I think the best word to describe cats is “non-chalant”. Cats project this aura of, “hey man whatever is cool with me dude. meow.”
Author Archive for brendon
I should have done this earlier this week but I got distracted by various things, such as sleep, food, and Resident Evil 5.
This past weekend was Portland’s sixth annual Stumptown Comics Fest held in a small exhibit hall in NE Portland, nearby the Lloyd Center Mall. I’m no comics expert by any means nor a convention connosieur, but I’d say it was a blast. As far as comic book related conventions go, I’ve only been to one other. That was last year at San Diego Comic Con, which is pretty much the mother of them all. Comparing the two conventions is like comparing a dorm room to Buckingham Palace. Buckingham Palace is a place everyone knows about and visits for the big names and history and energy. A dorm room is small, cramped, and is potentially full of friendly people you can get to know easily. That’s what I think Comics Fest was. It’s not high energy but it was personal. It was full of self published artists just trying to get people to know and see their stuff. Unlike Comic Con, it’s not full of corporate booths. In fact, I think the whole exhibit hall was the size of two or three of the bigger exhibits in Comic Con, maybe one if you could find the right one (there were definitely some big ass exhibit lots).
But since Comic Con is huge you’d almost think that it’s be an omnibus of entertainment. That’s actually what I thought before I went to SCF. The problem with a huge venue is that it actually dissuades the little guy. You don’t see many webcomic guys there short of Penny Arcade and PvP Online. You don’t see many upcoming talents selling their limited run screen printed comics. They just get lost in this huge wave of exhibitors or get shoved in the corner where there’s little to no traffic despite the exorbitant prices to get a booth spot at all.
Stumptown Comics Fest is so much influenced by Portland’s art scene and community, it’s hard to imagine it being any way else. It makes so much sense, it’s funny that I didn’t really know what to expect before I went when it should have been so obvious.
The most important thing I learned at SCF is fully understanding the person behind the art. It’s so easy to look at something and judge it on its own without thinking about the fact that a living breathing person not so much unlike me that I can hang out with (like at a party or a pier on the river) actually sat down and pour their time and soul into a piece of entertainment/art that I sit down and read. It’s really inspiring. It makes me want to get into art again. If there’s one thing about me relating to hobbies and arts is that I’m pretty non-committal. Meeting people with such passion for the art and the community really makes me want to work hard at a craft and produce a piece of work I can really call my own and that I can show people and be proud of.
I grew up watching television and movies. My sister and I would watch pretty much every movie that we came across, which was a lot considering we grew up with a black box (free porn when I was 11 years old? fuck yeah!). I can’t really call myself a movie buff as I’m not familiar with some of the jargon they tend to throw around like neorealist or cinema verite, but when you’ve seen the vast majority of Hollywood movies that came out in the last two decades, you pick up a thing or two. I’m a product of the post modern generation.
Last night, I watched How to Lose Friends and Alienate People and Yes Man. I know, I know. Why the hell would you watch those mediocre movies? Maybe I got nostalgic. Maybe I miss the days when I was younger and would watch crappy movies. But the thing is, I enjoyed myself. They were entertaining movies. I’m no snob but I know what makes a movie good. They could have been much better, but they weren’t. They were missing something. Yes Man was a competant movie but nothing really made it a classic like Dumb and Dumber or Ace Ventura. It felt like a follow up to Liar Liar without the supernatural element. I was still entertaining, though. There were some clever jokes in there and Zooey Deschanel is pretty fucking hot.
Have you heard of Watchmen? Of course you have. I’ll admit it. I put off reading it for years until a few months ago, when I just read it straight through at once. I was somewhat prompted by the movie coming out within months. Seeing the trailer piqued my interest, but reading the book completely turned me off of the movie. “They are going to ruin MY Watchmen!” are some of the nerdiest thoughts you can read, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think that to some degree. But after watching a few clips, I’m coming back around. It might turn out alright. Those that have already seen it have good things to say about it. It won’t be perfect, no adaptation really is (especially ones from comic books), but it might be pretty good. If Kevin Smith likes it, I can’t really complain much. I’ll just be annoyed and voice my displeasure after watching the living fuck out of it on IMAX.
It’s 2009. To many 2008 was a terrible year. A lot of incredibly bad things happened, especially to our economy. It’s definitely a poor time for me to be unemployed, that’s for sure. So a lot of people were looking forward to 2009. We have this weird notion that we can start over at the beginning of the year as if we can put the last month behind us as long as it’s January. Unfortunately for many, 2009 started out with a whimper and a cry. The gaming enthusiast press is dying. Hell, the print media is dying. On January 6th, UGO bought 1Up. Now for those of you who don’t know, UGO is one of the tritest websites that I know of. Here is an example of what they consider video games “journalism”. 1Up on the other hand was a great site which drew many people from around the industry with its honest editorials and podcasts with personality. People went to 1Up and read its magazine EGM not to get numbers and reviews from a website but to get the opinions of dozens of personalities that they trust. Editors and writers like Garnett Lee and Shane Bettenhausen came together to talk to other industry insiders as well as 1Up alum about games and it felt personal. It wasn’t PR trash. It wasn’t trying to get you to buy any certain product, but honest discussion about video games.
When UGO bought 1Up, 80% of the staff at the 1Up offices got laid off. EGM (one of the longest running gaming magazines) got shut down as well. This mass decimation is a huge blow to the gaming enthusiast community. It can be seen as a slow death of the gaming enthusiast press. What else do we have? Blogs? Those are 99% shit. No offense to those that run those sites, but it’s definitely hard to wade through the crap that people throw on there to saturate their RSS feeds. Without a strong site for the community to rally around, the quality of the community falters. Are we limited to using twitter to keep up with these journalists and NeoGAF to keep the community alive? Where will the industry take us once all the leaders are gone?
Perhaps from the ashes of corporate-backed journalism will rise a renaissance of high quality gaming journalism in the form of independent websites and blogs. Perhaps it will be like 1998 again, where all gaming websites were done by fans, or at least the best ones were (except this time we’d have CSS to make web design much easier and more appealing). I hope so. I really hope so.
I am incredibly excited about this game. It’s going to be ridiculous.
Here’s the older Leipzig trailer “Sackzilla”:
I feel old.
I was visiting my alma-mater yesterday. (Saying that makes me feel old.) The new freshmen were coming in, their last day with their parents, their first day as free adults. I was there to get free food, a noble endeavor, of course. All the new students are young, naive, unscarred by the rigors of college and the real world. I thought back to when I was a freshman. I thought about how it was five years ago. I remember how big the school felt. I felt the anxiety of being in a new place surrounded by new people in the same boat I was. Five years. That’s longer than I’d been in one place/school in my life. It was a long time ago. I’m a different person now. Then I realized, these kids, they were in 8th grade when I started college. They were born in 1990. Jesus Christ. I felt like I needed a walking stick.
So much can change in five years. So much I could have done but didn’t. So much I did do that I wish I didn’t. It’s weird. I kinda envy these kids. But at the same time, I don’t really want to go back to all the petty problems, all the silly deadlines, silly naive people. I miss one thing over all, above seeing my friends all the time (I can deal with that), above being able to stay up all night and have people around doing the exact same thing, and that is the carefree life that was college life. No parents, no worries about bills/rent, no worrying about getting a job or sleeping at a reasonable hour instead of playing video games all night. If life got tough, just drop a class. No big deal. Things were so simple. That’s what I miss the most.
But at least I don’t have to worry about writing silly 10 page papers on topics I care nothing about. There’s the bright side.