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
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