connected to huge empty dark wide open spaces of infinite black nothingness, until the next patch of city would appear once more.

It is a marvel to behold and i never tire of it, it is so fascinating a thing to witness, every time. each place is the same, the colors of all the lights are the same, the layouts of each patch are similar. It all looks so cold and empty, it feels hard to believe it's full of people just like me, it just feels like everything is being run by invisible little specks. It's incredible to look at your two hands, to touch your forehead, and to think that from these meager tools that all of this which you see below has sprung, in such a short time.. just a few short generations. After I double my age I can't imagine what it will look like, if it will be fancier and twice as dense and alien looking, or just a little more of the same but pretty familiar - just a little more packed. Who knows.

I could talk about this stuff all night, my thoughts are full of it.. but i have some urban sprawl of my own to tend to, at the moment.

the laughing cake

hello myspace LOSERS. (or blogspot losers). what the hell have you wrought.
I haven't written in here for a little while. i actually don't recall my last entry. that's a lie, i wrote one about a week ago as an R.I.P. to my grandma who'd just passed away (one week ago) but then I decided against posting it. Yes, I actually practiced some self-editorship, imagine that...

so, yes, things have been quite busy then. i flew back to boston the previous tuesday for her funeral. i had been wishing for a little vacation to get away from work/life and that's what i got instead.. though I must day, it wasn't quite what I had in mind, nor was it what one would call "a relaxing diversion" by any means. I will admit, it was nice to be away from Los Angeles though, for what it's worth... to be away from the computer. Sadly it wasn't for a happier reason, but that is how life goes, I suppose...

So this is a weird time of my life now. The passing of my grandma marks the passing of my final grandparent. My Mom's dad passed away in 1988, her mom in 1999 (likewise my father's dad) and now my other grandmother is finally gone, kind of a shock in this case as (unlike the others) it was quite sudden. But she was old, and unhappy, and if she was still alive now she'd surely be in very rough shape, so I am glad that is not the case.

It's a weird thing now though. This is something that's been looming over my family's head for some time.. for years. My grandmother had a lot of power in my family, and there were definitely some complicated relationships because of it. Now we can only wonder what will happen in her wake.. it's something that has been speculated about for years, in both positive and negative ways. All I can do is sit back and try to be supportive, and wait.. and watch.

Weirder still is.. now MY folks are "the old people." (Yeah, and they love reading it when I type that, I am sure!) But they know this. They are no longer the young married couple, a generation in-between that have to deal with not only their own children but still their parents, as well. Now they are the seniors, age notwithstanding, and my generation is no longer "the youngest one" at the end of the train. Yeah, my brother and I haven't any children of our own (or even wives of our own!) but we are in our early thirties.. and now I look on my parents, and see them not as these people who are still young and vigorous and full of youthful energy, but these people who are now really the oldest generation of my family, and that means I have to consider their welfare in a way that I had always, otherwise, taken for granted in the past. It's an ominous thing. I mean.. they are relatively healthy, and still quite young, but from my POV the years are starting to speed past. Well - faster than they used to, anyway.

I want to take this time to solidify a better adult relationship with my folks, is really the point I am making I guess. I have long felt like no matter what, I am always just "their kid" and that will always be true, but I don't want to feel like at this level I am "their kid who's gonna need to rely on them as a safety net." I don't feel that way, but I look at my own history and kind of the expectation I have given them after all these years, and I suppose it is still kind of perceived that way. I am not sure what all this means.. i have a lot of thoughts flying through my head the past week, a lot of philosophical upheavals and trying to get a better perspective after all the changes that've been going on (and the ones that are looming). I can't help but realize my life has been so cyclical and as I get older, I start to grow weary of the cycle. Or at least, I wonder just what is my point in that - what will really make me happy?

I saw a lot of my old friends this past week.. all the ol' homeys. That's always a good thing to do, a nice recharge, definitely traumatic in it's way as well, as people who understand could attest. A good thing I noticed is that -- well, the past several years, I'd go home once a year or so and catch up with the heads and so I would notice changes in EVERYBODY. Insignificant to one another since they'd be in each other's regular routine, but to my eyes they would change drastically. But basically, it's a cliche I know but - everyone was getting fatter and older looking, as the years passed - noticeably! Not to say I haven't got my own signs of slowing down (hahah yeah) but some of those guys were getting hit pretty bad. I was shocked, to say the least, to see that so many of them have literally been shaping up. I mean - hell - they looked like 5 years younger, many of them, than the last time i'd seen them! That's great - motivates me to get my own ass in gear in the same vein. I am tired of having a big round gut (it ain't bad, but it could be a lot better..)

Seeing old friends is funny, you get a recharge of what it's like being in the midst of your old gang. This sounds funny but I stopped at a lot of my old favorite local joints to eat some of the food that I have missed. I know it's weird but sometimes, for a guy like me, those are some of the things you miss the most! And so visiting the old eating places, the old foods, the old tastes of years past is also in a way like visiting old friends as well. Like i said, it sounds funny but it's definitely true.

As these years pass, visiting home feels stranger to me. It's been 7 years out here now - I grow more and more distant each year, and though New England will always be strong in my head and my heart, it's definitely getting further away from the person I am now. I just can feel how I don't belong there anymore, it makes me see how much I have changed since my departure. The weirdest thing, actually, is driving around... with my old friends, the old roads, the old neighborhoods.. the types of trees on the streets, the way the sidewalks are laid out, hell even the sewer covers.. the way the light shines, the way the sky looks, all these things, they literally feel like traveling through a memory. It's like looking through an old photo album filled with pics from when you were a kid, the way things all look like they are from a different time, with different styles, everyone looks so much younger. But the fucked up part is though all that stuff is there, it's all different now too.. a different coat of pain has been applied. Everyone's older, half the shops and restaurants that were there FOREVER have been torn down and replaced a few times over. There's no strong sense of communal sentiment, in that respect, so your brain just fills it in and the difference just makes you feel strange. It is what it was but it's also not that anymore, at all.

Geez. Do I sound old or what! Yeah so I am having a little bit of a midlife crisis, what do ya want. It's a weird time.

Anyway I will wrap this up by saying, in spite of it all, I a sad to see my old gramma go - yeah, she was ornery and probably really miserable for awhile, and she affected my family in ways that i'd rather not get into here, right now (too complicated) but she was my grandma and she was special, all right. She sure was something else. It'll be hard to return home to Boston and realize that she's not there anymore, waiting for a visit for me for at least a couple of minutes.

news you can't use

Man. I go outta town for one week and the world turns upside down, game-news-world-wise. Okay, well maybe not upside-down, but it's definitely as hectic as ever. Honestly, while I was away at my folks' for some family business, I tended to shy away from the internet unless absolutely necessary (that is, other than keeping tabs on the junkmail buildup in my email account, i kept pretty far away besides). Already a workaholic, I have become something of a newsaholic in recent years (more specifically a neogaf-aholic) - any of my friends who will give me a moment to chew their ear off will hear me raving rather rabidly about "ohhhh crap have you been watching the gaf lately?" And so, yeah, outta sight -> outta mind and it was nice to get away, if at least for a couple of days. Unplug, disconnect, think about some stuff other than game craziness.

But of course it goes on anyway. "GTA IV delayed? Whazzis?? Another WOW expansion to take over the world? Blizzcon and Quakecon? id speech?" etc etc. Man. I still haven't even looked at the last released Mass Effect and Heavenly Sword vids, I just haven't got the time for all of this stuff! Playing catch-up is always burdensome.. exciting, though, if tiring.

I did manage to jump on the MGS4 bandwagon for a second (well, that is, I watched the gameplay demo). Yeah, the thing looks pretty. But whew - okay, I will throw a dart into my foot right here and say that I've only played MGS 1 for a few hours and that's the extent of my familiarity with the thing. It's always been a good-looking, idiosyncratic game that's got "a whole room to itself" and the latest looks no different, but really - does it actually look FUN to play? Considering my recent posts, it shouldn't come as a huge surprise to hear such words out of me ("I like Burgertime and Columns!") but while the first MGS was novel and just fun and atmospheric, definitely boundary-pushing.. watching the new demo looked kind of yawn-worthy to me. I am of course a harsh critique of that style of game, simply because I prefer faster-action games - though of course stealth can be rewarding when done properly - I just don't like my games to be work more than play. Toys are nice but I don't need gimmicks over substance. Anyway I am sure the rest of the world will be pleased with the title.. Anyway I'lll end this rant with "Remember Portable Ops?" Does anyone?

So i got my hands on a PS2 Test unit recently. I won't expose my source (let's say I know a certain recently-retired Father of the Playstation Line.. not really, but that would make for an interesting story moreso than the truth). Anyway the thing can play JPN PS1/PS2 software, and I have a short list of games I'd like to check out for it - chief among which is a Compile game called "Zanac X Zanac," and I am not so sure I really wanna shell out $100+ for the damned thing. Though I'd likely enjoy it more than enough to get my money's worth. Ah so long as I am still working in 6 months, I'll shell out - deal? Anyway If anyone out there in BlogreaderLand has any weird Japan-only PS1/2 suggestions, I'd love to hear them - gaijin-friendly only please. I am thinking there's gotta be, also, some decent Simple 2000 games - and I might finally settle down with a port of Galaxy Force that is suitably rockin' (I should check to see if it's on the modded Xbox first, I suppose).

Anyway a week of catching up is ahead of me, so that will be some late-night pixel-pushing as it were.. stay tuned, and keep flippin' those Lynxes for Right-Handed Play...

16-bit atrocity

Geez so it's already my third post in, and I am at a loss as to what i should write. Never mind that A. I am 3,000 miles away from home, in my Home City of Boston for a funeral and B. There's a ferociously-squeaking doggie toy making lots of noise in the room beside me. C. I am preparing to meet my old homeys for some drinks in a couple of hours and catch up on "the good old days," and last but not least D. I am trying to type this on a Mac. Most people love their macs unapologetically - personally I count myself among those who prefer their Mac in iPod form, good for listening to music on and little else. But then I am always good to whine about some arbitrary thing or other.

Lounging in my hometown no doubt brings back many found memories of the gaming days of years past.... ahh, my adolesence. About 4 miles up the street from the den I am sitting in right now is housed one of the favorite locations of my youth, the arcade known as Fun & Games. Natick or Framingham, (the latter I believe) but it was just on the town line either way.. Pretty much the typical higher-level slum arcade of back in the days, they'd obviously lay out the dough to get the latest uprights and cabs in and out of that place like it was nobody's business (well, I guess then it would be EVERYBODY's business). Yeah they had Baby Pac-man, Kangaroo, Pac-Man Jr... Cobra Command and M.A.C.H.3 (laser machines!) and of course the little kickass disco passageway (lit blinking ceilings and floors.. ohh man i gotta find a modern version of that thing!) As the years passed they brought in Hang-On (sitdown), Outrun (... same). APB, Vindicators, E-SWAT, Robocop, Rampart, ok ok ok you get the point by now. They had crazy tracks on the ceilings with the crazy spaceship contraptions passing back and forth, the whole thing had this junk-space-age setting, as if designed by some futuristic whiz-kid stoner. Yeah, yeah.. I miss the 80s version of the future, what do you want me to tell ya. Anyway, I drive by there now and I don't even wanna set my foot inside. I have in the recent years, and I should say I am amazed at all that it is still there - but right up there on the marquee, and surprised that they kept the same logo, it's heralded as a Lazer Tag Arena. Wait isn't that shit from the 80s too?

I have a lot more to say about the arcades from back in the day. but for now I must meet the old heads for a couple black & tans. Hey I am in Boston, what did you expect me to say.

If i am lucky, with a bit of searching I might be able to dig up some vintage pics of game rooms in the old days..

retroness

Well, I should get this out of the way pretty early - I am definitely what one would refer to as a retrogamer. Whereas my peers are excited to waggle their wii's and get intimate with the 14 or so switches on their bluetooth xbox controllers, I am more than happy to limit myself to UP UP DOWN DOWN LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT BABABA SELECT START. Not just for Contra, or Lifeforce, but pretty much in general when it comes to videogaming. Hell even if it's just a joystick and an action button, I can make do pretty well. Like most folks in my age range who do this for a living, I grew up during the Golden Age of Gaming; unlike most of them, I seem to have gotten myself quite stuck there.

When I was quite young, I got introduced to Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Atari 2600. I am not sure which caught my fancy first (hey, I was like 5 yrs old, whad'ya want) but I was pretty hooked right off the bat. It took a couple of years of nagging but finally my folks broke down and bought me an Atari 400 (yeah, that's right.. the one with the membrane keyboard!) I was kinda disappointed that it wasn't the Colecovision I had long been drooling over, but it won me over pretty quickly. Anyway, as I got older, things like the NES came into fashion and I was right at the front of that war. I was making maps for Super Mario Bros. when most kids still thought that stuff was terribly dorky.. Gluing my eyes to the Black and White kitchen television to save the princess in Legend of Zelda. Yeah, all the usual "80's Gaming cliche's" that you've heard thousands of times, I was just another example of the same story. But yeah, I was pretty fulfilled! Then, yeah, graduation to 16-Bit with the High Definition Graphics of Sega Genesis and SNES.. and well.. I dunno. I went to art school and discovered girls and beer, what can I say? My sheltered social life of adolescence finally gave way to finding something different to do with my hours (toiling away in the studio or rampaging thru campus) and I guess I started getting tired of sequel after sequel of the same ol' business.

And of course, halfway through college, I stumbled into my calling. Originally a Fine Arts student (but hey.. I had originally planned to draw comic books, in my innocence), I found my way into the mysterious young 3D Graphics department in our school. Jurassic Park was the new Hot Shit film, Terminator 2, and then the first Toy Story by Pixar.. 3D was always this beautiful novelty but now it was starting to pop up here and there for more than 14 seconds in a film (The Abyss). The time was right, I somehow slipped into it, and I was hooked immediately (I'll never forget the first time when someone showed me how to make a Sphere Bounce in front of a .TGA of a house on his Mac, and it only took 1 minute to render!) So yeah, I was hooked with the new captivation... I put down my charcoal and graphite and started laboring inthe lab, in front of Infini-D, in front of D-Paint, in front of Alias Poweranimator V7 on the SGI. Yeah, all the stuff I made was... CRAP.. but being in the middle of it was damn fun. It felt, strangely, like being a little kid fascinated with Legos, all over again.

But video games? Okay, I loved Sega but their CDrom system disappointed me and their 32X add-on was just malarkey. SNES was always very pretty but I never caught the RPG train and all the SFII ripoffs were making me yawn for years.. Saturn was on the horizon but (ouch) $400 for .. Clockwork Knight and Bug! (Yeah people look back at those games fondly, but looking at the box covers at the time, not terribly impressive). And then, we had the Playstation.. and of course Project Ultra, I mean N64. Okay, I was still paying attention, but I looked at the graphics on these things and then I looked at the 3D capabilities of the machines I was playing with at school. It was hard looking at these games with these super-simplified characters with blocks for hands and heads. It just looked ugly and gross. Virtua Fighter was pretty fresh when it launched but it didn't age well even back then. So basically, gaming lost me back there.. for awhile.

Yeah, it's a shallow thing to say. "I lost interest in games 'cause the graphics sucked" I know it's all about gamelay, and I knew this as well back then, but something about the rules of playing a 2D game never properly translated into those early 3D titles in a way that captivated me. Of course, things have changed in the years since - games are BEAUTIFUL now, even I have to admit it - but something else got lost that in there that has never completely been recaptured for me. That's not to say I haven't found games to enjoy since, not by a longshot. But things have definitely changed - I have changed - and working on the other side of the screen affects things as well.

So where does this leave me today, then? I mean, do I have any right to even try to write a game industry-themed blog when I say something like "I don't like video games anymore?" Well, honestly, I do like video games, and more than anything else, I can say I am profoundly excited about where games are going. I think anyone can agree that right now, we are stuck in kind of a rut of "bigger and better" where every game tries to outshine it's competitors with this gimmick or that, or throw some money at the proven dev team and let them crank out a sequel or inspired knock-off. And sure, a lot of the games come out well, with fun gameplay, multiplayer goodness, never mind the gorgeous audiovisuals. But for guys like me, the days of wonder are gone.. or at least, changed.

I have a lot to say about what retrogames I believe have held up, and what captivates me today. In spite of my tone, I still spend several hours a week cranking away at some of my favorites which time has otherwise forgot. More than mere nostalgia, there are a lot of titles which never received proper attention and slipped by the wayside, but due to the whole "retroscene" many have enjoyed sleeper status, a second chance. Some I have been lucky to get my hands on - so many, I still don't even know exist. The fun part is makinng those discoveries.. Anyway, those particulars are to be explored in other entries. For now, I must sign off..

I'm starting a new Game Industry blog

I am launching a new game industry blog site, unlike my usual rambling + whiny blog this journal will be concerned only with the business I work in and related affairs (and try to maintain a somewhat professional attitude).

if you work in the field and have a website (or relevant blog of your own) and you'd like a link, send it over and I'll add it to the list.

There's only an intro there for the time being, but I hope to fill it up with lots of info soon - stay tuned.

You can access it easily thru the blog button on my website www.texturemonkey.com

Greetings!

Welcome to my first post! I have been meaning to start a videogame industry-themed
blog for some time now. For various reasons, I have held off, but I must say that now is as good a time as any to get of the ground with this thing. So I might as well get started and introduce myself.

I am not one for long drawn-out introductions, so I will keep this relatively short and sweet.
My name is Ron, and I am a level artist for a major game developer working in Orange County, California. I live in Hollywood, and I have 10 years of professional game art experience to my credit. Like many of my peers, I have been all over the map studio-wise, and I have been fortunate enough to have worked on a good few well-known games in my day. A quick glance at my resume should give any industry vet an idea of who I've been working alongside during my tenure in the business, and what type of work I prefer to do.

Born and raised in Boston, I was lucky to get my foot in the door with a relatively small Sierra outfit shortly after I wrapped up art school, and it wasn't long before I'd set my sights on the land of milk and honey (Los Angeles) and packed up to see what success I could pursue out here. Well, it's been a long and exhausting, yet rewarding path - and it's a long way to go, yet.

Anyway, I sure didn't start up this journal to gush on and on about the trials and tribulations of working in the field.. that is bound to come out, but in due time. For now, I would prefer to address the matter of "why create another game developer blog?" This is simple, really - i haven't seen much of them online! For the armies of devs out there, I have only passed by a handful of honest-to-goodness gamedev blogs in my day, and of those, many are mixed in with a bunch of personal stuff. That's all well and good, but perhaps it is better to keep things straight and to the point without going on about the stuff no one cares about. At least, that's what I'd like to read from a dev's blog (anyway, I have another blog where I can ramble on about partying in LA and what's the point of life and all of that, but it won't be rearing it's head within here.. at least, unless it's pertinant to the subject matter).

And further, why is a guy like ME writing a blog like this? Again, it's simple.. sure I have a decent amount of experience, but I am really just another grunt in the game industry at the end of the day. Outside of my circle, I don't think anyone would know my name, and that gives me the perfect anonymity to tackle something like this. No one in particular cares what the everyman has to say, but they can at least relate to it, and in that vein appreciate it.

Lastly, I will be honest and say that my purpose is absolutely to raise my visibility in this field. I have been a behind-the-scenes guy for awhile, and that's fine with me.. but for my future plans, it would definitely suit me well to get a move-on with developing some kind of a voice. This is asbsolutely an easy way for me to do this. So long as I don't mess it up too badly, it ougt to serve me well.. at least provide me with an interesting experience, to say the least.

So there you have it. I have a lot more to say, but for now I will sign off and call it a night. If you're starting out with me, I am glad to have you along for the ride. If you decide that you enjoy what you're reading, please pass the website aong to your buddies and help me get some exposure. Likewise if you think I am completely full of it, you can let me know if you feel like it. Anything in between is cool too.

Until next time, then...

- Ron
ralp99@hotmail.com

sadly no pride

alright well i really don't feel like typing so much, but then, i have lots of days where i really don't feel like doing damned much of a lick of anything. fortunately i am a workaholic so that settles that.

today flew by at work, things seem to be going better here for me generally. i am sketched about certain things which i'll not mention in this public forum, but i am generally sketched about anything whenever the honeymoon is over, so take that as it is. in all regards, things are alright although i do feel somewhat lethargic.

i went to beauty bar last saturday night, there was a time in my life some years ago when going to that stupid place assured that i would be having a blast. it's not as glitzy as several other places that are wayyy more comfortable (and, i assume, welcoming feeling) but it's warm in it's gross throwback-do it yourself-homely manner. it just feels a little scrappier than the other clubs in town, but the people there can be warm and friendly. anyway it was nice to glimpse back at those days, and honestly it makes me want to get home and put on my torn jeans and go dancing at star shoes, all of a sudden. sigh, maybe in a few weeks.

my health hangs in just fine but my exercise regiment has died and been belly up for.. well, for so long that i'd rather not mention it. i should be in worse shape right now, well appearance-wise, i guess i have a stubborn constitution. But i do feel it inside, in my energy, in my enthusiasm. Standing up and leaving my desk suddenly feels draggy, of late. I just want to melt into it, flop on the floor. it ain't that bad, but i have been exposed to the opposite which makes the days of lethargy that much more noticeable to me. i need to find someway to kick my lifestyle into a more active gear, to say the least. instead, i just complain about it - a lot - but in so doing i hope to inspire myself to affect some change. hey, it's happened before!

alright, well there you have it. i didn't want to write, and it shows. at least now i can get outta here. Pasadena HO! Bye...

almost

so

every once in awhile i feel like i am waking up from a dream. it happens at the oddest times.

i look at my life and my mind and where i have been and what i have done

and i feel like i have been pretty hard on myself and i don't appreciate it, and i should feel better about it. but instead i choose to write about it in a stupid online journal so that hopefully, i will look at this message on some other random night at some other random point in my life and remember just what it was i was trying to decide that i felt.

and now, right now, i have to go and close my eyes and pass out and go back into that dream, wherever that actually is.

there, then, was my point.

resurrected

sigh. a little typin'.

tired.. the past few days, a whole lot of running around. work is busy (as usual) and my social life has been actin' up. thursday todd w was in town, so i met he + the gang for some drinks (disregard in my previous entry where i noted that i'd be going home to chill that evening). friday night may and i went to the grove with edwin, for a little pizza, a little wine, a little whine, and some ratatouille. the movie was quite well-done actually. cute story, beautiful visuals. Saturday marvelously followed Friday, as it often does - I got up and out early to visit mr Long Lin and his Auto Mechanic shop. He got my ride all oil-changed and stuff. then i headed over to just tires where my poor car sat for several hours as i hoofed around town. i am putting tons of mileage on my vehicle these days, so i don't want to slack to badly in maintainence - i really don't want the thing to belly-up on me at this point in my life right now. Wel the thing sat in the shop i walked a block over to pink's hatdogs, rather hotdogs (but a hatdog would be an interesting thing to have, as well). I seldom go there, ever (uh.. maybe once or twice a year?) as there's always a retardedly super-extendo line reaching aorund the building. i musta waited about 45 minutes to get my dog, but that was fine, i needed to kill some time - and i had my friend bryan's book to finish reading, to keep me occupied. I finally got my quarry, i always order an Ozzy Dog at this place - they have all sorts of crazy combos - this one is a super-spicy polish dog covered with onions, nacho cheese, and guacamole. it's the biggest hot dog i have ever seen, condiments envelop my hand as i try to hold it and devour it with my gapin' maw. yeah, it's messy (even for ME, who was apparently raised in the jungle by wild animals).. and the tin is so spicy it always makes my nose get runny ad my eyes extremely teary. "So why do you eat the damned thing!" what can i say, sometimes certain experiences are enjoyable for reasons that we've not got words for, and i wouldn't have it any other way. fortunately, unlike most times, i was able to score a seat indoors so all my napkins would not blow away as i ate.

last night i met an old buddy of mine who i seldom see, since we live several miles apart - we went to Poubelle for a couple drinks (nice lil bar up the street) and then headed into Hollywood. The evening was a little lopsided, but not bad. I got home in one piece and didn't make a scene, so I am proud of myself. And today? Today was supposed to be Beach Day! But that didn't happen so I ended up having Backyard Hammock day, while I soaked in the sun and finished reading my book.

And now, well, it is sunday evening. The apartment is still quite warm, and the air outside is getting pleasantly slightly chillier. I am calm, thoughtful.. as i lay outside, I surveyed my little chunk of land. I don't usually do that, I am always freaking out neurotically about this or that or what have you, but today i just lay and looked at my apartment and my car parked in it's port, the apartment building next to me, all the little trees and plants lining the periphery. I looked towards the window in my hallway and saw the ceiling fan spinning in my room. Everything is covered with blocks of cement.. dirt lines their cracks, occasionally little clumps of grass or weeds will poke through as well. It is nice to have this spot, this quiet area, this peaceful little space to call my own. I don't OWN it, but it's close enough to feeling that way that i am satisfied. I head my coworkers going on about their stressful mortgage payments for tiny property and while I would love to own my own land someday, it feels like a perfect tradeoff for the time being, not to have to deal with such headache on top of everything else. I hope I can spend several years in this apartment, it suits my needs pretty perfectly.

There was a report in the news this week, there's a parking spot in Manhattan in NYC somewhere and the things costs like.. $250,000 to own. My god. It sounds so ludicrous. And you know what's more, if I had that kinda money I would jump on the thing right now. It's only gonna appreciate - and ten years from now who knows what it would be worth? AT the very least, you wouldn't be stuck losing any real money trying to sell it. Man.. My friend had an opportunity to buy a little shithole bldg in NYC a couple years back, I really wish he shelled out for it. SOMEONE would cough up for it sooner or later, and then he could just lie back and do something with the dough. That'd be nice.. man, I wish I had the time and inclination to invest in some real estate. I already have another industry to take up too many of my brain cells as it is.

Looking around, my apartment is in decent condition. I could be so much happier if the bathroom was cleaned, and the kitchen floor could use some love too. I wonder if I can get myself out of this chair and do something to that effect...

so oooo ooooo 0088

feels like it should say ninth. but it says twelfth. suck it up.

what's up, whoever reads my blog. it's been awhile since i have posted in here.. needless to say i do not like to do it so much anymore. tired of writin' and tired of chroniclin'. but what the hell.

so, things are alright. smoothed out at work a little i guess (yeah and now i have just jinxed myself for saying so, i am sure).... but it's alright. my mood is always gonna be weird about work, by virtue of it being me, being work, and it being a mood. all the bases are covered, or if you prefer, spoken for.

i have been overworked a bit lately and that leads to --ding-- partying a little. yah, but isn't it funny how the two can be incessantly linked together? Now is no different - well it sure doesn't feel like it. but you know, it is thursday night, it is 9pm, i am in my office in orange county.. after i write this blog i will pack it in for the evening and rather than go out and do whatever, i will relax at home and take it easy, then get some shuteye. and the weekend ought to be more of the same. and, well, yes it makes me sad to say that.. the mood i have been in lately, that of.. "i work hard to make other people really really rich, i want to live it up a little also!" has been sort of a factor, but i know it's not gonna really do much to help anything.

so E3 was this week. it's weird, this is the 1st time in 7 years where i've not attended. i have written enough about the event not to really wanna rehash it all right now, but at least i have kinda been keeping tabs on the boards to see what's the fuss been all about. the answer is - not much. the industry is kind of hitting a big stall. oh, so there's a shock. a bunch of somewhat interesting stuff coming down the pipe, but really nothing new, nothing revolutionary, nothing even sort of "holy crap that's different, and fun!" Just more shit. video games have become top-heavy, boring, redundant. I mean alright, last year was a dull showing, but the consoles were all new and everyone was in crush-cram-damage control mode. Is this the opposite of moore's law? The more advanced tech gets, the slower we manage to conquer it? There's probably something to that, if you think about it. This means we are kind of in a middle period then - a bell curve, this is the "golden age," before the deneoumont (spelled very wrong but i don't feel like checking it) and we are no longer in quite so much control of it.. and the chaos part of it starts accelerating.

it's okay, the universe thrives on the acceleration and deceleration of chaos and order. so basically, it's nothing new.. just on another scale. and pardon me while i reel it in before i start sounding completely like just another stoner (though mind you, talking about this stuff is doing no help to my urge to resist going out and living the nightlife) Enjoy it while it lasts, that is all i am saying.. damn consumer culture...

i love yahoo news. it always cracks me up. i could be criticized for even looking at it and considering that any kind of valid news source, but hell.. it's there, it's easy to digest, i don't have the time or energy to let my mind get swept up in all the underbelly of what's REALLY going on. News is pretty much entertainment right? Anyway, front page of yahoo mentions among it's seven bulleted items, and i cutNpaste here, "Trampoline injuries have soared in the last decade, study finds." Now that - THAT is ace journalism my friends. Trampoline accidents are on the up and up, and apparently it is on everyone's lips. Call a microsurgeon - it's time to organize a charity even. Can we get Ben Stiller to speak out on this, PSA style? David Schwimmer? Someone? The Streis?

Yeah, so you know where i am at, then. Basically awash in my own cynicism. I am in a decent mood i guess, in spite of it. And i have not been a complete homebody or office slug too much the past recent little bit and so it's got my charge up a little. But -- honestly -- and i feel like this has been ringing in my head a little bit, lately -- I feel like it's coming to a time when i need to do some huge re-evaluation of my philosophy. I am not the type to say or do such things since "oh, it's been awhile, time to re-configure my thoughts - let's check the schedule!" I mean I observe whenever there's some point in time like my borthday, the new year, or some other meaningful mark of time "where was i last year? 5 years ago?" etc. but this is different. this is when i just look at myself, my character. I really honestly do like myself, warts and all.. but sometimes, lately, I am starting to get pissed, or just maye kind of tired of it. Well, not tired of ME, but tired of the notion of this particular path I am following, these patterns I exhibit. Okay not so much THAT either but rather that once in awhile i will notice that it maybe doesn't completely jive with the world around me, and what my plans are with all of that.. what I want to seriously do with my life, what i have hoped for my future. I always will just rely on my own recognizance to see everything through, and the fact that the world is --essentially-- built for/catering to stupid people. I guess I must swallow my pride for a minute and own up to being one of them (well not STUPID stupid, but I know I ain't no Doctorate either). Though that starts a different argument about ow that's a completely different measure of intellect, and just what IS "stupid" then - and i really don't feel like getting off onto that tangent right now.

But yeah, stupid - and I will cling to my self esteem and say "I should know better" but honestly, if not for whatever degree of naivete/innocence/cluelessness I've got left, I wouldn't have even bothered venturing this far, never mind my ideas for what's to follow (and just what i am doing to get there).

I haven't really got a model for any of this, whether that is good or bad I can't say. I look up to my peers, and of course my parents, but really - we are different enough that it feels like it's a decent blueprint to follow if i wanted to be just like any of THEM, and yet the older i get, the more i feel myself being pulled away from it.

So maybe I am kind of stunted. Maybe I am eternally a bit immature. Maybe my philosophy, such as it is, has already colored my perceptions and expectations of the world enough to get me stuck in my particular character (isn't it true of anyone with a brain?) Maybe I would be happier to force myself to hunker down with a bunch of mountain dew just start force feeding myself large doses of television. Nah, too boring.

there's a reason why i still live in hollywood.

blogstinks

alright let me see if i can make it through one blog entry without cussin all over the place.

so i got possessed by the devil and went out to the bar last night. well i went out saturday and last night (tues night) and both nights were full of debaucherous merriment, of which i remember very little. but it is okay, i haven't been partying at all lately, so i guess it is not the end of the world if i make a smear on the scene here and there once in awhile. that will do for now, though.

i do miss the days of yore though. and i do have to knock off the jagermeister.. it works wonders but it also nukes my brain cells. i can't imagine what happens to alcoholics' brains, just being permanently zapped out of your skull like that all the time. seriously, in these periods where i don't get down very much, it strikes me more dramatically (and makes me grateful that i have the ability to just say no rather than relentlessly throw down, as they say)

or so i have led myself to believe..

work is going alright. it's still kicking me in the ass. it's a LOT of work! I was thinking this job was gonna be cushey, man i was wrong! so much stuff to learn.. this is how it goes my friends, get yourself into a different culture and there's tons of different rules and regulations to follow. and so that's life, adapt or die!

traffic bit this morning, driving a little hungover is bad enough but adding insult to injury is even more betterer. people always ask me how much i hate my drive, it's a haul but i am not turned off by it (could be much worse!) It's nice to have that time to myself and honestly, i do enjoy driving! even after all these years.. it sort of stimulates the same part of my brain that enjoys playing tetris or something. that's not to say that i don't like being a PASSENGER at times as well. hell i would be immensely happier if i was carpooling to work, in some ways. when that has been an option in the past, it has helped things quite a bit!

watched the sopranos tonight - 3 episodes to go (they're downloading now). I am sad it's over but, well, whatever. i enjoyed watching the show, but really, the end of the show - even if it is still good - it's kind of a drag. Especially in a show like this, when the show is officially ending, they start pulling some stunts "since it's ending anyway" that breaks from the normal continuity and sort of ruins the whole "suspension of disbelief" aspect. So, yeah, like i said.. whatever. And then i will have NOTHING to watch anymore (oh boo hoo). I need to get back to reading anyway. but i will say, it is kinda nice to have something to briefly escape into and care about which DOES NOT MATTER AT ALL, IN THE SLIGHTEST. Ha ha.

End of June, yikes! July is... like.. a few days away! That's halfway through 2007! I almost said 2006. 2006 sounds too futurey enough as it is. 2007 might as well be 2014 or 2023. I wonder what i will be doing then, when i am 39 or 48. Argh. HolyCRAP. You know I talked to my Dad the other night on the phone and he mentioned about how he is closing in on 60. SIXTY! My Dad is almost sixty... yeah, and I am sure he is enjoying reading this. Ah well, at least he made it to sixty without either of his kids killing anybody or something like that, I suppose that has to account for something. Or had illegitimate children or whatever. Yeah, you made out, Dad!!

I wonder if my next 30 years will be anywhere near as hectic as the past 30. Sure the world will evolve in new and strange ways, a lot has happened since i started paying more attention to things. I have no doubt that some cataclysmic weirdness of biblical proportions is in store. Well, hopefully nothing too earth-shattering (hoping my audience is relishing my metaphors) Honestly though, it is strange to think that my coming years are just gonna be spent stuck in the current mode.. until i DIE really. As opposed to the first half, growing up and going through adolescence and generally forming my personality and stuff - turning into an actual person - schooling, figuring out just what it is i'd do with my life - well from here on out it is all just about working. Work, work, work. Isn't that pathetic? Work, make money, spend money, save money. Scrape scrape scrape. A trip here, an indulgence there.. but pretty much locked into this stuff for the long haul. Year in ad out of the same thing! Learn new stuff to add to my skillset, meet new similar people, apply all of that, keep making products. And all the while just getting progressively older and fartier and smellier and more overweight. ... BAH!!! Is that it? Is that all? Buy some crap, maybe go through a few cars. Now you know why i like to go out and act crazy and get out of myself and out of my head and stuff once in awhile. i can't bare to think of all these coming years of just being force-fed a stead diet of crappier movies and crappier television programs and stuff.

this is sort of the philosophical argument i had in my life not too many months ago "what kind of life do i want to have? what kind of person do i want to be?" I opted for the more stable, comfortable route rather than the less assured, more random kind of life. i made my bed and here i lie. the thing that's great about it all is, i can really ditch it all at any time and just go wherever and start over and do it all differently. . hope that it will somehow color me differently and cause me to experience life in a more profound way than i'd detailed in that previous paragraph.

but damn it - i am an american. this is my pedigree, this is what i have born into, this is what i have always expected and how my world has outlined life for a guy like me. it's what i am supposed to want, to do - that's just evolution. but then, alongside order there's always been chaos. that's why people flip out sometimes, maybe - that's why our world has so much seemingly random bizarre going-on sometimes i guess (even though it can be extremely dreary at times). That's the part of myself i will always grasp onto, even if i can never completely satisfy it - my urge to just be wild and unbound, whatever you want to call it! maybe it will make me nuts, maybe it already has..

or i will just keep working, jumping from job to job, eventually slipping into the place that fits the closest.. find my weird nights out at the occasional random places to satisfy
my urge for breaking the pattern now and again. yeah, so i guess i need to travel. Someday.

it's interesting to watch some of my friends going through some of this stuff as well. perhaps they don't verbalize it the same way i do, but just the age that we are, and what we do with our lives -- the stuff we have been through, none of it particularly special (but special enough to draw us together) Anyway I guess it makes it a little easier to deal with, if nothing else!

this blog is titled, "ron complains about his life for a change"

hello and welcome to Happy Magic Blog Afterdinner Time. My name is Ron and I am goign to share this special time with you right now and tell you about some things in my life which are fun to whine about. So please pull up a McShake and some french fries, smother them with ketchup (the McShake too), take off your shoes and buckle in for some good bloggity goodness.

Well it is thursday night and i am here at my office in santa ana. it is the end of a long day, following a long week and beofre that a long month/few months. Okay I guess the length of things is well established at this point. I have been sitting around all day long making little rooftop elements and doodads, it's been great fun. Actually I do enjoy doing that stuff, I suppose maybe that means there's something a little wrong with me or I have been steadily unearthing the autistic layers of my brain, or something, but there you have it.

Work is going alright. I don't really wanna talk about it right now, it's been sort of frustrating. I spend too much time here and I am at a point where I am both very thankful to be working at a place like this and at the same time getting really tired of the videogame industry. I think I need some more positive reinforcement beyond just seeing my wallet get slightly fatter every so often (which is usually immediately depleted as I chip away at my debt).. I need some pat on the back or something, I dunno. I think I am pretty good at what I do, but I work in an industry that favors superficiality over, uh, tremendously bizarre aesthetic.. or something.. anyway the point is it's business for $$$ over personal gratification (well, for us grunts anyway) no matter where you are or who you are working for I suppose. Anyway I tend to flip flop on my feeling on the whole general shebang so I won't linger on bitching about it at length (...it's true, I swear!) I guess no matter what I did for a living, I'd take issue with the politics of it, that's the kind of guy I am. I am still waiting for a golden age whose day is past, I suppose.

So I have an ant problem, I have mentioned this before. Honestly I see ants crawling all over my desk all day long. I can look down and see like 4 or five of them at any given time, walking on my keyboard, my mousepad, up the side of my monitor. Yeah it used to be fucking revolting but it's almost become sort of cute by now. I love pulling them off of my arms, wrists, and pants. I don't want to think about the ones which are probably crawling near my orifices. Apologies to Salvatore Dali. This would all be well and good if i was a slob but i am really not, there's a couple of empty water bottles on my desk that that's it really. Our office is just infested with ants - I need to buy some serious ant traps and just obliterate the whole colony. DIE you little fuckers! (waiting for the ironic part where i see ants crawling across the screen over the word "ants" which i'd just typed)

I am no stranger to ant infestation. I am forgetting if i have memorialized my Anty Past in my blog before, and since myspace blog tools are anemic to say the least, I will assume I've not gone off on it - if so, chalk this up to a rerun (hey it is summertime). I remember living in the valley during one particularly hot summer. And then - the ants came. They came by the dozens, the hundreds, the thousands.. I can't count. There was this thick long line leading into the house from the back door, a line comprised completely of ants coming to and going fro. We called it "the Ants 405". You could smash as many of them as you wanted, but it wouldn't matter, they'd just keep coming, as ants do. Over the carcasses of their fallen bretheren, it would not matter. PROGRESS-- EXPLORE!! SEARCH!!! CONTINUE!! ADVANCE!! They'd got all over the house. Again let me say that I was not a slob and we didn't have a messy house or food lying around (Well, besides the dog dish). But the ants where everywhere. I would wake up in the morning and there'd be several ants crushed under my back from when I was sleeping. I'd pick up my alarm clock and ants would be walking all in and out of it. I'd open the fridge and there'd be ants in EVERYTHING. And even the freezer.. I would put a glass under the ice depositor thingy and ice cubes with frozen dead ants would come out. I opened the freezer and there'd just be these big balls of dead frozen ants clumped together inside. Yup, so.. pretty gross.

We had a hot tub. I mentioned the tub beofre, I am sure.. it was Pam Anderson's manager's tub. Or something. Anyway we'd routinely clena it (as one has to) - there was a huge ant colony inside the motor housing. I opened up the housing for whatever reason and more ants then I had ever seen in my life just came streaming out.. we put some water or something in the housing and they all fled. It was like a moving sea of blackness, for like 15 minutes.

So. Yeah. Ants. There you have it. I am making myself feel itchy now.

I am tired. I have been working all hours lately and little else - my social life has withered up and died, essentially. I am not too happy about that, but you can't have it all.. It will be back, anyway. And I have doen my share of partying and hanging out I suppose. But, yeah, it's taking a toll on me lately. It's colored my mood and got me kind of down - I can't really moan about it too much 'cause the whole point of it all is "get a job, keep a job!" these days, and that's usually a tough thing to do in my life it seems. Oh, I like it, at the end of the day - things are never stagnant, there's always tons of new shit to learn, new rhythms to adjust to, new technology and technique to conquer and coexist with, new politics to finagle - things are not dull and dreary. It's just tiring, and as I get older it wears me down a little more as the years pass. In the recent years I would counter it with some excessive party-heartying, but the times are frowning on the continuing of that lifestyle for a number of reasons, and so I have to stick to the straight-and-narrow. Yeah, that's fine too, and I feel like a good american and consumer - I fill my tank, i eat my carbs, I flush my toilet, i pay my bills. But where I'd usually had this feeling of "inevitably building towards something greater," I feel like my ignorance and naivete is giving way to desire for security, stability, and steadiness (bless those acronyms) and rather than mess with the world on a daily basis, I just want to make it thru the weeks and keep my head above water and my S together.

Yeah, so... I need a little vacation. An honest, worry-free time in my life where I can just chill and not sweat the immediate future and just plunk down and relax for five freakin' minutes. I need a solid weekend where my only concern is finding a decen tparking spot on the beach, and if there is enough suntan lotion in my bag so i won't look like a lobster at the end of the day. I want to lie down on my couch and marvel at how comfortably soft it is without slipping immediately into slumber-mode 'cause i am worn down from making myself nuts with overblown neuroses. I want to look at my life and my work and my society and put it into a manageable schedule for all it's elements, how much it will all cost and how much time I will spend on it and how many more miles my car will be able to sustain me as we power thru it all together before i need to take out a new loan for a newer uglier ride.

i think the only solution is to buy a convertible, at this point.. skin cancer or no skin cancer..!

the mooooovies

got the day off from work today - i am behind, but rather than going into the office (the daily haul!) i decided to work from home. not something i can do often, but it's a nice option when it is available.

i am backing up some files to free up some space on the ol' HD, so i got a couple min free. might as well kill it with the blog. or whatever.

beautiful day - smogy, as usual, but it feels nice and the air is gentle, if it can be called that. it's just nice to cruise around hollywood and hang out for a quiet day at my place - it's nice to get some work done here too, as opposed to being office-bound. no commute, no ants crawling onme. i mentioned that already, huh. also i can look out my window at the lemon trees, and gawk at the hot chicks exiting the apartment bldg next door.

so i thought i would write an uncharacteristic post about the theater. "what? ron hates things that everybody else likes! Oh be quiet dammit (it's hilarious how many different
friends of mine like to tease me about that, independently of one another).

it's been years since i have been an honest-to-goodness movie buff.. in fact i have really only had a passing interest in that whole scene, in general. sure, i like films, but as i have often written, i never usually get juiced up to see some movie or other, really. there's often something i might be somewhat interested in seeing, but really i never have this feeling like "ohhh i NEED to see this film!" I guess i used to feel that way when i was a kid, i can think of a couple different episodes in my history.. more on that later. I guess growing up in a time when there'd been such a heavy emphasis on interactive entertainment, it was always more compelling to me to spend my leisure time DOING something rather than just sitting back and observing. If only what i was actually "doing" all those years involved more physical activity, outside in the sunshine, rather than sitting in front of the tube with a Nintendo controller gripped between my adolescent fingers. Sigh, like i said, symptomatic of my generation (and also, we jewish children are usually too nerdy to be jocks) I guess i can blame my parents for not forcibly kicking me outside more often anyway. If i am ever a dad, that's something i would force my kids to do "go...outside.. and PLAYYYY!!!" Even if they hate me for it, it will be better for them.

Anyway, so movie memories - yeah, for me, my past experiences with films usually pertain to what was going on in my life when i saw some film or other, and the circumstances leading up to seeing it. if the film sucked, then whatever, but if it was a good (or interesting) time leading up to that, then a good film would be received much better (or, at least more memorably).

I look back on my childhood and remember the films i saw as a kid - mostly it would just be my folks dragging me to a film, i don't remember really nagging my parents to take me to this film or that very much (it's happened a couple of times, but not a normal thing) I remember my dad took me to see the Muppet Movie when i was like.. 3???? I enjoyed it, but the part with Mel Brooks and the Electric Yarmulke scared the crap out of me. I guess I must have seen Star Wars @ 1981 or something, i am not totally sure when that was. Unlike 90 percent of my generation, i have never held that film in such unbelievable reverence.. I enjoyed it, but I never felt so utterly captivated by it as my peers claimed to. Even back in the days, i can't remember the other kids being quite so ga-ga about it (at least no more so than anything else). i guess it just wasn't a big Star Wars scene in Framingham, what can I tell you. A couple of things stand out, however.. early in the film, when Luke's adoptive family (and their entire town) is referred to as having been destroyed while he was away, it really FREAKED me out!! So much so that I had this uneasy feeling for the entire rest of the film, i never could get over that. (well, i have by NOW). Also I remember the film seemed to be extremely LONG. I enjoyed it but when it was draggingon I'd get anxious and just want the amn thing to wrap up already ("Ron are you sure you're not Gay?" I can hear it now..) I remember my dad took me to The Empire Strikes back when it was released and enjoying it so-so, not terribly memorable for me at the time (I guess i was like 8 or something) - though by the tme the final one released, I was interested in seeing that one. Hey , i just realized, I am writing a BLOG about STAR WARS. I have finally come full circle!

I guess that's my queue to change the subject- though I will mention, I had a playroom as a child, and my mother bought all these cool posters to hang up in there (Muppet Show with the full cast, etc) and this awesome Darth Vader poster. My little brother's friend would get scared and cry when he saw it, so she took that one down (awww...)

I guess I should get this one out of the way, I also saw Tron when I as 8. Man, that movie was weird. I don't know if I compelled my mother to take me to that picture, or if they just did anyway, but man.. that film was WEIRD. I was a pretty big videogame freak even at that young age, and this film just completely sucked me in. It's still pretty taboo to refer to it in mixed company these days, unless you're kind of a hardcore dork, but I don't care - my brother and I loved that film, even though it waqs truly bizarre and surreal and overall really firghtening, foreboding and nightmarish. The visuals, the concepts, the overal ambience, the music, everything about it just seemed like this crazy alien world.

More than a few films coming out in that period reflected a general cultural tone, again I'll refer to the star wars movies - more so than in the 70s and prior, we had a lot of high-concept sci-fi films and stuff sort of gathering notice in the mainstream, these htings were getting serious budgets (relatively), expensive fantasy was becoming this new and marketable thing in a way that it never was before (always very much niche, prior). I guess anyone who witnessed the 70s and 80s would have to agree about that. It's funny, since I am so apathetic about fantasy now in my adult life, but as a child I grew up absolutely immersed in it... it was hard not to!

Damn how long does this CD take to BURN????

A couple of other films. i remember when the Transformers movie was being released in 1986, I was 11 years old. MAN OH MAN was a I a huge fan of that show - It was a very unusual thing for a movie version of a TV show to be released, and so I was suitably excited for this one. I remember the day it came out, there was a hurricane warning and my mother did not want to drive mt to the movie theater. OH MY GOD, you would think I had just found out I was going to be jailed or something, i was so very upset with my poor mom... I wailed and whined and almost cried, I wanted oh-so-badly to see this movie "HAVE to see the Transformers movie!" Well she gave in, ultimately, and drove us to the theater - i think I missed the prologue (who cares), but I was riveted. In hindsight.. SUCH an upsetting and violent movie! I won't repeat what's been said so many times before, but that was sort of a traumatic day of my young life. 10 minutes into the film and half of the characters are shot and killed. That's hilarious.
Man, it's just a cartoon.

I am tired of writing about my stupid nostalgia...

I remember going to see Pee-Wee's big adventure with my friend Danny Kaufman (or was it Dan Freedman? i don't remember). This was another example of one saturday afternoon, I am minding my own business, and my mother says "I am going to drive you and Danny to the movie theater to see Pee Wee's Big adventure." Me: "Mom what the hell is that? I don't wanna see some dumb sounding movie called 'Pee Wee's Big whatever', it sounds so stupid" Her "Well you're going, put on your shoes" Man.. needless to say, she dragged me there and dropped me off, but about 5 minutes ino the film I had totally come around on the subject. that movie KICKED ASS. I guess my mom is pretty cool. Sigh.. I could watch it RIGHT NOW.

In a similar vein, i remember going to see the Weird Al movie "UHF" when it came out in 1989. Ever since i was a young'un i LOOOOOVED weird al - he was just so, uh, "weird.." I saw a preview for that thing and knew i had to see it. The movie was awful, but honestly it was probably one of the best movie theater experiences i have ever had! I have never laughed so much in a theater in my life. That thing was amazing. For years my friends made fun of me for enjoying it so much, until they got a little older ad could appreciate it the way I did. Sigh, it's a difficult thing when you are so much smarter than EVERYONE around you, y'know what I am saying? Y'all?

That year (1989) was the first "big movie year" I can remember. Yeah.. 1989. Just finished up middle school, getting ready to start as a freshman at Framingham North High. The new Batman movie with Michael Keaton was coming out, with tonnnns of hype behind it. the new Indy film also. I was pretty excited. I had to go see Batman the first day it was playing, at the first showing. I had already bought the comic adaption but kept it stowed away so as not to ruin the surprise. I kept watching the 20/20 sneak preview on VHS to get psyched for it. Batman was my favorite. I had on my batman tie-dyed Tshirt. i was ready.

I was disappointed. the movie sucked. well it did not suck, but man.. it kinda bored me. it started out cool but just deflated pretty quickly. the action scenes were sparse and strangely shot, there was too much joker time and not enough batman kicking the shit out of the criminal underworld time (though, the action scenes were pretty tight). I thik I was just let down by the hype. Still, I had to see it again, and I enjoyed it. The next few summers, they started rolling out the new Action fests pretty regularly, each season being phenomenally more expensive than the last, you had all the Schwarzenegger films (T2, total recall, etc), Disney movies were in vogue suddenly (hip and stylish, not just for little kids anymore)

When I went to college, this was around the time when movies were starting to be something that could be collected - growing up I'd always see them advertised in the TV guide VHS review section with MSRP's @ $120 or so - buying a film was a retarded idea! We'd just dupe them if we liked them, not with flawless results, but that's how it was and so you didn't mind (besides, you could fit a couple onto a tape, at the sacrifice of more quality). "tapes," those days were all about "tapes." VHS tapes, cassette tapes.. people even called NES cartridges "tapes." People are idiots. THERE'S NO "TAPE" IN THERE, YOU STUPID WHITE TRASH MORON!! Sorry, i am still a little bit angry. there, there.

Anyway, College. So now people were buying VHS tapes of movies left and right, @20 a pop - they'd also release them onto video much soon after the theatrical run would conclude (it used to take what seemed like ages, like.. at LEAST 6 months for a video to release after the theater was thru squeezing it dry. No matter what the film was!) Anyway the point was, being in college suddenly meant watching WAY more movies. Lots of my friends had at least small collections of films, and half the time we'd be hanging out in someone's dorm watching something or other, drinking beer, eating delivered pizza, making out, usually at least half the people in the room would be under the influence of some controlled substance or other.. sigh, yeah, those were the days! We had this thing called "HSCN" (Housing services cable network) which would prety much be showing newly-released videos 24/7. no flash, just cheesy-looking Amiga Toaster graphics with bulletins about a pep rally or committee meeting or NCAA game and a bunch of movie times, some shit you'd like to see, some you wouldn't. some you wouldn't even know WHAT it was, but if it was on and there's nothing else to do then might as well give it a shot, luck of the draw eh? It's free anyway (saw some cool movies, randomly, that way. "barton fink") Also back in those days, for the first time in my life, we'd go in HORDES to see movies. Your dorm-side was your extended family, so about 15 or so of us would pile into the car's of whoever was privileged enough to actually OWN a ride, head out to the mall, and just all catch the latest flick together. yeah, those were GOOD times, 'cause even if the movie was atrocious ("jim carrey film") it was the weekend and you were out having a blast causing some mayhem with all of your gang. then you'd go back to campus and get loaded. Whew!!

I remember going out to see "te new Quentin Tarantino flick" during early sophmore year. I had seen reservoir dogs years before, and enjoyed it enough, but not enough to become, I suppose, a connoiseur. Anyway, there was a preview for this thing called "Pulp Fiction" and it looked.. well.. not so wonderful, in the preview. and I am one of those retarded peopl who "hates some words" and Pulp is not a word that i like. "Orange juice pulp" - it just sound gross! But i LIKE orange juice! It's alright. Anyway, what do you want from me. Anyway point is i was not too psyched to see this film, but i got dragged along. John travolta's in it? How can it NOT be good? (haha) Anyway I won't state the obvious, let's just say that the movie definitively altered the path for popular culture for some time. Shawshank Redemption came out arond the same weekend and got DESTROYED. I remember seeing it later and enjoying it very much, and feeling like they got super-shafted...

I remember going to see Shindler's List.. haha i snuck a subway sandwich into the film with me and chowed on the thing for the first 20 minutes of the Holocaust. What am I if not classy, though? I remember there was a fair degree of hubbub surrounding the film (duh) at the time of it's release, though at a party college campus you're not really going to get waves of excitement over such a thing. Still my interest was piqued, and my half-german roomate was eager to see it (we each dressed in the opposing team's colors for the event.. we also carried little flags to cheer the teams on. He even had a giant foam finger with a swastika on it.. oh ok, enough already) Seriously, that was a tough film to watch, I remember when it ended the whole audience just sat and stared at the screen, silently, through the entire credit roll. then we went outside to wait for a bus to bring us back to campus, it was snowing and freezing and bright (though very late)-- the bus took like another hour to arrive. It was a bizarre night.

Movies.. movies movies... Danny Freedman (who I also went to see Bill and Ted's Excellent adventure with.. we weren't daring enough to skip scholl to see it like the Skids did, though) wet with me to see Police Academy IV, I guess we were in Middle School? I will always remember that (terrible) movie as the one that had the longest dragging-on ending. I had to pee sooo bad, but i really wanted to catch the ending. Which sucked. I don't know what is wrong with me. i sat there twitching in my seat for like 25 minutes. OCD anybody?

I remember seeing the Disney flop "the rocketeer" - and then going to see "the naked gun 2 1/2" wth my friend Pat (1990?) As his folks pick us up, he tells me "tell them we're going to the rocketeer" then after they left us off at the theater, we got our Naked Gun tix and walked on in. About 20 minutes into the film, his mom and dad show up - IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FILM - and somehow find us and drag him away "Patrick, you are coming with us!" And he spilt. So weird! What the hell? Did his dad have a thing against leslie nielsen? All i can think of is that they didn't like the double-entendre name and thought it was some completely different kind of movie. I'll never know.

Okay this has been a long and pointless ramblefest. I have plenty of other appendages to this story, but my DVD is done burning, and I have stuff to do. So, that's where I go now.

chellist

go to sleep! i am trying.

TUES JUN 5

yeah i wrote a couple hours ago, but i needed to write an update. to vent. to complain. drum roll.

1. my food came here earlier than i realized - no one told me! it sat, alone, on the ant table. no ants appeared to be init though. also it was warm enough to still taste good. BUT - they skimped on the hot n sour soup. also there were minimal pieces of chicken in there. Pfeh.

2. I hate when guys named Christopher are called "Topher." I never heard of this until i read an annoyin book some years ago by that dave eggers jerk who is from SF. "Toe-fer" - F that. "Christopher" is bad enough - "Chris" I can deal with but "Topher" has gotta go. I also disliked the name "Drew" for many years until listening to loveline- but if i hear the name drew and it's not preceded by And- or Doctor, then I am pissed off.

What's with long versions of names anyway? Why can't most of them sound not-obnoxious? I hate when I know a "Jim" who insists on being referred to as James. Or "Jason" isn't just Jay. Could you tell I did not like being referred to as Ronald while i was growing up...

hey, I am gonna buy a Tron book. That's not a complaint, though. I wonder if there's any Tron Coloring Books on Ebay - or Tron Puzzles. Or Tron Halloween Costumes. Or Hide n Sleep's.

Oh my god. I would completely buy a Tron Hide N Sleep. Can you imagine just how cool (no one knows what I am talking about, that's alright)

flesh-colored cheetos

didn't i write in this last nite already? WTF? i have a friend who actually says "double-you Tee Eff" when he gets mad. It's-a great.

7:57, waiting for chin's cafe or whatevr the hell it is called to arrive. they said it would be her ONE MINUTE AGOOOO. why is it not here now. another late night of working, i have been powering through my work lately.. i have so much stuff to make, in such a short amount of time. please refer to older post about "the pain in the ass-ness of making nextgen art" Ah well at least it seems to be looking better, i guess. keep building.

weird dream last night - i was kind of an asshole in my dream. i forget a lot of it, basically i was single and living in new york i guess. i was at the bookstore and met a couple of girls, one of them was real cute but her less-attractive friend started to kiss me so i decided "whatever, i guess i can go out with her instead." We made plans to go out and i headed around town and met some other girl at a grocery store or something.. she gave me her card. cruising around, wasting time, i realized i was a bit late (like 1 hour) for the date i had with the unattractive chick. i am always late for everything, what's the difference? anyway she called and left a voicemail on my phone, i listened to it - it was the LONGEST VM EVER (not true, i hold the record for that..) Anyway she started off sounding sad and disappointed in the message, which gave way to anger, screaming at me, and sobbing... i suddenly was very glad that i had not met up with her as she was apparently very crazy and pathetic. i decided to avoid her (i love the word "avoid!") and decided to meet the other chick who'd given me her card. i entered her building quite brazenly, as she lived a few flights upstairs from the crazy and dejected female...

now where's my food. dammit.

what if i spat on the horizontal?

yup. another night. another night with my bum planted firmly in the seat.
i think i freaked out a little bit lately. not "oh oh OHHH MY GOD" freaked out, but more of the usual "ahh, damn, whining, grumpy old man-type observations" freaked out.

i AM getting grumpier. that's no surprise - my friends make fun of me now "what's wrong ron why do you have to hate everything!" I used to be the one with all the sheer unbridled obnoxious enthusiasm all the time. it remains, but it's definitely got covered with a layer of urine, it seems, lately.

i went to target tonight to buy a brook and dustpan. it perturbed me that the target on bristol in santa ana was exactly like the target in van nuys. the home appliances, the picture frames, the DVD burners, the stools.. the little salty pretzel stand.. all the same. okay we were maybe facing a different direction, but yes. i am no stranger to complaining about these types of things "why's it all gotta be cookie cutter!" and to be honest if it was laid out differently, i would also have been pissed "ohh shoot the store's closing in 15 minutes how am i gonna find what i am looking for?" so you see, really, the universe can not win. no matter what it does to me, i will still bitch about it. anyway they didn't have the type of broom i wanted. i did find a reasonable version up the street at bed bath and beyond, which closed just as i had paid for my purchase. i still haven't cleaned up those stupid ashes....

then i got a cheeseburger. i am not supposed to eat cheeseburgers. i had one for lunch already. i had one yesterday off my BBQ grill. i had one the night before when i was stumbling home drunk from the bar (or so my wallet tells me, from the tommy's receipt). ergo, no more cheeseburgers for awhile. it's alright, i have been eating way to omuch roughage to balance it out in general, anyway. Mmm.. leafy! Salady goodness.

i bought a few design books the other day - we have a great store for that in los feliz. this store is GREAT, the place is overloading with tons of books about all manner of kitschy americana trash. seriously, if i had money i would buy the entire place out. i can go in there and just wile away hours, looking at albums of futurist architects or german advertisements from the 1970s or whatever. refridgerator magnet collection books. that sort of thing. okay it might sound a litte bit retarded but trust me, it's very cool.

driving home tonight i was pissing on santa ana in my mind. oh, get over it! when i was having to work again in the valley, i was pissed as well. i was SO done with the place. it's just a place where your office building is located. i don't even mind the drive so much.

i guess i should echo my recent sentiments though - yeah i am TIRED of doing the same thing. i mean, i have different things to do (all the time). gotta keep up withmy peers, always gotta learn tonnnns of new stuff, new technique, new style, get faster, better, etc. But i think my stamina's waning a little. maybe it's just a settling period, maybe i am just tired of always getting so sucked into this thing all the time.. sucked in, spat out, back and forth. like i said - i'll complain if it's stable, or i will complain about it if it's dramatic. i am a grumpy old man!!!

but yeah i was fantasizing about having a different life as i drove. like, what if i was some different guy. not just another suit, or just another nerdy game guy, but just another wild weirdo out there doing whatever. i am so plugged into society, with my car and my paycheck and my girlfriend, my friday night, my usual place to get a burrito. the jobs change, the faces change, but the years pass and "the more it changes, the more it stays the same." I guess you do hit some kind of plateau after awhile. And it does feel good to have stuff behind you, the worrisome mystery gone "now how the hell am i gonna handle it when X happens? What if she wants to see other people? What if i lose my job? What if my car breaks down? What if so-and-so moves away? If there's traffic going to blah blah destination, what other route can i take?"

anyway, i guess i miss the excitement of the mystery a little, sometimes. but i am glad to have things waiting for me to figure out, still.

go to sleep. you think too much.

yes and no pt 2

sigh. another weekend spent in the office. i actually was planning to let my hair down this weekend.. guess it's not to be.

there's something to be said about next-generation technology. we get all psyched because "ohhh ohh look at all the things we had to do before to make things look nice, we now have all this POWER to play with and we can do so much more - everything will be easier!!!" Well bullshit, with the extra power comes "oh look how much higher quality we can make everything, let's skirt realism less and work that much harder to make things even more detailed!" Yeah, so it is and has always been, and little changes in that situation. Anyway, that's why i am in on weekends, ever.

bitching about work aside, things are alright. i would not say i am in a particularly wonderful mood lately, but at least things are better than they were months ago. i still like working here, and everything else in my immediate circle is going according to plan. i will be happy when i pass some forthcoming milestones in my life though. as usual i am trying to keep mellow these days, i have not been partying much... at all.. and just trying to keep out of trouble and save up some money. it always feels like that takes so long to do! I feel like i wish i could lock my personality in a time capsule while my work-self just chugged through a couple of years, just to even everything out. sometimes it almost feels like that's how it goes -

to be honest, a little bit lately i have been reminiscing about the truly weirder times in my life, like when i was newer to LA and much stupider about many things in general. i do miss that energy, even with the weird drama i was going through. it was just new and exciting. nothing really has felt new and exciting in a way i have wanted it to for awhile - i guess you become familiar with the same basic things in your life, overall, after awhile and as you get older, you kind of just bond with that. yeah, here i go talking like an old guy - you get settled into your patterns. what you eat, what type of things you do for fun, what types of movies you watch, books you read. getting older is all about less experimentation and more like going with what you know, don't take chances - don't waste your time! okay, so i am having some problems dealing with being 30.

halfway to 60.

1/3 to 90.

So don't worry, I am absolutely sure I will not live 'till 90. But I digress.

I think I will cheer up when I wrap up this level and have some cool work behind me to feel proud of, at least.. cleaning up my apartment would help too.

don't mind me. i am just whiny because i am unwrapping a sofa for the last hour and change.