Dialogue

Hmm, for a guy who was pals with George Lucas, being picky about dialogue is a little weird.

"GRAB THE SWORD BOB ITS THE ONLY CHANCE!"

You'd THINK you'd be saying stuff like "I like the way the chick jumped down the building after that guy!"

"Yah, she not only didn't hesitate to jump to the fire escape, she jumped even FARTHER than him the second time!"

"...and then she was rescued by the super geek squad guy who outsmarted him AND THEN punched him out."

"Yah well THAT wasn't so good heh."

"I DID like the part where they made her strip down to her panties, injected her with LSD, and made her take a bath in front of a bunch of cameras though."

"Yah, now THAT was some classic sbiznish."

"It don't get any better than that."

"Well, the first Stargate show did have a COUPLE totally naked chicks layed down on slabs of alien technology and forced to endure the attentions of tentacle creatures."

"Hmm, yah."

"So I guess it DOES get better than that."

"Yah, sometimes."

"But that was on showtime."

"Yah, so its like, no fair."

Hitchcocker

There's this thing with "Eastern Philosophies" and "Western Philosophies" as it regards to storytelling.

Where folks say that "Western Philosophy" stuff needs a beginning and an end, a bad guy and a good guy, all the mysteries need a solution, blah blah blah, y'know, all that duality stuff.

Meanwhile Eastern Philosophy stuff is okay with an ever-unfolding mystery that never gets solved, and the audience that can handle that appreciates the ability of the storyteller to produce more and more beautiful mysteries, they appreciate each layer of the onion as it gets peeled back, rather than have the author solve them in a clever way and close the book on 'em so we can forget about 'em and get on with the next thing.

So as long as the journey is well done, it don't ever need to end or get anywhere, really, everybody maintains the potential to be a bad guy and a good guy in an Eastern Philosophy thingie more than they do anything else, and that potential hardly ever gets converted into any kind of kinetic energy that you could nail 'em for heh.

Its almost like the author is afraid to commit to saying anything is one way or another, while hoping that being vague will work to their advantage and that something random and awesome comes along at just the right time to save 'em, and in some cases, it is exactly that.

I don't think things need to be broken down like that, really, I mean, seems like there's plenty mixing going on between the two "types" in a mutually beneficial way, in all the good stuff, anyways.

And I'm a monk and everything, but I gotta admit that I like the Western Philosophy stuff.

A lot.

And when I saw that Fringe thing, all I was worried about was that it was gonna be another Lost, where its just like, a bunch of random weird stuff that tries to never make a point or tell you anything so that you can never complain and feel let down about it ahaha.

Like, the story is advancing without touching any of the walls or the ground, its keeping its options too open.

And the more you hold an audience back and tempt them and build suspense and make them waste their time wondering about your stuff like that, the better your ending better be, y'know?

You can't drag gunslingers along for months and months and then have a dud fer the ending where it all turns out to be a dream of a guy in an asylum and a big waste of time that nobody would've comitted to if they would've known that from the beginning or whatever heh.

But you do need to drag 'em along and tease 'em.

And the more you drag 'em along and tease 'em, the more time they waste messing with your crap, putting their hands on the steering wheel and all that, the more likely it is that they'll buy the car, even if you have a dud fer Le Grand Finale, y'know, that's that whole Cognitive Dissonance bit.

And the Eastern Philosophy Camp says that's okay, that's what its all about, yer making brain kindling, baby, I can help you help yourself!

Yah, see, so that's a good excuse to use heh.

"Oh its all enlightened and Zen and shit!"

Yah, when I think about it, see, I put myself in the shoes of a guy who just has to randomly make shit up for a show like Lost, and I'm like, shit man, that's too goddam easy, that's just like artists that are allowed to splash down totally random blobs of paint and call it art.

All the guys I like do the hard bits good, y'know, like taking that totally clumsy Western Philosophy thing with all its sharp edges and trying to do something interesting with it, something deliberate and awesome with a totally awkward and smoky piece of farm equipment.

Y'know, like Hitchcock.

You gotta take a chance and be kinda daring and ballsy to do a Hitchcock, where every single second is a bullet in your eye.

You can't even fail to do anything totally random and senseless, except by accidentally doing something that makes sense.

So there's like, points awarded for difficulty, there, like they do for gymnastics and diving and stuff, y'know?

Anyways, the weird thing is that I spent so much of Fringe worrying that it was gonna turn out to be a totally random bunch of crap like Lost that I didn't even notice how bad or good it was really ahaha.

That's like a new evolution of the medium right there, where you can sorta hide behind how bad Lost was AHAHA.

Actually it seems like a pretty good vehicle for telling weird stories, with the setup they got, I always thought the X-files had an awesome setup, as a vehicle for carrying stories, y'know, even if a lot of the shows themselves were a waste of time and I coulda done without the background story-arcs that remind me of the way superheroes tend to get all tangled up with too many visits to alien dimensions and too many uses of the time machine.

'Cause like, the Fringe is like, halfway between the X-files and the Matrix, y'know, with their "the world is a mad scientists lab, and he has a plan," that's pretty damn cool, right there heh.

If they get "guest" directors and writers like Mr Pink on the Sopranos, and like the X-files did, it could have some really good shows ahaha.

Hey, at least it ain't like CSI Miami!

Dude, CSI ain't even a mystery show, its a bunch of models walking around piles of gore and neon lights!

What is up with American Mystery shit, its so pitiful compared to English junk, its like they're writing Mysteries for Nascar folks or something.

Why can't they do good mysteries and still have it be for Nascar hillbilly folks and shit AHAHA.

I mean, c'mon, Poe and Lovecraft and Howard and all them, those were Americans, right?

Poe even married his sister and died from drinking too much or something, I mean, c'mon, seriously, doesn't get any more Nascar Hillbilly than that ahaha.

Aw whatever.

Edit: Like how I din't really commit on whether I liked it or not?

Goddammit ahaha.

Sweet and Soulful

I'm a WKRP in Cincinnati kinda guy.

I'm a Barney Miller kinda guy.

Not a Friends or Beverly Hills 90210 kinda guy, even though I got some buddies that eat that stuff up, and it makes me laugh that they like that stuff, and that definitely don't make me like 'em any less.

But I like Sanford and Son better.

I was born in the 70s, and went to kindergarten in the early 80s, and the first president I knew of was Ronald Reagan, so I don't know who to blame for the way I am (heh), but I really got no stomach for American Idol type stuff, its nothing personal, its just that that's a bunch of intolerable New Kids on the Block crap, to me, y'know?

That's like somebody telling me that lounge singers and British Food is good, or that we should waste a time machine trip on the 50s.

I'd rather go to the 20s or the anytime after Lost in Space or the Forbidden Planet came out.

I need texture.

I ain't really got any stomach for all that dramatic vampire stuff either, I drink beer and fart and laugh about it just like everybody else, I'm a wolfman, baby.

So, saying all that, I'm pretty weird, I guess *rolls his one good eye* and I don't really get why people would wanna do things the way they do most things.

Why you'd wanna be "professional and serious" and take part in a gaming industry that was modelled on the way SOE does stuff, or whatever.

'Cause you don't have to do it that way.

Why ain't there any WKRP in Cincinnatis of the gaming industry?

There's tons of Less Nessmans and Herb Tarleks and Venus Flytraps out there man.

Heck, half the Loni Andersons out there are actually Less Nessmans and Herb Tarleks ahaha.

So what's with everything being so 80s?

Is it because y'all live in Texas and its still the 80s over there?

Are you the guys that are keeping Bon Jovi in business?

Goddam it must be just like Rockford Illinois or something AHAHA.

Dude, the 80s were kinda fake and cheesy, y'know?

I mean, there was some good stuff, like the A-Team and Night Rider and Tron and Sledge Hammer, but the rest of it was pretty sad, actually ahaha.

I wonder if its 'cause of the hair band metal guys at Id.

Y'know, 'cause they were like, death metal nerds, and I have the sneaking suspicion that they started some cultural thingie where all the rest of the nerds think they needed to be death metal nerds to be cool and get laid or something, which arrested the cultural development of the region and sorta froze things into the way they were in the 80s.

Most people don't really live long enough, once they go down the death metal nerd road, to realize that Panterra ain't really all that and a bag of chips *winky-wink* ahaha.

The folks who start out liking Panterra might eventually go into that soft metal ballad crap eventually, when they get older and "more sensitive," but that's about as conscious and enlightened as they're ever get, y'know?

AHAHA.

I dunno what it is, but the whole gaming industry thingie seems so soulless and morbid and unpleasant to me, somehow, sorta like that, like Robots from the 80s or something.

Y'know, there's like nobody that likes pancakes and the occasional John Denver tune and shit heh.

That's what I think is wrong with the art of the whole thing.

The 80s wasn't really known for its art and attention to craft and detail and texture and shit, s'like, 90% of the stuff people wore and carried around with them and half the furniture in the 80s was made out of plastic heh.

And the 90s were like the 80s minus the ballsiness and energy that made Cameo some cool ass shit ahaha.

Here's one of those places where Raph really shines, though, 'cause he's some cheesy ass WKRP in Cincinnati shit, alright.

Heck, he's from the 1800s or something, actually.

That's why it bugs me when I see him "trying to fit in" ahaha.

I mean, he's better than that, his folk songs and poems and all that Tiny Tim shit he's self conscious of, that's what makes him cool, y'know?

Dude, look for a video of Tiny Tim when he was young, standing next to anybody else from his time period, some hair-oil dweeb that was representative of what was "cool and appropriate at the time," some shmuck that you can compare him to, and then you tell me that Tiny Tim don't look exactly like a Time Traveling Archaeologist from the future singing his favorite songs from the distant past or something ahaha.

Well, whatever, I didn't really mean to pick on Raph and make him look all freaky, I was actually trying to explain how cool he was AHAHA.

Anyways, that's why I'm not really into the whole "game industry" thingie, its all so Orwellian and soulless and shit.

And I think it'd be easier for you guys to detect that, in the junk that came out of it, if it wasn't all made by a bunch of dudes who drank too much pop before hitting the old 3d Studio Max ahaha.

That's really all that's making it colorful and somewhat cheerful, sometimes, I think, the abuse of caffeinated beverages and shit, y'know?

Take one of those poor mopes with the shaved head and the dirty prison jumpsuits from 1984, prop his skinny ass up in a chair, pour coffee on him until he starts smiling and tapping his feet, and then make him do 3d Studio Max shit so we'll have plenty of unicorn tentacles to ride on!

Its so sad and soulless really, its like the way the Emperor from Warhammer 40k ate psychics or some shit ahaha.

And I think that's at the heart of the art problem, the heart of the weakness of the medium, really, there's nothing to be sympathetic toward, just crayons rubbed on paper over skin and bones and nastiness wrapped in colored plastic for merchandising percentages, really, its so starved and beaten to death that's its barely sentient and human anymore.

No WKRP in Cincinnati to it.

This is all part of that thing where the folks who are the loudest and most romantic about a thing prolly ain't never actually seen it for real, ain't it?

Man, I hate that one ahaha.

That's not that damn Nietzsche again, izzit?

Sounds like something he'd think.

Goddam I hate that guy ahaha.

Anyways, screw that Texas stuff, and I don't even wanna hear about California and what kind of tea the endless misty gray-ass of Oregon gently weeps, wake me up when one of you guys move that whole "game industry" down there out of the 80s and into something more like WKRP in Cincinnati, that shit oughta be in Boulder Colorado or somewhere cool like that, y'know, Mork from Ork knew what the shit he was doing when he landed his suspendered ass there AHAHA.

Smash TV

I'm still working on my game, all the time.

Its just that its hard to think of anything to say about it most of the time.

Mostly what I'm doing right now is drawing cartoons and doing experiments with animation (trying to find the best way to do things so it'll run on crappy computers) and collision detection and structural crap like that, stuff that don't exactly beg to be blabbered about, and although there's some funny one-liner shit in there every once in a while, I tend to keep working and forget about it insteada coming here and writing it up.

And I got to the point where I don't wanna do screenshots and stuff 'cause I might need to reserve a domain name or copywrite or trademark some shit and I don't know anything about that kinda crap and I ain't got any time to think about it right now either.

Basically its all just 'cause I'm bad at thinking up names fer shit, so the few passable ones that I do I think up, I wanna keep, y'know, so I don't gotta keep thinking up new ones and redoing the artwork and all that heh.

Right now I'm sorta stuck on this thing where its hard to come up with junk that ain't all about killing stuff.

Its so easy to make a game where you go around blowing shit up with submachine guns and missiles and lasers, y'know?

My game can do all the Syndicate-Style junk now, left click to move, right click to hose stuff down with your weaponry.

But then I think about how that'd make Pete Seeger cry, and I'm all like, "shit man, I better think of something else, something with some redeeming qualities, y'know? Something to sorta go along with all this sinfully delicious Smash TV boobs and gore!" heh.

So there's this whole existential nightmare thingie to it, that I'm trying my best to "conveniently ignore" by trying to convince myself that its a "satire" or something, but I ain't succeeded in fooling myself yet ahaha.

Y'know, it really is fun to blow shit up and look at hot chicks, there's just no getting around it, you can sing songs about holding hands and sharing the land and all that till yer blue in the face but that don't change a thing about how fun it is to right-click on stuff and hose it down with Missiles & Miniguns & Flame Throwers AHAHA.

Oh, I know, I'll have stuff like farming in the game.

So we'll be able to do something "green."

AND patrol around the farm in our powered armor and hose down weeds and zombies with our machine guns while collecting cash and valuable prizes and stuff.

And then I'll have something in there that makes it sorta satirical, so its like, its teaching you that going around and hosing things down with flamethrowers is bad!

...while it lets you do exactly that, sorta like those scifi shows where they're gonna televise somebody getting executed...

"oh that's so awful!"

"I wonder if they're gonna show it!" ahaha.

Thats just so goddam cheesy man, this isn't gonna do anything for the good of humanity, goddamit, I wanna do something good, y'know, like Star Trek, man, but that's so goddam boring and hard to do AHAHA.

Musers

There's musicians that make music to be famous and get laid.

And there's musicians that make music in order to help everybody in the audience get laid.

Personally, I'm forever indebted to the poet that taught me that the best moment in the world is that moment when a woman first steps her leg out of a car, when all you can see is that flash of leg, and everything else is mystery.

The guy who taught me that Doormen are the Luckiest Bastards in the World.

And the guy that taught me about how great warm mexican asses are, compared to cold white asses that practically give you a heart attack in the middle of the night when you accidentally bump into them with your leg.

That's what really matters, y'know.

Even Doctor Phil knows that, although he could never admit it in front of his particular audience without being torn to shreds.

Poor guy.

Dude Ginger Is Hot

There's a whole lot of different directions I could go with this things at Dundee's.

First off, I'll do a negative one.

"Television" isn't really getting any better or worse than it ever was, its always had a few supergenius artist writers and directors and actors, and a whole ton of crappy ones, there's old shows that make me sit back and wonder how the hell they came up with what they came up with, and there's old shows that make me say stuff like "oh, this must've come from back in the days when nobody cared about plot" ahaha.

So there's a bit of "dude, nobody has written anything as good as Fahrenheit 451 since" in there.

As far as it evolving as a medium, though, I think it actually has evolved as a medium, in the only way a medium can really evolve, and that's sorta mechanically, like a science, or through shared techniques and technology.

I wonder if the "lack of serial entertainment qualities" thing Dundee is noticing is really more due to the fact that shows spend more of their life in a repackaged and re-released on DVD state now than they did in the days before that was an option.

So now, instead of people having to catch the show on the TV, and the writers having to worry about the audience missing a recent episode (which would make you tend to package each story in a way where it didn't matter what order you saw the shows in, if you were a writer), they actually got to worry about it in the other direction, where the show might look terrible on DVD (or at least not sell so well) if it doesn't have some ongoing plot and "evolution of the characters" and stuff.

Remember those "recap" shows they used to do that they don't gotta do anymore?

We actually used to like those, back in the day before we could record or buy and replay the shows ourselves, 'cause it let us know what we missed heh.

And the guys doing the shows liked 'em, 'cause it was a cheap show, playing back bits of other shows ahaha.

And there's that old joke about knowing that the main characters on Star Trek are never gonna die, that's tied into that too, even though that show did kill a character or two and do some character development over time junk (it was kinda minimal, but then, on the other hand, Deep Space Nine did a ton of it, and it was actually hard to follow if you missed a couple shows).

Anyways the audience has evolved a bit, too, blabbering about their favorite bits and pieces of the Sopranos and the A-Team and Night Rider and Six Feet Under at work for fifty years will tend to do that sorta thing, even the most dimwitted folks can listen in to everybody else and repeat the stuff they heard.

And that's a major factor there, that's the people the writers are thinking about when they write the show, they want folks to be talking about it the next day at work, that's what shit like Twin Peaks (which is what Desperate Housewives reminds me of, much thanks to Cooper being in there heh) and "Lost" was all about.

Not that there's just "one best way" to do that stuff, I'm not saying that, either, there's a place for stuff like Gilligan's Island, too, I know people talked about Gilligan's Island at work until they ran out of shit to talk about ahaha.

"Dude Ginger is hot."

"They are never gonna get off that island!" AHAHA.

But whatever, I guess the main thing is the evolution of a medium, and that I think its the evolution of the techniques and technologies used to make it and the exploration and understanding of the science behind it that does it, really, even in the audience, 'cause as time goes on, they understand more and more of that stuff too, and you gotta shoot a little higher to surprise 'em.

But you can't just go straight to expert, you gotta have your bunny hills running simultaneously, 'cause there's a sucker born every minute, and understanding the stuff they're teaching on the bunny hills provides you with the POV the "fresh ones" are gonna have when they come to take a peek at your work.

And the stuff that it takes a supergenius to understand ain't gonna be that popular.

And you may be cool with that, just draw a line in the sand and be an elitist prick and wait for all the smart folks in future history to recognize you long after you've become a mummy, 'cause the only opinion that really matters is an intelligent opinion and all that.

But you could teach people how to get from A to B and stuff too, y'know, while you were at it, just like somebody taught you, and then you'd be farming your own audience, tending to your flock and shit, that's probably the more appreciative and responsible way to do it.

Saying stuff like "Gilligan's Island is for mouth-breathers" might get you in good with the folks who wanna feel superior to the mouth-breathers, but who is that, really?

I don't think that somebody who ain't a mouth-breather ever has to worry about being mistaken for a mouth-breather.

Its just those "borderline mouth-breathers" that are grabbing for things that'll help them distinguish themselves from the ordinary mouth-breather.

I think that's especially true when you are grabbing for stuff that's at the ordinary mouth-breather's expense heh.

Smart folks know that's its actually advantageous to be mistaken for a mouth-breather.

Ah crap, I think I'm doing exactly what I'm complaining about while I'm complaining about it again ahaha.

Goddammit AHAHA.

Tons of Mavericks

If you had to take a drink every time somebody used the word "maverick" at the republican national convention, you'd be pretty goddam drunk.