Too bad I don't speak Japanese

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While I’m not hugely into anime, I have over the years found a few that I enjoy a lot. Right at the top of that list is Ghost in the Shell, notable both on an artistic level and as one of the better science-fiction films I’ve seen come out recently.

It appears that there is a new Ghost in the Shell movie coming out in 2004: Innocence. In addition to the promotional website, they’ve also released a short teaser trailer (13.3Mb Quicktime .mov). Since everything’s in Japanese, I don’t have much of a clue what anyone is saying, but my lord does it ever look pretty!

Even better news about this, too: someone in the Slashdot thread about this posted a press release that states that Dreamworks will be distributing GitS:I domestically in the first half of 2004!

While Go Fish will undoubtedly release its share of indie films, the second film announced by Dreamworks was Ghost In The Shell II: Innocence, the follow-up to the extremely successful science fiction anime feature, Ghost In The Shell, which was directed by Mamoru Oshii and based on the manga series by Masamune Shirow (published in the U.S by Dark Horse).

Puts me to sleep every time

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Early fall, 1997.

James, Richard and I had just gotten out of a late showing of that year’s Sci-Fi/Horror film, “Event Horizon“. None of us had known quite what we were in for when we decided to go, aside from the most basic premise of “something creepy happens in space,” but it looked fun, so off we were.

We had a blast. The movie itself, if you haven’t seen it, is either really good or really horrible, depending on how you look at it. As a horror movie, it’s pretty good — as a science-fiction movie, it’s horrendous. That night, though, we just had a lot of fun with the horror movie part, sitting in the dark in a huge theater, jumping at all the cheap thrills and loud noises, and thoroughly enjoying it.

Leaving the theater sometime after midnight, we were so jazzed on adrenaline that we were bouncing off the walls, so we stopped off at the local grocery store for some snacks.

“I like it here,” commented James as we walked down the aisles. “It’s warm…the lights are on…there’s air…. Can we stay?”

We got to the checkout counter, and I started skimming the tabloid headlines as James and Richard paid for their goodies. “Hey guys,” I said, and held up the latest Weekly World News. “Alien’s Last Words!”

James just looked at me and deadpanned, “Ack. Ack ack. Ack ack ack ack. Ack.”

Eventually we headed back to my apartment. Once we got there, James decided that he was still too amped from the movie to have any chance of going to sleep. In order to relax and calm down, he decided the best thing to do would be to watch a nice, calm, relaxing movie.

Like Aliens.

True to form, he was asleep before the movie ended.

So close…

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…but not close enough. My temp agency and I spent the morning getting me set up with an assignment with a software company’s call center. Everything was looking good (including running me through some quick tests that verified my typing speed at 80 WPM, and a combination listening/data entry test that I apparently scored around double the average score on), they handed me the address of the call center, and I headed back home to wait for the confirmation call.

Once I got home, I hit the Seattle Metro Online Trip Planner to figure out how to get to the call center — and realized that it was about a two-hour commute that involved a one mile walk. Wow. Much as I need to find another job, that’s a bit much, so I had to call back and let them know that, much to my chagrin, I had to turn down the assignment. Bummer.

Back to square one…

LISTBlog

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My friend D has just gone live with her newest project: LISTBlog.

The objective here is simple – compose lists based on the topic chosen by the post’s author. Feel free to leave your list in the comments or on your own blog with a link and/or TrackBack to the particular list you’re participating in.

List #1 — Songs you hate to love.

I am so going to lose what credibility I have for my taste in music with this list. The majority of the time, my musical tastes focus on the goth/industrial/alternative side of things, though I listen to a wide range of different styles, and I’m not sure there’s a genre out there that I don’t enjoy something from.

I do, however, have a weakness for well-crafted “pop” music. What used to be a perfectly acceptable genre — “pop”, or “bubblegum pop” — has of late become the realm of such quality acts as Britney Spears and her ilk, and overall isn’t nearly as listenable as it has been in years past. However, occasionally, a song will come along that, even when voiced by an artist that will cause most sane, rational people to run screaming from the stereo, I find myself liking. It rarely, if ever, has anything to do with whatever flavor of the week is providing the voice for the song. Instead, what will catch me is the hook, the production values, and the writing. Even if it’s a hideously dumb song, if it’s assembled well, it’ll often work its way into my brain.

Here, then, are five songs destined to cause me to hang my head in shame and forever regret publicly admitting that I actually enjoy them. ;)

  1. Spice Girls: “Wannabe” (And, incidentally — as long as I’m damning myself — the Spice World movie was far more entertaining than I expected it to be, and is solidly in my “guilty pleasure” movie list. Pick it up sometime, try to ignore the fact that it’s “THE SPICE GIRLS”, and just watch it for the zany British humor.)
  2. Britney Spears: “Oops! I Did It Again…” (I can’t explain it. I really can’t. But this song makes me laugh every time I hear it.)
  3. Los Del Rio: “The Macarena” (Back when I was DJ’ing and the Macarena was at the height of its popularity, it got played about weekly, and [since I have no shame] I’d get up onto a stage area by the DJ booth and do the dance. It didn’t take long before I’d end up with a group of girls watching me — apparently, in their words, I “do good things for the Macarena.” I’m still occasionally tempted to break into it in the middle of a Sisters of Mercy tune at The Vogue, though I haven’t been that crazy/tipsy yet….)
  4. Ricky Martin: “Cup of Life” (I actually think Ricky gets short shrift much of the time. While the more “American” pop-oriented tracks I’ve heard from him generally fail to impress me, the songs with a stronger Latin feel aren’t bad at all.)
  5. Kid Rock: “Wasting Time” (Actually, any Kid Rock song off of Devil Without a Cause. I was just berating myself for this the other day. I know I generally have decent taste in music. I know I shouldn’t like Kid Rock in the least. But for some reason, every so often, his blatantly ridiculous pot-smokin’, 40oz-drinkin’, wife-beater wearin’ white trash attitude is just what I need. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go kill myself.)

Alien

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I just got back from seeing the Director’s Cut of Alien — one of my all-time favorite Sci-Fi/Horror films — at the Seattle Cinerama.

The movie, of course, was excellent. The Director’s Cut isn’t that much of a change (I immediately noticed three differences between it and the original version, one of which was footage that’s been known of and previously seen as a “deleted scene” on the original Alien DVD), for me most of the fun was just being able to see Alien on the big screen, as I was far too young to do so when it was first released.

While I enjoyed the movie a lot, this was my first experience with digital projection — and I have to say, I’m somewhat less than impressed. I’m not really sure if this might be a side effect of the size of the Cinerama screen, and whether it might be less visible on smaller theater screens, but I could very easily see a vertical “banding”/pixillation/scan line effect. In shots with a lot of movement it wasn’t very noticeable, but in still shots with strong vertical lines (walls, fixtures, table legs, etc.) it was definitely apparent, and made the image much less crisp than I had expected it to be.

I also don’t know what medium the movies are read from, but I’m guessing it must be some form of optical disc, similar to a DVD (though I’m assuming with much higher resolution for theater projection). AT one point early in the film, there was a slight glitch, and it produced the same “blocking” artifact that can be seen on DVDs if they have fingerprints on them. It was only there for a brief moment, less than a second, but on a screen the size of the Cinerama, it’s extremely distracting.

Even with the slight technical oddities, though, it was a lot of fun.

The rest of this post discusses the various additions and changes in the Director’s Cut from the original theatrical release version. If you want to stay spoiler-free, stop here — otherwise, press on!

The additions I noticed:

  1. After Kane is brought back onto the Nostromo and is in the infirmary, there is a little more business among Ripley, Lambert, Parker, and Brett. Where in the original version we cut to the four of them in the observation area, the new version cuts to just Lambert, Parker, and Brett. Ripley descends from a ladder and enters the shot, and Lambert slaps her and they have a quick scuffle before Parker and Brett pull them apart. Lambert slumps against the back wall, and Ripley crosses in front of her, at which point we pick up where the original version cut in.
  2. When Brett walks into the machine room with the chains hanging from the ceiling, there is a quick shot of Brett from above. It’s subtle, but towards the left of the shot, you can see the silhouette of the alien as it hangs from the chains above Brett. Interestingly, this shot is not included in the original DVD’s special features.
  3. The last addition is the infamous “Dallas cocooned” scene that was present in the extra features of the previously released Alien DVD. To be honest, I’m torn on this addition. The accepted life cycle of the alien has been egg > facehugger > host > chestburster > adult alien, with most adult aliens being soldiers, while one will become a queen and lay more eggs. In Aliens, we saw cocoons being used as a way to store captured prey, either as food or as convenient hosts for future facehuggers, and it could be argued that that is what has happened here — Dallas and Parker have been cocooned for future use. However, when we see Parker, he appears to be becoming an egg — as if he were somehow transforming into a facehugger. I’ve never been totally happy with this (in addition to breaking previous canon, it’s less scientifically plausible), so while it’s definitely cool to see the sequence in the film, I’m torn as to whether or not I really like the addition.

I’m double-checking against the Deleted Scenes section on the Alien DVD I have, and it appears that more of the Deleted Scenes have been added in — I just didn’t realize it as I was watching the film, probably because I’d seen them before on the DVD. These include:

  1. Added: The crew listening to the alien transmission on the bridge of the Nostromo. Interestingly, the audio effects for the transmission are different in the new cut of the film than in the deleted scene.
  2. Partially added: The deleted scene version of the confrontation between Ripley and Lambert is longer than what was added to the Director’s Cut — Lambert’s dialogue describing them pulling Kane up from the egg chamber has been removed.
  3. Left out: A scene I was hoping would be put back in — a conversation in the infirmary after the facehugger’s blood eats through a few levels of the deck plating where Ripley notices a stain on Kane’s lung (the gestating chestburster) — was not added back in. Probably a good idea, as it could hurt the pacing of the film, but it’s still a nice bit of foreshadowing that I’ve always felt was a pity to lose from the finished film.
  4. Left out: An intercom conversation between Ripley and Parker as they harass each other.
  5. Left out: A raucous argument among the crew in the mess hall after Kane’s death, brainstorming on how to capture and kill the chestburster.
  6. Left out: The bloodier version of Brett’s death, where we watch the alien crush his skull as he screams for Parker before it pulls him up into the air shaft.
  7. Left out: Lambert and Ripley’s uneasy reconciliation, where Ripley apparently starts to explore her suspicions about Ash when she asks whether Lambert had ever slept with him.
  8. Left out (for obvious reasons): The only partially-shot action sequence where the crew almost traps the alien in the airlock, only to have it escape, wounding it and spilling more acid blood in the process. As only the bridge “reaction” shots were filmed, I didn’t expect this sequence to be put back in.
  9. Mostly added: There have been a few slight edits to the cocoon sequence. In the deleted scene version, Ripley has a few lines saying that she’ll get Dallas out and onto the shuttle before he pleads with her to kill him. Aside from losing those, the rest of the sequence has been added in its entirety.

This just hasn't been my best week

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Earlier this week, I discovered that my site design had been appropriated without acknowledgment or credit by a third party. Upset about this, I posted about it. Some of my readers were able to provide me with an e-mail for the likely party, and I e-mailed them. I also cc:’d an administrator at the school.

While this action resulted in the site being first removed and then redesigned, it has been pointed out to me in the comment thread to that post that I managed to do this person essentially just what had just been done to me — a mistake that could have easily been taken care of quickly and quietly became more public than had ever been expected or desired.

What can I say — they’re right. I shouldn’t have been so quick to take the actions that I did. Already overstressed and overwhelmed from the attention my site has been getting of late, I reacted too quickly and without enough thought.

The following is the latest in a series of e-mail messages I have been trading with the person in question, expressing my apologies to him.

Thank you very much for accepting my mistake, please notify me of the appropriate amount of money I should paypal to you in order to repay you for bandwidth my site took by using an image served from your server.

Don’t worry about that — chances are it wasn’t terribly much, and as I’ve been getting an insane amount of traffic lately due to my recent experiences with Microsoft, my bandwidth limits are so ridiculously shot at this point that any traffic you might have added would be just a drop in the bucket.

It has been pointed out in the comment thread for my post that I may have jumped the gun in cc:’ing your academy superiors in my initial e-mail without first seeing if you would remove the site on your own. In retrospect, I should have given you the chance to remove it on your own — the only defense that I can give is that as there was no current e-mail address listed when I found your site, I was not certain I was contacting the right person, and at the time I found your site, I was somewhat overwhelmed from the attention my site had been getting and was somewhat touchier than I usually strive to be.

In my experiences with Microsoft (detailed earlier on my website, though it’s entirely possible that that is how you found my site in the first place), I made a mistake, and was immediately given the most extreme punishment possible. I then turned around and essentially did the same to you. For that, I most certainly owe you an apology as well.

I do hope that this hasn’t caused any major problems for you at the Academy (and as such, will also be cc:’ing this apology to the same contact person at the Academy that I did my initial e-mail). We’ve each recently made mistakes that have become more public than we expected or would have wanted them to. Hopefully each of us can learn from this in the future.

Again, good luck to you, and best wishes.

Everybody makes mistakes. Of late, I’ve been making my mistakes loudly and publicly — not something I’d really recommend to anyone. ;) Hopefully I can stop this trend before it gets any worse!

Congratulations, Bishop Robinson

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After far too much controversy — which is, unfortunately, far from finished — Gene Robinson was consecrated as Bishop on Sunday. It sounds like, while there were objections raised and protests held near the site of the consecration, overall it went pleasantly and without any undue problems.

After the objections were raised, [Presiding Bishop Frank T.] Griswold thanked attendees “for bringing their concerns before us.” But he also seemed to make a case for unity when he related a story of a primate who told him that “the Holy Spirit can do different things in different places,” adding, “That is precisely what we are doing here.”

Robinson received a more effusive endorsement from the Rev. Douglas Theuner, who he is replacing. Concluding a humorous and wide-ranging address that lightened the mood in the arena, Theuner told Robinson that his consecration is not the defining battle in the history of the church that some have made it out to be.

“When a young man unsure of his sexual orientation reads ‘The Episcopal Church Welcomes You’ on a sign outside the church and enters that church, that’s a defining moment in Christian life,” he said.

Many congratulations and best wishes go out to Bishop Robinson.

Jason Webley Deathday 2003

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Last night was Jason Webley‘s Deathday concert. Incredible, beautiful, fun, funny, and moving — everything I’ve come to expect from Webley’s shows.

The show was held at the Town Hall, which is just kitty-corner across the street from my apartment building. Just a little after 6pm, Prairie glanced out my kitchen window and noticed that something was glowing outside of Town Hall. Curious, I opened the window and poked my head out. The glow was easy to identify as a Jack O’ Lantern. What I hadn’t expected to see (though perhaps I should have) was the line that was already starting to form. Hoping to get good seats for the show, we decided that we’d go join the line, bundled up, and headed downstairs and across the street.

We found a spot in line right at the corner, and spent the next hour or so watching people play, identifying costumes, and chatting with the people in front of us — a cute girl with red dreadlocks and her boyfriend. We never did catch their names (even after mentioning at one point that we didn’t know each other), but they made for a fun way to pass the time as we waited, talking about everything from lemmings being thrown over cliffs to whether or not I liked artichokes (I don’t).

Eventually we made it inside, stood in line for a while longer waiting for the doors to the auditorium to open, and finally getting in and finding seats. We ended up getting great seats — the auditorium has a staircase in the center of the hall leading down and out, and we were just one row back behind the stairs, with a perfect view of the stage. Town Hall was perfect for the show, too. Huge (around 900 seats), and I’d guess the audience was between 700 and 800 people, primarily “alternative”/punk/goth kids in their late teens and early twenties, but a sizeable number of adults, also. One of the things I’ve always liked about Jason Webley is how well he attracts a wide range of fans, and that’s always obvious at shows such as these.

Not long after we all filed in, the musicians took the stage, and the show began…

The empty stage

The lights went down, and the auditorium went silent. A door opened on the side of the stage, and Jason entered — in puppet form. As a gorgeously done Jason Webley puppet, controlled by two puppeteers wearing all black, he walked to the front of the stage, guitar case in hand. He sat down, pulled out the guitar, and played the first song (recorded…as good as the puppet was, its fingers weren’t quite that dextrous).

Once the song was done, he walked back offstage, and the black clad assistants came back onstage. There had been a large box covered by a sheet at center stage, and they proceeded to remove the sheet to reveal a large trunk. They unlocked the trunk, opened the lid — and helped Jason (the real flesh-and-blood Jason this time) out of the box, clad only in loose yellow pants. As he came to life, he was given his trenchcoat and hat, and finally, his accordion, and the main part of the show began.

Emerging from the box

The show was incredible. The accompanying musicians were expanded this year to include a string quartet of two cello and two violin, in addition to the brass band, drums, and Jason switching among accordion, guitar, and piano (and occasional shovel). The addition of the fuller, more orchestral background was wonderful, filling out his songs and allowing for some beautiful background music for some of the more performance-art sets of the show.

Because Town Hall presented a more formal setting for the show than some other venues, like last year’s Deathday show at the Paradox, after the first few songs Jason took a moment to break the ice and loosen things up again by leading us all in a rousing sing-along of “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,” with everyone either standing up or sitting down again at every word that started with a “B”. This was fun, and got a good deal of giggles going through the audience, but apparently that wasn’t enough for Jason, as he decided to teach us another dance — the Gnomie.

Now, the Gnomie is quite easy to do. Inspired by those little lawn gnomes seen in the front yards of homes, all you have to do is get a sheepish grin on your face, pull your shirt over the back of your head, and then wiggle your arms (now pulled up a bit by the shirt) as you bounce around a bit. Have you ever seen a crowd of 700-some people doing the Gnomie? We almost didn’t, as there’s always some people a bit too shy to do something quite this silly. But Jason implored us to get everyone involved. After all, one doesn’t get too many chances to do the Gnomie, and so he asked us all to turn to anyone we could see who wasn’t joining in, look deep into their eyes, and sing to them, “If you don’t Gnomie by now….” The general mood loosened up a lot after that!

Do the Gnomie

This year, love, the heart, and flight were the running themes of the show, and the thematic elements of the performance were nicely woven between the more upbeat, sillier moments. Three stories were told during the course of the show: The Boy With Wings on His Heart, The Boy With A Ball of String for a Heart, and The Boy With A Balloon For A Heart. Each story was about our relationships with love — for each other, for home, for what we see in this world. I’m really hoping that someone who was taping the performance was able to catch these stories on tape, they were wonderfully written and performed.

During the last half of the show, red balloons were occasionally tossed into the crowd. Small heart-shaped balloons, larger round balloons, and a couple really large round balloons (easily two feet in diameter). These would fly around the audience, bouncing from one person to the next. They’d disappear for the quieter songs, then as the energy ramped up again, they’d reemerge from underneath seats or more would be brought out, and the air would soon fill with red balloons again.

Big red balloons

For each of Jason’s stories, he used a small doll (the child’s doll with a soft body and plastic head, arms, and legs) to illustrate the story as he told it. For The Boy With A Balloon for a Heart, the story told of a boy who’s heart would expand each time he saw something he liked, each time he saw something that made him sad — anything that made him love. This doll had had its body replaced with stocking fabric around a balloon, and each time the boy’s heart grew, Jason blew the balloon up a bit. Eventually, as the story ended, he had a (truth to tell) somewhat disturbing looking swollen baby doll, which he handed to the audience. Seeing as how we were already batting large red balloons around…well, the baby just got added into the mix. I’m not entirely sure if that was Jason’s intent or not, but for the rest of the evening, you’d see three or four balloons fly in front of your face, followed by a balloon baby careening through the audience.

Eventually, after a good collection of old Webley standards and some new songs (perhaps there’s a new album in the works?), a mass audience tickle fight, and everyone “getting wasted” for the Drinking Song by pointing at the roof, looking at their fingers, and spinning in circles twenty times or so, the show started to wind down.

Jason took off his coat and hat, and one of the assistance appeared in the audience with a doll version of Jason hanging from a pole with wings strapped to his arms, flying around the room, and eventually onto the stage. After a few flights around the stage, the doll Jason descended into Jason’s arms. Gently cradling the doll in his arms, Jason stood there, the auditorium dead silent — when the crack of snapping wood filled the hall, and the wings, shattered, fell to the ground. Anguish washing over his face, Jason gently reached into the doll and removed its heart.

Removing Jason's heart

Two white-clad pallbearers came on stage, bearing a small coffin between them. Setting it down on the stage and removing its lid, they reached up and coaxed the doll from Jason’s arms, laying it to rest within the coffin. One then turned and took the heart from Jason, placing it back in the body of the doll. They then stood back up and slowly left the stage, bearing the doll away and out of the auditorium down the central staircase, leaving Jason collapsed in grief on the stage. The two black-clad assistants then came back, gently picked Jason up, put him back into the trunk, closed and locked it, and covered it with the sheet again. The band played gently as we all got up and quietly left the auditorium, filed outside, and gathered in the rain outside of Town Hall, waiting to see what would happen next.

Eventually, someone caught wind of the next part of the night’s activities (for Jason’s big shows are never entirely done just because we’re no longer watching him onstage), and everyone started walking a block down the street to the closest entrance to Freeway Park. As we all entered the park we passed people with large bunches of balloons, handing everyone a single balloon. We got ours and continued on into the park, following the paths until we got to one of the large plaza areas next to the Convention Center. Here, the two pallbearers were standing next to a small stone cairn, still bearing the coffin with Jason’s (doll) body in it.

We gathered in a circle around them, each of us holding the balloon we had been given, talking quietly, reliving the show we had just seen, talking about prior Deathdays, and waiting to see what would happen next.

Waiting with our balloons

Eventually, people came back through the crowd, gathering all the balloons together again. We each tied our balloon onto one of the bunches, then all the bunches were gathered together in the center of the circle. Not long after that, the balloons started to rise, with Jason (in doll form) tied to the bottom of the bunch, to let him fly away into the night. Unfortunately, here the night hit a slight snag, to the amusement of the gathered fans. As there was a light rain that evening, the balloons were becoming slightly weighted down with water, and couldn’t get enough lift to fly away!

Jason floated gently above our heads, but wasn’t able to get much lift beyond that, and our cheers of encouragement as he floated above us quickly turned into laughs as he drifted first into one of the park lamps, then into one tree, and then into another. Each time, someone would extricate Jason from his predicament, knock some of the water off of the balloons they could reach, let him go again, we’d all cheer — and then watch him find another tree. After the third time, someone pulled the bunch of balloons down and those of us closest to the bunch, laughing and cheering, jumped up into the balloons, doing what we could to knock as much rain off as possible.

One last launch. Cheers and cries of encouragement. “Go, Jason!” “Fly away!” And fly away he did, finally rising above us, floating away over downtown Seattle, to wherever Jason goes during these long winter months.

And so Jason Webley has died. Until next spring and his rebirth…we’ll all miss you.

“Goodbye forever, once again…”

Goodbye forever, once again...

Update: More Webley links…

One last interview

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I think that this should be the last of my posts regarding my recent notoriety. Tech news site BetaNews interviewed me about the entire affair yesterday, and the interview has just been posted on their site.

On October 23, Michael “Woody” Hanscom posted a picture to his Web blog, intended to garner a chuckle or two from a few close friends and colleagues.

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The reaction the picture drew from his employer can only be compared to a kind of Orwellian nightmare where anything an individual does online can come back to haunt them. That nightmare is the reality faced by an increasingly vulnerable corporate world where the Web can be used as a tool to disclose potentially sensitive and damaging trade secrets to the masses.

Thanks to David Worthington for conducting the interview.