Twin Peaks is a series I’ve been meaning to watch for a long time now. I’ve had the score from it for a long time, and I still listen to it to this day. I bought the Prequel/Epilogue Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and watched it several years ago, but not knowing much about the series, it made almost no sense to me, though it was still a very interesting; a typically “David Lynchian” movie experience.
Meghan bought me the then just-released Gold Box complete series for my birthday this past year, and we just recently got around to watching it. That series is, in short, completely amazing; we were both completely hooked right from the start, and now that we’re done, I find myself wishing there was more. It’s just too bad that ABC killed it before they could do a third season, because so much was left unresolved. That, in and of itself is fairly typical David Lynch, but still. It’s disappointing. And there’s virtually no chance in hell that it will ever be resolved. Some of the actors are now dead, others are not interested in returning, and they’re all too old now anyway. It was 17 years ago, after all.
The only hope that the world will ever see any “new” material resides with Mr. Lynch himself; there remains a lot of unused Fire Walk With Me footage (whole story arcs were cut out) that he has supposedly been re-editing to put in a special edition release of FWWM on DVD. The last word (in 2006) was that is was supposed to release sometime in 2007. We’re well into Q2 2008 and there’s been no word, so I’m not holding my breath. On the plus side, FWWM is becoming hard to find on DVD, which may mean that existing stock is being sold out or recalled in anticipation of a new version about to release.
So I’m stuck turning it over in my mind, how things turn out. Left with the surreal and haunting imagery of the series every time I close my eyes. In particular, the sequences in the Red Room with the Man From Another Place, are etched into my mind. At this point, my only hope for any kind of closure, is that Lynch and his co-conspirator Mark Frost will put their heads together and write a novelization of what the third season should have been. That also seems unlikely.
It’s amazing to see though, just how profoundly the show impacted and influenced pretty much everything that came after it. The X-files and the Silent Hill games are the most obvious examples, but I see many many elements of the show in other things, too. I had no idea just how influential it was. Ironic that they were shunned by their peers in the industry at the awards shows, despite 14 nominations. Unsurprising that the industry doesn’t bother to reward innovation and creativity. I guess that’s why I don’t have cable, and why I think 90% of the stuff on TV is garbage.
Posted by Ron as Media, TV & Movies at 9:22 AM EDT
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I have to admit, I stole that one from Star Wars. You know, the scene in Episode 4, when they’re attacking the Deathstar, they’re in the trenches proceeding towards the exhaust port, dodging fire from the turbolaser batteries, and suddenly, the guns stop firing. The rebel pilots are confused for a moment, they don’t know why they’re no longer being shot at. And then they realise, as the TIE fighters are coming at them, just why it is that the guns stopped.
So it kind of parallels why it was that I quit blogging for so many months. I had a bunch of other shit going on, life outside teh intarweb. I didn’t want to shoot down one of my own, you know?
But that’s over now, for a bit anyway. I fought valiantly, but the damned X-wings took out all my TIE fighters, so back to the guns it is.
It’s kind of funny, the way I do that; using pop-culture-based metaphor and euphemism to communicate ideas. My sister does it too. In fact we can, and have, had entire conversations using quotes from films, songs, and other unrelated nonsense jargon. It confounds my wife; I can see how and why. I think it annoys her a bit, too. Sometimes, though, it works better than any conventional grammar at conveying just the right meaning, with the caveat that your ‘audience’ be already on the same cultural wavelength as yourself. That’s why it works with my sister, and not my wife; Jen and I grew up for 20-something years together (like it or not!), and have largely been exposed to the same things, culturally and environmentally, over time, so she has a pretty good idea where I’m coming from with my odd manner of expression.
On the other hand, my wife and I have completely different backgrounds, and have only the last 9 years or so to draw upon. Yes, we have a lot of things in common now, one of those things that help make us a beautiful team, but our childhoods are not really among them. That’s a strength all its own, though, and not entirely related to what I’m talking about.
Posted by Ron as Media, Miscellaneous, TV & Movies at 10:57 AM EST
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I haven’t blogged this month, so before it’s too late, here goes.
I haven’t been up to much of note. Still anxiously awaiting the day that my boss lets me know what’s going on with my future. I’d really really like to be signed up for an apprenticeship; the sooner the better, as far as I’m concerned.
Once I know how secure my job is, I’m sure there are a few things that will get taken care of. I know I have blogged a little list about it before, but now I may have some things to add to said list.
My computer is beginning to give me some trouble. I don’t know if my hard drives are dying, or if WindowsXP is finally taking a shit after nearly 4 years. I’ve been getting some disk errors lately, and chkdsk has been running at startup a lot recently. My gut feeling tells me it might be one of the hard drives. Either way, it might be time to retire this box to light duty.
I think I’ve found my replacement. I’m tempted to go with an ultra-quiet HTPC from Lix Systems, whose specialty is inexpensive Linux-based set-top systems. To start, I’d likely dual-boot Windows and Linux until I become more familiar with the latter, and am sure it does everything I want it to. This would then be hooked up to the new LCD TV/monitor I’d get for the livingroom. Coupled with a wireless keyboard and mouse, it sounds ideal; kick back on the couch to do all this crap instead of sitting at a desk.
Also on my agenda is replacing Meghan’s SVX. It has a negative association for me, as I bought it from SASS, whom I now hate. Plus, it’s not as nice as Alice, my other one. Meghan spotted a very nice-looking WRX wagon at Sudbury Fine Cars, so perhaps we’ll check it out one of these weekends. However, this is a rather large financial commitment, and I have a mortgage to worry about these days too, so it is by no means a certainty.
Well, that’s more or less all there is at the moment. Naturally, if something interesting occurs, I will be sure to write about it here.
Posted by Ron as Computers, Fire-in-a-can, Home Sweet Home, Media, Miscellaneous, Work at 5:54 PM EDT
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I’m always late with new things. I don’t follow trends that closely, good or bad. I’m forever getting caught up on things that are “must see,” it seems. Much like my blog.
Anyway, as you can guess from the title, last night I watched V for Vendetta. It was at the insistence of one of my housemates, though he didn’t have to pressure me too hard.
I hadn’t heard much about the movie, except that Hugo Weaving was responsible for the masked character. I had few expectations for it, which is a refreshing thing. That tends to leave a lot more room for a film to impress than it does to disappoint. The only thing that I’d expected was that I would be making some “Mr. Anderson” jokes at the expense of Mr. Weaving’s acting abilities, as I did in Lord of the Rings. Heheheh, “Welcommmmme to Rivendell, Mister Bagginnnnssss…”
Needless to say, there were no such opportunities. In short, the film blew me away, and I can hands down call it one of my instant favourites.
Posted by Ron as Media, TV & Movies at 11:26 AM EST
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I write this in case anyone actually wants to hear about it, even though there won’t be much to it 
I haven’t been up to much. Unemployment can be pretty dull, though I admit, I really needed a break. My last job was pretty brutal on me, physically, psychologically, and emotionally. I should have blogged the whole thing, as my ‘mentor’ was pretty rotten towards me in the end, and it would have been interesting to track how he grew to be that way. But, I didn’t, so you get the abbreviated version, above.
I’m probably going to go back to my old job, though there is always the possibility that we will be moving again, so who knows. Crap like this is why I’m glad I keep a rainy day fund. You can’t always rely on EI, as in this case, I’ve been fired rather than laid off, so I can’t claim. Actually, half the time when I could, I didn’t bother (like last year).
So, in my boredom, I’ve been playing lots and lots of video games to pass the time. Finally got around to beating Front Mission 4, then promptly started “New Game+” and got about as far as I had before I stopped last time. I’m anxiously awaiting news of the North American localisation of FM5, though not holding my breath.
I also played through a few hacked SNES ROMs; a superb Japanese Super Metroid hack called ‘Legacy’ which completely changes the game map, basically making it a new game entirely. Took 11 hours for me to get through it. I played a few other Super Metroid hacks, but one was a poorly thought out rearranging of the power ups, and the other was an annoyingly hard challenge hack (though it was otherwise well done).
The other major hack I played is a complete redesign of Super Mario World, called Super Demo World, which is essentially a showcase for the capabilities of the author’s own world-editing tool for the game. And when I say complete redesign, I mean it’s almost unrecognisable, just the game engine remains. New worlds, new map, new levels, new items, everything. Oh, and it’s also 12 times larger. Before patching the ROM, you have to expand it from 4 Megabit to 48. Amazing, but also very hard.
Then I went on to play a good chunk of the way through a translation patch for Dragon Quest V, which was never formally released here. Great game so far (I’m about halfway through), much better than DQVII, even though the graphics are a little sub-par for a SNES game. When finished I am also going to have a go at DQVI, which is also supposedly translated to the point of being completely playable, and understandable, in English, as well as being much nicer-looking (think Final Fantasy VI). Of course, all that is doing, is making me want to go buy DQVIII, which is only about 40$ brand new everywhere now.
In the meantime, my sister also bought ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds’ for the Gamecube for 10$ from a clearance bin at the Superstore. Surprisingly good game. It’s a 3rd person 3D beat-em-up style game, which although somewhat held back by the GC graphics capability, still manages to be a lot of fun to play. Most franchise games like that are dreadful, but this one isn’t. Maybe it’s because I like the show. It doesn’t hurt that most of the voice acting is done by the actors from the series, the only exceptions being Willow/Allison Hannigan and Buffy/Sarah Michelle Gellar, though the person that voices Buffy in the game sounds just like her. Can’t say the same for Willow, but even if she doesn’t sound exactly like her, she still talks the same. A for effort.
I’ve also started back into Warcraft III, and polished off another dozen missions or so. It’s a pretty good game, and I particularly enjoy that it has a difficulty setting, making it accessible to casual RTS players, like me, while still providing some challenge to genre veterans. I’m playing it because it’s a good game, not because of any love for the RTS format; I much prefer turn-based strategy.
Also played the demo for Return to Castle Wolfenstein out of sheer boredom. The first level where you actually escape from the castle was awesome. The second level where you must escape the catacombs beneath the castle was stupid. Skeletons and Zombies and Flame Demons, oh my! What a pile of crap. That’s been done before in other games, and done better, in my opinion. Thief: The Dark Project comes immediately to mind. Though the fact that these undead warriors can deflect your bullets back at you with their shields is kind of neat.
I haven’t been just playing games. I watched some movies, too. Last night’s selection was 50 First Dates, which I thought was cute. Odd for me, since I usually find romantic comedies to be vomit-inducing. On that note, I also watched Wedding Crashers recently, and that was pretty hilarious. Also caught Starsky and Hutch, which I thought was mostly lame, though it had its moments.
Two of the movies I recently watched were very similar, which is interesting in that one of them is a huge success and the other, not so much. The two in question are National Treasure and the Da Vinci Code. The plot and pacing of these two movies are very similar. Both were decent enough movies, but the only reason the latter did so much better is because of the hype, though I will admit that there was good enough reason for it; the Da Vinci Code novel is much better than the movie (though I still found it to be contrived, predictable, and factually inaccurate at times, despite claims to the contrary). To the credit of the former, however, I actually much prefer Nicholas Cage to Tom Hanks.
Last, but certainly not least, I watched Grandma’s Boy, which, if you’re a nerd, and you like video games, this ’stoner movie’ may just be one of the funniest things you’ll ever see. So stupid, so funny. Though it is shameless. I will not let my parents watch it. It also features a really, really cool Aphex Twin song called Windowlicker.
So other than that, I’ve just been doing a lot of reading. Luke sent me a nice torrent of a bunch of out-of-print Palladium RPG books for TMNT and Robotech, so that has taken much of my time this weekend.
Oh, and my car got broken into again. This time it was in the parking garage of my apartment building. I don’t even know when it happened; it had been sitting for about two weeks when I discovered the damage. Same car as last time, the Dodge Stratus. Chrysler products are a car thief’s wet dream, though both times the GTA gangsta-wannabe failed. In retribution, they stole the chromed valve stem caps from my tires. It cost 3$ to replace them from Canadian Tire. Talk about pathetic. Oh and they also left their nasty gangsta-approved nike athletic t-shirt, complete with stinky gangsta cologne smell mixed with sweat on the seat. Now the whole car smells like that. Good thing the body shop at Oxford Dodge shampoos the interior when they’re done. In any case, I think I’ll get rid of it for real this time.
Posted by Ron as Fire-in-a-can, Games, Media, Miscellaneous, Music, TV & Movies, Work at 12:20 PM EDT
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I suddenly feel compelled to rant a little bit on the sheer stupidity of all the hype surrounding yesterday’s date. 6 June, 2006. So fucking what.
Rescheduling (which is retarded in and of itself unless absolutely medically necessary) the birth of your child so that his/her birthday doesn’t end up 6/6/06. Talk about retarded. I have trouble believing that a rational human being, even a Christian one, could find the superstition of the ‘number of the beast’ a compelling enough reason to take any kind of drastic action.
I invite the antichrist, “please, come to us already; purge the planet of all those wankers.”
Posted by Ron as Media, Religion at 10:12 PM EDT
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I’ve been doing a lot of political reading, and engaging in the odd debate on various forums (which have nothing in and of themselves to do with politics). Usually, this involves butting heads with neo-con idiots. As part of the fun, I ran across two interesting videos available online.
The first was a “homebrew” 9/11 documentary called Loose Change, which basically asks a lot of the hard questions that the american media was reluctant to ask, or unable to get any answers for. Like Farenheit 9/11, you probably should take some of this with a grain of salt, but the important thing about it, like with Michael Moore’s work, is that it promotes discussion and inquiry, which is the exact opposite message that people have been getting from the american media (especially on Fox). The video can be seen on Google Video here.
And speaking of the american media, and Fox, a while ago, the fifth estate put on a feature called Sticks and Stones, about the degeneration of the american media into a mouthpiece for the conservative, right-wing, neo-con agenda. It covers the Ann Coulter affair in some detail, and even reveals subversive elements within our own traditionally soft-core socialist country. It runs about 42 minutes and I found it worth every second of my life devoted to watching it.
Posted by Ron as Media, Politics at 12:16 PM EDT
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