Irrational Planet

Doctor Who Review: 1-7 "The Long Game"

2010-09-02T22:54:00.000-07:00

Alternate Title: Like I Need a Hole in My Head

Brief Synopsis: Rose loses interest in her new boyfriend when he starts screwing around with the past; Meanwhile, someone's been screwing around with the future.

REVIEW

The Long Game is one of season one's middling episodes. The sets, costumes and effects get the job done but aren't particularly impressive. The story's not bad but it relies on the actors to make it entertaining enough that we don't ask too many questions.

Questions such as: What the heck is the Jagrafess, what is it contributing to the evil plot, and why doesn't anyone notice it until it starts making snarly noises? Who's the editor and how does he sense 'fiction?' Why doesn't anyone think "No one comes back from floor 500... Oh, that's probably because they're dead." Why can't the editor stop Cathica from hacking him? How did the Doctor and Rose get to be "nobody" in the computer? (This last one actually has an answer but it still doesn't make much sense in this episode.)

But having gotten all that off my chest... Russell T. Davies does a good job here of setting up plotlines without letting us see exactly where they're going. Humanity isn't living up to its potential; the poor state of TV is partially to blame. No one's asking questions anymore. Journalism is dead, and free thought along with it - a pointed warning for the 21st century? The ending leaves a lot unresolved but the loose ends will actually matter later on. RTD's plotting is not always going to be this subtle, so enjoy it while it lasts.

Interspersed with all this are scenes of Rose and the Doctor behaving somewhat childishly in order to tease or impress Adam. There are some cute moments, such as Rose showing off knowledge she doesn't actually have and the Doctor making free money with his sonic screwdriver. There is a sense here that all three characters have taken their stupid pills.

Above all, the one part of this episode that demands comment is Adam's cybernetic surgery and subsequent dismissal as companion. The receptionist/nurse who convinces him to go along with it is weirdly seductive and the whole thing is uncomfortable and disturbing. The cybernetic implant itself is more than a little silly. Having a hole in your head would come with certain drawbacks, like, say... Random mosquitos flying into your skull and stinging you in the frontal lobe? The silliness of it makes it hard to believe that anyone would go along with it. "Adam" is supposed to make us think of temptation but his sin here is sheer stupidity.

The Doctor rejects Adam for succumbing to the temptation to use time travel for his own gain. But the Doctor has a magic wand that makes infinite money, so what does he know about it? You might say he's incorruptible, but you might also say that there's not much power left for him to acquire. If Rose was doing her job of keeping the Doctor connected to humanity, she'd point out that it's human nature to want wealth and security, so setting Adam loose in the future with a bottomless credit card was dooming him to failure. It's enough to accuse D9 of sabotaging the little twerp out of jealousy.

That's all troublesome enough but the episode leaves us with the wrongest final scene since D5 unconvincingly failed to rescue a certain whiny companion in the days of the dinosaur. Adam has botched his trial period as companion but the dismissal and scorn he's subjected to are overly cruel, especially considering that D9 specifically ordered him to make mistakes. It's also worrisome given how easy it is to imagine that Adam will be dead in a few months for lack of anyone to do maintenance on his new wetware.

IN RETROSPECT

I remember a lot of people online assuming that Adam was going to come back for revenge. He's been treated cruelly by the Doctor and he's got future tech in his brain - Obviously he's not just going to just sit there in 2012 and live a quiet life like the Doctor told him to! I'm still not sure if this is part of RTD's cunning misdirection or just another reason why this storyline was unsatisfying.

The future this time out is dingy and disappointing, which it had to be because they couldn't afford to produce another episode on the scale of The End of the World. But before you have a chance to ask why this future sucks compared to the one we saw before, the Doctor is framing it as a mystery, which makes it compelling. That's damned clever, I've got to admit.

It took me a long time to post this review because it kept coming off as extremely negative, and I wanted to at least grant the episode credit for what it does right. So I want to take a moment to point out that Simon Pegg is so good as the editor that I was never bothered by the many questions that character raises. Suki was also briefly interesting; maybe this episode would have come off better if it had been about them instead of Adam.

THE BIGGER PICTURE

Sometimes the Doctor and Rose don't take their adventures seriously, and it can make them seem callous, even sociopathic. They have way too much fun dancing around other peoples' misfortune, treating time travel like a video game. Somewhere down the road this will actually have consequences.

The only other major example of a turncoat companion up to this point is Turlough, the fifth doctor's would-be murderer. D5's companions were all whiny and ill-conceived but Turlough managed to be pretty interesting anyway. The companion of dubious morality is such a fun character type that it's surprisingly rare in the show's history.

FIRSTS

First "bad" companion of the new series.

First mindbogglingly dumb mistake made by a companion in the new series - no, not the cyber-surgery, I'm talking about when Rose gives Adam her TARDIS key! If he'd really wanted to make trouble he would've tried to take the time machine for himself.

First time in the history of fiction that someone is given the power to barf ice cubes.

KEEPING SCORE

Did the Doctor save the day? / Did the Doctor inspire someone else to save the day? I'll say both because Cathica finished the job but only after having huge doses of common sense poured into her brain by D9.

Surprise Time Lord Super-Power #5: Overriding anonymity. Somehow the Doctor is not just unknown, but reads as a blank to the Editor's computers. If you've read the Dune books you know why this is not effective camouflage.

WTF Factor: Lots of stuff, but mainly the Jagrafess. What is it? What does it do? Why doesn't anyone notice a giant pink thing until it's biting their heads off?

Personal Confuser: Cathica is able to easily out-hack the Editor when the plot allows it. Earlier it seemed as if people connected to the network were completely at his mercy.

Nice person who turns out not to be nice but dies anyway: Suki.

Best scene: Any time the Editor was being gleefully evil.

The Big List

1. The End of the World

2. Aliens of London / World War Three

3. Dalek

4. Rose

5. The Long Game

6. The Unquiet Dead

Sulk in Moonlight

2010-07-13T03:18:00.000-07:00

I've been tinkering with an alternate guitar tuning. Here's the first thing to result from that experiment.

Sulk in Moonlight

(The tuning is E G# E G# A# D#)

Also, check out the drawings I've been posting to twitter.

http://twitpic.com/1r14yd

Doctor Who Review: 1-6 "Dalek"

2010-07-03T21:24:00.000-07:00

Alternate Title: I, Dalek

Brief Synopsis: The Doctor meets a soldier who fought on the other side of the war, and they try to kill each other in between talking out their survivor's guilt. Rose brings the compassion and forgiveness.

Five Words: Exposit. Exterminate. Elevate. Empathize. Euthanize.

REVIEW

The episode is called "Dalek." What more could you want? Honestly, all it has to do is deliver the gloriously violent title villain and some good scenery-chewing and it gets a free pass. And indeed this one is all about Eccleston and Piper exchanging melodramatic dialogue with a giant pepperpot and that stuff is all golden. Any scene lacking the motorized plunger Nazi shows how weak the episode is otherwise, though. Basically if this episode didn't feature a Dalek as the monster it wouldn't be much good at all.

Capitalist bad guy Van Statten is the standout flaw: A tremendously boring character who's just there to be wrong about everything. A lot of time is spent characterizing him through his amoral, culture-of-ownership style arrogance, but he's too shallow even to qualify as a strawman, because what really are his beliefs? "Internet entrepreneurs deserve to rule the world?" And how did being a patent troll make him ruler of a fascistic empire? Clearly a whole lot else would have to go wrong for this idiot to be dictator-for-life. Worse, whereas a proper bad guy is a foil to the hero, Van Statten and D9 hardly interact at all as characters. They just shout at each other without listening to what the other is saying.

Possibly even less effective than Van Statten is his aide, Diana Goddard, who we're supposed to like because she's less stupid than him and delivers his comeuppance in eye-for-an-eye style at the end. But all that indicates is that she uses power the same way he does and has learned nothing from his example. A cheap Ha-Ha ending for two useless characters.

Enough negativity. The really substantive aspect of "Dalek" is the survivor's guilt theme. If you keep in mind that Daleks are basically sci-fi Nazis, you can easily recognize what a serious vein of drama Mr. Eccleston and Mr. Pepperpot are tapping into. We learn a lot about how much D9's experiences in the time war have changed him, to the extent that he seems emotionally damaged. The Doctor has never been this dark before, and Eccleston makes it engrossing in a way that D1's misanthropy and D6's arrogance can't approach.

I have to point out that a lot of the dialogue here is kinda dumb if you think about it. "You would make a good Dalek" is not a line that a Dalek would ever say, for example. The most complimentary thing a Dalek can say to a non-Dalek is "You're exploitable." But it's still good material for the actors to tear up the screen with. (And maybe absorbing the internet exposed the Dalek to Godwin's Law.)

It's a key plot point that the Dalek is changed by Rose, due to a DNA transfer thingamajig(eyeroll) that immediately makes it start having emotions other than hate and shoutyness. This isn't a bad idea, but it's hampered by the regrettable technobabble, and more importantly, the fact that we don't learn anything about Rose here. A comparison is being drawn between them but really what we see is the Dalek becoming more emotional in a generic kind of way. It isn't well explained why it can't bring itself to kill Rose, nor why Rose would defend it after it went on a killing spree in front of her eyes. The script could easily have given up every scene with Van Statten in order to better develop the idea that the Dalek is bonding with Rose. This kind of thing was done better in the Trek episode "I, Borg," to give an example.

Oh well. In any case it would have made a whole lot more sense if the Dalek had just gotten distracted reading tvtropes.org and looking at funny cat videos.

IN RETROSPECT

This is an episode that, on the one hand, is a history-maker and a highlight of the first season, but on the other hand doesn't hold up to re-watching too well. The parts of it that aren't good stand out in stark contrast to the parts that are. It's also a bit of a shame, in a way, that this isn't the last ever episode with Daleks. It's a pretty good "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow" kind of story for them. Of course, DC kept making Superman stories after that, so... Yeah.

THE BIGGER PICTURE

D9 is a lot more eager to kill Daleks than D4 was back on Skaro, but Rose talks him down. D7 was pretty cavalier about committing genocide on them, though, and Ace never called him on it. In the grand scheme of things it looks like the dilemma from Genesis of the Daleks remains unanswered.

Adam Mitchell debuts here and seems like a salvageable guy. There's a scene between him and Rose that we can tell is sweet because the music says so. And maybe he's infected by Van Statten's arrogance and self-interest but the simple fact that he goes to Rose and the Doctor at the end indicates that he knows who the real heroes are.

There's a lot of insight into the Dalek thought process here that's pretty interesting for a long-term fan. Even from the start, this Dalek seems to be capable of some deeper insight than we usually get from the little squidbrains. Presumably being isolated from peer pressure and space Nazi rhetoric will go some way toward freeing up even a Dalek mind. One interesting question to ask as you watch is: How much of what the Dalek says to Rose on their first meeting is just a heartless scheme to get a hit of her DNA?

FIRSTS

First new series Dalek with exciting swivel-shooting action.

NOT The First Elevation. They did that in some of the later episodes of the classic series, though without calling quite as much attention to the fact that stairs are a solved problem.

First Time The Plunger Kind of Makes Sense. ("This is Kev the Dalek, he has two plungers. Kev's not very dangerous." -Eddie Izzard)

First mention of the word "regeneration." Note also the question Rose puts to D9, "What the hell are you changing into?" It's a little too subtle to work as foreshadowing, especially if you're new to Doctor Who, but it's a nice touch nonetheless.

First Doctor Getting Seriously Dark. We've seen D9 cross some moral lines, as when he seemingly killed Cassandra in DW 1-2. But in "Dalek" he's holding a gun and ready to use it, which just feels wrong.

First The "L" Word: The Dalek knows that Rose is the woman D9 loves because it scanned her DNA and read the entire internet. It also found out that Kirk loves Spock and human females love sparkly vampires. Odd that in this episode where the Love bombshell is dropped, Rose seems to be sweeter on Adam.

SCOREKEEPING

Does the Doctor save the day? No. The Dalek probably would have quietly died if D9 hadn't come to investigate. And Rose was the one who put an end to the conflict.

Does the Doctor inspire someone else to save the day? No. It's not his best showing as far as results are concerned.

Semi-companion: Adam Mitchell.

Nice Person Who Talked to Rose and Died: This is a stretch, but I like this feature so I'm shoehorning it in. Anyways, the one soldier who tries to reason with the Dalek when they're in the stairwell is a nice touch.

WTF Factor: The Dalek x-ray lasergun is conducted like electricity through water, making it officially more confusing than phasers or light-sabers.

Personal Confuser: Being secret owner of the internet doesn't seem like that great of a business deal, and downloading the entire thing isn't much help if you don't also get a good search algorithm. I wonder if the Dalek has its own universal translator or if it just ran it all through Babelfish.

Old Who Reference: The Cyberman head, of course. In any other episode it would have seemed gratuitous but it makes sense here.

No Really, The Last of the Time Lords: Apparently the Doctor would know if there were any other Time Lords left. Even if they were hanging out in a different century or in another dimension. So don't get any ideas. This does help explain why Time Lords always seemed to be able to recognize each other despite changes of appearance.

Interesting little sidenote: The Doctor recognizes the spaceship from Roswell. I wonder if he would know how to drive it, too.

Bad Wolf: It's honestly a little too blatant here, and too pointless a throwaway line as well. In retrospect it seems like a tip-off that the whole Bad Wolf thing is not going to make sense.

Best Scene: The final confrontation.

Most Emotional Moment: This one's pretty harrowing all the way through. Take your pick, but I have to go with the initial reveal of the Dalek.

Funniest: "Hair dryer." I also love when Rose ducks the swiveling Dalek eye-stalk when they're in the elevator. It seems unrehearsed.

The Big List

1. The End of the World

2. Aliens of London / World War Three

3. Dalek

4. Rose

5. The Unquiet Dead

Doctor Who Review: 1-4 "Aliens of London" and 1-5 "World War Three"

2010-06-16T05:32:00.000-07:00

Alternate Title: Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Time Travelers

Brief Synopsis: Rose returns to the present time, more or less. Things get domestic. Meanwhile, an alien invasion is going on but it's not the one you're expecting.

Five Words: Harriet Jones, MP Flydale North.

REVIEW

This is the one with the farting aliens. Which is too bad, because setting that bizarre distraction aside, it's a very good episode. Few Doctor Who plots deliver this many genuinely clever twists alongside meaty character development. Not to mention Harriet Jones, one of the more memorable guest characters in the new series.

This is the episode that shows us that Rose's backstory and supporting cast are going to be crucial elements of season one. And while they'll be revisited from time to time, such as during the finale, the bulk of the drama really plays out here. Rose comes home and discovers that her adventures come at the cost of neglecting her loved ones, and the Doctor has to admit that he can't guarantee the safety of his companions. It's a big statement too for the show itself, that we're going to be seeing this more realistic take on responsibility and consequences in New Who.

The downside to this story is, of course, the villains, who are not particularly frightening or amusing and show glaring consistency problems between animatronics and CGI. They aren't without their interesting aspects, to be fair. The head-zippers and discarded skin-suits are one way in which the Slitheen's cartoonishness is very effective, a delightfully lunatic kind of horror. There's also the classy confrontation between Margaret and the Doctor which fully merits said villain's return later on.

But it really just comes down to the farting, doesn't it? Fat people farting a lot, that's what you take away from these episodes. It's even a clever idea that big aliens could be squeezing down into rotund human disguises, but the script just won't stop hammering the FART JOKE button.

IN RETROSPECT

I really had forgotten how good this episode was. So much of season one's essential character drama is packed into this two-parter that you could just watch this and The Parting of the Ways and you'd get virtually all of the impact of the finale.

Harriet Jones is a tremendously likeable character, but also a very naive model of a perfect politician. She's from a small town. Polite but insistent about doing the right thing. Cares about her constituents and empathizes with them on a person-to-person basis. Smart and proper but she knows how to have fun("Pass it to the left"). Ushers in a new golden age. She's practically a walking campaign promise. The idea that she's going to be a revolutionary figure in politics seems far-fetched given that she is the image of the leader we want rather than the leader we need. Anyways, there wouldn't be any reason for me to mention this if she wasn't going to return in a more ambiguous role.

It was really fun to relive the excitement of the UNIT alert when the Doctor's name comes up on the screen. It's a nice, subtle nod to the show's long history, and it keeps the plot moving along effectively too.

By the way, when the Doctor is figuring out who Harriet Jones is, it reminds me of a future episode where he senses his memories changing to reflect altered history. I doubt that was the intent, but it's fun to make that connection.

THE BIGGER PICTURE

D9 and Rose's relationship is defined about as clearly here as it's ever going to be. According to Rose the Doctor is better and more important than a boyfriend. Rose's inability to explain this to Mickey and Jackie is poignant and makes perfect sense.

Mickey is still getting picked on, not just by the Doctor but also by the script which uses him for comic relief. At the same time, he makes a much better impression this time and even though he turns down the offer to become a true companion it's clear that he's more than the close-minded buffoon he appeared to be in the first episode. By any fair analysis he passes the companion test in World War Three and his lack of TARDIS experience is just a technicality.

Jackie is at her best here, challenging D9 with no respect for Time Lords or saving the world. Her question to the Doctor cuts right through his self-image and brings up the responsibilities he doesn't like to admit he has. She remains a likeable character throughout her appearances in future episodes but is never again as significant, even when acting as more of an official companion.

It's a nice moment for D9 when he grieves for the pig which is, after all, just a pig. I wonder how much the Doctor's ethics would have in common with Peter Singer's... Depends who's writing the episode, I suppose. Anyway, I get annoyed by aliens that are just humanoids with animal heads(a lazy cop-out that Doctor Who is quite capable of resorting to) and this is a clever subversion of the trope.

FIRSTS

First multi-part story for the new series.

First hammer repair job on the TARDIS.

First Trinity Wells, dramatic American newsreader.

First Harriet Jones' incessant introductions.

KEEPING SCORE

Does the Doctor save the day? Yeah, pretty much. Earth would've been toasted and sold off as radioactive scrap to aliens without his intervention, and D9 gets plenty of good hero bits. When he comes up with the vinegar bomb idea it's a great scene that we'll see played out in different ways in the future - The Doctor trapped in a room and armed only with facts.

Does the Doctor inspire someone else to save the day? Partially. He gets Jackie and Mickey on his side enough that they'll push the button for him.

Semi-Companion: Jackie, Mickey, and Harriet Jones.

WTF Factor: Farts!

Not All That Nice Person Who Talked to Harriet And Died: Indra Ganesh, the humbly named junior secretary. He gets a "Sorry" for his trouble.

TARDIS Facts: Aliens of London and The Unquiet Dead both bring up a classic TARDIS bug/feature - it takes you to the most exciting place and time within a certain range of where you were actually trying to go.

Personal Confuser: Mickey gains access to military weapons in a scene that is hardly any less absurd than an Eddie Izzard comedy routine: "Hacking into Pentagon computer... Double-click on YES."

Surprise Time Lord Super-Power #2: Instant Charisma. The Doctor hardly has to say a single sentence before he's taken charge of the soldiers, which is perfectly in character, really. Some prior Doctors(D2, D5 and D7 in particular) would be less assertive and just wait for the soldiers to figure out who the alpha male is. But you just know all the Doctors can do this when they want to.

Surprise Time Lord Super-Power #3: Electricity Resistance. For all that the cliffhanger built up the electric shock trap, the Doctor didn't have that much trouble with it.

Surprise Time Lord Super-Power #4: Weaponized Technobabble. Okay, it's not technically a super-power, but it's still surprisingly useful. I wonder if he doesn't use this power more often than we realize.

The Big List

1. The End of the World

2. Aliens of London / World War Three

3. Rose

4. The Unquiet Dead

Doctor Who Review: 1-3 "The Unquiet Dead"

2010-06-06T01:34:00.000-07:00

(Spoilers!)

Alternate Title: These Zombies Are Just Gas-tly!

Brief Synopsis: Rose and the Doctor visit Charles Dickens in Cardiff and find out that ghosts are made of gas.

Five Words: Bad science versus bad faith.

REVIEW

This one's enjoyable but it's a big step down from the previous episode. The bad guys are lame and the plot doesn't hold together. Let's start with the Gelth. Sometimes they are zombies. New Who gets a lot of mileage out of zombie-like monsters, but plain old zombies seem so unimaginative compared to Autons or people with gas masks or patients suffering from every disease in the universe. Then the Gelth become gas-ghosts, still boring but with an added level of not-making-sense. Then they're angels, which almost works, but of course they're really demons, which is unbelievably boring.

Then there's Charles Dickens, who just doesn't fit in. There's a point where the Doctor says "We might need you," and of course, they do. They need the addled mind of the elderly Dickens to think that turning up the gas is going to be bad for the aliens who are made of gas, which somehow turns out to be right.

A lot of the plotting is just stuff happening at random - the zombie showing up at the Dickens reading, Rose getting caught by Sneed - and weird shifts of character like the Doctor suddenly trusting Sneed and the Gelth who together were doing a good job of killing Rose only moments earlier.

The biggest problem, though, has to do with the treatment of the overall themes of faith and betrayal, and the inconsistent behavior of the characters. It's most painful when the Doctor is chiding Dickens for being skeptical, which seems radically out of character. While one must at some point believe in ghosts and zombies if they present themselves, as big a science nerd as the Doctor should be supportive of healthy skepticism, especially when it comes to ghosts and seances in Dickens's time.

The Doctor is also remarkably stupid to trust the Gelth. They want to "stand tall and feel the sunlight." Which is presumably why they kill people? Like they almost did to Rose? Which is why Rose is justifiably mistrusting of them, and ends up being completely right about everything(excepting maybe the value of corpses). There's an attempt to justify the Doctor's behavior by pushing his Time War guilt buttons, and it is certainly possible for him to be arrogant and to make mistakes, but in this case he's just being a doofus the whole time and it's painful to watch.

Rose reasons that this can't happen because it would change the future, which seems fair, but the Doctor says "time is in flux" and apparently this means it's okay to meddle with history. This is a lampshading exercise that new Who will rely on regularly, and with some success; here it completely fails to address Rose's point that bringing alien zombies to Earth in the 1800s would have enormous consequences. But maybe the Doctor already knows what we will see for ourselves before too long: Humans immediately repress any memories they acquire of alien invasions.

In the end there's a reversal where faith in angels ends up being a horrible trap but given that we like Gwyneth and want the Doctor to be right, it comes as a disappointment. And then Gwyneth is hanging on after death, animated but still conscious, and maybe this is some kind of miracle? But Gwyneth was wrong about faith, and the Doctor was wrong about trust, and Dickens was wrong about skepticism... The idea may have been to sow mystery and ambiguity but it just comes across as a meaningless series of events where reason and faith are equally likely to be wrong and the Doctor will happily play Jenga with history as long as "time is in flux."

IN RETROSPECT

I remember being annoyed with this episode the first time I watched it, and revisiting it for this review let me figure out why. Still, it was the first episode my girlfriend watched with me, and that turned out well, so happy ending there.

Another little gripe that I noticed this time was the overuse of false color. This has become a pet peeve of mine in movies and TV. Night-time scenes are drenched in blue and the interiors are equally awash in oranges and browns. It's unconvincing and hard on the eyes.

THE BIGGER PICTURE

This is the first in what will be a recurring cycle of jaunts to the past to meet a historical guest star. In that context it makes a little bit more sense than it did to me upon my first viewing, when I was perplexed by the selection of Charles Dickens and 19th century Wales to be featured in New Who's first episode set in the past. Later seasons will show what they can do with a historical set piece when they haven't blown the budget on sci-fi extravaganza already.

A reference to Rose's dead father gets worked in ratherly cleverly, and Bad Wolf gets its first real call-out, referred to specifically as the BIG Bad Wolf, driving home the Little Red Riding Hood symbolism which... I guess makes just as little sense as anything else about the whole Bad wolf thing.

Gwyneth is so charming and well-played in this episode that it makes Torchwood that much more disappointing. More of this sentiment to follow, I'm sure!

FIRSTS

First Shamelessly Cliche Opening. It's saved somewhat by Mister Sneed's weary "Oh no..." as he responds to the blood-curdling scream.

First Christmas Episode. Out of season.

First strong hints of Rose/D9 romance. Practically flirting.

First I'm Sorry. Not be confused with I'm So Sorry.

First non-subliminal Bad Wolf.

First The Rift in Cardiff.

First TARDIS accuracy problem for the new series. We also find out that there are other rooms, though we'll never find out how one gets to them.

SCOREKEEPING

Does the Doctor save the day in this one? No.

Does the Doctor inspire somebody else to save the day? Not really. He antagonizes Dickens the whole time but the rescue comes from Dickens's own courage and resourcefulness.

Does the Doctor even do good in this one? Kind of a mixed bag. He solves the outbreak of zombie-ism but it comes at a high price.

Best Scene: Rose's chat with Gwyneth.

Best Joke: Rose's rhetorical question about horror movies ending up in morgues as opposed to gazebos.

Cheesiest: The minute the Gelth get what they want, they turn red and get skull-faces and scary monster voices. Any point the episode might have made about misjudging alien life forms goes right out the window when the aliens turn out to perfectly conform to human expectations of what evil looks like.

Semi-Companion: Charles Dickens

Nice Person Who Talks to Rose and Dies: Gwyneth

WTF Factor: Spirits - I mean, disembodied aliens, can manifest in our world if there's gas. Also, they can move around as gas at will, but increasing the amount of gas makes it so they can't move anymore. Even though it's the medium they're able to move in... Oh, nevermind.

Quick, Suspend Your Disbelief: That's sure some fake snow Rose is setting her foot into in close-up.

And of course, the Big Rating List:

1. The End of the World

2. Rose

3. The Unquiet Dead

Doctor Who Review: 1-2 "The End of the World"

2010-05-24T13:17:00.000-07:00

(Spoilers!)

Brief synopsis: The Doctor takes Rose to the future in order to show off how far special effects have come since 1989. Rose meets a bitchy trampoline and the Earth gets destroyed.

Five Words: Hitchhiker's Guide to Doctor Who.

Introductions: Cassandra, The Face of Boe, Psychic Paper, Magic Cellphone

REVIEW

The first episode, Rose, was just a warm-up for this. Russell T. Davies mixes the formula and characters of Doctor Who with the fun-loving absurdism of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, noting that the best possible way to kick off a sci-fi serial is to destroy the Earth. Davies, of course, doesn't have to commit to it for the rest of his series the way Adams (mostly) did, but it still sends the same message: Forget this dull little place you call home. We're going places.

There's a lot of great character moments in this one. Rose's attack of culture shock is well-done and very believable. She's interesting and relatable throughout the episode, a good sign for things to come. The best bit for the Doctor is not any of the grim, melancholy foreshadowing stuff - it's when he smiles as he says "That's not supposed to happen."

There are a few flaws. Rose doesn't have much to do during the climax. Jabe is killed by a Legend of Zelda puzzle. Cassandra is about as threatening as a pop tart. But none of this impedes the momentum of the story. To put it simply, if you aren't hooked after this, you're watching the wrong show. This is the episode that sets the standard and the tone for the season, and to some extent for the entire show. The plot's a little flimsy, but the performances, effects, sets and costumes are all dynamite.

IN RETROSPECT

The psychic paper shows up for the first time here. It's essentially the social engineering version of the sonic screwdriver, and that's just cool. If anything, it deserves to get used more often than it does. I'm sure you can open at least as many doors with psychic paper, and you can do a lot of other interesting things with it too.

The bit at the end, when the Doctor and Rose go back to the present time and have that quiet little moment of fear, mourning and fast food - that may be the all-time best scene in Doctor Who. The high sci-fi future and everything that happened there is made all the more poignant by the sudden return to normality.

THE BIGGER PICTURE

This episode takes a moment to explain the language issue - that is, why do all the aliens in the universe speak English - which as far as I know has never been addressed on Doctor Who before. And thankfully, it's a good and beautiful example of how to work a nerdy explanation into your story. Unlike, say, George Lucas, who chooses stupid things to explain and wastes your time doing it, here Russell T. Davies quickly informs us that the TARDIS has a universal translator that works by remote, further adding: It's a psychic thing, don't worry about it. Which Rose does, of course, which is great because it moves the plot ahead and justifies the explanation being in the episode. Perfect exposition. Gold star.

Although Doctor Who has always used time travel chiefly as an excuse to change settings every episode rather than for its more complex storytelling possibilities, there are hints in this episode that the new series is going to at least raise some questions from time to time. "Five billion years later," Rose muses, "my mum's dead." That kind of unnerving realization brings the whole story to life, more even than costumes and effects.

FIRSTS

First hints of D9's Enormous Angst. Yeah, there was a reference to the time war when he was talking to the Nestene Consciousness but he didn't really have time to brood about it then.

First Last of the Time Lords, and maybe also the first verification that this is really a continuation of the series and not a reboot.

First instance of a computer scan taking just long enough to provide a touching moment.

First questionable use of a pop song.

First instance of the Doctor having all kinds of fun and then being sad at the end because people died.

First heart-string plucking use of Rose's theme.

SCOREKEEPING

Does the Doctor save the day in this one? Yes. Good ass-kicking episode for D9. He saves Rose and most of the aliens on Platform One, and takes down the villain rather gruesomely while he's at it.

Semi-Companion: Jabe

Nice Person Who Talks to Rose and Dies: Rafallo

Best Scenes: "She's dead now" and the ending.

Best joke: The iPod that plays classical music.

Most emotional: Rose's theme.

WTF Factor: 5.5/Apple/26 is the first time in the series you can just about hear Russell laughing at you because he knows that you know that there is no possible justification for making an actor say anything that weird.

Woeful Cliche: The Countdown of Death, although I can't complain too much because it actually makes sense in the story. It's used about as well as it could be, too - It starts up before there's any danger, and of course we know it's going to be a Countdown Of Death, but the Doctor and Rose don't know that, which is good tension-building stuff.

Personal Confuser: The Steward's computer has a "Kill Me Horribly" button. Shouldn't there be a little window that pops up to ask "Are you sure?"

Surprise Time Lord Super Power #1: Bullet Time. I like that he takes a little moment of Zen to do it. And really, if you call yourself a Time Lord it shouldn't be any big deal to shift your perception of time.

And the Big Episode Rating List:

1. The End of the World

2. Rose

Doctor Who Review: 1-1 "Rose"

2010-05-17T02:25:00.000-07:00

Spoiler note: I will spoil the episode in this review and talk a bit about how it fits into the series but I'll try not to give away too much about future episodes so if you haven't watched the series already you can follow along with me.

Brief Synopsis: A seemingly ordinary young woman named Rose has a chance encounter with killer mannequins and a strange man named "The Doctor." She handles the excitement well and is rewarded with the chance to accompany the Doctor on his adventures through time and space.

Five Words: Good, but trying too hard.

Introductions: The Ninth Doctor(D9). Rose and her supporting cast of Mickey and Jackie.

REVIEW

There's no getting around the fact that the first episode is a bit wet and floppy, like a fish handshake. The opening is too technoish, shiny modern, "Isn't this very exciting!" Rose is quite watchable but her mom(Jackie) and boyfriend(Mickey) take up time without being very interesting. There are also prominent plotholes, several scenes that don't work, some iffy special effects and a lot of horror movie cliches.

Predictable zombie-like behavior aside, the Autons are great, and despite being a long-neglected entry in the Doctor Who bestiary they perfectly suit the relaunch of the series. Living mannequins are no less disturbing now than they've ever been, and they need no setup and very little explanation. It does end up going a little overboard with the monster trash can and freakish mannequin Mickey. The special effects run past their limits and become jarringly cartoonish.

Besides the Doctor, Rose, Jackie and Mickey, the other notable character here is Clive, a likeable paranoid who's been keeping tabs on the Doctor(somehow only managing to collect unconvincing photoshops of D9's promotional images). Clive is the perfect example of a guy who would love to be a companion if given the chance, but is completely wrong for the role. It's still sad to see him killed off; he's the first example of New Who's tendency to burn through perfectly likeable characters at an alarming rate.

The highlight of "Rose" is the TARDIS reveal, which is absolutely perfect and justifies every awkward moment in the rest of the episode. The power of this great little scene makes good every promise behind the relaunch - it proves that Doctor Who is a timeless show that deserves a rebirth, and it proves that the right people are in charge of the new series, if you'll just give them a chance to hit their stride.

IN RETROSPECT

It's quite weird to watch this first appearance of Mickey Smith and know that he'll actually turn out to be fairly likeable in the final analysis. In this episode he's little more than an easily jettisoned extra from Rose's mundane life. He's good-hearted but not that sharp. Kind of a dope, a little too much of a GUY guy. He'd rather be watching football; he tries too hard to look tough. He seems to be Rose's antithesis, a boring, ordinary human with no potential. Rose's mom Jackie actually makes a better impression here with her bold, comical flirtation with D9.

Christopher Eccleston is fantastic, of course, but I regret that his Doctor isn't written much differently than David Tennant's. He's manic, a fast-talking man of action, makes too many wiseass remarks. Other than shades of angst and sarcasm, they behave pretty much the same. And obviously it's a shame Eccleston didn't get more episodes.

The Doctor is kind of bizarrely cheerful in this episode. Part of that is his love of danger and his enjoyment of Rose's company, but it seems a bit out of character compared to the rest of the upcoming season. Ultimately, a small flaw for a first episode. Maybe D9 is just trying too hard to cover up his universe-supporting angst.

THE BIGGER PICTURE

While "Rose" has its flaws, it wisely avoids the mistakes of the previous attempt at a relaunch - the 1996 TV movie. It doesn't try to explain anything more than the crucial facts you need in order to understand what the show is about. Like the best geek-to-mass-media conversions - say, the Spider-Man or Iron Man movies - it gives fans the faithfulness to the original that they want(within reason) but it doesn't compromise on entertainment value in order to deliver fan service. Not only do we not hear words like "Gallifrey," "Daleks," or "Chameleon Circuit," time travel doesn't even get mentioned except as the last temptation to get Rose to come on board the TARDIS - and the result is that every drop of continuity that appears is a treasure for new and old fans alike.

D9's callousness toward Mickey is a bit surprising here. It is unapologetically elitist behavior from the Doctor, who in other situations has often celebrated the common man. It shows that he's become jaded by his experiences, and it's a hint of a theme we'll see recurring in future episodes: The Doctor needs a companion to remind him what it's like for normal people.

FIRSTS

First new episode since 1989!

First new Doctor since 1996!

First Autons since 1971!

First It's Bigger on the Inside for the new series.

First onscreen "fan" of the Doctor. Not counting the kid from The Greatest Show in the Galaxy who makes metacomments like "I know it's not as good as it used to be..."

SCOREKEEPING

Does the Doctor save the day in this one? No. Well, he provides the antiplastic and saves Rose early on, but is taken prisoner in the climactic confrontation.

Does he inspire someone else to save the day? Yep, Rose plays hero at the climax. This marks the start of a trend for D9.

Nice Person Who Talks To Rose And Dies: Clive

Best Scene: Bigger on the inside.

Funniest Moment: "I'm in my dressing gown. Anything could happen."

Cheesiest: The independently moving mannequin arm with its magical powers of levitation and leverage. The Doctor spends an awful lot of time wrestling feebly with the Autons in the climactic scene, too.

Most Emotional: When Rose says "No" to the Doctor there is such a sense of drear existential horror. It's a moment that lasts just long enough to make you feel really depressed before turning back around for the happy ending.

The Gaiman Award For Fanciful World-Building: The Shadow Proclamation. Who's proclaiming what now? If it's so shadowy how does anyone know about it?

Woeful Cliches: The Crawling Hand. Or how about the door that slams shut to trap the heroine, operated by no visible (or conceivable) party? After a lifetime of Zelda videogames I've grown a bit tired of that one. Also, why do horror movie monsters always move really slowly at first, then speed up the instant the heroes start to run?

And finally, the Big Episode Rating List, part 1:

1. Rose

Now wasn't that exciting? Stay tuned for more reviews.

Extremely Minor Tips For Better Living

2009-10-19T23:42:00.000-07:00

It is a well-established fact that the first Traveling Wilburys album is better than the second, whether it's due to the randomness of inspiration, the loss of Roy Orbison, or some mysterious magical chemical that must have been floating around the atmosphere in 1988. But if you listen to both albums together on shuffle, the differences disappear and you have one big chunk of good old-fashioned enjoyable music.

Eden: Heartfelt Reactionary Utopia

2009-10-03T12:32:00.000-07:00

Eden is among the truest of myths. It is human nature to remember a better place in a better time, and to extrapolate from that the existence of a long-lost utopia. Perhaps it is because we sense the hand of entropy drawing us down inexorably. More likely it is an adaptation, an evolutionary counterweight to our curiosity and wanderlust.

Eden is the memory of simplicity. It is childhood innocence shared by all and converted into an explanation. Before we knew sex and sin we sought each other innocently, explored our world, named everything in it because that is our nature. Adam must have found Eve attractive before the fall; he just didn't know what to do about it yet. He must have teased her putting snakes in her hair and spiders in her fig leaf.

Eden is a knowable mystery and a conquerable wilderness. It is not civilized or entirely safe but it is an easy environment for humans to dominate. Like a video game, it presents just enough challenge to make us happy. Link goes looking for Zelda and she disappears as soon as she is found - isn't it really a game of hide and seek? Link, again, doesn't know what to do with Zelda when he finds her. And if there is a role for God in this story it would have to be the evil man who keeps them apart, because there are only three characters, and the evil man represents Power.

Some will say that the lesson of the story is that you should be obedient to God(i.e. Power) but the real lesson is Ignorance is Bliss, so long as you live somewhere that is forgiving to the ignorant.

In An Axiom Far Far Away

2009-08-04T03:58:00.000-07:00

The Mandalorian Principle: Audiences love what is compelling but not explained.

The Midichlorian Counterprinciple: Audiences do not love what is explained but not compelling.

What I Miss About TV

2009-08-01T07:54:00.000-07:00

What I miss about TV is the random access. TV(with cable) was a great technology for quickly finding engaging content without a particular plan in mind. With the web and podcasts and such you have to go through a process of selection that involves mental effort. I guess what I'm saying is websurfing is a more deliberate pasttime than channel surfing, and the ability to mindlessly explore a limited set of TV channels fills a niche in the modern homo sapien's life that the internet can't quite replace. TV's a little bit like iPod Shuffle, in a way. You turn it on, it delivers content, and you respond with a simple binary decision about whether you're entertained. Even when the eventual conclusion is "Nothing's on," there's a certain satisfaction in having looked, and having exhausted the possibilities. The sense of ennui when it seems that there's "Nothing on" on the internet is, by contrast, infinitely deep. It can go on for hours if you persist in looking, because you know the thing you're looking for is out there somewhere(it always is) but you can't seem to find it, or even quantify it with a Google search.

I suppose Youtube is the obvious counter to this, but somehow I don't spend a lot of time there, even though I do like it. Probably I just need more bandwidth. Which is a funny word, sounds like a word a baby would make up. Bandwidth. Huh.

DS-10 Exegesis

2009-07-16T05:20:00.000-07:00

I've been tinkering with Korg DS-10, the generally awesome music creation app for the Nintendo DS. It has some limitations, but it's a surprisingly powerful tool for its modest platform and the touch screen allows for direct input in the style of Korg's Kaoss Pad device.

The method I've been using with DS-10 is to construct loops and instrument/scale sets and then improvise with them. You can hear some of the more interesting results of this work here: DS-10 Exegesis

There will be more of this in the future.

Irrational Planet - The Electronic Album

2009-06-20T04:30:00.000-07:00

Get it Here.

I have a compulsion to follow my muse capriciously, leaving things unfinished. But with work on my newer projects stalling, I resolved to devote one last flurry of edits to the group of tracks I had long envisioned as belonging to my first album, to be named, as is this blog, Irrational Planet. Some of these I've published before, albeit in different forms. Some are being released for the first time.

(Technically, I suppose my collected improvisations to date would be my first album... But that seems like a different sort of creature that lacks a specific name.)

Learning is Fun: The Smurfs of War edition

2009-05-24T17:54:00.000-07:00

"Amazingly, the plot of Smurf vs. Smurf, published in the early 1970s, was almost exactly replicated in modern history with the escalation of the Serbo-Croatian conflicts of the 1980's and 90's: from a football game (see Dinamo Zagreb-Red Star Belgrade riot), to the ethnical division of villages and finally all-out war." From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smurf_Versus_Smurf

In Pac-Man, three of the ghosts act in concert to try to outflank the player. Blinky aims straight for Pac-Man. Pinky tries to anticipate where Pac-Man is going. Inky attempts to be on the opposite side of Pac-Man from Blinky. The last ghost, Clyde, tries to keep his distance from Pac-Man, but still causes problems because the player will be concentrating on escaping from the other three. Details here.

There are three Transformers that turn into planets, counting the tie-in Death Star toy. Oddly, Fortress Maximus is still a lot bigger, and a lot more expensive - google product search reveals a small industry devoted just to selling all the various little plastic bits of him. You can pay $200 for just his head.

Cats Can't Talk #2

2009-04-07T03:33:00.000-07:00

Lalla Skub Python Spaghetti Pope

2009-04-06T21:17:00.000-07:00

Recently I've been listening to the audio book version of The God Delusion, read by author Richard Dawkins and his wife(and former time traveler), Lalla Ward. Generally I agree with it and don't consider it unfair, though he does dwell overly long on some topics that seem gratuitous to me, like nitpicking the Bible. Might as well shoot fish in the theological barrel. I've seen the skub over religion enough times on the web that it's old hat. Just post a link to Skeptic's Annotated Bible and move on.

The internet has provided some lovely trojan horses against religion such as the invisible pink unicorn and the flying spaghetti monster; most venerable of these is Discordianism, which might as well be the official religion of the internet. Discordianism is the true true religion; it is also the old new religion, predating upstarts like the Church of the Subgenius. To some extent they all have their roots in H.P. Lovecraft, for whom atheism was overwhelmingly the optimistic view.

Occasionally on the internet you may encounter the overeager convert to Discordianism. I was such a netizen once, many years ago. To a certain kind of person - someone who quotes The Life of Brian a lot, say - it is a thrilling discovery, an ontological moebius strip that allows and encourages you to be a cult of one and speak in tongues all you want, secure in the knowledge that it only has to make sense to you.

Discordianism is still my favorite answer to the question "What religion are you?" I tend not to say it, because cool people tend not to be the ones asking, and besides the explanation is too long and too much of an in-joke for such conversations.

It is impossible to otherwise respond without a series of parentheticals; I'm agnostic(practically atheist(but with a spiritual side(and an interest in myth, which I see as a key to the human psyche(See? The word "psyche" is a mythological reference)))). Discordianism gives me a more satisfying answer, one that says in one word, "I'm aware it's all a game, but that won't stop me from having fun."

This is the great thing about Discordianism and the reason it's more than just a parody; all the old enlightenment-centered religions encourage you to go into seclusion and deep meditation and throw away all the parts of your personality that are insane, but they don't give you the tools to assemble a functioning human being from the parts that are left over. The missing tool is the Discordian mantra, "You are a Pope."

Anyways, it seems oddly appropriate to be reading/hearing Dawkins's book now, because I've been delving deep into myth-space for my new project, which, if all goes well, will be a concept album of mythological mash-ups. One of my artistic principles is to include a dark heart of Yin in the midst of Yang.

Cats Can't Talk #1

2009-04-01T20:19:00.000-07:00

Dacrylagnia

2009-03-27T21:56:00.001-07:00

Is one of my favorite words that I learned from the internet. It's a whole story in one word. I haven't gotten around to actually writing that story down, but it seemed a good title for a twisted little tune.

Also present in this virtual B-side is the opening piece of my new project. It's a mind-massaging bit of 11/4 rhythms and tone clusters that I put together just today. It's a funny wine, not what you're expecting, but you may like it.

Dacrylagnia

Three Thoughts On The Watchmen Movie

2009-03-12T03:55:00.000-07:00

1. The violence is too much. It's over the top, it's grim and gritty, it's the too-cool and too-desensitized thing that Watchmen(the comic) more or less created and that Alan Moore has regretted for twenty-five years. V For Vendetta(the movie) had exactly the same problem - the message of the story was buried beneath a layer of Awesome Badass. Violence that existed in the comic, and which the nature of comics allows the reader to dwell on exactly as long as he or she wishes, is made so gory and brutal that it must become a spectacle. The sadly formulaic superhero fight scenes drag the film down, and the ultimate tragedy? This brand of action is not even that entertaining anymore, though at least Watchmen's cameramen have the decency not to throw their cameras down a flight of stairs and call the result a fight scene. The sound effects, each one lovingly crafted to make each punch sound like a steamroller flattening a horse, are terribly distracting. Is that guy dead? Oh, no, he's fine. Wait, what about that time? It sounded like his entire skeleton was shattered into a million pieces. Nope, he's getting up again. Huh, I thought these guys didn't have super powers.

2. Otherwise, the movie was amazingly well realized. Doctor Manhattan alone was worth it. The crowd giggled at the big blue wang(not to mention the sex scenes) but I expect it was a horizon-broadening experience for them nonetheless. The movie did have a tendency to push the awesomeness of each moment so hard that at times it crossed into the numb emotional gray of a pop album where the volume is compressed like a TV commercial. It was tiresome, and as a fellow movie-goer put it, "difficult." But it's safe to say that pretty much anything that wasn't a fight scene was astonishingly good, and sometimes beautiful. When Matthew Goode delivered the famous climactic line, I was trembling with awe and excitement, and loving it. And if they didn't quite fit in all twelve cover images - the turning bottle of Nostalgia, ironically, was the most noticeable omission - Oh well. Close enough.

3. Alan Moore's name is not on the movie, and his fame spreads nonetheless. The man is officially the Philip K. Dick of our times; the culture has recognized his brain as a badly needed source of nourishment. I hope he has occasion, someday, to reflect on this, weigh the good and bad, and come out feeling positive about the experience. This is probably me being absurdly naive, so let me rephrase that: I hope the culture doesn't devour his brain too messily. We don't get brains like that every day. It takes a miracle.

Doctor Who: Alpha Male of Nobody

2009-03-09T13:27:00.000-07:00

Of all TV shows, Doctor Who is the closest to my heart. I watched PBS reruns of John Pertwee, Tom Baker, and Peter Davison when I was very young. The imagination and intelligence of the show appealed to me. I didn't notice its weaknesses. The slow pace, and the cheesy special effects - maybe, in a way, they made the show even more appealing, because the show was telling me, again, use your imagination. Just like you do when you're wandering the woods on a winter day, pretending you're on an alien planet. There's probably only two pieces of pop culture you need to see to understand my childhood, how happy and fulfilling those endless seasons were. One of them is Doctor Who. (The other is The Legend of Zelda.)

The show's hero, known only as The Doctor, has certainly influenced me, though he is so close to my childhood that it's difficult to tell the trees apart from the forest. I hesitate to blame my eventual personality on him; perhaps this is only coincidence. Or maybe it's enough to say that his example gave me permission to develop certain antisocial tendencies.

Generally, I think the Doctor is one of the best role models on TV, because he's a superhero of the intellect, and we don't get enough of those. His science may be sketchy, if not laughable, but the point is he uses his brain to solve his problems. Do you realize how many superheroes there are, and how few of them work this way? Even Batman, a smart fellow who defines himself by an avoidance of lethal weapons, ultimately closes each case with his fists. Superman may have a superbrain, depending on who's writing him, but he doesn't need it. He can laser a hole in your head just as easy as look at you. The Doctor is the number one brainy hero, and I'm not even sure if anyone deserves second place.

Of course, role models have a way of letting you down. A lesson for an older child; models are never the same as the thing they imitate. Never quite realistic. The Doctor is an outsider and an alpha male at the same time. He doesn't care, he drops out of the competition. But sooner or later everyone around him is forced, by his genius, to recognize his alpha status. They submit to him, even though they don't understand him. Because his brilliance is overwhelming.

I've been waiting my whole life for that to happen to me. For a long time I thought I had dropped out of the competition, but in fact I had only redefined it, naming myself Alpha Male of Nobody. I don't have to prove anything to anyone, because I'm outside and above. I thought I was independent, but it doesn't work that way. Without recognition to feed my ego, I disappear.

It's not enough to just be the smart guy. Except for limited moments of recognition in academia, or gaming, or internet posting, the world does not submit to the smart guy. And anyways, in the rare case that it does - Well, that's how things like Scientology happen. The smart guy is no less corruptible than anyone else, when people start believing his hype. Smart guys do save the day. They do it a lot, more than they get credit for. But they do it slowly, methodically, and often without enough foresight. There are always drawbacks. Smart guys create a new world that's better and scarier than yesterday's.

The new Doctor Who series is much more refined than the old one. Its pace is too fast and it's still capable of embarrassing itself, but overall it is a smarter and more self-aware show. The new show devoted an episode to what happens when people don't recognize the Doctor's alpha status. It was called Midnight. It was scary, and realistic, and maybe I should have seen it when I was a kid. I don't know. It's the forest for the trees - I can't tell.

In Avatar Form, Top Five Doctor Who Villains Who Should Return(And Continuity Be Damned!)

2009-02-27T10:46:00.000-08:00

1.2.3.4.5.

Three New Improvs

2009-01-24T19:27:00.000-08:00

I've been sitting on these for a while. One in particular needed editing. But if I start cutting and pasting I have trouble deciding when to stop, and there's only so much of that I can do and still call it improvised. So mostly I leave them alone even if I meander for a while in the middle. With each one of these it gets harder to come up with things that sound new. But I'm still tinkering with interesting effects to try out.

I am planning to record some things that are actually composed. Until now I've left my compositions to the computer to perform for me, but I have something I've been working on that I can do by myself.

Strangelet Soup

In the Future, Everyone Will Be "The Man" For Fifteen Seconds

2009-01-18T17:55:00.000-08:00

One of the odd things about the internet is meeting famous, or semi-famous people and interacting with them in a kind of community, and having to reconcile this experience with the experience of being a fan.

This is most pronounced, for me, on forums. More than once I have discovered that a person I like very much as a writer is not a person I can get along with on a message board. Of course, there's no reason to expect otherwise. You have to remind yourself that the writer of your favorite novel is not your friend, no matter how much time you feel you've spent with him, or how close you may feel to his characters.

And the strangeness of this dichotomy reaches its peak when the object of fandom has moderator power over the board. I have a small problem with authority - not in a spiteful troublemaker kind of way, more in a naive anarchist kind of way - so it's particularly uncomfortable when someone I admire becomes The Man. I have to resist an urge to take the side of a banned poster, even if they deserved it, and I have to temper my knee-jerk emotional response, which is resentment and paranoia.

I can see in myself the same emotional reaction that causes netizens worldwide to cry "The mods are nazis!" Such reactions are (mostly) unwarranted, but the net is so much like an anarchist utopia that the occasional imposition of authority stands out like black on white. It's impossible not to feel threatened. On occasion I have felt deeply disturbed by events like this, but I get over it within a couple days. I guess the lesson is "sleep on it."

Learning is Fun: Mortality Edition

2009-01-01T18:46:00.000-08:00

On a whim, I looked up the location of the grave of Emperor Norton.

That led me to the city of Colma, a modern necropolis. I found myself thinking I should go there someday.

Apparently there's a musical.

The plural of necropolis is "necropoleis."

Portal Trek (or: The Internet's 5000th Article About Portal)

2008-12-17T10:20:00.000-08:00

There was a recurring theme in Star Trek: The Next Generation of evolution to a new stage of life, consisting of some kind of psychedelic mental energy phase that transcends space and time, dissolves all borders, and lets us soup up our warp drive engines through sheer imagination. Wesley Crusher was supposedly a mutant harbinger of this future humankind.

This aspect of the show was summed up best by Q in the last episode: "The trial never ends. We wanted to see if you had the ability to expand your mind and your horizons. And for one brief moment, you did. ...For that one fraction of a second, you were open to options you had never considered. That is the exploration that awaits you. Not mapping stars and studying nebulae, but charting the unknown possibilities of existence."

The individual storylines contributing to this subplot were not always good, and it had a kind of 60s naivete to it, but I always liked this idea and wish more had been done with it, including the oft-maligned character of Wesley.

There's times when I play the game Portal that I feel like I'm super future man Wesley Crusher. And these are the best moments. I step through a portal on ground level and emerge from a point high on the wall, about fifty feet up, and begin to fall. Approaching terminal velocity, I look down and create a portal on the floor below me. I slip through and once again emerge from the portal high above, only now I'm falling sideways. Before gravity can reassert itself and overcome my momentum, I've landed on a distant platform, having abused the fabric of space-time to create a catapult. The laws of physics shrug. All this is compulsory, and the game designers have cleverly arranged the levels so that you will discover tricks like this, but you still feel like a genius when you do.

Portal is the smartest game I've ever played. Not that it's challenging - compared to old-school puzzlers like Lolo it's a cakewalk.* But the way that every aspect of the design stretches the imagination is unparalleled. Even more amazing is the economy with which this is accomplished. There is only one character - a sinister computer, a sarcastic version of HAL 9000 that acts as narrator and adversary. The heroine says nothing and would not even need to have a face were it not for the fact that you often end up looking at yourself through the portals. A sparse but evocative story is told through your antagonist's witty comments and a handful of fascinating environments.

Over the past decade, a lot of game designers have gotten carried away in their attempts to make video games a serious storytelling medium, and mostly the result has been overwrought time-wasting nonsense. Portal, meanwhile, has maybe a minute or two of unskippable dialog, and everything else is icing on the cake.** Using extreme minimalism, Portal strikes the imagination such that you come away wondering about the implications of everything it showed you.

The typical rules of video games are also parodied and exploited in fantastic ways. One stage requires you to get past a series of obstacles using a box, a standard trope of game puzzles. But Portal's sinister computer manipulates you, providing a box with pink hearts on it, planting a suggestion that humans are known to anthropomorphize inanimate objects, and then callously forcing you to "euthanize" your box before completing the stage. World 5-3 of Super Mario Bros. 3 has a well-loved item that has to be given up at the end, but that game never implies that you should feel bad about reaching the end of the level!

Star Trek may be naively optimistic about humanity's evolution, but Portal at least justifies holding out hope for great things to come in the evolution of video games. If my wishes are fulfilled, maybe some time in the not-too-distant future I'll be writing an article here about how some game makes me feel like I'm Odo.

*As is well known by this point, the cake is a lie.

**You will be baked, and then there will be cake.

Autumn into Winter

2008-10-22T14:24:00.000-07:00

Here.

This is a companion piece to Chrysalis. There's a basic chord structure in Autumn that's reversed in Chrysalis. It's emphasized most clearly during the swing-waltz sections. I started writing Chrysalis because I realized that the chords from Autumn would work just as well in reverse.

I originally wrote the first and last parts of Autumn as different pieces, but they grew and met each other in the middle. It's fun to write arpeggio-based pieces like this. You can use subtler and stranger progressions than you could with block chords.

2008-09-16T22:04:00.000-07:00

Richard Wright:

Thanks for the music

Here is Things

2008-09-05T17:07:00.000-07:00

New things. Yay!

I meant for the alternate version of "Hopeless Love" to be last on the playlist, but Archive.org decided to put it first for some reason. Aside from that chiptunes rendition, I've used a more new agey sound here. I think it's nice.

Click for things

Recent Dreams

2008-08-10T19:03:00.000-07:00

The sky beneath the water's edge
The ocean of light above my head
I stand ashore among my kind
And they listen to the rustling
of my mind.

I dreamt a day pleasantly passed
Two distant friends were joined at last
But time reversed, came yestermorning's sun
Destiny slipped and time
came undone.

The unlived days we wonder about
Pass over us like the shadows of clouds.
I stand ashore among my kind
And they listen to the rustling
of my mind.

A Random Observation From A Former Self

2008-08-06T19:48:00.000-07:00

I was googling myself and came across a comment that I wrote about one year ago. I think it's pretty accurate.

"Out of all the comic strips that aren’t funny anymore, Dilbert is the one that was funny the most recently."

Wow... With that caliber of witty pop-culture commentary, I bet I'll be appearing on VH1 any day now.

Negative Lad part 1

2008-07-28T14:26:00.000-07:00

At first, I didn't think I would put this up. These recordings were made as a test to see if I could get a good sound out of the piano and mike. The results were mixed - I was happy enough with the sound, but the piano needs tuning and you can hear lots of noise from the keys and pedals. The performance is also easy to criticize, showing off my dumb left hand and my sociopathic glee in sustaining chords into a stew of dissonance. But nitpicks aside, there were enough "keeper" moments in this improv session that I decided to go ahead and post it.

I only added significant effects to the middle section, which was already pretty weird anyway. The first and last bits just have minor tweaks to liven up the sound.

Negative Lad
1 - I'm A Big Fish
2 - In An Empty Pond
3 - Better Learn To Walk

If I were a less lazy person I would devote more time to practicing piano, because I do love it as an instrument.

Ps. Negative Lad is my superhero identity. Don't tell anyone.

Post-Awesome

2008-07-17T12:37:00.000-07:00

And now, the post-Mannette Festival depression phase of the summer.

Bleargh.

I wonder if this is how it feels to be a washed-up rock star. It's a feeling like "Wait, life can go back to being not awesome? Didn't I prove to the world that I'm cool and therefore above all this standing in line and doing paperwork and wondering how to get money?"

Off to the Festival of Steel

2008-07-01T10:55:00.000-07:00

Today I'm heading out to West Virginia to attend the Mannette Festival of Steel so I won't be updating for a couple of weeks.

The Mannette Festival is emblematic of how good it is to be involved in steelpan. Many of the world's foremost players and composers come to the festival to perform with students and amateurs.

Pan is a marvelous instrument, and a marvelous movement in culture worldwide. It is still an infant in accoustic musical instrument years, and much of its potential remains to be explored. It combines the possibilities of rhythm, melody, and harmony into a complex but accessible whole. The classical canon of pan, or the nearest thing to it, is calypso, a genre not so long gone that we can't still understand it and dance to it. Even the most intense competitions of skill on the instrument are festive occasions. All music has the power to move us, but perhaps none is so blatantly fun as steelpan.

It is probably for these same reasons that pan is not often taken seriously. In America we typically hear the instrument as a soundtrack for "Girls Gone Wild" commercials late at night, as generic Caribbean atmosphere in "Under the Sea" and "Kokomo*," and occasionally in synthesized form in the Super Mario games.** It's not that pan is even counterculture; it's simply viewed as a novelty if it's recognized at all. It is a shame for the instrument to be overlooked. It is a great way to get people into music - especially young people.

I'm reminded of how lucky I personally feel to have discovered this instrument. I spent a number of years without a direction in life or any connection to people outside of my close circle of family and friends, and pan played a big part in turning things around. I'm still looking for a way to sustain myself with my creativity, but I feel, for the first time, confidence and satisfaction(and this blog has become a significant aspect of the process).

*A song which mentions some ten different Caribbean islands yet manages to overlook Trinidad and Tobago...

**Not to say that these things are equally disreputable. In fact, as Mario stands for both fun and a high standard of quality, I don't object to that association at all.

Fear the Groove

2008-06-26T15:28:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted a finished electronic piece for a while, so here's a newly polished one.

Because They Fear the Groove

This tune started with a bluesy bass-line in E-flat minor. I added layers to it while consciously avoiding giving much concern to the usual rules of harmony. The result was quite cool but a little too simple for my taste, so I added a coda in B-flat phrygian dominant to spice up the overall experience. A neat trick that results is that when the "B" section reoccurs at the end, you hear it in the context of the new tonality. This ambiguity isn't fully resolved until the final chord(B-flat).

New Music

2008-06-20T14:30:00.000-07:00

Three new things, here.

Rediscovering The Beatles

2008-06-15T15:20:00.000-07:00

Recently, thanks to the Purple Chick remasters, I've been listening to the Beatles a lot. I heard them in my childhood but never seriously listened to them until the recent Love album. I have an early memory of hearing songs like Rocky Raccoon and Piggies, thinking they were really about animals.

I'm more of a Pink Floyd guy - more instrumentals, more keyboards, more earnest lyrics - but there's no doubt that the Beatles were the best at what they did. Their humor often surprises me. I tend to take music at face value, so I don't immediately notice when a song is supposed to be a parody(I thought the strings in Good Night were lovely rather than comically over-the-top). Pink Floyd's humor tended to be either acidic or incomprehensible.

I think that Come Together is my favorite Beatles song, because it accomplishes so much with a cool rhythm and a small selection of modal chords, and the lyrics are so wonderfully surreal. Other times I'm more attracted to Because for opposite reasons, but the two are definitely top of my list.

One of the great things about the Beatles is that so many of their songs are one of a kind - unique within their catalog and elsewhere - and yet, if you had only the one song to go on, you might think that the band sounded that way all of the time, because they make it seem so natural and practiced. It's fun to imagine parallel universes where, for example, a song like Because might have been the basis for an entire album. I'd really like to visit those alternate worlds and bring back those albums. But then, maybe it's better to leave them to the imagination.

Voice of Wind

2008-06-12T23:06:00.000-07:00

For the past week or so I've been wrestling with editing an aimless 15 minute improv down to a reasonably sized collage of the best parts. Eventually I realized that I was trying very hard to turn a spontaneous event into a composition, and that perhaps this was foolish, or at least more trouble than it was worth. So I gave up on that and slapped together something new in just the past few hours.

Voice of Wind

It's three pan instruments playing in distinct ranges and each in a different pentatonic scale(adjacent on the circle of fifths). The result is more of an unchanging soundscape than my solo recordings, although paradoxically it took more planning and arrangement.

Accompanying it is a bonus track of the same piece distorted in amusing ways.

Devonian

2008-06-03T16:52:00.000-07:00

My girlfriend had been saying for some time that "Devonian: The Age of Fishes" would be a good title for a piece of music. After composing the basic melody for this piece, it seemed quite old and fishy, so I used the name.

Devonian

This piece is in the Phrygian mode, which can be found by playing the natural notes from E to E. The trick to composing for modes is to find alternative ways of expressing tension and drama, because they lack the dominant function chords that most western music is based on. Here, I've used tone clusters that contrast with the sparse harmony of the rest of the piece. The hardest part was coming up with a drum part that provided the right amount of structure and syncopation without calling too much attention to itself.

Composing this was pretty quick and easy, as it's a relatively simple piece - it can be played on piano using only the white keys. I tend to be suspicious of pieces like that. I can't help thinking that people have been writing tunes like this for thousands of years, and surely someone has used "E-B,C-F" as a melody before. Then I remind myself that if I really cared about total originality, I would have to do something crazy like throw out all my instruments and design new ones around weird tuning systems. I have to believe that the things coming out of my brain have a certain flavor to them that's original even if the ideas aren't entirely new.

Trekkie Confessional

2008-06-03T02:08:00.000-07:00

I've been revisiting Star Trek recently, following the realization that I could rent all the special features DVDs from my local public library. The Star Trek franchise is dear to me, even though it went a little off the rails toward the end. As I've been watching special features and the occasional episode, I've been contemplating things like "What went right for the character of Julian Bashir that went wrong for the character of Wesley Crusher?" and other fannish notions. I love behind-the-scenes stuff so this has been great fun for me.

It's been said many times before, but it's nice to see a future where humanity figures out the whole civilization thing and solves issues of disease and hunger. I'm a utopian at heart; I feel that it should be possible to get everyone to coexist happily if you can just kick a few close-minded people in the seat of the pants and get them to pay attention to themselves and to the world. I know, in my realist's ego, that people are too stuck in their own narrow reality tunnels to even agree on what utopia is, let along create it, but my intuition says otherwise, and it may be because Trek has defined my idea of the future.

My favorite people on Trek are the outsiders, the Stranger in a Strange Land types - Spock, Data, and Odo. Alienation sums up how I relate to most human beings, so naturally I identify with the aliens, and appreciate that they are given their place in Trek and allowed to be weird, free of judgment. And when they face some kind of threat, or discrimination, or accusation of inanimacy, their friends stand up for them. Friends who are more normal but no less open-minded.

Probably the only scifi show that strikes closer to my heart is Doctor Who, but I'll save that for another time.

Ps. Various dictionaries, via Google, are telling me that "inanimacy" is not a word, but I don't like the sound of "inanimateness."

The Convenience of Twelve

2008-05-21T15:08:00.000-07:00

One thing that I find fascinating about steelpans is the arrangement of notes on the various types of instrument. Since most steelpan instruments consist of multiple drums, it's very convenient that the tuning system used by most of the world has twelve notes. You can take the factors of twelve and relate them directly to the pans and their tonalities.

2 x 6 = 12 ; Double second divides twelve notes into two whole-tone scales of six notes each.
3 x 4 = 12 ; Cello/guitar pan divides twelve notes into three diminished seven chords of four notes each.
4 x 3 = 12 ; Tenor bass and quadraphonic pans divide twelve notes into four augmented triads of three notes each.
6 x 2 = 12 ; Six-bass pan divides twelve notes into six pairs of fourths and fifths.

If there were thirteen notes in an octave, all this would be a complete mess.

The only pan that uses a single drum is the lead or tenor, which is arranged in a circle of fifths. The interesting result of this is that any melodic contour can be easily remapped into a different key by shifting the physical pattern of notes around the circle.

The Mannette Steel Drums website has pictures of the drums and their layouts here.

Chrysalis

2008-05-13T16:07:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't posted much lately. I've been sick.

Today, I'm putting up a sort of demo version of a piece that I think is my best work in composing via computer. I've been tinkering with it, trying to find a sound that works, but that was becoming very complicated, so instead I've just put up the most recent version using the sounds that I composed it with - all bell-based synths.

Chrysalis

I hope someday to record a version of this for steelpan orchestra but in its current state I fear that the arpeggio parts are unplayable due to their speed and complexity. The cello voice is wonderful for arpeggios but the size and layout of the instrument makes it very physically demanding to play complex lines without rest.

Two New Things

2008-05-05T16:53:00.000-07:00

Two things today.

Objects of Desire / Skin

I've taken to heart something Andy Warhol said - do something once or do it every day. And so I've been putting more work into recording and editing.

The first, boldly named piece, is based an idea that I shall definitely be revisiting at some point. Aside from a few brief diversions, it's based on just two chords, but I was able to get a lot of interesting emotional effects. The tonalities have just enough in common that they feel related, but each makes a distinct impression.

Unfortunately, there is some background noise that crept into this one, but I excised the worst of it and was too happy with the performance to throw it out.

The second piece is more of an experiment. I played lead pan with my fingers, with the microphone placed right up under the drum. It's an interesting sound, I think. The finger taps remind me of the pluck of a harp, and the muffled harmonics are remniscent of gamelan.

It's a bit difficult to play pan this way. It's hard to get a good tone from any but the lowest notes. Playing full chords as I do at the end is tough, which is why there isn't more of it. The breathless pace was also a challenge and exposed the relative lack of coordination in the fingers of my left hand.

Climb the hill in my own way / Every day is the right day

2008-05-03T11:27:00.000-07:00

Recently, I've been thinking that the process of developing one's musical skills is like climbing a mountain, except that everytime you think you've reached the peak, it turns out to be a small summit, and the true peak remains hidden in the clouds. For every moment that you think, "Yeah, I'm really good," there are countless moments when you think, "I'm not good enough," and this seems to remain true no matter how long you work at it.

Case in point - Making these rough, formative recordings has been a humbling experience. Most of my experience has been in playing live as part of a band, which takes a somewhat different skill set than recording. Being in a band is a social experience. You bond with the other players, and support them just as they support you. You have to be able to listen as well as play, which may seem easy and obvious, but is actually one of the elements of that nebulous concept that is talent. Recording is different. It's kind of solipsistic, especially solo recordings. There's nothing but your sound versus the empty space. And empty space has a way of making you look bad, instead of holding you up the way a good drummer does. Empty space just sits there, daring you to come up with an idea that's better than blank Zen perfection.

As a result of all this, it seems that with each of these recordings I make, I get more critical and demanding of myself. Which is good, really. Once I feel like I've finished with this project, I'm going to have a lot of pent-up energy ready to spend on more structured compositions.

Ten Great Games

2008-04-28T01:38:00.000-07:00

Someone recently asked me(in real life, even) about my favorite video games. This is something I've occasionally thought about, but the question set me to mulling it over once again. Here, in alphabetical order, are ten of my favorites. The ten? Maybe. For now. I always change my mind when I re-read these lists.

Frequently cited for Best Game Ever status is Chrono Trigger, an RPG made by a "dream team" of designers from Square and Enix. A simple but charming story leads you through time and space, searching for the cause of the apocalypse in 1999. Compared to the RPGs of its era(and most RPGs of any era), Chrono Trigger is sublimely elegant and streamlined. Battles occur without any interruption, characters team up for attacks, and strategy arises from the placement of enemies. The plot keeps you glued to the screen, introducing new hooks all the time to keep you from turning the game off. And just when you think you're finished, New Game+ is unlocked, along with a variety of new possible endings. Players who manage to defeat the final boss at the very start of a New Game+ are treated to a visit to the Developers' Room, where the game's staff offer a final congratulation.

It's a perfect peanut butter <-> chocolate situation. The "job system" of the classic Final Fantasy games was cast aside, replaced by a deconstructionist philosophy that reshuffled the relationships between abilities, characters and objects in each new game. Meanwhile, the designers of Tactics Ogre had come up with a wonderfully engaging battle simulation, hampered only by the lack of an interesting system of character growth. Overlay the job system on Tactics' gameplay, and the result is Final Fantasy Tactics, the most addictively customizable game I've ever played. I should also admit that the game has its flaws - plenty of them, in fact - but that doesn't keep it off my list, as I have probably spent more time playing this than any other game. Its GBA sequel, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, is also good, fixing many of the flaws while unfortunately sacrificing some of the depth.

One reliable source of new ideas in 3D games has been the rolling of balls. There are two examples on this list - the first is Katamari Damacy for the PS2. This is one of those occasional bursts of mad genius that arises from Japan and demands to be experienced, like sushi, Ranma 1/2, and the head-mounted toilet paper dispenser. The game's opening movie is a stunning experience in its own right, awash in rainbow colors and entheogenic imagery. The actual playing of the game is simple but captivating. You are a small, green fellow with a canister-shaped head, and you roll a ball around that gathers stuff to it like a snowball gathers snow. Anything less than a certain fraction of the ball's size attaches to it, adding to its mass, and increasing the size of objects that you can collect. That's it, except that the objects are identifiable. Ants, pencils, toilets, cats, children, cars, houses, windmills, islands, rainbows, gods - all are objects in the game, and many of them react in some way to being chased down and captured. To transform an entire world of creatures and things into one huge ball of crap is a somewhat disturbing experience, but in a good way.

Probably the greatest franchise in gaming, the Zelda series offers an embarrassment of riches. It's a challenge to decide which title in the series is the best. Is it Twilight Princess, the most realistic and refined of the 3D games? Maybe Wind Waker, which resembles a vivid cartoon more than a game? How about A Link to the Past, the best of the old 2D games, with its classic take on the light world/dark world design? Since this is a list of my favorite games, I'm going to pick the original, the shiny gold NES cartridge, The Legend of Zelda. I'm under no illusion that this is a better game than its successors, but its antiquated charm holds a special place in my heart. I particularly like the nonlinearity of the first Zelda, and wish more modern games would embrace this sort of structure. There is a prescribed sequence to the game's dungeons, but if you choose to walk away from the set path you may do so. Zelda also famously offers a "second quest" with a reorganized world and completely new dungeons. In my fan's heart I mourn the fact that modern games are too complex to make this kind of bonus feature viable in today's game industry.

In video games, unlike other entertainment media, sequels are frequently better than the original. Such was the case with the classic Mega Man 2. The first game had some good ideas but exemplified the sadistic streak of early NES games, when difficulty was equated with quality. Mega Man 2 brought the challenge down to a fair level, still tough for newbies but not dominatrix tough. It also perfects the Mega Man concept. You choose what order to complete the stages in, and gain new weapons at the end of each. The weapons you get change the nature of the game for the remaining levels, adding a lot of strategy and replay value compared to other platformers of the time. As the series continued, diminishing returns quickly manifested in the enemy and weapon designs. None were ever again as good as Mega Man 2, nor were the graphics and music as inspired. Mega Man 2 was the pinnacle of the series, and arguably, the entire NES era.

Metroid Prime is an essential title for the Gamecube, combining first-person action with Zelda-like controls and a scenario revealed through discovered data, hieroglyphs, and sensor analysis, similar to Marathon. While its deviance from normal FPS standards is jarring at first, as it lacks the direction inputs to offer full look and strafe controls, once you get comfortable with the game it offers one of the most enthralling virtual worlds yet seen in video games. Having played one too many plot-heavy RPGs(and the one too many was specifically Xenogears), the optional scenario text in Metroid Prime came as a joyful revelation to me. Here was a game in which plot and exposition never came at the expense of gameplay. Sweetening the deal, the game has lots of potential for sequence-breaking, i.e. defying the designed path of events in the game for fun and profit. This accidental feature, partially "fixed" in later releases of the game and more or less expunged from the sequels, adds a great deal of challenge and replay value.

The short but sweet Ogre Battle series merges RPG with war simulation. Instead of leading one party of heroes through a world full of randomly occuring battles, in Ogre Battle you organize an entire army of warriors into groups and send them out to fight an opposing army. The N64 sequel, Ogre Battle 64, is a step up in depth and strategic detail from the original, making it one of my all-time favorites. The task of naming fifty to two hundred characters alone is enough to make me drool with excitement, and each time I start a new game I pick a theme, like mythological gods, or characters from other video games, to add a different sense of fantasy to the experience. Sadly, once you reach the final battlefield, there's nothing really left to do, so I tend to quit in the last chapter a little bit before reaching that sad moment.

I love when a game has bonus content well beyond the norm, whether it takes the form of secrets, cheats, bonus missions, or multiplayer options, or in the case of Perfect Dark, all of the above. It's a great action game, but it's the vast array of multiplayer possibilities that make Perfect Dark almost infinitely entertaining. The game features great weapon concepts like the Laptop Gun, which can act as an AI-operated drone, or the N-Bomb, which causes visual impairment. The maps are fun and full of secret passages and crawlspaces. The game's one flaw is its potential for lag, even with the N64 RAM expansion. Avoiding explosives and the rather superfluous Hi-Res mode helps to alleviate this downside.

The N64 was an ill-fated console that failed to compete with Sony's Playstation, but you wouldn't have known it from their launch titles. The PSX launched with... Um... What did it launch with? Toshinden? Whatever it was, it was unmemorable. Meanwhile, Nintendo had converted the most famous video game character of all into 3D, and the result was Super Mario 64. There's a joy in the movements of Mario in this game that has rarely been seen before or since. The various jumps and attacks that Mario is capable of make the game endlessly entertaining, despite its simple graphics and relatively small world. About once a year I dust off this game and collect all the stars all over again.

The Gamecube, on the other hand, was lacking in launch titles, with no big franchise offerings from Nintendo(Luigi's Mansion was a decent game, but more of a one-off oddity than a real Mario title). Who should come to the rescue but... Sega? Yes, perhaps Sega's last great offering to the world was Super Monkey Ball, a masterpiece of simple game design. Roll a ball from the start of a maze to the finish, move on to the next stage. The levels get increasingly complex and difficult as you go. That's all there really is to it, but like another arcade classic, Bubble Bobble, the simple but clever nature of the design lends itself to hundreds of variations. Bubble Bobble could trust its gameplay to carry it through minimalist concepts, like a floor containing only empty space, and Super Monkey Ball is able to pull off similarly fiendish twists, like a single platform with a rapidly spinning goal. The game manages difficulty level perfectly, with easy levels for beginners and challenges that ramp up gradually to the point of pure insanity. As a welcome bonus, Super Monkey Ball includes a variety of multiplayer minigames, including the best billiards simulation I've played. Super Monkey Ball 2 is also a solid game, although I prefer the first one.

Arpeggioland

2008-04-23T15:53:00.000-07:00

More noodling. If I'd thought of it, I probably would have put the album name in the ID3 tags as "noodles" when I started this project. Oh well.

Arpeggioland

With this one I've used reverb to simulate an effect like the sustain pedal on a vibraphone. This is another effect that I'd like to explore further in real-time if I can figure out how to do it. I'm imagining a plugged-in pan setup that would have effects pedals for stuff like this. Could be fun.

There was an audio glitch in this one that I had to delete, along with a very small patch of music. Hopefully it isn't too noticeable. I almost left it in, but I knew I'd be bothered by it later if I didn't fix it.

Sorry I haven't been posting in the past week, but I have an excuse: Rehearsals with Ray Holman.

Storytelling Troubles in Twilight Princess and Final Fantasy XII

2008-04-16T13:23:00.000-07:00

I don't get around to playing most of the big franchise games these days, but I did make time for a couple of grade-A titles, namely Final Fantasy XII and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Both games present the player with very convincing virtual worlds to explore, and both take their series' storylines in more realistic directions. The degree to which they succeed at this is quite remarkable, but this trend toward realism clashes with many traditional video game elements.

The realistic nature of these virtual worlds has psychological consequences - the creatures within them are so convincing that I sometimes feel a bit conflicted over killing them. Video games are famously casual about death, with the traditional value of a life being set at twenty-five cents. But as the monsters become more lifelike, the spirit of adventure no longer seems to justify slaying entire ecosystems full of wild animals. It is, of course, only a game, and anyone who thinks my rampant virtual slaughters will be echoed in the real world is a fool. But when virtual reality looks this real, it causes a certain moral dissonance. The lesson of games is that it doesn't matter; those animals you kill will reappear magically when you leave the area and return. Video games have always taken a haphazard approach to ecology, which we didn't really notice until now. The realistic illusion of Twilight Princess's world collapses when you stand in a desert and look over a small hill at a massive lake.

Both games also struggle to present more mature plots while still delivering classic gameplay in the amount fans expect. In Twilight Princess, the storyline starts strong, but becomes stagnant about halfway through. The latter half of the game is occupied mostly by a single goal, and there is minimal dialogue compared to the first half. FFXII similarly reaches a status quo early on, and while its plot keeps moving, it also seems to suffer from having a longer "laundry list" than its script. Things that make the early storyline interesting, such as conflicting goals and motivations, disappear behind the need to have all the player characters fulfill their functions in the game. In both cases, the needs of the game stretch the story to the point of absurdity.

FFXII also flirts with absurdity by having its relatively realistic characters engage in the sort of over-the-top fighting moves that have been part of the Final Fantasy formula since the seventh installment in the series. Anime-like action scenes that were consistent with characters like the spiky-haired Cloud from FF7 seem totally bizarre in FFXII. When rogue hero Balthier waves his hands in the air and conjures a tsunami, I can't help but wonder where this power came from. You can, however, see the roots of this game/story division in the earlier games, particularly the distinction between game-death and plot-death.

I expect that the next stage of evolution for video games will be to overcome issues like these. The PS2/X-Box/Gamecube era gave us convincing 3D graphics, but the design challenge of putting this technology to use still remains.

Summer

2008-04-14T23:51:00.000-07:00

New steelpan noodling.

Summer

One of my favorite things to do when playing pan solo is to run up and down giant chords, as you can hear in this recording. The tonality is ambiguous; rather than use the diminished chord that normally occurs in major/minor keys, the chords here tend to escape into foreign areas of the circle of fifths. There's a sense of alternate major-minor-ness going on into infinity. The occasional emphasis of the Lydian #4 tonality adds further mystery.

For some reason, the images that came into my mind while I was editing this noodle were of hot summer days outside in the sun when I was young. A feeling of innocence and passing time.

Phrygdom

2008-04-06T22:19:00.000-07:00

Another of my musical experiments is online. More steelpan improvisation.

Phrygdom

This time, I've applied an effect that makes it sound kind of like a weird keyboard... If you played a keyboard with sticks. I like it. I need to figure out how to apply the effect in real time so I can run it through an amp and hear it as I play. It'd be a cool stunt to bring out during gigs, and it might blend with other instruments better.

The scale this time is phrygian dominant, which is heard in flamenco, klezmer, and Indian and Middle Eastern music. It's one of the most dramatic scales, as it has the dark, bold energy of the minor key dominant chord but without ever falling back to the subdued minor tonic.

My plan with these recordings is to keep doing them until I have roughly an album's worth. Since they're improvised, it's not going to be my best work, but the point is to make myself learn more about recording in Logic by doing it. I have some more electronic compositions that are nearly ready to post, too.

Archive.org derives a variety of formats for the files I post, but in the process the ID3 tags are lost, so download the 160kbps MP3. That's the format I upload it in.

The Pentatonic Scale

2008-04-02T02:02:00.000-07:00

Pentatonic scales are fun, pure, simple, quick to learn and easy to remember. Their blessing is also their curse - the lack of dissonance in these scales can make them bland. They're very sweet and pleasant. They don't have the attitude of blues scales or extended chords. But they're a great tool for soloing and composing.

One handy cheat is playing the pentatonic scale of the dominant over every chord in a major key - For instance, G A B D E over C major chords. This almost always works, and avoiding the tonic note makes the scale more interesting.

If you want to get clever, you can throw chord changes back in and modulate to the pentatonic scale a fifth up from every chord that occurs. It's a tactic for going "outside" that I've been playing with recently. After playing G over C, for example, you could play D over G, bringing in the foreign note F#.

When I fool around at the piano I love to play pentatonics with big stacks of fifths for harmony. The pentatonic can be seen as five consecutive perfect fifths. The G pentatonic scale, for instance, can be organized as G D A E B. Fifths played like this on the piano create a towering open space of harmonic layers. There's a sense not of chord-ness but of ancient, natural polyphony.

Weird Brains

2008-03-29T01:39:00.000-07:00

Artists and shamans are both in the business of publicly exercising their abnormal brains. The difference is that shamans are considered to have practical value.

All artists worth talking about are weirdos. I think many of them would have been shamans in a different time. Maybe a shaman is just an artist who has a good scam going. Or maybe it's the other way around.

I've never felt comfortable on the dance floor. I don't understand what I'm doing there, or who I'm doing it for. When I finally got onto the stage, I found a place that made sense. The only place that makes sense, that isn't imaginary or inside a video game.

I've sometimes wondered if I would feel at home in a monastery. Some kind of Zen place, peaceful, lots of time for contemplation. Do places like that really exist? I hope the other monks don't mind if I bring drums.

Today I was sitting on a bench in the snow, near a library, and listening to the Decemberists song "Legionnaire's Lament." I like that one. I like songs with vocabulary words. I started to write down interesting words that rhyme.

Then I saw Sarah Vowell's show, and then Clusterfunk, and then I came home and wrote a rambling blog post using my weird brain.

Reverb = Genius

2008-03-25T18:24:00.000-07:00

Koto-Scale Improv

I've been experimenting with recording recently, and this is the first thing that I've liked enough to put online. This is about %95 improvised. The simple theme at the beginning was planned, as was the key change, but that's it. I probably wouldn't have uploaded it, except that it sounds so spooky with the reverb.

The scale used for the first half originates with a Japanese string instrument, the koto. This scale, called In-Sen, arises from the way the koto is tuned. Interestingly, this five-note scale can be found within the seven-note scales of western music, but its attitude is quite different.

One of the most pleasant scales is the pentatonic, which can be described as a stack of five perfect fifths, for example F-C-G-D-A. Add two more notes to that stack and you get the seven-note scale of the western world, F-C-G-D-A-E-B. The first and last notes are a diminished fifth apart, and form a harmonic boundary between scale tones and the five other "outside" tones on the circle of fifths. Now, cut out the second and third notes, leaving F-D-A-E-B, and there's the In-Sen scale. It shares a sense of purity with the pentatonic, but the diminished fifth drastically changes its character.

Eris Vs. Eros

2008-03-24T21:40:00.000-07:00

Here is my second tune to be posted to the interwebs: Eris Vs. Eros.

Three mythological names in one title may be a bit too much implicit meaning for a three-minute long computerized instrumental to live up to, but once I'd thought of the name there was no doubt that I was going to use it. Don't read too much into it. Titles are mostly a hook to catch someone's attention and give them a rough picture of the content. I feel it's appropriate that they should be only vaguely suggestive, though, because too much "meaning" up front prevents the audience from hearing the music with an open mind.

This brings to mind something that David Byrne wrote in the liner notes for the CD release of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts:

Byrne: In the West, anyway, the causal link between the author and performer is strong. For instance, it is assumed that I write lyrics(and the accompanying music) for songs because I have something I need to "express." And that as a performer it is assumed that everything one utters is naturally autobiographical. I find that more often, on the contrary, it is the music and the lyric that trigger the emotion within me rather than the other way around. By making music, we are pushing our own buttons, in effect, and the surprising thing is that vocals that we didn't write or even sing can make us feel a gamut of emotions just as much as ones that we wrote. In a way making music is constructing machines that, when successful, dredge up emotions - in us and in the listener. Some people find this idea repulsive, for it seems to relegate the artist to the level of trickster, manipulator, deceiver. They would prefer to see music as an "expression" of emotion rather than a generator of it, to believe in the artist as someone with something to "say." This queasiness is connected with the idea of authenticity as well; that, for example, musicians who "appear" down-home must be more real.

I was very happy to read that, because it matches up with my own artistic experiences and makes me feel that I'm on the right track. Writing music for me is an almost psychedelic experience. During the creative act, there is little conscious consideration of "meaning." There is instead a feedback loop of generating ideas and critiquing them, over and over again until the thing feels right and complete in its entirety. Meaning arises unconsciously, as the art that one creates tends to reflect one's feelings at the time, even if one is not aware of it.

art/life/game

2008-03-24T05:33:00.000-07:00

A recurring issue of the day is whether video games qualify as art. Proponents point out that video games are clearly able to recreate art in any of its various forms, whether as film, music, painting, comic books, or even theater. Of course, the video game context changes things, which is where the naysayers come in. Games are defined by interactivity. Take away interactivity from a video game and the result is a very different medium, typically something like a computer-animated movie. If the audience has a choice in the outcome of the story, is it still art? Some have argued that the meaning of art disappears in this case. Another complaint is that games often offer not so much a plot as a laundry list of meaningless chores. Sort of like real life.

Let's go back to the beginning. Video games can do everything art can do and more. Even if we were to agree that interactivity destroys artistry(and it doesn't, but let it go) this point remains. Art is something that you get when you remove features from video games, or to put it more simply, video games are bigger than art. Art is a way for an artist to share his ideas about life, but ideas are ethereal. They don't have to prove themselves against the logic of the real world. Games are more real than art, with physical rules and cause and effect. Art is given significance by its distance from life, while games are trivialized by their closeness to it. Which then, are video games closer to, art or life? They are fictional, but they are a kind of existence.

A better phrase to describe video games is "virtual reality," and I think if we remember this label every time we talk about games vs. art, many things become clearer. Everything that goes on in "real" reality can be simulated in virtual reality. Our virtual realities still have practical limitations, such as the lack of full sensory input, but the only absolute distinction between virtual and real is that virtual realities will always be simpler than the reality that contains them.

Video games, then, are a bit like life and a bit like art. There's a recursive pair of aphorisms - Art imitates life, and life imitates art. Is art life? Is life a game? Are games an art? Video games both epitomize and irrelevantize the distinctions between these elements. Video games are art/life/game. There may come a time when humans forget that art/life/game was once three different things.

Shuffle Kerfuffle

2008-03-22T03:10:00.000-07:00

I'm stealing this idea from the Onion. Ten songs on shuffle:

1.Play Dead - Bjork
Bjork's pretty cool. I guess people have opinions about her. I dunno. She's a great singer. This song has a funky bass line. I like it.

2. Blackbird/Yesterday - The Beatles
This is from the new Love album of mashups and greatest hits. I ignored the Beatles for a long time because I figure things that are that popular probably aren't any good. Turns out, they live up to the hype. Yesterday is one of the most enjoyable songs to sing along with.

3. J-E-N-O-V-A - The Black Mages
One of the best compositions from the Final Fantasy series, in rock form. I love the key changes in this. It keeps shifting up or down a minor third. Strangely affecting.

4. Chocolate City - Parliament
In Parliament's cool guy on the radio series, this one isn't as fun as Wants to Get Funked Up, but it's still cool. And it seems particularly relevant today - "They call it the white house, but that's a temporary condition."

5. jags minns inte - psilodump
This is one of many tracks I got from 8-bit Peoples. If you like the idea of music made with primitive video game sound chips, this is the site for you. Maybe it's just nostalgia, but I love that sound.

6. Fugue #7777 - Asuka Sakai
In the video game Katamari Damacy, this is the theme of the King of All Cosmos. It's a funny synth-opera type of thing. I like having this piece of silliness show up in my shuffles, almost as much as Totaka's Song.

7. Slippery People - Talking Heads
I love Talking Heads, especially in their funky phase. I believe that David Byrne is the ultimate cool white man.

8. Lint of Love - Cibo Matto
My sister got me into this band, which is kind of like J-Pop made by Americans of Japanese descent. They have a unique attitude, and there's a lot of humor in their lyrics. I'd say Lint of Love is definitely their best song. It's both funny and musically strong.

9. Metal Man Goes Clubbing - Disco Dan
From the venerable Overclocked Remix. Like a lot of these game remixes, this one goes on a bit long for my tastes, but it's still great fun. It's almost impossible to go wrong with Mega Man 2.

10. Hanging In There - Ray Holman (Mannette Festival 2003)
Ray Holman is one of the greatest pan composers. In his lightning-quick panorama pieces, he packs more excitement into a few chords than some people manage in entire songs. And then he has tunes like Hanging In There and Since You've Gone that draw you in with impressionistic harmonies but get more emotional as they go.

Haikus From Hell!

2008-03-20T01:13:00.000-07:00

1
Hi, welcome to hell
See the pits of sadism
and the lava lakes
2
smoldering fires
endless torment of the damned
A nice cup of tea
3
In this dungeon dwells
Lucifer's favorite prey
Telemarketers
4
They never hang up
So steel spikes shoot from the phone
The wire strangles them
5
Grotesque and mangled
The corpses reanimate
To be killed anew
6
God's sense of humor
Nothing without irony
Hell is sarcastic
7
Cleansing satire
redemptive comedy with
a happy ending
8
The horror you see
Is just our way of showing
How we truly care
9
This concludes our tour.
Please patronize the gift shop.
Thank you for coming.

Multi-Genre Video Games

2008-03-17T23:37:00.000-07:00

Why yes, I am indeed seeing how many different topics I can post about in my first week of blogging.

Occasionally a game comes out that consists of two different types of game neatly pasted together. The results are usually quite memorable. You'd almost think game designers would try it more often, but I suppose it means a lot of extra work. I'm not sure how many games like this have been made, but I can think of three off the top of my head.

In Sunsoft's NES classic Blaster Master, you put on a spacesuit and drive a tank into a mysterious underworld, searching for a frog. Not a frog that turns into a princess or anything like that, just a frog. The main world is a sidescrolling platform game that's a bit nonlinear. Sometimes you'll find buildings where you can exit the tank and enter a Zelda-like overhead view. All the bosses are fought in this mode, including... more frogs. Big ones.

Also appearing on the NES was The Guardian Legend, from Compile. This time, the main world that you wander around in is the Zelda-style one. When it's time for action, the anime cyborg heroine transforms into a spaceship and flies into a 2D shooter remniscent of the top-down parts of Life Force. Less frog fetishization in this one. Maybe that's why I never liked TGL nearly as much as Blaster Master. It's still a good game, though.

The last example that springs readily to mind is Actraiser for the Super NES, made by Quintet. This short but excellent game puts you in the role of a vengeful god, cleansing the world of demons and eradicating every ecosystem that your worshippers can't cope with. There are no specific references to frogs in the game, but I guess we can assume from its stance on environmentalism that it's even less frog-friendly than The Guardian Legend. Anyway, the up-close-and-personal business of demon-smiting is done in a side-scrolling format, by your sword-wielding avatar. The grander scale of the game is seen in the simulation mode, where you and your cherubic lackey guide the development of civilization. Actraiser is probably the best of these three games, although it's also the easiest and shortest.

Am I forgetting some other games that would fit this criteria? Do they have frogs in them? If my frog ran away and fell into a vast underworld I think I'd just get a new one.

The Internet is Star Trek Technology

2008-03-16T15:22:00.000-07:00

In the future of Star Trek, Earth is a utopia where technology satisfies everyone's needs and desires. There is no money because nothing is scarce. There is no business because nothing is exploitable. In short, Star Trek technology makes people happier while also making capitalism obsolete. On the TV show, they rarely went into much depth about this, so there are some logical holes. How does their government work? Would we ever really run out of things to buy and sell? Does Captain Sisko's father run a restaurant simply because he wants to? How do the Ferengi continue to be unapologetically capitalist when they have all the same technology? These issues aside, the premise is a sound one - technology removes limitations from our lives, and businesses which exist to exploit those limitations inevitably die off.

The internet is the Enterprise's copy machine. It makes copies of anything, for anyone, in any quantity. A lot of money was made in the 20th century by selling copies, but in the 21st, copying information is a basic fact of life. Trying to corner the market on digital copies now is like trying to corner the market on oxygen. I'm not sure what replaces the old business model, but ignoring change is not an option.

The two things to note here are A: Star Trek technology improves life for humanity in general, and B: Star Trek technology makes business models obsolete. Maybe I watched too much Star Trek, but I think it's only a matter of time before A makes us forget that we had any concerns over B.

Ps. Another good sci-fi allegory for the internet age is The Stars My Destination.

The Irrational Planet Thing

2008-03-16T01:30:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, I was sitting in computer science 101 and thinking about music instead of paying attention. I was mentally stuck in 5/4 time, a seldom-used meter with five beats to the measure(famous examples of pieces in 5/4 include the Mission Impossible theme, Take Five by the Dave Brubeck Quartet, and a Gorillaz song simply titled 5/4*). One nice thing about being stuck in 5/4 is it makes you nigh invulnerable to earworms. After a great deal of thinking and tapping out rhythms with my pencil, I wrote in my notebook a rhythmic pattern of three dotted quarter notes and an eighth note. This would become a bass line. I chose E minor simply because I hadn't composed anything in E minor before. I added a repeating motif above the bass that would become the central theme of the entire piece. I had a random idea that the melody could be split between measures, taking up two-and-a-half beats each from the measure preceding it and the measure following. If only all my random ideas worked out so well. It would take two more years of listening, tweaking, and learning before I was able to finish the piece. I began to feel that I'd painted myself into a corner with weird overlapping rhythms and wonky chord progressions.

While listening to the tune, I had a funny notion that it might be considered dance music on some other planet inhabitated by many-legged Far Side-esque aliens(I've often thought that in a perfect world, Take Five would have inspired a dance craze instead of just a trend in jazz). So I decided that the name of the piece would reflect this idea, although it would take a lot of brainstorming to come up with the final title, Irrational Planet. And Irrational Planet: The Song Thing led to Irrational Planet: The Album Thing, and now I'm posting it on Irrational Planet: The Blog Thing. This rendition of the tune was created in Logic with software synthesizers.

Irrational Planet: The MP3

*Video game fans should also recall the Ridley boss theme from the Metroid games, the battle theme from Final Fantasy VIII, and the final overworld theme from Secret of Mana.

Hello World

2008-03-14T17:19:00.000-07:00

Hello World