Mad Science
Today, odds n’ ends:
LCC Show: It was a good show. Spartan Culture Night was probably the highlight for me. I’m not sure if you know this, but I am half Spartan.
Crackdown Mini-Review: For the Xbox 360, Crackdown is a GTA-genre freeroaming sandbox game featuring a constantly evolving Robocop-like protagonist. The more you engage in various activities (beating down criminals, sniping them from the rooftops), the more your various attributes increase in power. Eventually you can pick up trucks and throw them at people, and leap onto rooftops from the sidewalk.
The gameplay is tight and the nearly mission-less structure is a breath of fresh air. Without a plot to follow, you are given free reign to assassinate the game’s minibosses in any way you choose. Also there’s co-op.
One interesting difference between this and the GTA series is that since you’re operating on the side of the law in Crackdown, killing civilians is a no-no. As a result, your auto-target doesn’t target civilians, and if you do wipe them out (in explosions, for instance), your attribute growth takes a hit.
Compare this to GTA where they pretty much want you to kill civilians. There’s no reprecussion for killing them and they often say stupid, irritating things as they walk past you. Civvies in Crackdown often give you the thumbs up for rescuing their asses from criminals. So I personally try to play in a way that limits collateral damage as much as possible.
Another thing about Crackdown: It’s the first time I’ve ever seen in-game advertising. It’s true — in this dystopian, barely-hanging-on-to-civilization future, there are billboards for the Dodge Caliber. These billboards presumably are refreshed by Xbox Live.
I don’t mind it much. It’s not exactly subtle but it’s not distracting either — but if you were a corporation, would you want your products associated with a grimy, hooker-infested virtual city?.. It’s unreal.
Backseat Shopping
Car shopping is so much fun. Even better is helping someone else shop for a car — it’s an exciting purchase that someone else is making and you get to be a part of. Kind of like going with someone to the pound for a puppy or being a secret collaborator for the upcoming moleperson invasion. The joy of the quest is almost as fun as the quest object itself (puppy, world domination).
Capsule reviews from the back seat: Scion xA — An overall bargain for the price, but soon to be eclipsed by the upcoming xD with its bigger engine and more controversial styling. Back seat: Cramped. Toyota Yaris — The same low-yield engine as the xA in a more econoboxy interior. Lots of plasticky plastic. Back seat: Less cramped, especially in the sedan. Honda Fit — We couldn’t even test drive this because there was only one on the lot, and it was inside the showroom. Honda of Santa Monica is actually charging a premium of $2000 above sticker on these due to their popularity! Paint me surprised. But sitting in it felt OK due to the vertical size of the cabin. Backseat: OK.
Now, my personal favorite — so favorite in fact that I’m hoping it doesn’t sway the car purchaser — the VW Rabbit. Pound for pound, probably the best driving experience, and with a pretty good warranty to try to dispel the recent crappiness with V-dub’s reliability.
You can’t beat the solid feeling of a German automobile. Stepping on the brake is like pushing your foot against a horse’s back — it feels muscular and with just the right amount of give. Not squishy. Plus the Rabbit’s engine is in, as Dave put it, a completely different class than the Japanese cars tested that day. Also, the backseat is OK and on the cusp of being a little roomy even.
It got me looking at the GTI as my next car. Either that or a Volvo S40. Revs or baby yuppie refinement? Tiptronic makes me really happy though — “manual for lazy people”. I just love the feel of European imports.
LCC Show Next Week
Come on feel the noise — Monday, February 26th and Tuesday, February 27th at UCLA:
Apocalypse Later — the new LCC show!
Now Available in Popular “Book” Form
I’m pretty sure I’ve said it here before, but I’ve always liked reading plays as much as I like seeing them. Maybe even more.
Seeing a play is like witnessing a magic act — you’re in the dark and connecting with your eyes and ears as someone saws a lady in half. But reading a play fires up a different part of your brain. I guess words have their own separate kind of magic for me.
Cowboy Versus Samurai is now available in printed form! Many trees and Bothans had to die to make it so, but there it is for your private literary entertainment!
Selected scenes from the play have been published in Smith and Kraus’s Best Stage Scenes of 2006, and the play in its entirety is featured in New Playwrights: The Best Plays of 2006. Either or both would make a fine addition to your library. Finally, act out the play in your living room with your favorite action figures!
“Best Stage Scenes” is available now at Barnes and Noble and is pre-orderable at Amazon.
“New Playwrights” will be available from both B&N and Amazon in March, and at brick and mortar stores everywhere.
Update: “New Playwrights” is now available at Barnes and Noble and Amazon.
When Life Gives You Rubberbands…
Make a rubber band ball. Every day my mail arrives strapped together by a rubber band. I have this new rule that I don’t throw away things unless they’re garbage, and rubber bands fall into the category of “someday possibly usable”, so I had a mass of them on my desk.
Now I have a rubber band ball. It’s about the size of a racquetball — just large enough to fit into a person’s eye socket. It’s fun to roll around while you think about organized chaos.
I just read “‘Night Mother”, inspired by the Broadway revival featuring Edie Falco that took place a few years back.
It was wrenching. Well constructed, makes you think about inevitability and what it took to get you to that point.
I really, really love reading good things. I like it when something good makes me feel like I’m full of despair because at least it’s true despair. Good things make you connect with the truth.
Ping Pong Club
(Via PoeTV): Ping Pong Club: Episode 1 — Warning, NSFW!! This horrifically broken and hilarious anime series is a combination of Porky’s, Wonder Showzen, and an afternoon spent on mushrooms. It’s filthy, perverse, stupid, and also has the very best anime theme song I’ve ever heard.
Warning: This anime enters through your eyeballs and drills into your brain cells where it lives in the drippy warmness until it springs to life and makes you leap out of a volcano and ride a panda into outer space. You have been warned.
Also, in the venerable “How to Draw Manga” series of books: How to Draw Manga Volume #34: How to Draw Sluts! The existence of this book makes me both laugh and feel sad at the same time. Like a sad clown, in the literal sense — not in the figurative sense, as in those who would buy this book.
Currently
Dancing: The cabbage patch, sometimes intermittently adding the running man in for effect.
Listening: The Shins, Wincing the Night Away — Moody and melodic, this is good music to listen to while you wear your thick-ass glasses and sit on a Sawtelle curb eating mochi.
Reading: The Pleasure of My Company, Steve Martin — About a neurotic, broken-yet-lovable connection-less guy searching for a connection. In other words, about modern apartment-dwelling man. It’s great how Mr. Martin has transformed from wild-and-crazy-guy to novelist and L.A.-ite. Some people age like wine.
Watching: Freaks and Geeks. Oh yes some of you whine about Fox canceling Futurama, but that my friends was a far lesser crime than axeing Freaks and Geeks. It is like comparing the Armenian Genocide to kicking your uncle in the testes. And I don’t mean to downplay the severity of the Armenian Genocide by comparing it to a one-hour TV show — it was, after all, a Genocide. But damn if it isn’t a crime that Freaks and Geeks wasn’t allowed to go on longer.
Proof of Intelligent Design: (From PoETV) Nut-Cracking Crows. Because god made crows and then he made cars and street signs and hurrf blurrgh durr.
My Work in Print
Year Zero
Available from Samuel French and Amazon.com
Cowboy Versus Samurai
Available from Samuel French and Amazon.comFor a complete list of books containing my work, please click here.
