Saturday, February 26, 2011

Glassjaw's back

With plenty of new material.  Ever since 2002's Worship and Tribute, fans of Glassjaw -- including myself -- have been wondering if Glassjaw was gonna release any new songs and they did. I bought Worship and Tribute a few months, so I didn't have to wait as long as some people, but still you'd think a band with two EPs and two full-length albums would've released new material probably about a year or two after Worship and Tribute. The band's vocalist, Daryl Palumbo, is involved in other projects, which explains the hiatus. Plus, the fact that he has Crohn's disease probably had an effect on how the band put music together in terms of new material. I still have much respect for Daryl despite the hardships he's faced. The singles release, Our Color Green, which I downloaded recently, has had all five of its songs performed live but I guess they were never released in a CD or digital format up until the beginning of this year. Even though I've already listened to the songs All Good Junkies Go to Heaven, Jesus Glue, and You Think You're (John Fucking Lennon) via YouTube, it's still nice to have 'em on iTunes where I could have 'em on a playlist. I would've gone to upcoming Glassjaw show this Sunday night at The Regency Ballroom, but I got other things going on, including a math test the next day. I downloaded the Coloring Book EP -- which is being handed out on Glassjaw's tour -- today and I'm enjoying it so far. Hopefully all the new material will hold me over till the next full-length release. With a band as inventive and musically diverse as Glassjaw, it's easy to understand that one would anticipate new material just to experience it.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Howard and The Thing:

No, this has nothing to do with the Howard Hawks classic The Thing from Another World, but rather an individual by the name of John Howard. Up until a couple hours ago, I was a member of his Facebook for John Carpenter's The Thing. You may be wondering what "up until a couple hours ago" implies. Well, originally the page was relevant in terms of content to The Thing, but the group went through constant name changes, which pissed me and some other people off because there was really no point in being in the group if it had nothing to do with The Thing. Some people posted on the group's wall that they were leaving and I just left without saying anything.  I'm not sure if somebody was trying to keep the group related to The Thing by changing its name once it was changed to something else so that it stuck to the original purpose of the group, but I really wish John Howard would make up his mind. If he's gonna bastardize the group's original purpose to the point where it really has no purpose and no relevance to The Thing, then I figure the group's not worth my time anymore. I found another Thing group to join, which wasn't much of a problem. I can't say how I feel about John Howard personally since I don't know him personally, but I can say that I don't appreciate his actions because not only could he be removed from Facebook if the now, should I say, facelifted group has content in it which offends others and is not appropriate for younger people on Facebook, but also because I think he has better things to do with his time than promote a group he changed which really has no purpose of being on Facebook. Maybe's a little unstable and needs something to do to get his mind off that...who knows? I just hope if his actions cause problems, he'll be aware of that and that he'll take his being held accountable seriously.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Ideas are money:

For some people anyway. They figure they can cash in on something that hasn't been done before, which isn't always a bad thing. I just think one shouldn't have an idea and have it become a reality only for it to make money. It seems that if an idea is just being used to make money, then that takes the enjoyment out of it. Ideas should be used to produce something fun for someone, with no anticipation of making money off of it. That was the case with Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird when they created the Ninja Turtles -- they didn't think they were going to make money off their idea since they were basically doing a parody of Frank Miller's work on Ronin and Daredevil. Am I saying that one will make money off an idea if he or she doesn't anticipate to do so? To some degree. Anticipation did not determine Eastman and Laird's success -- originality did. No one had thought of crime fighting mutant turtles before, which was made their idea stand out in comparison to, say, a rehash of a Spider-Man story.

Another thing that comes to mind is when ideas are stolen to make money. I'm not sure how often such a thing happens or even how people can get away with it, but it seems rather dishonest. I just hope that in order to avoid stealing an idea -- that is, one gives credit to the person who has their idea represented in, say, a video game -- one acknowledges what his or her (similar) idea comes from. Not acknowledging the fact that one borrowed some ideas from a previous work is like saying, "Oh, no one'll ever notice." People do tend to notice, though, and they can end up feel like they've been cheated into buying something which has similar concepts to something they already own. I've noticed similarities between Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2 and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. I've had The Sands of Time sitting in my game drawer for a much longer period than Soul Reaver 2, but it wasn't until that I started playing it again that I noticed its similarities to Soul Reaver 2. While I don't mind the similarites between the two games -- the Soul Reaver and the Dagger of Time, for example -- I think that a game can lose its appeal if relies too much on the similarities it has with another game. Furthermore, I hope Ubisoft, the developers of The Sands of Time didn't simply rehash the Prince of Persia games so they could make money by stealing ideas from Crystal Dynamics, the developers of Soul Reaver 2. I'd imagine it's the other way around where Ubisoft borrowed some of Crystal Dynamics' concepts with permission to avoid any unecessary lawsuits.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

One of those days:

A screwy one at that. By the time I reached my algebra class this morning, there was a sign on the door saying that class had benn cancelled, which I was OK with because I could just write down the assignments that had been posted on the door as well and do 'em in the library. Shortly after writing down the assignments, I headed over to the library. I got there about 9:15 and checked out a math book to do the assignments since my order for books hadn't been processed yet. So I walked on my math while listening to my iPod and thought I'd finish my assignments at a reasonable time. Well, I was just about done with 'em until about 11:00 when the power went out all over campus. There was a lady that walked around the library and she said people could work in there since the natural lighting from outside provided enough light for everyone. I worked for a few more minutes until a campus policeman walked into the library and said everyone had to leave until the power outage was figured out. So I left and when I exited the building, some staff were telling people to pick up the pace in terms of exiting the library. Myself and others had to be careful to not fall on the stairs while exiting, though, because there's a big, long staircase that connects the library to the lower ground.

Once I made it down the stairs, I walked around to see if I could hang out with anyone, but I didn't really find anyone. Students either walked around in a zombie swarm-like fashion or stood around and talked. I walked to the student center and spent a few minutes there until some guy with a megaphone told everyone to exit. Once I exited, I found somewhere to sit down and contemplate the situation. After a while, I had lunch and headed over to see a former teacher of mine so she could interview me about a class I took with her.

I got to my teacher's office at about 12:30, which was when the interview was scheduled. She wasn't around and I noticed a sign that said she'd be back at 1:15, which was the assumed time that the power would go back on. I decided to hang around and wait. She arrived a little after 1:00 and she said she was late because she had to eat lunch off campus since the power was out and since no one was allowed to go to the student center to buy lunch. So after a little planning on the spot and figuring that it would be best to conduct the interview in her office, we got started. The interview went pretty good and my teacher was glad I came by because she was worried all day. After the interview, I headed to the nearest Wendy's -- the one near my school -- to use the bathroom since I didn't attempt to use a bathroom on campus because I figured pretty much all the bathrooms were locked. I walked to the bus stop after going to Wendy's and got on the 62 when the bus came.

Nothing really exciting happened on the bus except for when one of the tires popped for some unknown reason. Some guy in the back kept saying, "Oh, my God," but I didn't know if it was his fault that the tire popped. The bus driver left myself and others off at the bus stop near the Pruneyard, which was OK with me because I just had to wait for the next 62. Plus, the bus driver gave me two day passes since I didn't have any money to pay for the next bus. He figured if I lost one pass, I'd have another. I got on the next 62 and got home a little after 3:00.

It was quite a day for me...makes me wonder why I even got out of bed today.