No. It’s not a post about condiments. It’s yet another: Random Posting Surprise™. As in, I’ll start writing something and surprise myself as to what it’s about. I once again started slacking off on posting here after a fairly good start back when I last updated the Oddball Update’s design. This weekend I finally got around to recategorizing all my old posts in the archive — well, I started, anyway — and this left me feeling like I should take a break from that to post something new for a change.
Last week we were in Michigan for a few days, visiting friends and family. We spent Labor Day there, and I actually got to take a couple of days off from work, so it ended up being a four-day weekend for me. The weather was perfect most of the time we were there; sunny and in the mid-70s with the exception of a couple back-to-back rainy days. We had ample opportunity to chat with my family members, I got to see my friends Pooch and Reaper (and pick up Donutown besides, which simply has to happen every time I’m in town), and eat out at our favorite restaurants. We also did a fair amount of eating in this time as well, which was fine with us, because it meant enjoying that much more of my grandmother’s home cooking.
Surprisingly, I did not have much in the way of allergy troubles. I often get bouts of asthma-like congestion and an uncontrollable runny nose when I’m back in the homeland, likely due to the dust and molds present in my old house’s ductwork, if I had to guess. The season contributes a lot to this phenomenon, especially because when it’s cold enough to warrant firing up the furnace, the warm air blowing through those ducts is usually enough to put my sinuses on an express elevator to hell. This time, though, the furnace was not needed, and we only ran the A/C a couple of times. For the most part, I had no trouble. That was certainly a relief.
And, as I mentioned in my initial review of The Beatles: Rock Band, my video game day with my friends was inspiring enough for me to reacquaint myself with the “plastic musical instrument” genre of games after a long hiatus. Since then, Apple and I have continued to have a blast with the Beatles game. I’ve been able to re-familiarize myself with my old favorite songs, which I mostly haven’t listened to in a while, and Apple was introduced to a whole swath of the Beatles’ catalog with which she was previously unfamiliar. The other day she came into my room and took all the Beatles albums off my CD rack, then proceeded to arrange a mix disc which she put in her car. Listening to it on the way to dinner the other evening was like going on a trip down memory lane.
The Beatles’ music makes me think of my high school days, for it was then that I first started listening to them. My friend Pooch introduced me to the group and their music besides, and I promptly started buying up the albums, working my way back from the Beatles’ latter years, the tracks from which I was most familiar. Hearing those songs again today mostly reminds me of driving my old Grand Prix, for a Beatles CD or cassette tape was never far from my car stereo whenever I went home from school, drove to or from my friends’ houses or wherever else I was off to. There were a lot of things wrong with those years, but the smaller they get in my rear-view mirror, the more the good times come to the fore — hanging out with friends, discovering new music, playing the great computer games of the era, and enjoying Junes, Julys and Augusts filled with relaxation and creativity in the pleasant summer weather of Michigan.
Pooch is still introducing me to bands, although this time they’re mostly Japanese in origin. Last week’s trip to Michigan was no exception, for we got together and I picked up some new albums from Shoko Suzuki (whose lovely retro-sounding song “Hi, Hello” I’m listening to right now), Shonen Knife, Ayumi Hamasaki and Ryoko Shinohara.
Speaking of music, I also learned some exciting news about my favorite Thai pop group, China Dolls, whom I’ve gushed about several times in the past. It was Pooch, in fact, who informed me that China Dolls original member HwaHwa had recruited a new member to replace Bell, the other half of the duo, who left to open her own dance school. The new member, Dan Chun, has since performed with HwaHwa on various TV programs and concert events, under the China Dolls name.
I’ve only heard a slice of one song from the “new” China Dolls — plus I’ve seen the concert performance that went with it — but I was pleased to hear that that it was a return to their dance-pop roots. (The original duo had started to go down the R&B/hip-hop road before they broke up.) Supposedly HwaHwa and Dan Chun will be releasing a new album on a Mandarin label sometime soon, although I get the impression that not even HwaHwa herself knows for sure, if her posts on her own forum are any indication. If a new album lands, I’ll have to check it out — hopefully it’ll be full of dance-pop stuff in the old China Dolls style. That stuff is just so catchy and happy, and I could use some catchy and happy. (Hell, couldn’t we all right about now?)
Anyway, we got back from Michigan this past weekend, and I just wrapped up a really busy week at work. We had some new product releases this past Monday, and of course in addition to doing all the posting of files and communicating with customers, I also do all of the promotion and marketing. I swear, I wrote the same mind-numbing marketing copy about sixty different ways over the course of the week. Blog posts, tweets, press releases, change logs, blurbs, product descriptions, RSS feeds, newsletters, ugh…my brain has completely burned out on hyping these products. Every website, news feed or press agency I submit to requires content in a slightly different format, so while I can reuse certain phrases or paragraphs, I always have to craft a custom submission for each recipient. It gets really droll and monotonous.
Hopefully, this week I can mix it up with some other stuff. I did get a chance to put in a few hours last week doing interface design for a custom work project we got from a major telecom, which was a serious breath of fresh air in the midst of all the tedium. It also reminds me yet again how much more I enjoy doing design than marketing. Trumping stuff up just isn’t my thing — I don’t have anywhere close to enough of that energy and outgoing-ness to do marketing effectively. I prefer to create the whatever-it-is, then put it out there and let potential customers examine and purchase it on its own merits. This is reflected in my own buying style, since I don’t like being marketed to and I am influenced very little by marketing or advertising when making my own purchasing decisions.
On the sidework front, I wrapped up a big ongoing project a couple weekends ago, and just today got paid for my efforts. That’s always a good thing. A small slice of this paycheck will be contributed to the “restore the ’79 Trans Am” fund, efforts for which officially kicked off during our trip to Michigan when I met with the mechanic/restoration guru who will be doing the job. We’re looking to start around the first of November. Now that I have the last bit of money I was expecting to collect, I need to throw together an email to him to firm up some details and talk dollars and cents. I’m probably going to be splitting this project into at least two rounds, with the first round taking place over a couple months this winter and likely involving a fair bit of corrosion removal, application of POR-15 rust preventative and engine bay cleanup.
Speaking of my mechanic, we had a great chat about the Trans Am (and other automotive nuggets) while I was up north. I even got to go for a ride in the ’68 Cougar he’s putting together. On the outside it looks stock, but under the hood is an Intech 4.6L V8 and automatic transmission from a
Look like your Chinese is getting used!
Xièxie!
Well, I could introduce you to some more non-Japanese bands, but I didn’t think you’d go for Funkadelic or Curtis Mayfield. 🙂 Though I do have a ton of other ’60s and ’70s British rock bands like Floyd, the Kinks, etc.
And I do believe you’re forgetting the most epic television season premiere: Smallville. 😛 Seriously, I saw a still from the upcoming season somewhere, and they’ve got a quasi-goth Superman in all-black (including a trenchcoat). It’s like Tim Burton’s awful Superman film is finally being made, only ten years later!
And speaking of Battlestar, I read today that they’re going to do an actual film version based on the original TV series, and directed by Bryan Singer, no less? Wow.
I would like to hear more Pink Floyd, actually. What I have heard (just their most well-known stuff, as you might guess) has always impressed me.
Weirdly, I just dug up what appears to be a collaborative album from 2005 called Tiwa Hula Hula by the original China Dolls and several other T-pop groups (JAMP, etc.). In short, it’s Hawaiian-themed party music. It’s fairly lightweight but pretty good all the same. And actually, these tracks would be absolutely perfect to import into a DoA Xtreme game.
God, Smallville is still on? It seems like I ask that question every year and the answer is always, inexplicably, “Yes.” What, are they going film noir style with it now? I seriously don’t even know what’s going on there. I hear Kristen Kreuk got out of that pileup some time ago, but if she was thinking it was going to drag down her career, then that’s pretty ironic because she went on to make that horrible Chun-Li movie. Which I intend to Netflix, by the way, if for no other reason than to giggle at how awful it is.
There’s going to be a Battlestar film based on the classic Glen Larson series? Wow…that’s weird. Doing a little searching on this, it seems Bryan Singer actually tried to get this project launched in 2001, but that the 9/11 attacks put the kibosh on it. This page has some renderings and sketches from the pre-production work back then. The new “Scorpion” light attack fighter bears an eerie similarity to the Viper Mark VII from Ron Moore’s reimagined series. The plot details also sound a lot like what was already done in the third season of the new series!
In a way, I’m surprised that Singer is trying this again, since it seems the Battlestar idea has already been done — and done exceptionally well — by Ron Moore in the interim. At the same time, though, I’m not surprised, because right now a lot of BSG fans are greatly missing their fix, and Singer could cash in on that, albeit with an apparently unrelated project. It’ll be interesting to see if this goes anywhere. Personally, I just want Cylons with vocoded voices again.
Ironically, speaking of Battlestar movies, I just found this video trailer from Richard Hatch’s own idea for a BSG reboot back in 1999. Although frankly, it looks more like vintage 1989.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybIyzTO4zhU
It’s even got a “holo-Leia” moment, except with Lorne Greene. Wow.
Wowzers. That definitely has a season 1-2 TNG feel to it…or perhaps more accurately, an Action Pack feel to it.
I realize they were working on a shoestring budget, but that was super cheesy. And I never liked those silly helmets they wore when flying in space, and they look even stupider here (and the green-screen effects during the in-cockpit shots are terrible). All the trailer was missing was that stupid sports game Starbuck and Apollo were always playing, wearing their Daisy Duke shorts and all.
Apparently Richard Hatch sank a substantial amount of his own money into producing that little trailer, which I suppose shouldn’t surprise me — because it’s not much different than a fan-made Star Trek film, except in this case the chief nerd in charge had some relatively decent bank.
Wow, Action Pack. Is that the soul-crushing singularity that spawned the awful “Bandit” series with the Garth Brooks-wannabe dude in the green Dodge Stealth? Ick-tastic.
The vaguely Egypt-inspired set dressing of the original BSG really was capped off (no pun intended) by those awful helmets, which were really odd in that they had no visors or any kind of face shield on them, yet they looked like they were supposed to. Perhaps all those the little pin lights around the open-face part of the helmet were supposed to make us believe it used a sort of force field as a protective screen, but the effect was never believable, being that it was 1978 and all.
Ugh God, you had to remind me of that awful Triad game with the rubber hotpants, didn’t you? At least Ron Moore had the sense to retcon that to a card game in the 2003 series.
Speaking of other things Ron left behind, I had to giggle uncontrollably in the very first few seconds of that Richard Hatch trailer, when Hatch himself says “20 yahrens had passed.” Because until then, I had forgotten that the original series had its own words for units of time, like “yahren” (year–let’s steal words from Deutsch!) and “centon” (minute).
And then there was that other curse word, “felgercarb” (sometimes spelled “feldergarb”), which was apparently a euphemism for “crap.” Ron Moore hated it, but he did include it in the reimagined series as a brand of toothpaste [!]. Tubes of which were autographed by Rene Auberjoobiedoobiedoobie, we can only hope.