Strange days
I recently joined the beta of Home on my PlayStation 3. It’s the Metaverse from Snow Crash, only boring. It does look really good.
So I boot it up for the first time, design my avatar (below), and am plunked into my beautiful waterfront studio apartment. I leave for the town square, populated by other Home players – you can tell the real women from the men role-playing by the modesty of their outfits – and notice that there is 2D video playing on screens intermixed with the 3D environment – house ads for Sony projects. I go into the shopping mall, browse around – would I like to spend 49¢ on a new pair of virtual jeans? no – and go up to the second floor, where there’s another large video screen playing Sony ads, this time for movies. I stand and watch. Purchase the Fred Claus Unrated Edition in HD from the PlayStation Store.
AND THEN
then a trailer for House Bunny. And there’s my sister, walking to the side of Anna Faris.
Kind of a postmodern moment. I hit the R1 button and make my avatar applaud.
Quiet day
Words cannot express how much I’m looking forward to the Mother 3 translation
maybe a screenshot will do it
Never not blogging
- Games: Snatcher Pilot DS: The Snatcher demo disc ported to Nintendo DS – quite an achievement. Snatcher’s an old cyberpunk game by Hideo Kojima of Metal Gear Solid. You’re going to need a NintendoDS flash card to play. Via Insert Credit.
Jules Guerin: The Chateaux of Touraine: Four pages with images from this incredible 1906 book of illustrations: one, two, three, four. Via the Comics Journal’s Journalista blog.
- Have you ever entered into an agreement without a contract? Song of the day: Method Man and Mary J. Blige, You’re All I Need To Get By (You Don’t Need A Ring To Be My Wife)
Journal-Inc: Grocery bag alternatives. Boy, I like the Porter one.- Late update: NEW DARK KNIGHT TRAILER!!
Rise of the robots
- Modular robot reassembles when it’s kicked apart: everywhere on the internet today. Skynet rises. Seriously though, how long until these modules are itsy-bitsy? See also the NeoCube.
New BMW M1: sexxxxxxy. The body looks like two layers, as if the black underneath is cracking through, trying to escape. And check the I Ching rims! In other car news, the 2009 Prius will be bigger inside, longer, 100hp engine, 50-55 miles per gallon. My car, with a 275hp 4.2l V8, gets 15-17mpg.- MSNBC: Smiley-Face Killer. Sounds like a direct-to-video thriller, but real.
- Movies: I saw Teeth yesterday and liked it enough to recommend. Just campy enough. Jess Weixler was brave to take the role and gave a great performance, I thought. Directed by Mitchell Lichtenstein, son of Roy.
If you’ve ever wanted to play a Wu-Tang Clan rougelike, your time has come.- Song of the day: HNIC 2 FINALLY dropped, so here’s Prodigy Raining Guns and Shanks from the mixtape. Looking forward to that new Mobb Deep record in 2011, keep your head up P!
What’s up Monday
Kitsune Noir: House Uc by Miyahara Architect Office: Great use of concrete. I wonder what’s on the roof. - Wired: Deutsche Bank Loves Shai Agassi’s Plan to Bring Us EVs (Electric Vehicles): “Bean counters at Deutsche Bank absolutely love Shai Agassi’s plan to sell electric vehicles like cell phones and think it could be a “paradigm shift” that causes “massive disruption” to the auto industry… a typical contract would cost $550 a month and provide 18,000 miles a year.” Basically, energy is 7¢ a mile versus 24¢ a mile for gas in Europe. This should work, right? People who would buy a loaded Smart would just lease this instead?
Ian Albert – Video Game Maps: Amazing maps of territories I know well. The San Andreas map effort is a real marvel. The clickable version to the left is scaled down to 11% of a version already scaled way down from a gigapixel. (via Selectbutton forums.)- Music music music music: Pilooski edit of Alan Parson’s Project I, Robot for D*I*R*T*Y Edits Vol.1.
Hack your PSP Slim
So I just bought a PSP and waded through a bunch of bad information in order to successfully get it hacked – I decided to write up a little how-to for the nerds in the audience here. Easier than working with an AppleTV but not as satisfying T_T
Media List
Here’s what’s on my queue – what am I missing? I’ve heard a lot of the talked-about music and seen a lot of movies that’ve come out this year but haven’t read a lot of books.
Books
Fiction
Audeguy – The Theory of Clouds
Bolano – The Savage Detectives
Ellis – Crooked Little Vein
Jin – A Free Life
Nersesian – The Fuck Up
Powers – The Echo Maker
Non-Fiction
Buchanan – The Social Atom
De Landa – A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History
Gilbert – Stumbling on Happiness
Kapuscinski – Travels with Herodotus
Kugel – How To Read The Bible
George, your book about everybody being special
Comics
King – Walt And Skeezix 1
King – Walt And Skeezix 2
Schulz – Schulz’s Youth
O’Malley – Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together
Tezuka – MW
Art and Architecture
Klanten – Spacecraft
Paglen – I Could Tell You, But Then You Would Have To Be Destroyed By Me
Reiser – An Atlas of Novel Tectonics
Cooking
Ruhlman – The Elements of Cooking
Music
A Bigger Splash – I Don’t Believe A Word (Innocent Bystanders)
Burns Sisters Band – I Wonder Who’s Out Tonight
Reign – Zippered Up Heart
The Viceroys – The Viceroys At Granny’s Pad
Wire – Read And Burn 3
Video Games
PS3
Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune
The Eye of Judgement
Virtua Fighter 5
So, um
…see you next year. Seriously, what games should I get for this thing? I’m thinking Rachet & Clank (NYT rave), Oblivion (which apparently ate two weeks of Tom Bissell’s life) and maybe Ninja Gaiden or Virtua Fighter 5. Also v. excited about Blade Runner: The Final Cut in HD.
Update: I opened the box, and this thing is ugly. It’s the size of a small player piano and seems to be coated in a kind of lacquer I thought was only available to WASPs in the 80s. Seriously, it shines like the ashtrays in the movie Metropolitan. Weirdly done, Sony.
Another obsession dealt with
In 1992, a Japanese video game company called Kaneko made a prototype of a Beastie Boys arcade game. It was eventually released, but heavily modified and stripped of licensing. I wrote up a page to collect all known information about it in one place. I give you: The Beastie Boys Arcade Game.
Clack Clack Klack
- Andreaa has a new site for her new book and a new Amazon blog. On the offhand chance that anyone who reads Litwack.org is unfamiliar, make sure to buy To Feel Stuff on August 1. Napping is okay, but don’t sleep!
- Kismet is on the way. All of my people are falling into their note-slots in the cosmic harmony; me too.
- Speaking of harmonies, new mixtape on the way: Platinum Cute. Kyle Minogue? A’yup. Is It All Over My Face? edit? Yes. M. Herbert remixes from YouSendIt? Correct.
- Video iChat: hot, but Canada’s Cox Communications SUCKS. Stop standing in my light, Canada!
- Have I been buying NintendoDS games in advance of my Lite arriving? Yeah – Brain Age and New Super Mario Bros, of course. Most looking forward to: importing Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!, Contact (OMFG), Hotel Dusk (return of Shadowgate, looks like), and Mother 3 for the GBA slot. If they don’t bring it over I will burn the fan translation to a rom MYSELF.
- Popsicle-brand Popsicles are now flavored partially with fruit juice and have been ruined, thus. It’s always apple juice, the natural fruit juice. Apple juice from concentrate is the corn syrup of the natural flavorings set. Fuck!
It’s on like Donkey Kong Jr.
This video game thing started at a really early age. That’s me and Kate!
Put a quarter in your ass ’cause you played yourself
This is the video game post.
- Mother (AKA Earthbound) 3 is coming out April 20 in Japan and I could not be more excited. It’s going to be released for the Gameboy Advance, which is as close to the Super Nintendo as Shigesato Itoi could get. Details have been kept totally undercover, so I can’t tell you what it’s about, but I can say that it’s going to be either the greatest or third-greatest game ever made.
- I’ve been playing Ape Escape 3 and it’s kind of okay. I’m 10% complete. A bunch of monkeys have gotten loose, and you have to catch them with a net. This is the third refinement of that idea. There’s 3D forshortening, so sometimes when you think you have one of those motherfucking monkeys cornered you’re wrong and they throw a banana grenade at you. Such is life.
- I’ve also been playing a little Spider Solitaire, one of the bundled WindowsXP solitaire games, and it’s pretty hard on the four-suit setting. In fact, I still haven’t solved a game. Rough. I wonder how much luck is involved. I doubt every deal is winable. Most of the strategy is obvious
- My next Playstation 2 game is going to be Disgaea. I love turn-based tactical RPGs. After that, Rogue Galaxy.
C’mere god damn it
- Just wirelessly synced my Treo 650 for the first time. Slow as fuck but awesome.
- SF 18-20th?
- My second-most intense spaghetti carbonara ever is coagulating in my gut right this second. So many egg yolks.
- I read that Edge “2006 big question” thing in full (the question was: what’s your dangerous idea?) and it seemed like the answers fell into four caterories: a. Ideas are SO SUPER DANGEROUS THAT I’M NOT GOING TO TELL YOU (variation: other people answering the survey know this and are holding back), b. oh, religion is wrong/right woo woo woo, c. one universe (quantum physics hardliners) vs. teh MULT1VERS3 (it’s just our little corner of the phase blanket thingie that has a constant that enabled the formation of life, k? laws of nature not a message from the ultimate creator, get over it) and d. the interesting answers. Trend: the people at ivy league schools didn’t necessarily have better ideas, but were on balance better writers.
- I’m going to Fry’s today and picking up my next video game, if the price is right: Romancing SaGa. The SaGa games can be rrrl rrrl frustrating (fucking “Final Fantasy Adventure 1″) but I hear this one is the best yet and highly non-linear. Riot in excitement city.
- Second day of 2006!
My Dragon Quest VIII review
is up right now. Playing DQVIII and writing the review is sort of why posting has been light around here lately.
Don’t stop till you get enough
Video games
I’m working on a long review of Dragon Quest VIII. I’m 20 hours into the thing and most certainly not done. I still haven’t played the Final Fantasy XII demo that came with.
Television
I’ve seen three episodes of The Boondocks and Rex is right, it’s better than you’ve heard. The debate (on the black left?) over the use of the word (how can I not use scare quotes) “nigga” is useful, I guess, but what appeals to me is how lonely the characters are. None of them have any family besides the others and all three of the main characters seem mildly depressed all the time. This didn’t come through for me in the comic strip, which is why I think the show succeeds as an adaptation.
Bonework
I’m working on something big that involves mold-making. It’s harder than I thought. We’ll get there.
Tuesday bullets
- If anyone needs a cheap flight: from Josh Bearman comes word of $100 round-trip tickets on AirTrans.
- I’m not buying an Xbox360. I mean, if you want to, go ahead, but I’ve come to this realization: I fucking hate any video game that makes the player control the camera.
- I just had a Subway chicken parmesan 6″ and it’s officially crazy. Maybe this is old news, but wow. It totally reminds me of something I’d eat in my youth all the time but I don’t remember what, specifically.
- Speaking of chicken, Chinese saying: kill the chicken to scare the monkey. 1-9-9-8.
Stuff that’s rocking my world right this second
- Google Analytics. So much power for free.
- Last night’s Lost. Here’s a perfect example of something that’s simultaniously popular and the best in its field.
- Grant Morrison’s All-Star Superman. I’m 26 and have been through three million Superman re-imaginings in my lifetime, so I approached this one like it was a sick monkey. Suspicions blown away! It’s amazing. Frank Quitely is now one of my favorite comic artists. Moebius influence?
- Windows FreeCell. I know, I know.
- This teapot.
Breaking the cycle
Interesting: Bape, Gdeh, BxH can be lumped together as “urahara kei?” So says this Superfuture post. I really sometimes love clothes, which can be magic. Take the new ACR jackets and bags. They form a system. Fabric Gundams. You’d have to be insane to have money and not walk around dipped in Acronym with a M18-L (hey, it happened to Cam), your iPod and some Class Acts, right?
So and, after Halloween, I popped a 300gig hard drive in my Media Center box and backed up my music collection. Yeah iTunes. $80 for the drive at Fry’s. So much money for so little space. What is the complete PlayStation 1 ISO collection, 12 terabytes? See what I’m saying? I’m so addicted to videogames that I’d eventually get around to playing that hacky pirate yaoi mahjongg game or whatever.
Mildly mutagenic
My goodness, E3 was exciting. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo all announced their new video game systems. (Well, Microsoft bought an infomercial on MTV on the 11th, but that’s beside the point.) Why is this important? Who cares? ME. I LOVE VIDEOGAMES, AND IF YOU DON’T AND AREN’T RELATED TO ME, WE’RE DONE, NAWMEAN?
Just kidding. Let’s run down the news.
Xbox 360
Design: I haven’t seen any of these consoles in person. With that caveat, I think the Xbox 360 is the best-looking of the three. There’s a clear design philosophy at work (the biconcavity of the sides is supposed to make it look like it’s inhaling, astonished by itself), and I like the color scheme. The switchable faceplates are an error, but whatever.
Excitement: I could care less about the games, frankly. Halo 3 is the major exclusive, and I’m not into it. Virtually everything else good will also appear the Playstation. Promising is the Windows Media Extender factor – if you have a Windows Media PC, you can beam television and music to the Xbox. If Windows 2007 ever comes out, every PC will have the Media PC feature-set. The excitement wildcard is the Xbox Live online experience; basic Live support is free, and J. Allard, the system architect, is a self-professed fan of Neil Stephenson’s vision of the Metaverse, as laid out in Snow Crash. What they’re talking about for Live – buying and selling persistent virtual goods (a t-shirt your avatar can wear in a snowboarding game and a fighting game both), general skill-level matching – sounds good.
Playstation 3
Design: The design is horrible. Just awful. The type on the decklid is the font from Spider-Man 2, for chrissakes! This thing should have a unique visual identity; instead it looks like is a municipal opera house in the midwest.
Excitement: Tech-wise, it’s a beast. The GPU and CPUs will be eating desktops alive for the next year, if not longer. And this is going to be the first widespread consumer device with Blu-Ray, an optical format which stores 54 gigabytes. So if you have a nice HDTV, you’ll have nice hi-def games and nice hi-def movies, too. Wi-fi is built in, unlike with the Xbox. There’s going to be more than one model of Playstaion 3, and I expect the device to grow in capability over time. Videoconferencing? Not an issue. TiVo-like PVR? Pop in a hard drive. Unless Sony makes some crazy hubristic mistake, I expect them to keep at least 60% of the market.
Nintendo Revolution
Design: Not finalized. As-is, looks bland. But if you look at recent Nintendo designs, that’s purposeful – they continually emphasized software over hardware, so there’s no reason for them to design a console that’s physically an event unto itself. Just stand me next to your TV and forget I’m here, it seems to say.
Excitement: The Revolution plays games from every previous Nintendo console, including the Gamecube, and Nintendo plans to offer old games for sale online. That’s wonderful. The Revolution is underpowered compared to the Microsoft and Sony machines – just two to three times more powerful than the Gamecube, but it doesn’t really matter. All the Revolution is meant to do is play games, and of the three companies only Nintendo really, really gets games. Since 2000, Animal Crossing and Zelda: Windwaker are the best games I’ve played for any system. Sony and Microsoft are Brett Ratner; Nintendo is Fellini. (Square is Edward Yang.) Of the three systems, I’m most excited about the Revolution; I think they’re going to sell it for $199, too. The new Zelda is going to be killer, and if there’s any justice in this life, 2006 will be the year for Kid Icarus 2.
Forget PSP
Look what daddy got in the mail:
Big thanks fly out to Linker4u.com. I ordered and paid via Paypal on Sunday and they got this to me today – EMS shipping from Taiwan. Five stars. UPDATE: Oh, how technopride goeth before the driverly, or perhaps pin-connecterly fall!
Weekend laze
Here’s an easy post: I keep a list called “media” to keep track of stuff I want to consume. This is it.
——————————-
Fiction:
Abe – The Woman In The Dunes
Ali – Brick Lane
Gardner – Mickelsson’s Ghosts (sounds great)
Murakami – Kafka on the Shore
Proust – Rememberance of Things Past (what’s the best translation?)
Speigelman – In The Shadow of No Towers
Stendhal – The Charter-House of Parma
Thorne – Eight Minutes Idle
Wallace – Oblivion (bought a copy last night)
Wodehouse – Code of the Woosters (saving this for when I’m feeling down)
Non-Fiction:
Bloom – The Anxiety Of Influence (can’t believe I didn’t read this in college)
Hiromix – Girls Blue (out of print, hard to find at a reasonable price)
Katayama – WonderWall
Levinas (I read On Escape (thank you Eojean); what next?)
Maharashi – DPM (Looks bananas)
McComb – Robot Builder’s Bonanza 3rd ed. (Not coming out?)
Mingus – Beneath The Underdog
Games:
The Sims 2 (I liked the first more in theory than practice)
Fable (I don’t have an Xbox; might rent one)
Halo 2
Wanda and the Colossus
Ape Escape
Getting Up
Dragon Quest VIII
Fallout 1+2
Paper Mario 2
Legend of Zelda – The Minish Cap (new Zelda games are my drug of choice)
Grand Theft Auto 4
Movies:
Appleseed
Last Life In The Universe (I have a copy, but I’m having trouble getting the subtitles to sync; looks amazing)
That Obscure Object of Desire
The Big Chill
Together
Vernon, Flordia
Music:
Richard Harris – The Yard Went On Forever
Gordon Lightfoot – Best Of
PSP
Sony revealed a launch title for their Playstation Portable, “Talkman” – you type in words in one language, and a CG mascot speaks them in another. A little more exact than ye olde phrasebook. Neat.
“Can you point me in the direction of the soaplands?”
I write