Author: Chuck
More Doughty than a Fan Can Handle
Mike Doughty’s got a new album out, it’s called Golden Delicious, and I was already hooked just from hearing the 30-second samples. I’m a monstrously big fan of Soul Coughing. My first take on Haughty Melodic (Doughty’s first “real” solo album) was unfair disappointment that it didn’t sound like Soul Coughing, but over time it…
Since the 1800s
After the ComicCon left me beaten and senseless last year, I was looking forward to the more low-key WonderCon this year. Low-key is what I got. The little of WALL-E I saw looked good, but at this point, advertising for Pixar movies is kind of like advertising oxygen. I learned from the Shutter panel that…
Come on and dance
I went looking around the internet for an explanation of the title of last Thursday’s “Lost,” which was called “Eggtown.” That turned up nothing, forcing me to resort to a Steve Miller Band reference. It’s tenuous at best, but I assure you that one bad title is not indicative of my entire oeuvre. One thing…
The Old Man and the Realistically Rendered Water Volume
I’m just arrogant enough that I tend to automatically dismiss anything presented as a list of rules or guidelines about writing. There’s obviously a ton of craft involved in writing, independent of any concerns about talent or personal style. But attempts to codify it are always either too vague to be practically useful, or too…
Ready… Be fought against!
Previously on Spectre Collie, I got alarmed at what I saw as the rising sentiment against storytelling in videogames. The people on the message boards and blog comments kept saying that storytelling and interactivity are mutually exclusive, that story-based games aren’t games at all! And notable people like Will Wright were making proclamations that the…
Grotesk
Helvetica is an hour and a half of people with bad hair and bad accents talking about fonts. I don’t want to discourage people from seeing it, really. It’s a very well-made documentary, doing all the things a documentary should do. It stays neutral throughout (like you’d expect from the subject matter), but a couple…
Literacy 2008: Book 4: Baltimore
Book Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire by Mike Mignola & Christopher Golden Synopsis On a battlefield late in World War I, allied soldier Lord Baltimore is attacked by a strange bat-like creature. Now, the war is over, but a mysterious plague has spread through all of Europe. Three of Baltimore’s friends…
The Orchid
As I mentioned, I was confused for most of last year’s ComicCon, so I missed the “Lost” panel. I wasn’t aware until reading about it on a message board just now, that during that panel they showed another Dharma Initiative orientation film, that was later repeated on ABC’s website. This one is for station 6,…
The Sayid Ultimatum
This week’s “Lost” was called “The Economist,” and the series is continuing on its trajectory of pure awesomeness. I genuinely feel bad for the people who’ve given up on the show, because I feel like my patience has paid off. They’re doing exactly what I was hoping they’d do, but better than I imagined they’d…
Namaste
Via the RiffTrax blog, Bill Corbett shares a relaxing meditation with us all. Learn it, memorize it, and go in peace.
Literacy 2008: Book 3: Jingo
Book Jingo by Terry Pratchett In a series 21st in the series of Discworld books. Synopsis The lost island of Leshp suddenly rises in the middle of the ocean, sparking a war between the nations of Ankh-Morpork and Klatch over ownership of the new land. Sam Vimes and the rest of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch…
You have 21 years to comply
I couldn’t tell you exactly why I never got around to seeing RoboCop until tonight. I vaguely remember at the time being scared off by stories of how ultra-violent it was. Later, I just dismissed it as being another 80s action movie. After that, I put it in the same category as Total Recall —…