Malik (3/9/09)

I hate daylight savings time. Without a doubt, I can always count on the first full day of daylight savings to be a miserable day. Between having work and not enough sleep, it's a day day for me. When you add in the craziness of this year, in which snow is on the ground and slowly falling around me, it only gets worse. Nothing as fun as driving in the snow with a hundred thousand other commuters who all are freaking out over snow while being too tired to be safe drivers.

Anyway, I watched The Watchmen on opening day. If you're at this site, you're probably geek enough to know if the movie is for you. It's a great movie, and does as well of a job of adapting the graphic novel to the big screen as probably possible for such an unwieldy task. I mean the movie is pretty faithful (there are some small things, but nothing that breaks the movie), it looks good, it has a great and appropriate sound track, and the acting is well done. It's all you can hope for in a movie of this material.

The best part of the movie for me was watching the stupidity of stereotypes. For example, to the average idiot, this is a kiddy movie since it's based on a comic. Despite being rated R, having some heavy material in the plot, and plenty of nudity and violence to earn that R rating, you can still be assured that you'll see a kid in the audience when you watch the movie. I saw a group of kids with one adult.

This group stood out when they left right after a scene in which you get presented with a half dozen blue dongs (junk, packages, spears, or penises...they all work) presented in big screen glory. Right then this group of kids, with their lone guardian, all left. I can easily imagine what the guardian (who was probably the father of at least one of these kids) was thinking; "their mother(s) is/are going to kill me when these kids start talking about what I took them to see." Pure gold.

Anyway, I'm not able to form too many complete thoughts in my sleep deprived state. I'll just end this post now, before I just fall asleep on my keyboard and type a twenty page disertation on "fgthhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...".

Malik

Malik (3/10/09)

It is officially looking like it's a good day. There's some Offspring songs waiting for me to download and try out (maybe some other singles, if they sound good and have good charts) on Rock Band. That's always grounds for a good day. I'll have some thoughts, probably tomorrow, on these songs and if they are worth the investment. I think with The Kids Aren't Alright and All I Want, a couple of these tracks will be worth it.

Then there's the fact that no snow is in the forecast. This is always good, and is usually something that goes without saying in the Seattle area in March. However, after a quick shotgun blast of snow yesterday, and about an inch or two on I-5 (not to mention more piling up on the side streets), no snow is good news. While snow can be a fun thing, it's also something that gets old quite quickly when you have had about two decades worth in the last three months.

Most of all, today is an awesome day since my copy of Demon's Souls has both cleared the back order and has shipped. Now it's all up to customs on how soon I get the game. Here's to customs being quick and my package getting to me before the end of the week.

I can finally put my boredom to rest once I have this game in my most anticipating of hands.

Malik

Malik (3/11/09)

First off, for today I'm actually posting about the new Rock Band tracks on a Wednesday. It seems that this is becoming a rarity as I'm not motivated to download new songs until later in the week, usually.

On expert guitar, this week was a good week. Well, it was a perfect week for tracks if you like Losing My Religion (from R.E.M.). Losing My Religion is a slow song. It's not challenging and it would be an easy full combo for just about anyone who can handle expert guitar. However, if you do like the song, than you're looking at a fun full combo. If this is not your idea of a good song, than you should just skip it. No part sounds all that involved, and the speed is quite slow.

The Richard Thompson (or whatever the guy's name is) song is actually a good surprise. I don't know this guy's work and was a bit uninterested until I saw the guitar chart on youtube. After seeing the chart, I knew this was a must-have song. It's slow, overall, but has a fun basic verse and chorus line. However, the true fun comes from a slightly slow, but very interesting solo. It's also a very long solo taking up a good 40% of the song. There's some little chord shifts in the song, but the hammer-on/pull-off part is where this song shines. Nothing too hard, but definitely fun as hell. Possible one of my new favorite guitar charts for Rock Band.

As for the Offspring stuff; it's all good. I mean this is music I grew up on. Despite some over-charting, I still can't help but enjoy these two tracks.

The Kids Aren't Alright is fast, frantic, and sounds awesome. You put those features together and you have something worth the price of admission. Plus, if you grew up in the 90's and 00's, then this is music you probably know and love as it is.

All I Want is a good fast and frantic song. However, there is some over-charting going on, like with most other Offspring tracks. It's nothing major, but there are some things that just seem out of place when you know that The Offspring has two guitarists and Harmonix expects the RB guitarist to play both parts. Much like how there's over-charting in Gone Away. It doesn't break the song, but it does boost the difficulty of the guitar part a bit as you're playing, at times, double the speed you should be playing at. This is not a song made for full combos on expert from a sight read.

At least it's better than Green Grass and High Tides with the two or three guitar parts on such a frantic song being crammed into a single guitar track.

On a final note for today...an observation. This isn't too much in the geek realm, but it's an observation that drives me crazy.

Seattle has some of the most passive drivers in the world. People are so damned nice that people will literally block traffic at intersections as two people fight to be the one who didn't go first. If you turn on your turn signal to change lanes on the freeway, it's almost expected that you will find an instant opening as cars stop to make room for you, despite slowing legally proceeding traffic behind the lane change. This makes for a few jerks on the road as an expectation goes out. If an impatient driver turns on a turn signal, they expect instant gratification of an opening to merge in to.

This also makes for some damned funny, yet tragic, road rage incidents when a non-passive driver tries to merge into another non-passive driver. Well, the simple truth is a turn signal is "required" to change lanes, not the other way around. I love when I actually don't decide to delay legal traffic behind me to make room as soon as someone turns on their signal next to me, so the merging/lane-changing drive next to me decides to time for passive aggressive rage (luckily, I've evaded pure aggressive rage).

My observation; I'd love for these passive aggressive dumb asses to be driving in a city that's far less polite-to-a-fault. Maybe LA or NY. I bet the type of driving in these more focused driving areas (more focused due to bad traffic conditions being a constant) would beat this self-entitled bullshit out of these drivers in no time. It's constantly said that traffic in Seattle ranks in the top ten worst traffic in the US year after year. Well, less of this overly polite bullshit and this self-entitled crap would definitely fix this traffic mess more than any highway improvements ever could.

Malik

Malik (3/13/09)

It will be a quick post today. Life is hitting hard and fast right about now, which leaves me near the end of my wits. So, I'll just say it will be an interesting week next week for Rock Band DLC.

There's a bunch of $2 tracks, with two from The New Pornographers, two from Papa Roach, and one from Against Me!. Of those, it's interesting to finally see TNP get some new content in RB. I thought they would have had more by now considering they were one of the few bands from the original set of RB1 to not have any DLC. Plus, with them being so well know for their drumming insanity in RB, it seems fitting for them to have had more DLC before now.

As for Papa Roach and Against Me!...I really don't care. I guess Last Resort is a fun song if you're into nostalgia for a time when rock/rap rules the world. However, with a decade going by, I just don't get why this would be of much interest. I remember listening to the song just a few months ago on the radio and thinking about how it really didn't age well.

The rest of the tracks for next week may be more fun. I'm talking about a $5.50 three song Funk Pack, with one song each from James Brown, Average White Band, and Earth Wind & Fire. It seems a bit out of place on Rock Band, but it also looks like a lot of fun. I can't even imagine the fun factor for singing the Godfather of Soul.

On a final bit of news, for those who follow The Angry Video Game Nerd; new video is due on Monday! It's good to see him contract dispute/negotiations are over with.

Now back to my stress filled life while also sitting around waiting for Demon's Souls. Please, US Customs, don't leave me hanging.

Malik

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