How Many Times Can You Stand Hearing a Girl Shyly Whisper the Name "Dir en Grey"? FIND OUT NOW!

review: "metro 2033" (pc) (2010)

Metro 2033
4A Games/THQ
2010

Good:

• First Person Shooter
• Post-Apocalyptic
• Bullets are rare/expensive
• Reasonable/logical world, mostly
• Some first-person-sneaker moments

Bad:

• Stupid dog-monsters
• Spending most of the game having to follow someone else around...
• ...and they talk constantly
• ...and you need them to open a door
• ...and you can't do something else (read, pee) while they talk, you have to stay to hold down the "W" key.
• Dying without indication that something is deadly (the you-have-to-die-once-to-know-to-avoid-doing-that syndrome beloved by lazy game developers everywhere)
• Enemies seem to have no shortage of bullets, until you try to scavenge off them and there's only four left
  
• Enemies can take six shots to the head from close range, and still kill you
  
• Gameplay demands duck-and-cover functionality but there isn't any
• Long stretches that deny you the ability to move or shoot (i'm looking at you, red train!) that seem like they're supposed to increase tension, but really only increase disconnectiveness/boredom

This is what every level looks like.


Ooooh eerie light glob, lets stand still for several minutes and pretend we GIVE A FUCK.


Nice view, but you only get to see it through a cracked and fogged-up gasmask.


"This one's an oldie, it's called Qoo Quack Qluck or something."

I bought it for a couple reasons: it was free if one pre-ordered Homefront ("Battlefield 2 1/2 on US soil") and it had made some top-ten lists. Unfortunately, what some reviewers consider "immersive" I consider "boring."

It does set a grim mood, tho, a bit like Penumbra Something (the one on the haunted magic arctic ship) but more "shooterier."

It's not ~awful~, but it's not really fun to play, either. Fighting is kludgy, and the "exploration" is hand-holdingly dull. I am unlikely to finish it, [edit: i just uninstalled it] so...

rating: :\

~

Obi Wan Disables His Tractor

thx E!

I would have chosen different music (this is not fight music, it's slow-moving-ships-docking music) but nonetheless I burst-lol'd twice.

~

My Dragon "Nijigen Complex" PV Is Worse Than 9/11

This video makes me want to kill. It devalues all human life.

If I ever step listening to new j-rock, it'll be because the exposure to this kind of radiation outweighs the joy of discovering talented new bands!

It's been days, I feel like I should post ~something~

From "The World According to Twitter":

Compose the subject line of an email message you really, really don't want to open:

• To my former sexual partners, as required by law (@markowitz)
• RE: What seems to have been your car (@pumpkinshirt)
• From: Your Publisher. Subject: Ha, good one! Could you send the real chapter now, please? (@ Lookshelves)

Make up a prequel to a famous movie:

• Mr. Smith MapQuests Washington (michaelbuckman)
• Snakes in the Terminal (@justinchambers)
• We’re Running Low on Mohicans (@rllewis)
• There Goes Private Ryan...I Hope He’ll Be OK (@slightly99)

The First Grade Curriculum Sure is Rigorouser Than When I Was a Kid

"If I was a president I would be fair to other peapole like eygpt."

Kate made this just now, for fun! And by "president" she's referring to Egypt's (former) president (O.P. = "old president"), not Obama!

(N.P. is, of course, herself.)

A few of the kids in her class are probably Egyptian, so they must have been discussing the revolution in school this week.

Whereas in my first grade class in the early '80s, I distinctly recall plodding through "A Duck is a Duck." And that was the advanced track! I don't think I was aware that other countries existed then...

Yoshiki Shows His A.G.E.

thx cockroach!

JaME U.S.A.:

Yoshiki: "Music without fashion is nothing."

WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY YOU C%NT!?!?! I can't believe people didn't BOO HIM.

...over 12,000 views to his website YOSHIKINET.COM...

(Half of those were Yoshiki himself) (This site got 4x that last month, also for comparison, and yes half of those WERE mine!)

YOSHIKI now has several film projects in the works, including an animated feature.

Those poor investors...

YOSHIKI’s next exciting move: ASIA GIRLS EXPLOSION. YOSHIKI is teaming up with Jay FR for a "fashion musical" the likes of which have never been seen before.

The next sentence then describes it as "Cirque du Soleil with modern pop."

Then there's a Q&A that I just could not bear to finish, so full of butt-licking non-truth marketingspeak were the few lines I managed to not vomit from.

YoJP + JayFR

As a finale, JaME gives the wrong website (it's actually http://gw.tv/age/).

And if you click on "Special Guests" you will see Marilyn Manson's name.

Marilyn Donut

So how's that X Japan album coming along, Yoshers?

~

A Really Nice Small Film That May Have ZERO To Do with the Actual Game

Wired:

Techland didn’t make the Dead Island trailer — according to Develop, Scottish studio Axis Animation was in charge of production. Presumably the two teams worked together on the teaser...

"This trailer is meant to be illustrative of a scenario that might befall a typical vacationing family on the island," a representative for publisher Deep Silver told Wired.com.

Easily the most memorable game trailer I've ever seen... but after reading this I'm kinda feeling like I got conned! Good thing there was no pre-order up!

Who Do You Follow on The Twitter?

Post two feeds you follow...:

• One Japan or music related
• One anything else

...And then one you HATE.

~x~

Tokyo trend: Ear-cleaning parlors

CNNGo.com:

"They go to relax," says Yoshimi Sasaki, manager of the Akihabara branch of Yamamoto Mimikaki-ten, one of the biggest ear-care chains.

Yamamoto Mimikaki-ten opened in 2006 and now boasts nine locations around Tokyo.

"It's so relaxing that three out of four clients, who are mostly men, fall asleep during the session," says Sasaki. "Because of all the stress people have and lack of real-world communication due to the Internet, they want to make a connection with someone and experience healing."

The basic service at Yamamoto Mimikaki-ten lasts 30 minutes and costs ¥2,700 (about US$32). The customer is first introduced to a kimono-clad young woman who serves him tea and makes small talk.

This was part of the salon haircut process (along with a shampoo and ten-minute head massage, which was always welcome!)... and it was a very motherly sort of vibe.

But ¥2700 for an ear-cleaning-only session?! A nice body massage would only be a few bucks more! Fools! No wonder you're in a recession still!

~

taken at the park

Nice weather in New York this week, all the snow is melting away now!

review: luna sea | "kono sekai..." + "looper" + "with" (1998)

Luna Sea

The 3" CD Single B-Sides: Part Four
1998

"Kono Sekai no Omote Hate de" (Storm, 1998.04.15)
I used to think this song never went anywhere... but now I ~know~ it doesn't. Bleah! :(

"Looper" (Shine, 1998.06.03)
Ah, the song that makes you think your headphone cord is broken. Not a big fan of J's attempt at funkiness nor his Sug-life's spoken word thing. And the riffs and licks feel like leftover bits cobbled together like Frankenstein's monster. :(

"With" (I For You, 07.01.98)
Finally, a song with a little heart or authenticity or something. Some sci-fi movies have dirty, used, lived-in interiors; others are clean, sterile, and fake. This song is like the former, not the latter. But since it doesn't blow me away, it only gets a :/

This concludes the first edition of OMG Songs By a Band I Love That I Somehow Never Heard Before! and frankly, I was ~underwhelmed~!

~

(advertisement) Japan Fashion Now @ FIT thru April 2nd

Japan Fashion Now @ FIT thru April 2nd

See You Home Wolf

...And could the Japanese samurai really have used the verb tsuji-giri, meaning ‘to try out a new sword on a passerby’...

...the Japanese bakku-shan, ‘a woman who only appears pretty when seen from behind’...

...such delights as okuri-okami, the Japanese word for ‘a man who feigns thoughtfulness by offering to see a girl home only to molest her once he gets in the door’ (literally, ‘a see-you-home wolf’)...

(from I Never Knew There Was a Word for That by Sandra Howgate, a mostly boring book that takes what would best be arranged in list form and attempts to artificially quadruple/bookify its length by paragraphizing the info.)

Heavy Metal Guitarist Has Flesh-Eating Disease

OpViews:

Slayer rocker Jeff Hanneman has been forced to pull out of their upcoming tour after being hospitalized with necrotizing fasciitis, a bacterial virus that attacks skin, fat, and body tissue.

Hanneman became sick after being bitten by a spider. He is scheduled for surgery to remove an area on his right arm to treat the disease.

Slayer will have to head out on tour using a guest guitarist in Hanneman’s place while he recuperates.

Mustaine! Mustaine! (Or was that Kerry King who "joined" Megadeth for like a week in 1983?)

review: "quarantine" (2008)

Quarantine
2008

Finally got around to seeing Quarantine (nope, ain't caught the French original yet)...

Didn't realize (tho it was obvious from descriptions and trailers) that it'b be SO DAMN BLAIR WITCHY in that shaky handheld camera way, which I can never quite enjoy because it eliminates the one pure attribute film alone possesses: editing.

On the other hand, after the movie was over I realized that I was physically shaken, just walking around the the apartment, and any impact like that is worthy of respect.

I also dug the Rabies angle, and having several recognizable faces in the cast (the "poor man's Greg Kinnear" from Ally McBeal, "Eastern European costume shop guy" from Eyes Wide Shut) kept characters from getting confusing.

Not a must see, but watchable enough. (Now on to the new MacBeth!!!)

rating: :/

see also: nytimes.com/15doomsday

Remember When You Could Have Re-spect for the Grammies?

Me neither.

review: luna sea | "twice" + "ray" (1996)

Luna Sea

The 3" CD Single B-Sides: Part Three
1995-1996

"Twice" (End of Sorrow, 1996.03.25)
A crisp-yet-pillowy hybrid ballad. Vaguely feels like a trial run at "I For You", but Style-style. :)

"Ray" (In Silence, 1996.07.15)
Nice build, and the bouncebacky muted guitar feels inspires 1990s-era Tokyo in a really weird way, like a ticking clock but without any passage of time. Matches "Twice" nicely, like a pair of bookends, but this one's a tad darker.

But: the new direction "Ray" takes @ 4:10 feels like it was tacked on five years later and in a hurry, and when the song returns to normal around 4:40 it's a welcome relief. Might actually edit that bit out in Adobe Audition someday... :\

next time: "looper," "with," & "kono sekai..."

Jean-Luc MacBeth Squeals!

Watch the full episode. See more Great Performances.

"You have displaced the mirth."

Another attractive Japanese chick playing metal guitar :)

via SR

The Ebert is Back

Ebert's back (in a roundabout way) with "Ebert Presents" on PBS and ebertpresents.com.

I watched most of the reviews from the last three episodes online this week. They were competent enough* to make we wanna see a full episode, which I did a couple hours ago.

Thereupon ruining the show for me for all time.

It was a "Five Films That Influenced Me" show (not enough new releases in February?) and the guy host destroyed any credibility he could possibly have with a mass audience by droning on about the brilliance of:

• two silent films from the 1920s
• a french film from the '60s that's all long shots
• a nine-hour(!) documentary on the Holocaust from the '80s that uses only footage from the '80s
  
• an experimental French film so awful no one's even trying to sell it on any medium anywhere (rapid cuts between two dull still photos! interminable crossfades between two or more uninteresting subjects! amateurish text slapped all over the screen, blinking!!!)

And it's like, I'm going to accept your advice on what I should see?!?!

Are you MAD, Mansley?

Meanwhile, the chick reviewer is offering up "No Country for Old Men", "Magnolia", "The Wizard of Oz", "The Breakfast Club", and a Fellini. So she's at least somewhat honest and not a pompous fraud trying to overcompensate for other, hidden inadequacies, right?

Two thumbs DOWN. Down in your EYEHOLES!

* Bill Curtis narrating Ebert's typed reviews is pretty cool. The site nav stinks to high heaven tho (constant clicking back, or to new windows, instead of the site doing the logical thing and queuing up all the segments of the week in one window)...

review: luna sea | "rain" & "fallout" & "dejavu (live)" (1994-1995)

Luna Sea

The 3" CD Single B-Sides: Part Two
1994-1995

Rain (Rosier, 1994.07.21)
Sugi's guitar does this red-alert-siren-at-quarter-speed thing, and the robotic verse gives way to a surprisingly pleasant and human-y chorus. The end kicks into a cool little bass & drums-based jam. But, eh. :/

Fallout (True Blue, 1994.09.21)
Vaguely westerny, with the acoustic guitar chord progression it's got. The steady 8ths-ish drums don't change much between sections, which gets a little tiring, and the solo never feels like it knows what it wants. :/

Dejavu (live version) (Mother, 1995.02.22)
Though I like the curly drum-and-guitar shtick in the verse well enough, I get sick of this song really fast, and the muddy, distant, bootleggy quality of this recording (which I assume is pulled from a concurrent concert vhs/dvd) doesn't help. :(

In other news: I can't hear a difference between the album version of "Mother" (5:19) and the single version (5:30).

next time: "Twice" & "Ray"!

review: luna sea | "claustrophobia" & "slave" (1993)

Luna Sea

The 3" CD Single B-Sides: Part One
1993

"Claustrophobia" (Believe, 1993.02.24)
Sugizo's seagull-sounding guitar is drenched in reverb and delay, and the chorus doesn't emerge from the water til after the guitar solo! It's all very nebulous and moooooooooody. But the seagully main lick repeats itself waaay too many times without significant variation, attempting to drive the listener mad, perhaps. :(

"Slave" (In My Dream (with Shiver), 1993.07.21)
Faster and harder than "Claustro", this song has that famous "Ow! Ow-Ow!" (@0:55) that I hear in my head all the time. The frantic, cluttered barrage in the verse and bridge give way smoothly to an understated chorus that, unfortunately, isn't quite as memorable as the distorted flanginess of the main riff, verse and bridge. But still a great song. :)

And: I've heard these songs before! Possibly from the "Rewind" dvd (over a tour montage perhaps).

next time: "Rain" & "Fallout"!

Kate has access to better music than you did as a kid :P

I can't wait to hear these b-sides that i just discovered AREN'T on the Another Side b-side compilation! Thanks Cliff & Shinobi!

edit: untouched 300dpi scans of all eleven 3" cd singles (front & back) here (22mb): http://rapidshare.com/files/446772637/Luna_Sea_3-inch_1.zip

Gung Hey Fat Choy!

Took the kids to Brooklyn Chinatown (which, reliable sources tell me, is just called "8th Avenue" among the Chinese -- Manhattan's Chinatown is "Chinatown" [and Flushing, Queen's Chinatown is called "Flushing"])... there was supposed to be a paradefor Chinese New Year (Year of the Rabbit, be chill!) but all we saw was a street fair that consisted entirely of snap-bangs, silly string and paper fireworks.




Then we ate at a chinese place and shopped at a chinese grocery and came home. Maddeningly unexciting!

"Flushing Queens" is certainly a decent band name, tho...

Adventures in Pooping

Taking a dump at work, I read more of "The Gun" on my Touch.

Finished, but with no place to set down the Touch while I wiped, I plopped it into the hammock of my underwear.

I wiped.

Someone knocked on the door.

I pulled up my pants and felt the cold stare of the Touch as it glomped my taint.

O_o

egypt, re-learning the lessons of ancient warfare

War Nerd:

You can’t help thinking of Ancient Rome when you watch this riot video from Cairo. What you see is humans re-learning the lessons of ancient warfare. And they do it in a matter of minutes! I swear, this video had me more upbeat about the species than I’ve been for a long time. It’s not that we’ve lost our edge, we’re just rusty.

We still know how to do it. First rule: mass wins. You get your side together and stay together. Second: deploy skirmishers. Those are the hotheads throwing rocks about 30 feet ahead of the main mob. They’re to provoke the enemy, absorb the enemy’s first counterstrike. It’s a suicide job, so it’s a favorite in the male age 12-20 demographic...

...but even camels and horses are intimidating at first, if you’re on foot at street level. So when the Mubarak Loyalist Petting-Zoo Squadron comes clopping down the cobblestones, the mob/infantry falls back and this tiny cavalry force charges down the pavement.

But these guys are untrained in cavalry charges. They do what every incompetent cavalry force in history does: they lose cohesion and get overwhelmed by infantry. The camels and horses charge at different speeds, so they get separated. And they have no commander, no clear objective. They’re armed only with whips, a very short-range non-lethal weapon. And these horses are not battle-conditioned, so when they see a wall of humans ahead of them, screaming and throwing shit at them, they stop.

With the horses stopped dead, the cavalry is doomed.

I'm rooting for the protesters on the streets, of course, but fully expect them, once a democratic system is put into place, to soundly cock it up by voting for Muslim Brotherhood types who will repeal everything democratic over the course of their first year in power.

review: kagrra | "hyakki kenran" (2011)

kagrra
hyakki kenran
2011

Kagrra's last album... not a bang but a whimper.

The single, "Chigiri" is standard Kagrra singleness, bright and happy and bland as a particularly stupid puppy:



The track after it, "Kakurenbo", is dirtier, with palm muted chugging in the verse, then capped with the usual Kagrra chorus that sounds like every other giddy Kagrra chorus.

"Kikan" is even riskier, occupying a NIN/MM-type space in the verses, and the bridge shows off a spinning-parachutist feel, and then the usual ballady Kagrra chorus.

"Manatsu no Yo no Yume" is the last of the rockers on the disc -- cool drum break at 1:41, Izumi -- and feels fresher than most of the other tracks, and almost reignites feelings of their earlier awesomeness, but somehow just doesn't claw its way far enough to the edge.

There's a few ballads, "Shiki" being the one chosen to close the disc and their discography. It's not bad, it just isn't *wow*.

Shin (g), Akiya (g), Nao (b), Izumi (d), Isshi (v).

It's depressing that there's little to pinpoint as "yeah, take that out and you guys'll be awesome again" -- they're not doing anything wrong, exactly, except for the recycling of chorii. It must be frustrating for them too. They were a unique band with no competitors.

Maybe a change in production style or recording technique might have helped, something that took them out of their comfort zone. I always hoped they'd switch into an "authentic" jeans-and-black-T-shirts-and-Marshalls metal groove, unreasonably. Alas.

There ain't no denying -- it's time to throw in the towel.

Thanks for the memories, Kagrra!

rating: :(

More from CJ Chivers' "The Gun"

...Sergeant Kalashnikov worked alongside Aleksandr Zaitsev, an engineer who had recently left the army. One design feature was essential. They chose to make their prototypes’ parts loose-fitting, rather than snug, thinking that this might make the weapons less likely to jam when dirty, inadequately lubricated, or clogged with carbon from heavy firing.

This was a counterintuitive choice to many Western designers, who had experience with the precision tools that allowed assembly lines to work within tight tolerances and mill parts to an exacting fit. Some Russian designers favored that approach, too. “Tokarev had adopted one principle which determined the overall shape of his weapons: all the elements were stuck to one another so that not even dust could get in,” Kalashnikov wrote. “My approach is different: all the elements are spaced out, as if they were hanging in air.”

The approach was not original. It had been used by Simonov for the SKS and by Sudayev in the AS-44—the weapon that had been the front runner until Sudayev fell sick. It appeared to reach to the stamped-metal Soviet submachine guns, which were made with a looser fit to accommodate the anticipated shrinking and stretching associated with stamping and pressing metal sheets. It was becoming a trait in general-issue Soviet small arms and would distinguish them from their Western counterparts.

To those who did not recognize the reasons behind the choice, the AK-47 could seem crude. Anyone who removed the return spring from a Kalashnikov, for example, would find that many parts, when not held by its tension, would slide and rattle. This was not crudity. This was exactly as the AK-47 was designed, and contributed to the weapon’s ability to withstand field use.

At NIPSMVO, the loaded rifles were submerged for long periods in swamp water, then expected to fire. Then came the “sand bath,” with each rifle dragged through ash, broken bricks, and fine sand -- first by the barrel, then by the stock -- until the rifles were filthy and every opening in the weapon was clogged. “After that, without any sort of cleaning… they were fired,” Kalashnikov said.

The prototype fired almost flawlessly. “Look, look,” Zaitsev said, during one course of fire. “The sand is flying in all directions, like a dog shaking off water -- look.”

The weapons were subjected to extreme cold in a special chamber. Next the weapon was dropped from heights onto a concrete floor so it would land on its barrel, then its stock. The weapon survived and functioned normally afterward.

Tests continued until January 11, 1948. The results were presented to a thirteen-member technical and scientific commission, which decided Kalashnikov’s avtomat most closely fulfilled the requirements of the 1945 order. Mikhail Kalashnikov’s submission had won...

AK-47


AKB-48

review: king's x | "live love in london" cd/dvd (2010)

king's x
live love in london (cd/dvd)
2010

King's X is aging and the performances on this disc illustrate that fact painfully. Doug's voice is the main culprit, energyless and seemingly out of breath, leading the songs on a slow, pointless journey in front of an audience that can't even muster the motivation to lift their hands above their heads when they clap.

It's a bummer, because for decades the band, and their songs, have deserved a quality, better-than-a-bootleg live dvd.

To that end there's lots of cameras, shooting lots of angles and distances, and though the editing feels self-conscious with ill-timed cuts to the wrong person or place at the wrong time far too often, you're still thinking "Wow, at least this record (in the old-fashioned library of congress sense) of their live show exists."



"Dogman" doesn't have the growl that it should, "Over My Head" is reigned in... the only highlight is "Goldilox", every word sung not by Doug but by the whole audience.

Then you watch and listen to another couple tracks and get depressed from the dispiriting dispiritedness of it all, and move on to something younger, with better lungs.

rating: :(

L'Arc~en~Ciel - More Besto Hitsu

ナタリー:

thx \o/!

Pretty pretty pretty... unnecessary.