snagger.org http://blakeellison.posterous.com Most recent posts at snagger.org posterous.com Mon, 13 Feb 2012 22:35:19 -0800 How was the Zelda Concert? Well... http://blakeellison.posterous.com/how-was-the-zelda-concert-well http://blakeellison.posterous.com/how-was-the-zelda-concert-well
Back in early January, I got to use a birthday gift I was given back in December: two tickets to the Legend of Zelda performance at the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.

I got a couple questions pretty frequently following the show. From Dallas Arts District regulars: "How was Jaap?" That referred to the DSO's celebrated conductor and was an easy question to answer: he wasn't there. An Irish woman conducted the performance as part of the touring company that was putting on the Zelda concerts around the nation. 

The other question - "How was it?!" - is much harder to answer. It depends on what you think about games and what you know about music. 

"It was definitely an experience," I wrote to my brother, who I had unsuccessfully begged to come down from Oklahoma to join me at the concert. A professional musician and a devout Zelda player who even managed to sneak an Ocarina of Time reference into one of his successful compositions? Who should come but him? (On an aside, the excellent writer, world traveler and equally passionate gamer Hudson Lockett was an even better bromance-date for too many reasons to list here.)

The definitive trampling all over classical music tradition was in plain sight from the moment we walked in the place. Dress was all over the spectrum, from dating couples in suits and black dresses to cosplay groups in little green, elf-like Hylian outfits. The giant white board above the stage, visible in one of the pictures with this post, is a washed-out video screen that showed video clips from the games being referenced in the music.

The idea, it seemed obvious, was to educate listeners about what places or moods are being evoked within the music. The piece that we had all been assembled to hear was the "Symphony of the Goddess," a four-movement 'symphony' composed by an American spanning the Zelda franchise and a name derived from the latest game, Skyward Sword. 

The 'symphony' was, Hudson and I agreed, just an elaborate medley. Individual movements were medleys from individual games, so there was very little depth of atmosphere. Smaller details typical to the classical music tradition, such as the conductor's handshake with the first-chair violin, and not applauding between movements, were forgotten entirely.

Worse, the DSO sadly didn't do this music justice. The pianos and fortes were all in the right places on paper, but the group generally had a lack of chemistry that would move the audience. It sounded like the DSO hadn't had much rehearsal time at all with our Irish conductor. Criminally, the Fairy Fountain theme (you know it from every Zelda game's file selection screen)...

...was utterly butchered. No other way to put it. The poor harpists had to play their shortest strings to get those notes out, but by the looks I got on a video screen close-up, one player was older and had arthritic fingers that caused her to miss most of her notes. Stranger still, our composer thought it wise to do some call-and-response thing between the two harpists, but all that did was mess things up further when one player hit her notes and the poor other one didn't. It was cringing, dear-god-look-away awkward and equally painful to listen to.

So the performance itself really straddled the range from awful to (for tiny fractions of seconds) blissfully euphoric. And to cap it all off, our conductor left the stage two or three times, giving the audience the impression that they were being treated to a whole series of encores. That resulted in multiple (unnecessary) standing ovations.

That brings us back to your opinions on games and music. If you think games are art, then to celebrate them in the hallowed ground of a major city performance hall is an honor that they've earned. If you think games are the devil's work, it's sacrilege to let them into that hallowed ground. And if you're educated about classical music, then serviceable orchestration don't make up for blah arrangement, a wildly inconsistent performance, a huge video screen floating in the room shouting "HAY THIS IS THE PART WHERE ___", and all the smaller details of classical performances thrown out the window. But if you're not educated, you probably wouldn't have been bothered by any of those factors.

"You were probably not right not to come; you'd have hated it," I also wrote to my brother. A classically-trained musician, he wouldn't have enjoyed what was academically a lackluster piece of music and a bad performance to boot. Many real musicians probably committed suicide that night just so that they could roll over in their graves in response to the lack of musical convention and tradition. I honestly don't know if Kris would have been in that group.

Regardless of opinions, however, the facts speak for themselves. The Zelda symphony is the DSO's only sellout in its entire season and the fastest sellout in the organization's history. The arts, always more susceptible to patronage than we like to admit, will soon notice that gamers are a powerful, loyal and untapped demographic. In their (our) defense, is it so wrong that we call into question four hundred years' of tradition and appropriate classical music as our own when we pay for the artists? Who says we can't applaud if we hear something cool? Who says video can't augment a performance? Who says we have to be educated before hearing a symphony if we now have the technology to be educated while we listen?

As a birthday present, it combined pomp-and-circumstance and one of the greatest gaming franchises of my life. How could I hate on that?

Three or four standing O's, however many there were, were one final nail after another in the coffin of musical tradition. But from those gamers, those fans, those guys and girls across generations rocking Triforce tattoos and elf cosplay: I have no doubt that all of them were from the heart.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison Mon, 16 Jan 2012 13:25:00 -0800 Playlist: Catching up on all of 2011, pretty much http://blakeellison.posterous.com/playlist-catching-up-on-all-of-2011-pretty-mu http://blakeellison.posterous.com/playlist-catching-up-on-all-of-2011-pretty-mu

I haven't told the world what I'm playing, reading and listening to since March of last year!

Ack!

Let's get down to it:

Spotify 
I should mention Spotify first, since the service is a decent music player but it's really an amazing platform for me to shout out my musical opinions and tastes to the people who may want to know about it. I haven't really been able to share music with my high school amigos since high school, thanks to the inevitable demise of our LAN parties, too much laziness to run FTP or other filesharing servers, and the increasing difficulty of using common desktop apps to send files back and forth.
Spotify-log
Within a week or two of being converted to Spotify, Aroon, Alex and I basically got to play catch-up on several years' of diverging music collections. It's really good to be coming back together. If you're not using Spotify for its social features, it's because you don't have a taste in music.

All that said, I'm listening to:

Kenichiro Nishihara, Life - Mostly misses, especially compared to Humming Jazz, but don't miss Now I Know.

Funky DL, Blackcurrent Jazz 2 - DL's best since The 4th Quarter. Fantastic from start to finish. Don't miss Le Jazz Courant Noir. This is already the soundtrack to the rest of my time here in the US.

Nujabes, Spiritual State - You already know what I think.

Chris Botti Live in Boston - Sometimes you just need a little jazz.

Gaming

Forza Motorspot 3 (yes, 3) - So good that I switched away from GT5. Can't wait to get my hands on 4.

Yakuza 4 - I loved 3, so no surprise I enjoyed this one. There was less to surprise me in this one, and no new environments, but the enhancements over 3 made it worth the run.

Uncharted 3 - Personally, my Best Game of 2011. I started playing and next thing I knew Aroon was planted on the couch watching the action. Then, next thing I knew, we started over and Nick planted himself on the couch too. This is what a blockbuster - game, movie, whatever - should be.

Battlefield 3 - Actually really enjoyed the singleplayer campaign, if only because it's marginally less ridiculous than Modern Warfare. I really should've paid the $10 for multiplayer access.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Hats off to Eidos Montreal. They pulled off what every studio promising a big reboot promises, except they actually delivered. I adore the atmosphere, the world, the attention to detail. Looking at the augmentation, or the hacking mini-game, or the linearity, and it isn't classic DX. But the spirit of the narrative - the poverty, the paranoia, the way that globalization gives way to corporate rule - is completely and satisfyingly present. Can't wait for the inevitable sequel, and I'm just fine if it takes five years to execute again.

Donkey Kong Country Returns - As a trip down memory lane, certainly better done than most Nintendo platformers that aren't Mario. As a platformer, however, waggle controls are annoying and disappointing. And the cartoony, low-poly look that the Wii is known for doesn't do DKC justice. It's worth 2 or 3 hours, but from that you've scratched the itch and you can put it away.

Sonic Generations - I'd been hankering for a good Sonic so badly that I bought Sonic CD and gave it my first whirl ever since I never had a Sega CD growing up. Then along came Generations and - holy moly - it's good! A good 3D Sonic! Hallelujah!

Skip

Tropico 4 - Like a Zynga game but with a bad interface. Shudder.

Kirby's Epic Yarn - A game that showed incredible promise on its art style alone turns out to be a ho-hum platformer. I'd let my kids play it, if I had any. But I don't have kids, so skip it I did.

Final Fantasy XIII - Not worth the 60 hours it'd take to appreciate this game. After 5, I still have no idea what a fal'Cie is and I hate every character except the awesome black dude with the 'fro. Still, my hat goes off to the people who implemented the seriously beautiful motion graphics. Those little details were fantastic.

Reading

Steve Jobs' bio is worth the read.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison Sun, 22 May 2011 14:25:18 -0700 Tears to my eyes http://blakeellison.posterous.com/tears-to-my-eyes http://blakeellison.posterous.com/tears-to-my-eyes This Shing02 performance actually brings tears to my eyes. It's from last summer's Nujabes tribute show, but it was also the premiere of part 4 in Shing02's collab series 'Luv Sic.' It's beautiful.

(the new track comes in after 6:00, but you really should watch the whole performance)

You know those really touching commercials Google is running about sending photos to your daughter and finding French churches to wed the life-changing Parisienne? This is my Google commercial. I couldn't be in Shibuya last summer, but the videos on YouTube let the whole world watch. 

It's such a blessing.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison Sat, 26 Mar 2011 16:08:35 -0700 Blake Recommends: the Lightning Round http://blakeellison.posterous.com/blake-recommends-the-lightning-round http://blakeellison.posterous.com/blake-recommends-the-lightning-round Holy moly, school hit me hard. I haven't updated what I've been consuming since last summer. Well then, it's time to catch up, and to do so quickly, I'm going to borrow a concept coined by my dear friend and colleague Adam Wright: the Instareview.

The Instareview is almost like a haiku in that it conveys a lot of information, or one very poignant idea, using a minimum of words. Hopefully, it'll take less time than dilly-dallying in the details and the track listings and the analysis, but still give a good idea of how I really feel about something.

Let's get to trying this out!

Music

Cee-Lo Green, The Lady Killer - Good all the way through, not just 'Fuck You.' A classic? Maybe not.

DJ Deckstream, Deckstream Soundtracks 2 - Like a gourmet steak from a fusion place: weird first taste, but definitely meaty with a great aftertaste. On heavy rotation.

Jasmine, Dreamin - The only ever time I've 'pulled an Aroon' and played one song, on repeat, for hours on end. 

Kenichiro Nishihara, Humming Jazz - In a post-Nujabes world, there's a gap in Japan's hip-hop, and Nishihara comes closer than anyone else to filling it. Don't miss the collab with Substantial.

modal soul classics vol. 2, DEDICATED TO NUJABES - Speaking of Nujabes, his old crew released an album to say goodbye. You can hear the celebration of life in some tracks and the hurt in others. 

Kero One, Kinetic World - An album so DIY, you can hear the Garageband in it. (But I'm still psyched for his next one, or a live show).

Lupe Fiasco, Lasers - 18 tracks of some overproduced rapper (feat. Lupe Fiasco).

Passion Pit, Manners - I admit it. I'm hooked. Love these guys. Next thing you know I'll be driving a Volkswagen, using Apple products and watching comedies on ABC. Wait a second...

Think Twice, With a Loop and Some String - Half of Specifics does his 'own' album, half of which is collab with Specifics MC Golden Boy anyway. Who knew Canadian hip-hop was so consistently good?

Games

Yakuza 3 - Are you a Japanophile? Did you like Shenmue? Do you like some really good narrative in your games? The more you answered yes, the more you should play this game. I'm biased, but it was my game of 2010.

Gran Turismo 5 - It's Pokemon with cars. BRB, gotta keep catching 'em all.

DJ Hero 2 - Everything I, the boy who fantasizes of DJing, wanted 1 to be. Devastated there won't be a 3.

Halo: Reach - Bungie knows how to stay ahead of the curve. 

StarCraft II - I'm too white to play this game. I'm also too white to play football. Doesn't stop me from loving watching either one as a sport.

You Don't Know Jack - Best trivia game ever gets best modern revival ever.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 - First time I've ever said 'meh' to a Mario game. What happened?

Professor Layton and the Unwound Future - First time I've ever said 'meh' to a Layton game. What happened?

Call of Duty: Black Ops - Now's a great time to sell your Activision stock.

Red Dead Redemption - Objectively, extremely well made, but I can't get it out of my head that this is GTA4 with horsies. Sorry, Rockstar SD.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood - The cool kids call it AssBro for short. And they stick to the extremely addictive multiplayer mode.

Movies

The Social Network - This movie speaks my language: specifically, techie startup business technobabble written by Aaron Sorkin. If you're me, you'll love it.

Sucker Punch - What's the word for "a mess of messes"?

Pirate Radio - Every bit as cool as 60s/70s Britain.

----------

OK, so it's not as good as Adam's work, but man, I had a lot of pop culture to get off my chest there.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison Tue, 07 Sep 2010 21:43:17 -0700 An old(er) man's taste in music http://blakeellison.posterous.com/an-older-mans-taste-in-music http://blakeellison.posterous.com/an-older-mans-taste-in-music I noticed recently that my current listening habits are barely recognizable given what I listened to in high school.

Granted, that shouldn't be that much of a shock, but what surprised me is how little moved I am now by songs - some objectively good ones, even - that seemed to define big parts of my life at the time.

Take Incubus, for example. I had Morning View on repeat for at least an entire year of high school - and now it's been several years since I last heard it. The last album or two haven't been worth more than one listen. 

Jimmy Eat World is a similar case. They were the soundtrack to my college life. Aside from a brief love affair with Chase This Light during the rock-bottom of my time in Japan, I haven't heard much out of them lately either (though that will likely change with a new album around the corner).

The same thing could be said for John Mayer, I suppose. I was a huge, huge fan in late high school and early college. Now, his live DVD following his third album appeared from Netflix, and after staring at the envelope for a week I sent it back without watching. Just not interested anymore. I don't think he's capable of moving me anymore. I couldn't watch that DVD, dated one or two years ago, and get past the subsequent crappy album or his impending collapse as a tabloid fodder kind of celebrity.

Looking back, I think those correlated much better with more topsy-turvy times. High school exists only to stress you out, and college just comes with identity crises and other such inconsistencies out of the box. The raw edge of the first two bands and Mayer's self-aware, moment-in-time mellowness were a good fit for those days.

Can I be moved anymore? Life is about as comfortable as it could be lately. I've spent the last couple of years enjoying pretty much everything. There's no danger, no topsy-turvi-ness, and stress is short-lived. 

I went to concerts for all three of those artists when I was younger. Would I still go to another concert of theirs tomorrow? Hard to say.

In fairness, there are some things I've listened to ever since high school. Basement Jaxx seem to get better and better, for one. Daft Punk are established makers of classics by now. BT's latest rekindled something that had been neglected for years. And the hip-hop habit I was introduced to in mid-college is still going strong. 

It makes me wonder how long I'll listen to what's on heavy rotation now. It's been a great four years of Nujabes, but since he's passed away he won't have any new works coming.   iTunes tells me I'm really into Specifics and The Sushi Club - been listening for 1 and 4 years, respectively, and I have no idea when either of those guys will crank out anything new either.

Is it a sign that I need a new adventure? Another stress test in a foreign land? I can't kick my feet up forever, you know. Maybe Jimmy Eat World needs me back - or, more accurately, maybe I need them back and I don't even know it.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison Wed, 31 Mar 2010 22:28:13 -0700 Blake Recommends: April Fool's edition http://blakeellison.posterous.com/blake-recommends-april-fools-edition http://blakeellison.posterous.com/blake-recommends-april-fools-edition Oh, man. It's time to get caught up on some gaming action. This was originally the 'Valentine's Day edition,' given the timing of when I played all these things, but then school came along and decided to get all evil for a month and change.

Now I'm back to a reasonable everyday schedule, so it's time to share my thoughts on some games and music. I want to get on to new things, so I'll be making this quick.

Grand Theft Auto: Ballad of Gay Tony
The best GTA game made. Fascinating characters and a tight (but not short) storyline filled with high-octane action sequences. It's like playing a Michael Mann movie. Or a Michael Bay movie. But good either way. If you play one version of GTA IV, make it this.

Forza Motorsport 3
Truly a great racing game. Even feels good using the Xbox 360 controller, which is odd since it's a controller totally set up for action games. I think the great racing games are less about moving around the track and more about diving headlong into car culture. In this regard, Forza and DiRT have both been great recent games in the genre. I have to confess, though: I'm still a Gran Turismo man, and the only reason I haven't poured 100 hours into FM3 is that I know I'll put more than that into GT5. If Forza finally let its players revel in gearhead culture, GT5 will be the damned Smithsonian of car culture by comparison.

Brace yourselves for this one
I put a few hours into World of Warcraft.

Yes. I, the blakerson, played WoW.

The economics of this game are very different from my last foray into the game several years ago. Basically, back then it was "I'm paying for this punishment?" and then Blizzard spent years tweaking the psychology of leveling and loot accumulation and then gave me a year's subscription for free. So now, my experience was "Hey, this ain't bad.. where my friends at?"

To answer the requisite questions: Blood Elf Rogue, got to somewhere around 16-18 before play tapered off.

Perfect Dark
This one's a last-second addition. A wonderous HD port of the game was released on Xbox Live Arcade, finally sating the innate needs of former Goldeneye players who needed a re-release ever since games started getting re-released.

Good news: It's a 60fps, 1080p, re-textured redux of the original game, with tons of local and online multiplayer options including co-op and deathmatch modes.
It's got a throwback mode, which lets you play on the game's three redone Goldeneye maps using just Goldeneye weapons. It's still addictive well over a decade on.

Bad news: It's not Goldeneye. Between the rights to the game (which lie with Nintendo), the assets (which live with Rare, now owned by Nintendo's rival Microsoft) and the James Bond franchise (Activision), it'll never get re-released. You don't get to go back and run through the Dam and the Facility and so on in single-player, repeating all those missions that drove you nuts when you were thirteen. There are only three familiar multiplayer maps.

Still, well worth $10.

OK, time for some music.

Specifics - Lonely City and II
Two white guys from Toronto who've got their hip-hop down. I think I've heard "Take Me Back" a thousand times and it's still smooth.

Funky DL - The 4th Quarter
A brother with American-sounding rhymes from London's East Side.

Utada - This Is the One
A J-pop star tries to make it in the US. She's been huge in Japan since her youth, but like many Asian pop stars the transition hasn't been easy despite her native English. Going full-blown slut on her first English-language album didn't seem to work, so she hunkered down and tried harder and came away with something better the second time around. She's coming on my Internet radio pretty frequently, and I can't seem to turn her off. Honestly, who can say no to a line like "chemistry like apple and cinnamon"?

Hey, want to share some music?
Join Dropbox and let me know you've joined.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison Sun, 28 Mar 2010 23:06:59 -0700 RIP Nujabes :( http://blakeellison.posterous.com/rip-nujabes-1 http://blakeellison.posterous.com/rip-nujabes-1
02

I randomly checked Twitter two weeks ago to find that Nujabes was a trending topic worldwide.

Upon checking it out, it was an explosion of posts in Japanese - not surprising, considering the hip-hop producer born Jun Seba is big in Japan. But the odd short post in English - 'RIP Nujabes' - hit me harder than the wall of Japanese condolences.

Nujabes, to the American audience, is best known as the mastermind of the super-popular Samurai Champloo soundtrack. I found him that way too. But I quickly branched into his releases from his label and found some of his best stuff.

That was 2006. I'm still listening to Nujabes' tunes and those of his collaborators, ranging from jazz musicians like Uyama Hiroto to Western MCs including Substantial, Fat Jon, and Funky DL.

Nujabes' tracks kept my blood pressure down through a hellacious senior year of college. They comforted me as I went to and from Japan and adjusted to cultures twice. And even today they're my best background music when I'm working away.

Seba died in a high-speed car crash as the clock struck his 36th birthday. He had a long and prolific career ahead of him, as evidenced by mountains and mountains of messages left by his collaborators around the world. His fans, likewise, have left a pile of comments 250-deep as I write this.
 
I think that as we grow, our tastes in music change. I've grown up, and as such I'm no longer listening to The Offspring and Blink-182. But Nujabes and his family were something closer to constant in my life. I feel like my growth will always be, in some little way, stunted with a stunted body of work from someone who tapped into my musical soul so well.

If any friends in Japan are reading and are as disappointed as I am, please search out his record store Tribe in Shibuya and let me know what comes of it.

Photo: Koji Ohta

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:45:53 -0800 Super-late photos: Sir Paul http://blakeellison.posterous.com/super-late-photos-sir-paul http://blakeellison.posterous.com/super-late-photos-sir-paul This is the fourth activity I referenced after my London trip.

Sir Paul McCartney. Fifth-row seats.

The man can play a show. An entire section of seating was set aside for his friends and family (it was the last stop on his tour, and the only one in England). Two-and-a-half-hours-plus with no breaks. So much heart.

As excited as I was to see the legend in the flesh, I was more excited for my mom. She is to The Beatles as I am to games. She knows every factoid, every detail, every ounce of their personal history. She spent her youth following them from the great Internet-less distance of rural Oklahoma. She never saw a Beatles concert, but I was going to make damn sure she saw the closest possible thing during her lifetime.

And she did. That box got a big, fat check mark put in it. For her and for me.

As miserable as the rest of the trip was (Mom + jetlag + British food = not fun), she was beaming for a solid 48 hours (before she caught swine flu on the way home and became more miserable). "We saw Pauuuuuul," she'd coo. During those 48 hours, miserable British food, or having to ride the Tube, or the weather became non-factors. We did what we went there to do, and it felt great to do it.

Indeed, we did it. We saw Pauuuuuul.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison Sat, 21 Nov 2009 14:13:22 -0800 Blake Recommends: Winter Edition http://blakeellison.posterous.com/blake-recommends-winter-edition http://blakeellison.posterous.com/blake-recommends-winter-edition
It's been a while since I've done a round of recommendations for stuff I'm consuming. Let's fix that!

Stuff I love:

-Last.fm: If you use Pandora, switch to Last.fm now. They've really developed their ad-supported streaming radio service, and it's pretty solid. It's great for being exposed to new artists without falling into the Pandora trap of super-specialized stations that play the same 5 awesome songs over and over. My favorite feature is the presence of international music, so I have stations for J-pop artists like m-flo and Crazy Ken Band that play new tracks from them and their musical cousins. It's also a new feature on the Xbox 360, and I'm pretty sure I have it on non-stop while I'm studying at home. I've especially fallen in love with...

-Crystal Kay: Japanese-born, halfie, bilingual R&B. All the catchiness of Japanese pop music with some seriously solid vocals on top. Lots of fun to listen to, even if you don't speak Japanese.

-DJ Hero: I understand the complaints about DJ Hero. But I don't care. Even if what I'm doing in this game isn't actually what DJs do, it's a fun enough facsimile. There are enough tracks that completely kick ass to make up for the weak ones. And I really don't care about the reportedly blah multiplayer modes. I just want to do cool DJ things, and I get to do that. The art direction is cool and the game is good. DJ Hero is, honestly, what I've wanted ever since Guitar Hero came about. I wanted a game built around an instrument I care about more than guitar, and I got that. I paid the stupidly high price for this game and don't regret it. It's pretty rare that I enjoy a game that isn't critically acclaimed, at least outside the presence of diamond-in-the-rough-seeker John Martone, but this is one such rare moment. I'm going to revel in it, even if no one else does.

-Left 4 Dead 2: I have a little clique of Left 4 Dead playing buddies, and we've really enjoyed the last 6 or so months playing together. We had mixed feelings on whether L4D2 would mess that up, but after a week with the game we're all on the same page. And it's the page I wrote a few months back: It's more Left 4 Dead. How can this be a bad thing?

Stuff I just can't bring it upon myself recommend:

-Modern Warfare 2: It unfortunately fit with the trend in Infinity Ward games: an amazing, innovative, emotionally investing game gets followed up with a solid, but relatively not boundary-pushing, sequel. See: Call of Duty 1&2, Modern Warfare 1&2. 

Warning: spoilers. Skip down to Mos Def to avoid.
Clearly IW was trying to break the pattern with the infamous airport scene, but this was a hugely blown opportunity. The setup was this: you're an undercover agent sent in to root out an evil, evil former Soviet dude. So you're supposed to fall in with him, build his trust, and eventually bring down his whole empire. All of that should have been playable, in-game narrative instead of dropping you in this story's climax at the start of level fucking two. What the player gets instead is a paper-thin context from a load-screen briefing and a command: open fire on these innocent people, and go on a terroristic rampage. And when it's done, you get shot in the head and die. You play as a specific character for one level and then you're capped in the face. How much more disposable can your own in-game avatar be?

Compare that to the heaviest moment in the first Modern Warfare: halfway through the game, after you've followed this American soldier through to a climax in the Middle East, you die. You die. It was the biggest moment in gaming in 2007, and the biggest moment in 2009 is the bungled result of a very difficult development schedule dropped on IW. There wasn't time to make the player gain the trust of the evil Soviet guy, but IW couldn't spare the game this seriously heavy moment. Thanks for the mix-up, Activision. Now when anyone wants to explore the 24-esque theme of "doing horrible things to save more people," gamers will have this disappointing precedent to look back to. When will the core game publishers realize that short-term schedules impact the long-run quality of their product and their industry?

-Mos Def, The Ecstatic: I admit, I haven't given it an honest listen yet, but it's every bit as odd as other Mos Def albums. Maybe a little too out there.

-John Mayer, Battle Studies: Mayer's at his best when he's singing about things other people don't think about or can't put into words easily. His first and third albums were great for this reason, not because they were good music. So now he's adopted the most common theme of all, love, and done an entire album around it. It just seems like a waste of talent. At least two songs borrow their structures from tracks from Continuum. And what is Taylor Swift doing in my John Mayer?

PS: The cover of Crossroads is seriously lame. If Mayer is a young Eric Clapton in terms of guitar virtuosity, why isn't he showing it off here?

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:15:24 -0800 Dear West Coast... http://blakeellison.posterous.com/dear-west-coast http://blakeellison.posterous.com/dear-west-coast [this post is best read to the tune of Ice Cube's "Today Was A Good Day"]

So here I am in sunny San Diego,
Thinkin' 'bout when I'll be on that payroll

And here every other car's a Ferrari
It makes you start thinkin' that money's so godly

And you'd be forgiven to think
That life's just bling and bitches and weed

So please don't shoot me ('cause your gangstas are hard)
But your coast's own hip-hop is really sub-par.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison Thu, 08 Oct 2009 18:11:03 -0700 Music post: Get the new Basement Jaxx http://blakeellison.posterous.com/music-post-get-the-new-basement-jaxx http://blakeellison.posterous.com/music-post-get-the-new-basement-jaxx
Basement-jaxx

After a grueling 3-year wait, the new Basement Jaxx album is out. It's not as amazing as the 2006 one, but it's still solid stuff - and undeniably the sound that these guys are known for. 

It's called Scars - and be sure to let me know if you come across the extra track from the Japanese release. I love these guys, but 1500 yen for one track is a push.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison Fri, 06 Feb 2009 10:02:00 -0800 I actually respect Kanye West http://blakeellison.posterous.com/i-actually-respect-kanye-west http://blakeellison.posterous.com/i-actually-respect-kanye-west Yeah, he's ridiculous on stage, he goes off-script during charity telethons, or at the VMA awards. And he types like a 10-year-old on his own website.

But at the end of the day, he's actually self-effacing. And I think that quality is endemic of deeper, more respectable qualities like self-awareness and a sense of humor.

Haters start your engines, I hear 'em gearing up
People talk so much shit about me at barbershops
They forget to get they hair cut
OK, fair enough, streets is flaring up
'Cuz they want gun talk, or I don't wear enough
Baggy clothes, Reeboks or Adid-os
Can I add that he do spaz out at his shows?
Sure, he makes most Americans facepalm, but I can't help but laugh a little every time a Kanye track comes on. And not necessarily in a bad way.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison Sat, 19 Apr 2008 23:54:00 -0700 Pop culture update http://blakeellison.posterous.com/pop-culture-update http://blakeellison.posterous.com/pop-culture-update I'm really trying to avoid being one of those people who graduates from school and decides they've "grown out" of writing their own stuff. It's one thing to get too busy to do it, but 90% of people who shut down their accounts on Xanga/Blogger/Wordpress/etc. do it out of lack of interest.

Weak sauce, I say. If you want to bring down the number of entries, great, but I think few people have compelling enough reasons to stop being as expressive as they were before. It's cool that newer outlets are making people *more* expressive, too: my brother was never publicly read until he started writing Facebook notes and in just a few entries he's shown himself to be sophisticated, funny, and stylistically very talented. His stuff just screams "diamond in the rough," as if those same parts of his brain got used towards being a musician instead of honing his writing style.

I, on the other hand, have no excuse other than a job situation which is OK with me *reading* anything on a computer, but frowns upon me being communicative or expressive on work time, because that's a giveaway that I'm doing "private things" at work as far as my Japanese superiors are concerned. That alone makes me look forward to getting an American job in a certain respect.

Moral of the story: this blog ain't dead, and while I'm a bit short on epiphanies these days, I'm challenging myself to step up and be interesting.

So, in an homage to my older blogging days, here's what I'm consuming, and maybe you should be too:

What I'm listening to
Lots of hip-hop at the moment. In the last year we've had new albums from Common, Talib Kweli, and Lupe Fiasco, and they're collectively a bit darker, a bit funkier, a bit more grittier than their respective earlier records. But they're all good, so go get them.

What I'm reading
Wired.com is the best reading material I've come across in a while. It's a great mix of internet culture, tech news, and Silicon Valley Doings that's all written by a pretty accomplished collection of contributors. I especially recommend the Autopia, Gadget Lab, and Threat Level blogs within the site, and the online postings of magazine features each month.

What I'm playing
My game habits are thrown out of whack, since my multiplayer abilities are limited out here. If I were in the States, it'd be solid Super Smash Bros. Brawl. But instead, my Japanese Wii looks forlorn as I give more attention to my PS3 (and Gran Turismo 5 Prologue), and even more to my Xbox 360 (Halo 3 is still the multiplayer king). I'm looking forward to getting home so I can catch up on a lot of co-operative games and throw a gaming party or two.

In the meantime, I'm getting some rare single-player quality time. I finally finished the Halo 3 campaign. Call of Duty 4 was the best game of last year. Super Mario Galaxy is a 9 out of 10 - a massive improvement in recent Mario years, but it still doesn't outdo Super Mario 64.

Also, I did something I never do: I preordered a game. Grand Theft Auto 4, the American version, is to be delivered to my doorstep sometime in the near-ish future. I'm going to be massively sucked in.

Where I'm going
Mom's coming to visit me in Japan! It's going to be a whirlwind week and a half covering Tokyo and Kyoto, and long story short we'll basically be seeing everything that you can catch a glimpse of in Lost in Translation. We're even staying in the same hotel. At first, I was unspeakably excited about living like a rockstar with Mom for the trip. She hasn't had a vacation in something like 15 years, so it's all 5-star hotels and first-class tickets. If you know my mom, you get what's going on here. Then it hit me that it's pathetic to be excited for stuff that my mom's money is buying, and I should be much more excited that it's Mom and she's coming to see me. And I have gotten excited about it. I'm happy to be really sharing Japan with someone for once. Konnichiwhoa might be interesting to read once in a while, and the pictures might be cool, but it's a world apart from constantly having to explain things you see on the street, explaining random cultural idiosyncracies, translate everything from ads to restaurant menus to what shopkeepers say. And out of all the people who've had to put up with my Japan fascination, she's had to bear more of it than anyone - she paid for my degree in Japanese, and I had to fight for that. It's going to be an awesome, fun-filled, classy week and a half.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison Thu, 17 Jan 2008 21:43:00 -0800 Just for the record... http://blakeellison.posterous.com/just-for-the-record http://blakeellison.posterous.com/just-for-the-record 5 years from now, people will record the Daft Punk Alive tour as one of the great cultural events of our time.

People will ask if you went and which city's show you hit. It's the KISS, the Dead, the Stones of our time.

And it deserves to be, when [according to legend] a guy pronounced legally dead in 1986 is the opening act.

And I will answer "Yes, I was there. Tokyo."

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison Mon, 12 Feb 2007 18:08:00 -0800 OH HELL YES http://blakeellison.posterous.com/oh-hell-yes-3 http://blakeellison.posterous.com/oh-hell-yes-3 Dear friends, I've had a musical conundrum for a while:

I've been contemplating wiping my mp3 folder. Just taking a small handful of albums that are very near and dear to me, and killing off the rest.

That operation will have to go on hold, because The Avalanches are back.

Finally. After like a 6 year wait.

Apparently they're posting their live sets and some new tracks (which are always amazing; they have the best mixing around) over on theavalanches.com, so go grab those.

It's going to be a good year after all!

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison Fri, 15 Dec 2006 12:48:00 -0800 It’s the season for completely unoriginal titles http://blakeellison.posterous.com/its-the-season-for-completely-unoriginal-titl http://blakeellison.posterous.com/its-the-season-for-completely-unoriginal-titl I’m writing this from MS Word 2007. I’m testing out the new Office thing after a little year-long hiatus with OpenOffice. The online recommendations for Office 2007 just don’t stop coming in, so I made the switch and while I haven’t done much so far, the interface looks like a massive improvement. It definitely got an overhaul (finally). And yes, I’m even posting from Office, as Word supports posting directly to Blogger.

Oh dear God, I just noticed this thing manages bibliographies and sources. Suddenly I’m SO, SO happy I made the switch before I started draft work for my thesis. Supposedly all the wizards and stuff are slick, too, so the switch is already worth the trouble.

More interestingly, I’ve been up to quite a lot ever since I finished all my application work. I’ve been gaming like a madman, I fixed my desktop after a month of downtime, and I’m pouring every available minute into planning my trip to Japan. I’m gone in just a couple weeks. The planning’s been fun, though. I’ll be mostly in inner Tokyo, but I’ll be making a couple expeditions outside town for things like the Tokyo Auto Salon. My Japanese has improved a lot over the last semester, so I finally feel like I’m up to getting around everyday life in Tokyo there even amongst the people who don’t speak really good English. If you’re a reader and have any recommendations or requests for places I should go check out, hit me up – I’m more than open to suggestions, and I’ve got plenty of free time over there.

Now that I have lots of free time here (finals are easy when you’re a senior and wrapping up a language major) I’m catching up on all this pop culture stuff I missed while my desktop was out. I’m still playing the same Wii and DS games, mostly because Phoenix Wright will never, ever end. I’m taking my sweet time with Zelda since a game like this apparently only comes around once every 10 years or so. The musical front, however, has been much more interesting. I went on an acquisition rampage right after Aroon did, and we have yet to share stuff, but here’s some things among the awesomeness we’ve got:

Basement Jaxx – Crazy Itch Radio – Easily The Jaxx’s best yet. It’s new, it’s definitely in the Jaxx style, but it’s smoother than anything they’ve ever done. It’s like the late-night, after-hours version of Jaxx, and it’s awesome.
Daft Punk @ Coachella 2006 – This is just a bootleg of a Daft Punk set, but it’s revolutionary. They played a set entirely composed of their own songs, they cover all their hits, most of Discovery, gloss over Human After All, and all the while they bust out the best mixing since The Avalanches. If you’re a Daft fan, you have to have this.
Hyde Out – A compilation of Japanese hip-hop, including Nujabes and Shingo2, both of whom famously contributed to the Samurai Champloo soundtracks. If you like that stuff, you’ll love this.
Mos Def – True Magic – I’m really not sold on this one yet. Mos is always stretching the bounds of hip-hop, but on this one he decided to make his sonic theme gangsta rap, just like he used rock music for his last album. Between that and Common doing Gap commercials, I’m scared for hip-hop.
BT – This Binary Universe – OK, so I haven’t listened to or watched it yet. But I’m saving it for a good occasion, because by all estimates it’s amazing.
The Slip – Eisenhower – Yeah, that The Slip. The “accessible Boston rock” band behind “Even Rats,” the song that stole the show in the first Guitar Hero. The entire album is much in the same indie vein, and it dips into famous indie territory a little bit much, perhaps even stepping on Death Cab’s toes, but it’s really, really good. If you’ve been up with the mainstream indie kick of the last year, pick up this one while it’s still underground.

Speaking of Guitar Hero, here’s a list of what I’m not playing or listening to:

Guitar Hero II – What? I don’t like GH2? Damn straight I don’t. The gameplay enhancements (easier hammer-ons, etc.) and graphic touch-ups were great news, not to mention cooperative gameplay, 3-note chords and a much-expected ramped up difficulty, but dear God, the songlist is awful. The first game tried to be something to everyone, and it succeeded. Everything from hair metal to blues to bleeding-edge-new hits. I hear the GH2 tracklist, on the other hand, is going to be sold in a compilation called “Lowlights of the 80s and 90s.” They may as well have thrown in Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy” and some shitty R.E.M. song and called it “ClearChannel: The Game.”
Excite Truck – I was excited for a Wii spiritual successor to Wave Race 64. Sadly, this ain’t it. It’s fast and furious, and the thrill of the game is definitely worth playing for an hour or so, but as you progress through the game the difficulty ramps up too quickly and the AI is horribly unbalanced.
Red Steel – I was also excited for a Wii spiritual successor to Goldeneye. Surprisingly, this game is. It’s got all the same good points as the classic shooter – a cool premise, a novel control scheme, and damn addicting multiplayer. Even stranger, this game has all Goldeneye’s flaws too – graphics that won’t age well, just plain odd AI, and a very obtuse control scheme. Unfortunately, the aiming sensitivity is just a bit too off-kilter to make this game playable for more than 15 minutes at a time, unless you’re playing multiplayer with your mates. Ubisoft has promised a sequel, so I’ll keep my hopes up for that one.
Hybrid – I Choose Noise – Not only was I already falling out of love with Hybrid for being a touch too repetitive, Hybrid definitely chose noise with this one. It’s dark, it’s ambient, it’s almost industrial, perhaps a bit Aphex Twin-ish, but still Hybrid. If that sounds great to you, you’ll love it; otherwise, skip it.
Incubus – Light Grenades – Incubus, you’re fired. After the huge disappointment that was Brandon Boyd is Mad at the World – sorry, A Crow Left to the Murder – this was your last chance. The pack-in material (errr, the .nfo file with album download) explained that this album was just like “13 different tracks from 13 different bands, [because] we tried yet again to make a cohesive album and it just didn’t work out,” in the words of guitarist Mike Einzinger. Fuck that, S.C.I.E.N.C.E., Make Yourself, and Morning view were all cohesive and they were all brilliant. The album proudly touts a new producer, who worked with such “greats” as STP and Creed in the past. Are we really surprised when the new album sounds like STP and Creed? No, we’re not. This album does not rock. It’s a travesty - Incubus has been compromised by the Music-Industrial Complex, and all that’s left is a distinctive voice and guitar on top of the all-singing, all-rocking crap of the world. The brilliant musicians of history have bad phases – The Beatles and anything after Vietnam, Clapton and acoustics, Miles Davis and fusion. This is not a phase. This is Incubus compromised – not selling out, mind you, but bought out via hostile takeover.

At the very least, I’ll have a thing or two to listen to on the 14-hour non-stop from Dallas to Tokyo. It’s funny, too – I no longer get Christmas money from family to help pay for trips like these. It may be because I’m 22, but more likely because I have no family left. My paternal grandparents left me an inheritance greater than my own father’s. My maternal grandfather is only able to recognize me on a good day, yet he put a bunch of savings bonds in my name upon my birth. Part of each of those is paying for my trip to Japan. Funny how that works – for each of my grandparents, who fought in the Pacific War, Japan was the enemy. That was only 60 years ago. And yet, upon my arrival, I’ll be greeted as a friend. “Yookoso” upon entering the nation. “Irasshaimase” upon entering any shop, restaurant, or inn in the country. I’m not sure what my family originally intended for me to do with all the money they set aside for me. At the time, I suspect “go make friends with those who were once my enemy” wasn’t too high on the list. I don’t mean that they wouldn’t have wanted me to go – they were never that stubborn – but I’m sure they knew I’d find a worthwhile way to use the money – maybe pay for a house after I get hitched, or pay for part of law school. Or maybe, if I was lucky and adventurous enough, I’d see the world with it. My maternal grandfather went to the Pacific on a ship, only to find out that he got seasick. For a month. I’ll be across the ocean in 14 hours, and I’ll be peachy thanks to Dramamine. And when I get there, I’ll be safe and sound. I’ve been given quite a lot – and maybe I’ll be lucky and strong enough to turn it into something good.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison