Monthly Archives: April 2009

It’s nice to see political mockery is alive and well in Texas.

It’s no secret that I dislike my governor. Rick Perry has been a horrible governor for Texas and just keeps getting worse. There were a couple of corruption stories about him, but they have faded into obscurity.

Anyway, I’m sure you’ve all seen him recently. He’s the douche bag who stood up at a San Antonio rally of proud Tea-Baggers and said Texas can and should secede from the Union. That asshat. Despite Texas Mythology converning our weird state laws and what our constitution does or doesn’t allow, the reality is that there is no provision allowing Texas to secede. The closest provision we’ve got is that Texas has the option of dividing into 5 seperate states. Which is an amusing thought, but will never happen.

Why is he doing this? Because he faces an impossible primary against U.S. Senator Hutchison, a moderate – for Texas – Republican who’s respected by the majority of the state. So Gov. Goodhair is running to the right. The FAAAAAR right. Into the waiting arms of the Republic of Texas crazies. Because in the Republican Primary, it’s usally the far right that participates – they aren’t crazy about Hutchison.

The image at the top of this post is a t-shirt that the Texas House Democratic Campaign Committee has created to mock our endangered governor. Good job guys. Remind me to donate some cash.

1UP already stole my headline

Rock out with your block out was pretty obvious, to be fair.  I can’t make up my mind how I feel about this.  On the one hand, the concept I find to be pretty stupid, but then I don’t have kids.  But I’d kill to have two or three of the songs on that brief preview list available in the full game (Kung Fu Fighting and Song 2 if you’re wondering).

Canon fodder

“Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They’re just an interpretation, they’re not a record…”

–       Leonard Shelby, Memento

Given Hollywood’s propensity for mining old ideas for new revenue streams, we’ve all heard these complaints at one time or another:

They’ve ruined my favorite childhood memories.

What right do they have to change that?  It was fine in the original!

They raped my childhood.

The last one in particular jumped out most recently in a discussion reproduced here in The Basement, spurred by the issue of a new toy from the G.I. Joe movie being released this summer.  That would ostensibly be the same G.I. Joe that was a cartoon series from the mid-1980s.  Which was itself little more than episode length commercials for the G.I. Joe toy line being issued by Hasbro in 1985.  Said toy line being itself a retooling of its own toy line from the late 1960s that was eventually renamed Adventure Team when Hasbro opted to downplay the war theme of the toy in the wake of the Vietnam War (this according to Wikipedia, so take with a grain of salt).

As you can see from the long history of the franchise, a creation can sometimes undergo multiple revolutions over time, if the core idea is marketable but the current approach doesn’t appeal to the present audience/market.  And this is just from a franchise that was commercially successful.  One that didn’t have marketability may wind up being reborn as something completely different, bearing only the same name from one conception to another.

The question criticism such as Sam’s raises is at what point is the fan’s personal investment great enough that fan service can or should potentially trump creative license with an established character or franchise? Continue reading →

Book vs. Movie: Let The Right One In.

Books that get adapted for the silver screen usually get a bum deal.

Books that are written based on a movie are even worse off.

Let’s look at how Let The Right One In faired.

I read John Ajvide Lindqvist’s novel before I watched Tomas Alfredson’s movie. I do this with most the books that get adpated into movies because I usually prefer the book to the movie. The only movie I’ve enjoyed more than the book was Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. The book was fantastic, but the movie was just enthralling on a level that the book couldn’t match.

Basic plot of Let The Right One In: a 12-year-old boy who gets picked on befriends an apparently 12-year-old vampire girl. Hijinks ensue. But in the slow, dramatic sort of way. No one throws a pie.

The Book: A slow paced horror. The translation was really odd in places, but I was able to look beyond that. The writing wasn’t very captivating but the story was interesting. The plot took place over about a month and brought in many groups of people who were bound together by random events. It was well done and all of it served to progress the plot.

The Movie: A slow paced confusing horror. The movie sort of assumed you had already read the book. They dropped many of the supporting characters or truncated their involvement in the main plot. The timeline of the movie was sped up to about a week and a half. There weren’t a lot of clues to be used to help you identify characters. The ending was the same as the book, which I really liked, but they cut out one of the largest points of conflict between the two children (ignoring the whole vampire thing) and only aluded to it with a bizzare vag-shot that made no sense without the context provided by the book.

So, Let The Right One In: better book than movie. Both were very good but very odd. Worth watching and reading, but I suggest picking one or the other and sticking with it.

(I’m told there’s a lot more dark humor in the subtitles for the theatrical release than made it into the DVD subtitles, but what are you going to do?)

Blame the parents-pt. 1

Women like this make my blood boil.

It’s not even so much that the only good thing she said video games can do is improve hand/eye coordination.

It’s not even that she said that instead of playing video games, people should try to be better spouses/parents.

It isn’t even that she “GUARAN-DANG-TEEs” in all caps that no geek will ever get married if s/he doesn’t stop button mashing.

It’s the fact that she resorted to name calling  as old, tired and overused as her C U Next Tuesday when she called gamers fiscally irresponsible junior high aged kids with no social skills. Oh and here’s another brilliant quote:

” …your THUMB muscle isn’t really the first thing the woman is going to look at say, “Oooh….What a MAN!”

Oh and apparently, all women want a man that is “kind, gentle, sincere, and puts them first as a priority” so apparently, males that game are complete assholes and physically weak individuals that won’t be able to  protect us poor damsels in distress when we call out for help.

Views?

The Basement’s Take on the New Cobra Commander

Cobra Commander 4E

Cobra Commander 4E

What follows is a Bill Simmons-esque discussion many of us recently had about the new Cobra Commander toy relased by Hasbro. Well, except all the frat talk is replaced with Net jargon, but this is the Basement after all.

Sam: They’ve raped my childhood.

Jake: qfft

Me: So, Cobra Commander wasn’t a metrosexual version of Jason X in your childhood?

Sam: I will shoot you with ten guns.

Derek:  You know it’s Joseph Gordon-Levitt, right? From Brick, and 3rd Rock from the Sun?

Me: My bad. So, Cobra Commander wasn’t a short metrosexual version of Jason X in your childhood?

Sam: I want to murder the world.

Kurt: Holy shit.  I feel violated.  And to think I was actually sort of looking forward to the movie…

—

Yep, and we’re all married or in long-term relationships. There’s hope for all of you. All of you.

Domo arigato, Harmonix

Harmonix announces that next week’s downloadable content for Rock Band will include a 7-song pack of REO Speedwagon and Styx.

Jesus, if they’d only mix in some Van Halen, I could recreate the Texxas Jam in my living room.  I’m regressing back to my youth in the best possible way.

Update: The Texxas Living Room Jam playlist from the songs available for the game:

“More Than A Feeling” – Boston (Texxas Jam, 1979)
“(Don’t Fear) the Reaper” – Blue Öyster Cult  (Jam, 1979)
“The Trees” – Rush (Jam, 1979)
“Hello There” – Cheap Trick (Jam, 1980)
“Roll with the Changes” – REO Speedwagon (Jam, 1981)
“Any Way You Want It” – Journey (Jam, 1982)
“Bad Reputation” – Joan Jett (Jam, 1982)
“Renegade” – Styx (Jam, 1983)
“War Pigs” – Black Sabbath (technically not a Jam band, but Ozzy performed in 1984)
“Highway Star” – Deep Purple (Jam, 1985) 
“Living on a Prayer” – Bon Jovi (Jam, 1985)

Why yes, I did in fact only pick songs for the bands that would have been released concurrent with or prior to their Jam appearance.  Well, almost…Bon Jovi’s appearance predates Slippery When Wet by a year.

What?

Texas Geeks Know Sam Houston > Rick Perry

Anyone who knows me understands that I’m one of those annoying Texans who really digs being a Texan.

I blame my parents. You see, I actually grew up in rural Texas. So we had horses, cows, cattle guards, and dirt roads. Not that I lived on some big glorious ranch. More like ten acres of hard-packed red clay with patches of bull nettles and ragweed. Ragweed so prominent that I sweetened milk out of instinct for years afterwards because of what it did to our cows. Hell, my first girlfriend’s dad knew me because he recognized my last name from all the times he’d been called out to our house to turn off the electricity for delinquency.  A cavernous maw of washed out dirt and gravel quite capable of devouring the undercarriage of a county utility vehicle served as our driveway, so I’m sure he remembered the trips distinctly.

Now, I admit that for all that Texas cred, I lean to the left. I’m a mild liberal by most standards–or a dirty pinko socialist by my uncle’s standards (he always meant it with love). So the fact that I dislike Gov. Rick Perry might not be a big surprise. That said, his secessionist rant this week should offend anyone who embraces the name Texan.

I’d like to point back to a true leader of Texas who opposed secession, Sam Houston. Yep, the Raven opposed secession in 1861. I understand that Perry is full of himself and doesn’t have the cajones to do anything like secede. He just wants some face time before Kay Bailey Hutchison kicks him out of office next year. However it’s still worth acknowledging that Houston opposed secession when it was an inevitable tide here in Texas. It’s an important distinction. Perry’s sedition of ego versus Houston’s willingness to put aside personal power out of dedicated belief could not offer a more stark contrast in what it means to be Texan.

Me, I have enough pride in the term to want to talk about the the Raven over footnote Texan Goodhair. So, not just to annoy Sam, I started up a little Facebook page to further illustarte my contrast. It seemed the geeky thing to do. 

For some extra enjoyment, here’s Perry making a fool of himself and then being granted an unwanted education on Texas law by Rachel Maddow: