Emptyeye

I’ve made occasional reference to the This Week in Milford blog, which takes a snarky, sarcastic approach to the serial comic strip Gil Thorp, which is ostensibly based around a fictional Milford high school (Which has, historically, been semi-based in either Milford, CT or Milford, MI depending on who’s writing it at the time) coached by one Gil Thorp. I say “ostensibly” because there tend to be long stretches where the namesake of the strip simply disappears from the storyline.

In any event, today’s strip (Which is actually the second one from the bottom) has a particularly high “HUH?!” factor for a couple reasons. Honestly, context really only increases this factor (Contrary to “being the enemy” in terms of ha-ha-larity, I’d argue that context actually makes it even funnier), but suffice to say that what’s going on here is that the manager of the Kalamazoo Kings (An actual independent-level baseball team, by the way) have an opening in marketing for someone bilingual. Okay, no big deal there. The perfect candidate to fill the position: A monolingual, teenaged, illegal alien who has just realized he’s not all that good at baseball. Um, what?

My personal favorite part is actually the final panel, though. In an attempt to be funny, Elmer Vargas (The monolingual, teenaged, illegal alien who has just realized he’s not all that good at baseball in question) tells his boss “Um…if!” I don’t know if it was just a limitation of the font or not, but those of you that recall your high-school level Spanish will know that there is a significant difference in the translations of “si” (if) vs. “sí” (yes, and what was presumably intended here).

Yeah, weird stuff all around.

Heeere we go!

• Leading things off is this fun Rock Band video. There are a lot of “Full Combo” videos out there, but this one is a cut above the rest–clearly, much more work was put into it than just “film the screen” like lots of other videos of its ilk.
• Living right next door to a Dairy Queen cannot possibly be good for my waistline. It’s a wonder I haven’t already gained back the 15 pounds I worked to lose for six months or so from February to July of 2007 (Amazingly, I’m holding pretty steady where I want to be weight-wise).

Yeah, it’s been slow here.

#1: Burger King’s new (I think it’s new) Spicy Tendercrisp Wrap is quite tasty, at least without lettuce (I don’t like lettuce, as anyone can tell you).

#2: Harmonix are making it very difficult for me to not simply cave in and buy an XBOX 360 and Rock Band right now, with announcements such as this one.

Everyone has that album that probably got them through their adolescence. I don’t know that I’d quite go so far as to say as Moving Pictures was that album for me (My essay that got me into college was based around the title track from 2112, actually), but it probably shaped who I am today as a musician (If not as a person) more than any other album, in terms of showing me what a bassist could actually do. As such, it’s very difficult for me to pass this up, despite the massive monetary investment it would take at this point. Sigh.

Yay!

• I’m going to try to make the next Connecticon Member Appreciation Day on September 13th. These “MADs”, as they’re called, are essentially mini-Connecticons that are, for awhile, free to the public (After a certain date in the ‘Con year, they become restricted to CTCon attendees only). Fun stuff.
• As you may have gathered from my recent postings, I’ve been thinking of Metallica a bit lately, and more precisely, I’ve been wondering why Master of Puppets gets all the love/critical acclaim/rock magazine specials/etc. made about it. It’s very good, to be sure, but…it serves mainly as the bridge between Ride the Lightning, which laid the template for what is generally considered their best output and …And Justice for All, which was the perfection of said template. Puppets, by comparison, is…just not as good to me, I guess.
• Finally, with the 2008 football season almost upon us, have a joke:
  Q: What’s the difference between Mama Cass (Of The Mamas & The Papas) and the 2007 New England Patriots?
  A: Only one of them choked to death.

Thank you! Good night!

This past week, I actually posted some stuff. Amazing, huh?

I’m still trying to figure out precisely what to do with my stimulus check plus birthday money. Essentially, in one corner is waiting a bit and buying an XBOX 360 and Rock Band 2 when it comes out. In the other is actually addressing my recording obstacles full-on, getting either a new soundcard or adapter for the current one plus an honest-to-goodness updated copy of Cakewalk SONAR (The latter actually being the more expensive of the two); I know which one I should get (The second one), but knowing me, I’ll demonstrate a total lack of responsibility and commitment and cave and get the first next month.

Jess and I went down to New Haven today to eat at a place called Amato’s, which was pretty good. I had a huge lasagna, which I only managed to finish half of, and Jess had some chicken parm which she also failed to finish. More leftovers are always good, I suppose.

In Guitar Hero III news, I’m through 3 of 8 tiers on Expert, with all but 3 songs 5-starred. My most recent 4-star, “Paint it Black”, was probably also the most amusing in that I hit 96% of the notes. The problem was that six of the song’s 9 star power phrases were in the 4% of notes I missed. Oops…

Until next week..

-EE

Musically, Metallica’s …And Justice for All is one of my favorite albums ever. Production-wise, almost the exact opposite is true.

Tales have been told for years about the almost complete absence of bass on the album, but that’s really not even my biggest problem with it. No, my problem with it is something about which I know pretty much nothing, at least on the surface–the drum sounds. Whereas the later St. Anger (Not even Metallica’s worst album, by the way, [That would be Load] let alone “Worst album ever!” like a lot of people want you to believe…but I digress) suffered from the problem of Lars Ulrich using a wide variety of metal trash cans for a drum kit (Why do I actually hear the snare’s pitch changing on the title track?), …And Justice for All’s drums just aren’t big enough. The snare drum in particular is…tinny almost, lacking in power really. I notice it especially on “Blackened”. There just isn’t enough reverb, or EQ, or something.

Woo-hoo!

• I’ve been listening to Boston’s 1976 self-titled album almost constantly over the last few days. This was partly Rock Band-inspired, yes, but the album itself is…well, popularity isn’t necessarily synonymous with quality (See the diamond albums recorded by various boy bands of the late 90s), but 17 million people have it right in this case. Thinking about it some more, I came to the conclusion that bands like Avenged Sevenfold owe more to Boston than they would probably admit. The harmonic guitars and vocals of Avenged Sevenfold? That’s all Boston right there.
• I played Guitar Hero III for the first time in quite awhile today, essentially because I don’t own Rock Band. I began playing on Expert, and 5-starred the first tier so far. I know it’ll get harder quick–I never actually finished the game on Hard yet (Stupid last guitar battle).
• Michael Phelps is fairly good at swimming

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Yes, I’m still alive.

Yesterday, I turned 25. This makes me ancient and decrepit in most of the social circles I hang out in (Except for work, where I radically skew the average age of the department downwards). So yesterday Jess and I went to her parents’ house for brunch, which was tasty. Then my friend Brian came down from Massachusetts, and we went to dinner before settling down to watch the Summer Olympics. On tap last night was diving, specifically 3-meter springboard synchronized diving. And the team tapped to lead off the broadcast performed….a forward dive.

Yep, that’s it.

Now, I realize that diving is hard. But seriously, this is something your average aquatic 8-year-old learns how to do. And you lead off an Olympic broadcast with this? Really, it makes it very difficult for me to not make fun of diving as a sport when this happens.

Adding to our confusion was that the next tandem performed an inward 1 1/2 somersault–which is apparently no more difficult than a forward dive. Huh? Excuse me?

The Olympics are weird.

In other news, I’m trying with all my power to resist buying an XBOX 360 and Rock Band after my Connecticon experience. This is made all the more difficult by my realization last week that I actually still have most of my stimulus check, which was presumably designed for such irresponsible purchases as ~$450 worth of limited-use video gaming equipment (Wasn’t it this irresponsible spending that got the US as a country these checks in the first place?). Oh well.

A few things that I didn’t mention last night:

• I actually managed to miss every other tournament I had wanted to enter (Either directly or indirectly) as a result of Rock Band. I missed the DDR and Guitar Hero pre-III tournaments because Rock Band was still going on, and also missed Guitar Hero III because I was eating. Sam, whom I mentioned in the last entry, was actually eating with us, and ran to the tournament as she realized it was time to start. I knew this, but elected to continue eating, with my logic being both “Food is good” and “This is a convention; there is no way the tournament is starting on-time.” Oops, owned.
• In the bottom of the last entry, I probably made it sound like no one knew what the heck they were doing with regards to the tournament. I suppose this is true to an extent, but it’s not as bad as I made it sound–amongst other things, certain TVs being better for gaming than others is not exactly something intuitive; the only reason I know about it is because of my DDR enthusiasm. Darren absolutely did the best he could with what he was given (As he explained it, there’s essentially one “volunteer staff” for the entire convention. He’s the Director of Video Games, yes, but as basically has an equal chance of getting a volunteer who has never heard of a Nintendo Wii and thus makes jokes about its name that were old two years ago as he does of getting someone who actually knows games), and he should be commended for that. Plus, this was the first CTCon Rock Band tourney–truthfully, I like the first-of-a-Con type tournies the best, as they tend to be more laid back than later ones, because the tournies aren’t yet dominated by people who look down upon anything less than perfection on the hardest difficulties (I specifically remember playing on Medium in the Guitar Hero tourney back at MAGFest 4 for just this reason…I’m pretty sure my opponent and I both played GH for the first time at that same convention)–so naturally there would be kinks to work out. In any event, the point is that I had a lot of fun at the tournament, and despite all the adversity in terms of both participating in and running the tournament, I’d definitely do it again next year (And not just because I now have a title to defend).

(This post is huge; most of it is hidden behind a tag to prevent you from having to read it all each time the page loads)

This past weekend was spent at Connecticon. Quite honestly, I had hoped to have the CD/business cards/etc. out at this point, but various circumstances that I have documented before have prevented that thus far. In any event, I first became aware of this convention sometime last year, and went on the Saturday of last year to play in a DDR tournament. I didn’t do very well, but that’s beside the point–I had fun, and decided to go to the entire convention this year, and actually booked a room at the hotel despite living fairly close. This made more sense when I lived in Waterbury (My thinking was I’d go right to the hotel from work on Thursday, because I didn’t want to go from Waterbury to Cheshire, back to Waterbury, and drive back through Cheshire again on my way to Hartford), but as I’ve since moved out to Milldale, I did go back to my apartment after work to pack and then headed off to the Convention Center at about 7:30 Thursday night.

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