Friday, December 30, 2011

Script #2 - finished.

Script #2 first draft has been finished. I will update it and clean it up probably tomorrow, but it's done. It's also a mess. It's 50 pages long. I'm not doing myself any positive favors by describing it as a mess. I wrote basically the last 1/3rd of it in one sitting, so the end might be a tiny bit sloppy and I hope I haven't rushed anything. That's why I wrote an outline, though, and also told myself to cut the crap as I was writing the last few scenes. The first bunch of scenes have a lot of dialogue. I think I was just typing just to type. I want you to get to know the characters. If there's one thing I should be proud of for SJMonsterHunter, I wrote some pretty damn good characters. Well, hopefully that's the case with "The Voice." Hopefully you get to know these nonexistent people. Some of them will cease to exist after a few scenes or even one scene, but I'd like whoever is seeing the show to really enjoy each person who walks on stage.

Hopefully it's funny.

Anyway, sleep. Rewrites later. Bye.

Friday, December 16, 2011

Beach Boys - All Summer Long / Little Deuce Coupe

Someone named "B. Haley" sold his or her records to a new record store near my place of work. Two of these records were early Beach Boys albums, "All Summer Long" and "Little Deuce Coupe."

I'm not an expert on these things, but I think it's hard to figure out which albums had which songs for some of these bands because the music industry at nearly every level revolved around the single instead of the album. Maybe albums were released to just "put stuff out" and get it on the shelves. There was no cohesive narrative or theme on these albums, especially in the mainstream unless you were talkin' soundtracks. I know "I Get Around" was released earlier, before it appeared here on "All Summer Long," but maybe I'm wrong.

I love the Beach Boys but had NONE of their albums. I had a best of that was released in the late 70's, after the band had burned out their fan base by releasing weirder and weirder albums while just performing the hits live. (They looked like a bunch of hippies on the cover.) Critics rave about "Pet Sounds" and whatever "Smile" is supposed to be. Artist Pete Bagge wrote a great essay "In Defense Of Mike Love," ragging on these self-indulgent albums produced by a drugged and burned out Brian Wilson while the rest of the band is begging him to not "f*** with the formula." Good for Brian for experimenting and expressing himself, good for Mike Love for trying to keep the band going.

Anyway, one of the tracks on "All Summer Long" is "Our Favorite Recording Sessions," which is the band messing up in the studio and having a laugh before someone behind the board tells them to shut up. That man has to be the late Murry Wilson, Brian's dad and Mike's uncle. I think the Beach Boys are fascinating on a level beyond Brian's brilliant vocal arrangement over simple (but well written) rock music: like a lot of bands in the 60's that you can claim to be manufactured, the Beach Boys were managed by good ol' Murry, and he did so with an iron fist and occasionally a 2x4 that deafened Brian in his right ear. Out of context, it's a group of kids having a laugh. We know now that Murry was just a split second from terrorizing and physically abusing anyone in this band, caught on tape. That's kind of bizarre.

Yes, I'm impressed by filler tracks on records from over 40 years ago.

Anyway, the Beach Boys. What a great band.

Transformers: War For Cybertron.

I could blame a lot of things that keep me from the drawing board lately. I would say that in the last year, I've been pre-occupied with the Scott Janus Monster Hunter theater commitment. But I think the decline in my drawing (amount of, not skill or quality. That was already rock bottom, thank you) can be traced to when the wife bought me a Wii.

Or maybe moving in and getting married.

But I think the Wii, along with Instant Netflix, has kept me out of the mancave and in our living room. I do draw while something (familiar) is on in the background. But it's hard to draw during MarioKart.

It's even harder to draw or write with War For Cybertron hanging out in the living room.

I play nearly every game on "normal" or "easy" settings because, if you didn't know, I'm generally terrible at video games. Seasoned gaming veterans will know from the background music and death sting where I was in the level, "you died ALREADY?" Yeah, it was the start screen, why do you ask? So I cut myself a break with these. I don't have a lot of Wii games, and stick to MarioKart. (It has also taken me a while to get through the Metroid Prime games for Gamecube, which the Wii can play.)

So for xmas this year my true love gave to me a PS3 and it is glorious. BluRay, access to Hulu+, the MLB.tv thing...it's for War For Cybertron, of which I purchased over a year ago even though I didn't have a system because I wanted to play it on my friend's. And did. (And it was awesome.)

Now I have a chance to play it at home and thus more frequently, and thus I do. I'm excited to. I'm a Transformers junkie and I want to play a game all TF fans are still excited about, over a year after its release. (The Wii released "Cybertron Adventures," and after witnessing the trailer I figured I would just wait it out until the PS3 decreased in price and play the real thing.) It's this first person shooter platform hybring. Maybe 3rd person shooter? Don't correct me on this, I don't care. The thing is, I don't really care that much for video games. I DO like playing them, but most games just seem to be an exercise in button mashing, especially in fighting games. I've beaten my opponents in those but I never had ANY idea what I've been doing. I fell in love with MarioKart because it actually seemed like driving.

And, as I said earlier, I'm just no good at them. Hence the "easy" mode. Maybe I'll give the harder modes a shot. But I didn't want to get frustrated as I have with Metroid: Prime at various stages even though it's an awesome (yet headache inducing) game. There are 10 levels, basically split in half for Autobots and Decepticons. Now that I could play at home, I ended up beating the game in about a week.

Maybe it was too easy, or maybe the regular missions were just for show. The real reason as seems to be with most shooter games is to go online and beat the crap out of your friends or strangers (mostly strangers). This has been where I've spent most of my time. I beat the game with ease but in no way have I felt cheated or that did I say "is that IT?"

Most media tie-in games are for crap. They are hastily put together and frequently incomprehensible, or at least they had been (see: Angry Video Game Nerd on youtube, you won't be disappointed). I had the "Transformers" movie tie in for the PS2 and even though it had Transformers, the plot seemed bizarrely generic. Like you were just going from anonymous building to street to highway to race Decepticons to certain areas before stopping and hand to hand fighting. This was repetitive, and I didn't get far because it was also annoying and frustrating (especially when my copy would freeze up the borrowed PS2).

But now movies and cartoons exist to sell the (much more expensive) game. Heck, the music industry seemed to market its acts just to be part of Guitar Hero or similar games! The Ghostbusters game was definitely a love letter from Ray Stantz to the franchise fans. The Lego franchise tie ins are a barrel of fun as well.

I think as a dedicated TF fan, I can forgive the game to having little meat beyond 10 short missions and once I "gain experience" for my characters in the online frays, which last no more than 10 minutes, and will seem pointless once the characters gain all the experience points (level 25 for each of the four classes of robots you choose from). I haven't gotten tired of it yet but I also haven't attained those levels yet. Maybe the game could have organized in such a format; gaining experience in the levels, and powering up as an added bonus and gaining those extra abilities for the rest of the game? Ah, who cares. I don't want to review the plot (does it matter?), the gameplay (not frustrating!), the voice acting (stellar), the graphics (amazing), or anything else like that. I'm just letting you know what's taking up my time and encourage you to waste your time with it as well.

The game has inspired a possible paint or mod job for a TF. Slipstream is an unlockable character after you finish the Decepticon half of the game. I'm amused by the presence of girl robots (not those lifelike sex toy things...isn't anyone afraid of shorting them out and getting electrocuted?) so therefore, even though Season 3 of G1 Transformers was bizarre and kind of crappy, I'm a fan of the Arcee. I've painted a Generations Tracks figure into "Road Rage," which is itself just a name retroactively applied to the G1 Tracks figure that, in Europe, was red instead of blue. So, Slipstream. When you play that character in the online fight games, if she stands still for a moment, HER WINGS FLAP like a butterfly. Hi-larious. And adorable. My wife and I have named her "Hugbot" on the list of robots I made up for the online battles. Take a look at the artist design on that link, that's what I'll be going trying to replicate.

Anyway, a lot of fun. I have a script I'm to finish by New Year's. It's called THE VOICE and I hope to make it awesome but I am unsure of my chances to get it produced after SJ: Monster Hunter. Then some drawing, and some Goons shows.

OH! Hired Goons will be doing a short set for fill-in drummer Poochie's bday bash in Mt. Prospect on January 21st. Details soon.

More stuff later,
-paul

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Silly things of little to no importance.

Click on the image for a clearer version:



The latest "Everyone Loves Gears" episode, starring Chris Donaldson as some of the voices.



I'm a nerd.

-paul

Monday, December 5, 2011

Ron Santo, Hall Of Famer.

And too little, too late, says I. Click on the title for a link to my latest contribution to Bugs & Cranks.

-paul