Every Movie

Happy Thursday! Today lovely warm spring took a break and we had fake winter again. :< I will ignore it til it stops.

Work was just a tiny baby morning thing, I was out by 1! So I took a walk to CVS Longs and bought lunch and water for my fish. Poor things haven't been cleaned in weeks. But now they're okay!

Got myself a learn bass book, so we've been learning scales and such. Practiced quite a bit today, but mostly out of my tabs binder. I added Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again and the guitar chords for If Not For You.

It'll take a lot of work for me to get any good at the guitar, so I'm glad I'm sticking with bass, lol.

On my walk, I threw on George Harrison's first solo album, All Things Must Pass, and was reminded that What is Life is one of my most favorite songs ever. So I flipped open my binder and found that that was one of the first tabs I ever printed! But it was too hard.

Not anymore. I can totally almost really play it -- slightly slower and I have it perfect; at speed I get a little lost. But the songs that are easy I'm sooo pro at, like Get Back or that Dylan one I mentioned, or really any Dylan one.

I'm video chatting with Beth right now. We jammed a little bit, despite the lag. Ohohoh, technology.

She showed me this lovely video. It's like, what English would sound like if you didn't know it. I've always wondered.

Oh so the other thing is that we now get ten movies a week. Plz to be suggesting things you want me to see. I won't be able to fill that quota under my own steam. I just saw Requiem for a Dream and Rebel Without a Cause, and A Streetcar Named Desire is slated for tomorrow.

Also, if I would stop running around on stupid quests, I could totally beat Final Fantasy XIII. I think I was at around 60 hours, last I checked.

Okay I'm done with this. Lemme know, too, if there's anything in particular you would like to hear about.

-Steph

Video Game

Happy Thursday! Finally got some summery type weather in here, and it's a welcome change. It's nice to be able to open windows again.

Guess who I share a birthday with? I just found out today. Give up? Ventura. Well that's that this book says. The internet says April 1 and also March 9. SHUSH, THE INTERNET THIS TIME YOU'RE WRONG OKAY. So Ventura is 121 years older than me!

Arbortown adventure was fun. It ended up just being me and Carolyn and Beth, but we were a party and claimed the wilderness for Spain Narnia ourselves. I took careful notes on the map because it was highly useless before I added points of interest.

Such points include Monsters! Wishing Pond, Engelmann Secret Base, Bats, chickens, Pokeweed, Abbey Road, and Kangaroons. Next time you go to the Arboretum, I'll show you all the hot spots.

The rest of my week has been FFXIII, sleeping, and trying to wake up in time to go to work. Tomorrow I go at 4 so I think I'm good today.

FFXIII, in this last week, has taken 40 hours of my time. And now I'm at the point where I feel like it'll take 40 more. See, now, this thing is separated into "chapters" -- and let me tell you, that's only the beginning of its literary merit. And by literary I mean artistic, and by artistic I mean this video game (and indeed others) should be recognized as valid expressions of art. A crazy interactive hybrid of narrative cinema and strategic button mashing.

This is not a segue, it's an example: Remember how in The Wizard of Oz, the beginning was in black and white and then at one point it switches to color? That could be (and sounds like, as described there) a purely technical observation, a statement on types of film stock. But also remember that this transition occurs in beat with the narrative, at the point where Dorothy leaves her old life behind and wakes up in this strange new land. Now, you have the information in your grasp to transform this technical observation into critical analysis: Kansas life is dull and average, literally colorless. Step into the vibrant world of Oz, the change in film stock is shocking and ultimately a story-driven effect.

The artistic concept of form enhancing function -- the HOW it's said effecting the WHAT that's being said -- you can find this technique anywhere, not just in filmmaking. In Enchanted she literally goes from a storybook cartoon world into gritty 3-D New York.
Poems about

f
a
l
l
i
n
g leaves

or w i d e o p e n s p a c e s. You get the idea.

So remember how I mentioned the gameplay of FFXIII left a lot to be desired in terms of player input? How the maps were straight shots, no room to explore; the parties limited to who is available; and how their skill sets progressed one step at a time, this then this then this? In other words, the game came across as highly linear (a shocking break from the open worlds of previous titles in the series).

Guess what? It's all part of the story. If you don't want to know a little about the plot of the game, skip this: These characters are, at every step, being told what to do. Primarily, their very existence dictates that their actions can only lead them to one of two predetermined and pretty horrible fates. Their choice is between worse and worst. They have no options. But get this -- as soon as they decide to buck authority, to decide to forge their own futures, the map, storyline, skill sets, EVERYTHING literally opened wide up. We go instantly from point-A-point-B maps to a huge sprawling vast plainsland with optional quests from which to pick and choose.

I mean, if that's not an artistic choice then I know nothing about art. It's still blowing me away.

That, and that it's literally (so much literal speak today) beautiful, with such lovely graphics and people what look like people. Just think, 13 years ago we were playing with top-of-the-line 3D computer graphics...that still rendered characters with fingerless lumps for hands. Now we have this.

Better go get started on my second 40.

-Steph

23

Happy Thursday! How does it feel to be 23? Oh wait, I shouldn't be asking you that. I'll tell you when I figure it out.

Yesterday was pretty chill. I got up early (9ish) and puttered around. Did some laundry. I think I started FFXIII, then went to Target and bought snacks/checked their eye exam prices. Then I went to get a hair cut! And then I went to L&L for curry (it was okay) and then stopped at Mama-ya for MORE SNACKS. And then I played FFXIII until it was time for work. And then I came home and played until 2 in the morning.

11 hours in that, total, including today's play. Just started chapter five!!! But it still feels like I'm waiting for the game to start.

XIII is very very different from the others. In tone, style, gameplay, practically everything. There's no home base for you to gently venture out from (and return to in times of crisis)--you're just BAM thrown into the story, and you're on the move ever since. People are losing loved ones right and left, people are falling into bottomless pits, it's very traumatizing. And there's so much STORY. It's like the battles/battle system/adventuring is an afterthought, sandwiched between endless cutscenes.

Now that I'm getting the hang of it, I like it a lot. There's a lot of depth to what's happening, even though it's turning out I have very little say in what happens or how. It's really more like an interactive movie rather than a video game. It's cool. And it looks beautiful.

Alternasubject: Big Band. Did you know I like big band/jazz/swing more than any other kind of music? Yes it's true! Even more than the Beatles! Throw on something by Glenn Miller and you'll have my attention indefinitely. It's like I was secretly meant to have been there for the 40s. Big band is, like, the music of my soul.

I was at Joann's picking up some stuff for cheaps when I hear some lovely band music playing across the store from the sampler box, and suddenly I realize I know that song. I wander over eventually and see that the compilation cd it emanated from is called "BIG BAND SALUTE: THEME SONGS and HITS of AMERICA'S GREATEST BANDLEADERS."

So of course I bought it. (Which answers a question that none of you asked: what sort of cds do I buy, in this age of media piracy. My answer at the time was "I guess I don't ever buy cds. I'll buy the next Linkin Park album, but other than that......" My updated answer is "LP and compilations from Joann's or Target.")

And I'm so much in love that it prompted me to wax poetic on Facebook, reproduced here for the less Facebook-inundated:

The saxophone is the memory of a voice I've forgotten; the smooth blues shuffle the heartbeat I never knew.

Referring to the 40s as my long-lost era. The 60s don't even compare.

What may make big band a surprising match for me is how little I let on about it. Whereas I've been touting the Beatles for months now, big band is less an obsession and more a given. I mean, I don't necessarily seek it out or need it every day of the week, but if it's there, I couldn't possibly be happier. A little bit of big band is more instantly appealing than mass amounts of anything else. Know what I mean?

It's just right, and it'll always be right. It's perfect. If people were, um, radios, and each personradio only picked up one station, my radio would tune to hits of the 40s. That's what I would sound like, if I were a radio.

An old wooden radio sitting all alone on a side table in the living room; pouring out Glenn Miller and the Dorsey brothers and Louis Armstrong and Sinatra and Peggy Lee and mystery shows and news bulletins about the Battle of Midway and Orson Welles! While the kid plays with his train set on the floor and the dad reads the newspaper and smokes and the mom vacuums. That's the sort of radio I am.

Yeah alright, tomorrow we're going to the Arboretum and then hanging out and I will make people watch A Hard Day's Night. Because everyone should see it. I'll be a hard day's day, so I'm probably gonna get to sleep pretty soon. See ya then!

-Steph

Amp'd

Happy Thursday! My dad brought me home the amp he found a month ago! Used, they had to hold onto it a month for business reasons, but it was only $45 so I'd say it was worth it. Looking at new amps in the store, I've seen little guys, probably a fourth the size, for three times the price. A win win for all. Except for maybe the neighbors.

This week I learned the twelve-bar blues, which is a musical pattern that "the blues" is played by. Along with it, then, came George Harrison's "For You Blue." Progress!

Also picked up a beginner's bass book, like, teaching hand position and how to read music, together with theory and style and technique and basically everything I don't know.

ALSO picked up a songwriting book, which holds many secrets. So the band will be up and running in no time.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Alright. Some of you (I mean the general you; civilization at large) are jerks. You come in here and you don't listen and get angry about things that no one can change, probably things we warned you about the first time you didn't listen. If it gets to the point where you say "you've just lost my business," I can't imagine how you think that is any sort of substantial threat. If it gets to that point, 99% of the time it's because you're being a whiny idiot, and, honestly, frankly, and truly, the loss of your "business" is more like a loss of the disruption you cause every time you come in, so I can only see it as a win-win. You are simply more trouble than you're worth.

Now if you're having legitimate troubles, then we'll help you as best we can, and I'm sorry things are not going your way.

In other news, the rental policies of a certain world wide entertainment rental/retail store has changed. Five dollars. Five days. If you don't bring it back in time, there's another dollar for every day you keep it. (For the following ten days. Then it sells and if you want to keep it you only have to account for the retail price. Bring it back in the next 30 days for a refund of the sale price but minus the accrued $10. Twenty days past the due date the refund is store credit only)

Plz to be bringing movies back on time. My counter argument to your "but what about no late fees?!" is not the company-sanctioned "they're not late fees; it is an additional daily rate" but this instead: THAT MOVIE IS NOT YOURS AND OTHER PEOPLE WANT TO RENT IT. THERE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN DUE DATES BUT SINCE YOU'RE WHINY WE'VE LET YOU KEEP THEM FOR A VERY LONG TIME. NOW YOU ONLY HAVE A LITTLE TIME. BE RESPONSIBLE. IT'S YOUR MONEY.

On my side of the counter, it's usually lose-lose. People complain about not having enough time--when something's checked out for a long time, people who want it actually have said "don't you call them?!" I MEAN SERIOUSLY. It's not OUR fault that people don't bring things back. It's YOUR responsibility. The new rental terms are just there to remind you of that fact.

If we called everybody who had something out late....... The list of things that are out 4-8 days late is six pages long. (Though in fact an automated call does go out before it sells. People still don't get it.)

My least favorite customer actually pretended to slap me when I pointed out that all of that title was rented out. Like it was MY fault that either eight people got there earlier or that the company only felt like sending eight copies.

And sheesh, that's why we're informing you of the change--if it's not something you want to deal with, it's not like we're forcing you to rent here. Threatening me with taking your business elsewhere isn't going to get corporate to change its mind. Seriously. You people.

I can't wait until Sunday, when the things start coming back with the dollar on them. So many people are going to say "but nobody told me!" Trust me, somebody told you. You just weren't listening. I promise that you just weren't listening.

Okay that's my rant. It's been a long week. I'm going to go to sleep.

-Steph