Larry Madill: A Writer Gone Sane

Me and My Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Larry) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:48:00 +0000

I had a Twitter account that I never Twitter with, and then while following someone else's Twitter they decided to follow my Twitter which made me start using my Twitter. This basically screams to me, I have one more thing to not update regularly.

Anyway you can read my not updated Twitter at:

http://twitter.com/larrymadill/

WahJah Gamer

noreply@blogger.com (Larry) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:39:00 +0000

I've started a second blog to provide a specific place for me to voice my obsession with video games and gaming culture. You can check it out at:

http://wajagamer.blogspot.com/

Writer Available for XNA Projects

noreply@blogger.com (Larry) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 01:14:00 +0000

Crossposted from the Help Wanted / Help Available section of the XNA Community Forum:

I have been working as a freelance writer for Seven Years plus. Most of my experience has been in some facet of the entertainment industry -- either working as a freelance entertainment journalist or as a screenwriter mainly focused on independent movies. I have sold or optioned a couple of smaller budget film scripts, and just had my first script produced in June of 2007. I've got a keen eye for story and dramatic structure; I also can write some really kick-ass dialogue. I am looking to expand my horizons and resume into the gaming industry. I've been playing games since the Nintendo Era so I am not just a "Noob" that sees Silicon Gold in those 'dern Hills of Game Development. I love games and think that games can be a great medium to tell a story. I'd like to help those interested tell theirs. Always open to Paid Jobs (well, who isn't?) and my rates are flexible. But I am also open to Free Jobs at the moment, depending on the project and the details. You can contact me at: thedude@larrymadill.com You can also check out my Website at: http://www.larrymadill.com/ There you can find links to my resume, IMDB profile, some script samples, etc etc etc. Thanks and look forward to hearing from the XNA community. (Larry Madill)

Wow, Can I Speak to Someone Who Lives in My Country, please?

noreply@blogger.com (Larry) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 13:46:00 +0000

That was a first. A strange, confusing first.

I called Amazon's Customer Service for the first time (well, actually they call you after you request to call them) ever, and when I picked up the phone I thought it was a joke. Like a prank being played on me by a friend. Some dude named Nizam on the other end with an impenetrable Hindu accent asking me, "How may I be of service today?" I decided to ride this weird Kipling Waja out however. I posed a fairly simple question: I ordered an item on this date and I am supposed to receive it by the 21st, but the item hasn't shipped yet, I just want to verify that the delivery is still planned for the 21st.

The typical verification B.S. of Name, Rank, and Serial number all laced with an Indian Patois, then we get to the end of that preliminary dance competition and Nizam asks me, So I understand your wanting correctly to cancel your order? I declare, NO! And say, All I want to know is why my order hasn't shipped out and if it is still scheduled for delivery on the 21st? Nizam, eager this time, feeling he's got the gist of all this hepcat English I'm tossing out his way, says to me, So you want to cancel your order. NO NO NO NO! Let's try this one more time. And really slowly, like I am explaining the concept of governance to Sarah Palin, I repeat the question a third time. Nizam lets out an Ohhhhhhh, like I'm the guy with the 7-11 accent and who sounds like a retard, and says, Oh your order will shit out.

I hang up the phone confused and befuddled. Oddly Xenophobic too.

I decided to give it one more go about ten minutes later. This time I called them and I reached a guy named Bob who sounded Swedish and sped up on crank. However I could at least understand him on some level. And I got an answer. My item will ship today and will arrive tomorrow. TA-DAH! I made. I survived Amazon's Colors of Benetton Call Center.

Look, I'm all for giving people in developing nations work, but not work that involves me trying to parse through their rudimentary knowledge of the English language and American Consumer Culture. When I call customer service for any company I'm not asking for a lot. I expect the incompetence and general disregard that comes from making ten dollars an hour answering stupid questions. I get it. I know the dance. But, please, can I at least get verbally abused and mentally insulted by someone from my own country? Please?

My New Sarah Palin Video

noreply@blogger.com (Larry) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 22:00:00 +0000

Allison Does the Duster

noreply@blogger.com (Larry) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 13:32:00 +0000

"The X-Files: I Want to Believe" Movie Review

noreply@blogger.com (Larry) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 20:36:00 +0000

I still vaguely remember the night in 1993, fiddling around with my mono T.V.'s dog-ear antennas, trying to find something to watch, and happening across this show on Fox. Spooky music, F.B.I. agents, aliens, UFOs, that guy from "Red Shoes Diaries", and this amazing, unknown redheaded actress (even at 13 I had this thing for smart redheads), and I wondered, What is THIS!? This is science fiction T.V. show, on a -- at the time -- minor network, that had nothing to do with Star Trek.

What I had stumbled upon was the very first episode of the very first season of "The X-Files". A show that defined the iconography of my youth and helped in some strange way to set me on a path that would take me to Hollywood at the age of 21. A show that, despite the disaster of its final two seasons, and the wet carp to the cranium that was John Doggett, I harbor a lot of fond memories of.

So going to see the new X-Files movie was not a choice. It was automatic.

SPOILER WARNING! Do Not Read Past if You Don't Want Spoilers!

Which turned out to be an automatically bad decision. There are times when I wait for a movie to come out on DVD and think to myself, Gee, I really should have seen that in the theaters. In the case of "The X-Files: I Want to Believe" if I had waited for the DVD I think I would have held this film in a little higher regard, because ultimately Direct to DVD is sort of where it belongs.

You'd think in the wake of eight years of George Bush and real life conspiracies by our own government (GITMO, torture, the nexus of politics and terrorism, warrant-less wiretaps, fudging intelligence to get the U.S. into foreign wars) there would be fertile ground for a movie based on a show like "The X-Files", which was already centered around an innate distrust of authority, to take root in. Well, yeah it would be, but that is not this movie. Outside of a cheap shot at Same Sex Marriage and an attempt to minimize institutional pedophilia by the Catholic Church there are no politics in "The X-Files" and precious little conspiracy either.

"X-Files: I Want to Believe" in fact is an effort to get back to the "core" (or at least the Core as Chris Carter sees it) of the original show and go back to those simple Monster of the Week episodes that the original T.V. show did so well. In fact, the entire premise of this film seems to be an lift and extension of a Season One episode of "The X-Files" entitled "Beyond the Sea".

Both are essentially the story of hideous criminals, imprisoned by society, only to be cursed with a psychic connection to a a new killer and his victims that gives them visions that no one believes because, afterall, they are reprobate villains to begin with. But where the original Glen Morgan and James Wong T.V. script for "Beyond the Sea" was a tight, arresting forty five minute thriller with a monstrous Brad Douriff (as serial killer Luther Boggs) in the center of a psychic mindfuck, Chris Carter's re-interpretation is a lazy and disjointed two hour snore-fest with a lifeless Billy Connelly drifting towards the bottom like a marshmellow dropped into a not quite set jello salad.

Connelly plays Father Joe, a de-frocked Priest, who, as Scully is quick to remind us, "buggered" thirty seven alter boys, who know lives at some sort of rest home for pedophiles (I'm not kidding) in West Virginia. Of course, a female FBI Agent disappears and Connelly's Father Joe begins having psychic visions of the kidnapped woman. Amanda Peete's Dakota Whitney (yes, apparently in Chris Carter's world the female FBI agents that aren't kidnapped have silly porn star names) and Xzbit are confused, so an approach is made to Dana Scully to bring Fox Mulder out of "retirement" (which means be hold up in a quaint one bedroom house, being Scully's house boy), because, you know ... he's Fox Mulder.

And about five minutes in ... the plot of "X-Files: I Want to Believe" just kind of stops and idles. This is a thriller where nothing much thrilling happens, this is a horror film where nothing much horrifying happens, this is a movie where people just ... Talk a lot and nothing much happens. When you are lucky enough to stumble into a mildly interesting bit of plot progression that progression only serves as an excuse for more talking.

The script for "The X-Files: I Want to Believe" is just plain bad, okay? From the structure to the non-existent progression of the story. I could easily imagine Robert McKee showing X-Files: I Want to Believe at one of his screenwriting seminars as a perfect example of how not to write a script. Ever.

At some point Chris Carter seems to realize that Billy Connelly's Father Joe isn't holding our attention, and the return of Mulder and Scully only goes so far, so he then literally grafts the plot of Frankenstein -- yeah, like Frankenstein Frankenstein -- onto the body of a story that has run out of gas by the hour mark. Only that story goes nowhere either and really doesn't end or climax by the Third Act; more like it thrusts a couple times, rolls over, says goodnight, and then turns out the lights without any real sense of conclusion.

I was literally left sitting in the theater saying out loud, That's It?

The problems with "The X-Files: I Want to Believe" extends beyond the constructed on the fly story. The direction is strictly lackluster and would fit more on a T.V. show in the 1990s, then a feature film in 2008. The editing is lax and bloated. And all the supporting characters -- like Amanda Peete and Xzbit's characters -- could've been carved from blocks of wood and had just as much impact on screen as real life actors.

The only redeeming part of "The X-Files: I Want to Believe" is the reason most diehard fans are going to see it regardless. Mulder and Scully. For all his inability to write a coherent story or give life to supporting characters, Chris Carter still does know how to write Mulder and Scully. And David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson still know how to play Mulder and Scully.

The sexual tension and one-up-man-ship of their T.V. show relationship is largely gone, replaced by this ease of couple-hood. Mulder and Scully are now like the cool couple upstairs that come over every Friday night to smoke weed and watch Netflix with you and your girlfriend. The chemistry is still there. The characters are still there.

But the story that intelligently uses those characters, that chemistry, and still makes you want to believe is gone. And probably forgotten. "The X-Files: I Want to Believe" sets out to re-capture the series hey-day by trying to emulate great standalone X-Files episodes like "Beyond the Sea", and, instead, only serves as a reminder of the series nadir.

And it is a damn shame too.

Personally I still like think there is still good in "The X-Files" franchise. Much like there was still good in Darth Vader in "Return of the Jedi". But for that good to ever be realized again someone over at 20th Century Fox is going to have to metaphorically pick up Chris Carter and heave him down an open reactor shaft. Or relegate him to Executive Producer status and turn the reigns over to someone a little less in love with the sound of his own ideas.

Why is NeoGAF Running Anti-Obama Smear Ads?

noreply@blogger.com (Larry) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 00:35:00 +0000

For those that know, they already know what NeoGAF is. For those that never had the privilege NeoGAF is one of the largest Forums for the discussion of video games in the World. As of this entry about 3400 people are online at NeoGAF right now. When I type the term “video game forum” I know I lost about half my audience; I know, I know I can hear you saying, NERD! and screaming, Who Cares?! WHAT ABOUT FISA!? through my monitor.

However, NeoGAF is more than jut a home to the emotionally stunted musings of Thirteen Year Olds with anime avatars discussing the plot intricacies of “Final Fantasy X”. NeoGAF's Video Game Forum is home to more than Thirteen Year Olds and Gamers that act the part. NeoGAF is a professional video game forum patronized by leading members of the video game industry. Game designers, software coders, artists, producers from major game developers like Bungie, Electronic Arts and Ubisoft all either lurk or post on NeoGAF.

So in many ways NeoGAF is the watering hole for the entire Video Game Industry. A watering hole that used to be fairly a-political in the past. And a watering hole that appears now tainted by ugly, racially charged Anti-Obama Smear ads.

I was surfing around GAF (as it is normally referred) today reading through a thirty plus page thread filled with outrage and foam over recent accusations by Silicon Knight's Denis Dyack (the developer of “Too Human”) on 1Up Yours that NeoGAF is poorly moderated and needs reform (if you really want to know this piece of backstory you can listen to the podcast here and read about it here) when I glanced up to see this ad:

(Yeah, I know I had to shrink it to get it to fit Kos' Image Width Requirements. You can view a full sized image here or here if ImageShack craps out..)

A banner ad clearly depicting Barack Obama and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad side by side with caption “Is It OK to Unconditionally Meet with Anti-American Foreign Leaders”.

OK, lets stipulate that, of course, this is a gross distortion of Barack Obama's Foreign Policy, and lets also stipulate that John McCain once again demonstrates while he wants to be the Change We Can Believe In Candidate he is content to run a political campaign from Lee Atwater's playbook. The question I pose today is why are the site owner(s) and Admins of NeoGAF taking John McCain's ad money and willfully running Anti-Obama Smear Ads?

There are only two option here. Either the management of NeoGAF is grossly incompetent and doesn't know whose ads they are running, or have a blatant political point of view that they are content on advocating through advertising. No one seems to know much about who owns and runs NeoGAF, and given a track record that has seemed more or less a-political (unless the choice in question is Microsoft Versus Sony) I'd be more inclined to go with the former rather than the latter.

But exposing simple incompetence isn't enough for me. For a site that counts members from major game developers and console makers to video game journalists and the average gamer NeoGAF needs to be held accountable for playing politics instead playing games.

I'd encourage NeoGAF members, fellow gamers, and those that work in the video game industry capacity to email NeoGAF's admins, tell them to take down the Anti-Obama smear ads and keep politics and gaming separate.

You Can email NeoGAF at: staff@ga-forum.com

My Metal Gear Solid 4 Review

noreply@blogger.com (Larry) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 19:27:00 +0000

Metal Gear Solid 4 is a beautiful failure for a game and an extremely average CGI Anime extravaganza. If it wasn't called Metal Gear Solid 4 or made by Hideo Kojima MGS 4 would be getting roundly booed.

Where Metal Gear Solid 4 has a game (and not a student film animation project) there is a lot of potential that sometimes gets realize, but most of the time does not come to fruition. Where MGS 4 fails it fails because the game hangs on design choices ten years out of date -- monster closets, infinite respawns, the illusion of emergent gameplay where your choices as a player are reduced to one correct method of doing something, stupid enemy A.I., right down to an antiquated save system that appears to save anywhere you want but amounts to a checkpoint system you have to save yourself. Where MGS 4 succeeds it succeeds just because there are some hellishly fun moments that remain hellishly fun in spite of those poor design choices.

As for the story ... it is complete comic book bullplop and not even very well told comic bullplop masquerading as a 'Very Important Story'. The plot is riddled with massive holes in logic, the characters are paper thin, and the narrative structure is bogged down in the minutia of explanation for items (guns, robots, the godlike nanomachines) that never called for any explanation at all.

If you can find profundity in Metal Gear Solid 4's babble about nanomachines or the Deus Ex Machina of the conspiratorial Patriots, well, you can probably find profundity in G.I. Joe and Robotech Cartoons. Hell, I bet you could take a dump in a dry bush, rub to leaves in the dump, then rub the leaves together, stare at the smeared dump on the leaves and tell me how profound those smear markings on those leaves are.

But then again MGS 4 is not the first game to fail completely at weaving a logical, entertaining tale. Games are meant to be played (well, ideally; this game often has a nasty habit of deciding to play itself) as games. Right? I mean, no one really cared about the narrative structure of “Doom”? Well, yes and no, because in Metal Gear Solid 4 the story consistently swamps the game like a needy girlfriend demanding that you watch “Desperate Housewives” with her. Or Else.

I was about forty minutes in when I realized I had yet to actually do anything in the game. You know, like play it. Instead I had watched a lot of cutscenes featuring soon to be repeated buzzwords like “PMCs” and “war economy” and I presume much anticipated story points delivered with all the subtlety of pork roasts raining from the sky. After a while I was beginning to silently plead with David Hayter's “Old Snake” to not mumble another “HUH?” or ask another leading rhetorical question because every time Old Snake mumbled huh or posed that leading rhetorical question it would provide an opportunity for Otacon or Colonel Campbell to start talking again, and at this rate I'd never actually get to play the game I bought. Then I stopped caring, set down my controller, and flipped over to Sports Center until the cutscene was through with. This is a ritual I found myself repeating throughout the game when the game stopped being a game and reverted to “Final Fantasy: Spirits Within”.

Metal Gear Solid 4 finally dropped me, the player, into a war torn Middle Eastern Country. Which country? They didn't have the balls to say. Why was this country at war? They didn't have the balls to say. Why are the “PMCs” fighting the Rebels? What are the rebels rebelling about? Metal Gear Solid 4 doesn't have the balls to say. The entire hook for Metal Gear Solid 4 desperately wants to be “High Concept, Big Idea” by alluding to real life issues like Blackwater (in the form of Private Military Contractors), but the story of Metal Gear Solid 4 refuses to claim any deeper reasoning or press the issue further to back up the thesis that War is Bad, MmmmmKay. War is simply trotted out as something that is sort of bad, and then put back into the cupboard again until it is time to trot it out again.

As I crawled and snuck around Act 1 I realized that while war has changed Metal Gear Solid hasn't really changed all that much. You sneak around, get spotted, run, hide in a barrel or a bush, wait for your spiffy Octo-Camo to kick in, wait three minutes, rinse and repeat. As with every stealth game I play I eventually got bored and wanted to try my luck like a punk so I snuck up behind one PMC soldier and shot him point blank in the head. Alarms sounded, hell broke loose, and this time I actually got a way by running into an invisible trip wire that triggered a cutscene.

The ability to run and gun through levels without a lot of risk is the largest change to the stealth based Metal Gear Solid franchise this time out. However while the ability to run and gun carries little risk it also carries no reward either. After my first few tenuous kills I decided to kick the action up a notch and I spied a perfect place for it. Up ahead in an alleyway was a cluster of three PMC soldiers the game design seemed to beg me to sneak past, I instead whipped out my M4 and sawed the three in half. The alert alarm sounded and three more PMC soldiers rounded the corner looking for a fight I gave to them, then three more ran around the corner from nowhere and promptly were sent back to nowhere. Then three more, and three more, and three more. The pile of digital bodies and stack of weapons to be scrounged eventually clued me in, and I once more resigned myself to go and hide in my oil barrel in disgrace until the alarm passed.

I tried a similar strategy in the Second Act of MGS 4 where the time came for me and my Rebel Buddies to raid a villa in the middle of a nameless South American jungle. I decided to play sniper with an eye towards the stratagem of knocking off enough of the PMC soldiers so that the Rebels could make a push on the villa and clean up the resistance for me. Ha! Would've been a brilliant video game moment ... except for every soldier I shot, two more would respawn out of thin air and the Rebels wouldn't move from cover to take advantage of the opportunities I was opening up for them. I got the message when I died the third time. The correct way to play the level was let the Rebels have their big Movie Moment stand-off at the Villa as I snuck around back.

Metal Gear Solid 4's Eyes said Yes, but her Lips Said, No. No matter what clever ways I thought of to approach a tactical situation I was eventually given the Cock Block by a game's design that seemed to be saying, 'We wanted you to think, but not think that much! Really the choices and mechanics we are giving you are largely for show but this is how it should work.'

And when those mechanics work – as they worked in in the first three games – Metal Gear Solid 4 can be a lot of fun punctuated by a massive amount of nonsensical cut scenes. When those mechanics fail, or when I could think of a better mechanics that the game simply refused to let me execute, I was left thinking This could've been so much better IF.

When I reached the dreadful Act Three, which features an overly long sequence where you have to follow another anonymous Rebel Leader through a completely lifeless mock-up of Prague and then a equally lifeless rail shooter, the story and game runs itself out of gas. The plot shifts from a story about Private Military fighting a War about Something and that's Bad to looney conspiracy theories about Artificial Intelligences that control the world clumsily lifted from the pages of "Neuromancer". The game shifts to a greatest hits collection as Solid Snake revisits Shadow Moses Island (the setting for the first Metal Gear Solid) in Act 4 and a "battleship submarine" in Act 5 which is reprise of the tanker level in Metal Gear Solid 2. Luckily by the end of the game Hideo Kojima the Wannabe Filmmaker has overtaken Hideo Kojima the Game Designer so you can almost put down the controller and just watch for most of the last half of the game. Or watch Sports Center, like I did, waiting for your video game to finish playing itself.

Metal Gear Solid's war might have changed, but the way it approaches the game of war hasn't changed. An approach that worked astoundingly well for the series debut, Metal Gear Solid, in 1998, but ultimately fails in the face of open world games like “Crysis” and “Grand Theft Auto IV”. Whether by intent or coincidence Metal Gear Solid 4 suffers from the same malady as its main protagonist, old age, and in the wake of newer, younger competition faces the same fate, obsolescence.

Keep it Sexy, America.

John McCain's Greatest Hits

noreply@blogger.com (Larry) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 23:34:00 +0000

Bye, Bye Kittens

noreply@blogger.com (Larry) — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 18:47:00 +0000

I've been bouncing between Los Angeles and the Midwest since last Fall thanks to the Holidays, the writers' strike, an unsteady living situation back West, and (lately) a couple of script projects that have taken me to Missouri and back again. So I've been crashing at my Parents' place in Indiana, an old farmhouse with a lot of land.

Since I was little my family and I have always been animal lovers. I know I've mentioned that before a couple of times on KOS. We've taken in dogs and cats, and even when I left for California my Mom and Dad continued to feed and care for the strays the Rednecks would dump in the adjacent wooded areas. I do not know why people do that -- dump cats and dogs off to die, or to be other people's problems -- but they do, particularly the further out you go into the country.

When I came back in their was a new litter of dumped kittens hanging around. Combined efforts over the Winter managed to get two in-doors and later fixed. The third ... something awful happened to her in the past because she just would not come near human hands, settling instead for an old doghouse in the garage.

You do not need a biology degree to figure out what happens next. Kitty-O-Me (as my Mom had taken to calling her) got pregnant and eventually had five kittens in a doghouse on a stormy morning early last week. The plan was to wait until they were all weened and take the kittens to the Human Society, and then have Kitty-O-Me to a vet to get spayed and remain as the local garage cat.

Then Thursday, late in the Afternoon, we discovered that the smallest of the litter had died. Poor little black and gold fellow barely had a day on the planet before he (or she) went. Another kitten that resembled the one that just passed away was having a rough time breathing and I knew he probably wouldn't make the night. The next morning my Mom told me two more had died. The one that I suspected would pass on, and a black kitten who seemed fine the Afternoon before.

We all took it hard. I took it hard. Sure, kittens die sometimes. Just happens. It had never happened to me, or My Mom and Dad before, but we all knew that with a big litter sometimes... But three in less than two days felt surreal. I felt like I had been kicked in the teeth and punched in the groin by some strange karma. You do the best you can for a stray cat and her kittens that no one else seemed to give a crap about, and you are "rewarded" like this ... Three dying in quick succession, well thanks.

I've always been one of those people that waivered on the razor's edge of permanent despair. I like to think I see the world as it is, or maybe I just see the world as I like to see it, and that's a place that is filled with remarkably cruel, bittersweet beauty but in the end a world were nothing anyone does means anything in the grand scheme. I find myself always fighting urges to fall completely into a nihilistic hedonism that tunes out everything except the most immediate means of gratification. The random deaths of three kittens was not doing anything for my disposition or my typically grim view of life.

Kitty-O-Me seemed worse. I say seemed because I don't know, no one does. I can guess and, with a healthy glob of my own anthropomorphism, and say "Oh, that cat is depressed" or "That dog is sad", but one never really knows what an animal is thinking. But Kitty-O-Me definitely seemed ... something beyond sad, or depressed, like a postpartum shellshock. I guess it would be the sort of things human parents experienced before the Industrial Age when six of their eight kids suddenly die of whatever people died of back in those yonder years. Kitty-O-Me did not want to go near the doghouse until her dead kittens were buried and all the hay that was packed in for insulation was removed. Kitty-O-Me finally seemed to come around when my Mom held up her remaining babies, squealing for Milk and Momma. She returned to the doghouse to nurse the remaining babies. Worries of orphaned, two day old kittens abated and plans were set in motion to make sure these remaining kittens would have a shot at a decent life.

Once the two kittens and Kitty-O-Me had made it through the weekend we'd go out collect her and her kittens in a pet carrier and bring them inside, keep them isolated in a spare room until the kitties were weened, and then most likely adopt them.

Here-in lies the great danger whenever you get emotionally invested in an animal that is mostly ruled by winsome ways of nature. Their plans and your plans are not planned on the same page, or drafted from the same playbook. Nature's and instinct's often win.

This Saturday as I was playing Ninja Gaiden II and sipping a Diet Dr. Pepper (yes, I know, I am a man-child and I make no apologies) my Mom came pounding at my door. Apparently, as my Dad was trimming trees, he spotted Kitty-O-Me making a completely random break from the garage with her remaining kittens, secreting them off into the woods. A couple acres of trees and brush that once she got them into it, there would be no way anyone could ever find two tiny kittens. We will keep looking though. Well, I will, at least until Monday or Tuesday when I have to leave again.

The rejection of a stray cat after emotionally exhausting ourselves for days trying to take care of her felt a gut punch. Quickly followed by another gut punch when Kitty-O-Me silently returned back to the garage sans kittens like nothing happened, like all those kittens never existed. I hope she goes back to the woods, and has simply hidden her kittens for safe keeping, but the expression on that cat's face reads something chilling. She's orphaned those poor kittens in the woods where no one can get to them, I know it.

I've got nothing for you. I feel like I've told one of Aesop's fables without a proper moral to tie it all up. All I got for you is the obvious tropes that every Goth-y high schooler knows. You know the ones; about how life isn't fair and nature being cruel. Personally I do not know what to think, or make of this entire sad story. Just life I guess.

Where did I go?

noreply@blogger.com (Larry) — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 22:07:00 +0000

I didn't go anywhere per se. I've been here and there, trudging through life until a meet a rich Heiress who wants to take me away to Spain or somewhere.

I've been doing most of my political blogging on DailyKos of late. I've never been quite comfortable writing about my politics directly on my own website (even though I have in the past). I've never felt it fit in with the overall decor so to speak. So off to DailyKos I've gone.

Interesting experience. Not to mention a little weird. For instance, today when I published a diary pondering why the U.S. consistently plays favorites when it comes to our Israel Policy. I got somewhat tarred and feathered as I expected I would be, and that was all fine and dandy until I started getting creepy emails from people making opaque threats.

Like this one from Steve Markholm:

Let me ask you? Do the people you work for or seek work from know how utterly anti-Semitic you are?

You are clearly not terribly intelligent. Other than the fact that your entire knowledge of history comes from this looney-tunes website, you are stupid enough to post your resume and who you work for. Did it ever occur to you that you might incredibly offend someone to the point that they have the capability of affecting your career?

I am surprised that any intelligent person even responded to your line of crap. All they had to do was what I did. See that you are so stupid as to post your life and then proceed to engage in fascist rants. When people hire others or invest in others the first they do is Google searches. No one wants to chance someone with problems or is unbalanced like you.

Grow up.

I just like it for the fact that he insults my own intelligence and then proceeds to sound like a complete illiterate.

Ah, well, the Internets.

Keep it Sexy, America

"Poker Run" Trailer

noreply@blogger.com (Larry) — Mon, 26 May 2008 00:05:00 +0000

Here is the Trailer for "Poker Run" (the movie I co-wrote and was associate producer of, in case you forgot).

Enjoy.

Keep it Sexy, America.

Barack Obama Responds

noreply@blogger.com (Larry) — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

It isn't like me to start posting political messaging on my blog, but the kind of nonsense being spewed by the Hillary Clinton Campaign just needs to stop.

Keep it Sexy, America

Pastors Say the Dumbest Thing

noreply@blogger.com (Larry) — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 00:11:00 +0000

You know I find it funny that Barack Obama gets hung up because his Pastor said some stupid (albeit kind of true) stuff. However, John McCain gets a free pass when he gets endorse by Pastors John Hagee and Rod Parsley , McCain gets a free pass. Maybe its the lack of video of John Hagee and Rod Parsley espousing their own radical views...

Like... When John Hagee The U.S. State Department is inviting a "bloodbath" from God:

Or like the time John Hagee insisted that George Washington was making a tribute to the Jews:

Or like the time John Hagee equated Catholics with Nazis:

Or Rod Parsley insisting that Gay Rights isn't necessary because Gays might change their mind:

Or Rod Parsley ... just being a bigot:

Yeah, too bad there isn't video of any of those prominent Pastors who have endorsed John McCain, making radical, racist, and downright looney statements. Too bad John Hagee didn't do an hour long interview with Glenn Beck about how he believes the world is about to end.

Yeah, it is just too bad none of that video ever existed, because I am sure if it did the Mainstream media might be asking John McCain to reject and denounce their support.

Keep it Sexy, America

Things to Do with the Flu

noreply@blogger.com (Larry) — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 16:31:00 +0000

Like everyone else in America I was knocked down with the flu for the last week and a half of February. Seeing as being bed ridden is as good an excuse as any I caught up on my TV on DVD watching. First two seasons of 'DEXTER', a little 'LOST', and ' Band of Brothers'.

I also popped in the only season of 'Firefly', finally. I got to admit I never really cared for 'Firefly' when it was on TV, and I have never been a fan of Joss Whedon's work. The TV version of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' had its moments, but all in all Whedon always seemed like the Diablo Cody of the 1990s. Surfing on the seas of Cool Hip that were twenty miles wide and about an inch deep. Everything he wrote or directed felt like a mental revenge fuck for whatever happen to Whedon in high school. No doubt that kind of storytelling has its audience, but I've always found it tiresome, always wanting to scream, "GET OVER IT".

So, with that frame of mind, I was surprised when I actually came out on the other end of "Firefly" liking it. Hold on, Browncoats. I said, Like, Not In Love With. I still thought the Premise was confused and a bit goofy. It is easy to see that when Firefly was being developed that no real thought was given to the world beyond just creating a cross-cultural mash up. No one really had an explanation for why everyone in a spacefaring culture had reverted back to the 1800s in every other way, or why Winchester rifles shoot lasers, or why so many colonized planets had indigenous life exactly like Earth. The design seemed to go about as far as, "Oh this is KEWL!" and no further.

But, if you looked past all that, and basically gave into the premise, I really liked 'Firefly'. It was definitely worth the twenty bucks I spent at Target. And it made me want to track down a copy of "Serenity" on DVD.

Keep it Sexy, America

Ding Dong the Witch Isn't Dead...

noreply@blogger.com (Larry) — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 03:59:00 +0000

... Even though she should be.

There are nights I am proud to be an American, there are nights I want to move to France, and then there are nights where I personally want to strangle about 70% of the U.S. Voting Population. This night it is the most later of those feelings. Tonight I learned that Ohio joins Florida in the category of states that can't vote straight. Tonight I learned that if you fear-monger and bait based on false claims you can try and steal a Presidential Nomination. Tonight I learned that Hillary Clinton's base consists of Old White Women with leathery interiors and souls to match, working trailer trash that are easily frightened at 3am, and Mexicans. Tonight I despise, not my country, but a majority of the soulless, moronic apes that populate it.

We could've had real change, we could've had a revolution. Instead we'll have a grinding fight all the way to the Democratic Convention in Denver where Hillary can steal a nomination just to blow up the Democratic Party and lose to John McCain. Four more years of death and blood in Iraq accompanied by impending economic collapse. That is blood that belongs on Hillary Clinton's hands and every moron that voted for her tonight.

For about a month I had Hope. Now I am just filled with dread. The only feeling of Hope I can muster up is Hope of grand protests in the streets of Denver in August, and lobbing tear gas grenades back at riot police. The hope that is the Democratic Convention is to be a mess, I can help make it a grandiose mess with a couple thousand people in the streets.

If Hillary Clinton steals the Nomination because the Shriveled Women and White Trash in Ohio gave her the opportunity I am officially done with the Democratic Party. I am done with this joke of a Country. And I am done with a majority of the sniveling simps that comprise the citizenry of this joke of a Country.

You all make me sick. You get the fascism, the war, the economic, and social decay you deserve.

Keep it Sexy, America

Premiere Screening of "Poker Run"

noreply@blogger.com (Larry) — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 01:45:00 +0000

February 26th at the Chaplin Theater.

Jesus, I'm nervous. Like Larry David Jew-Nerves nervous First premiere for the first movie I ever (co)wrote. What if people don't like it? What if, what if, what if...

Keep it Sexy, America.

Gordon Freeman Phones Home

noreply@blogger.com (Larry) — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 17:07:00 +0000

Keep it Sexy, America

What Does Larry Want?

noreply@blogger.com (Larry) — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 18:26:00 +0000

Believe it or not I do have a loose system of goals I measure my life by. Different from yours, or most people. I don't give a shit about a new house, or a new car, or increasing my productivity, or making a million by the time I'm thirty, or breeding to create the next Generation of Mes running around.

I don't want any part of the bourgeois nonsense that holds most in a trance until they wake up at Forty and realize that their lives are not their own. Instead their life has been chopped up and packaged like exotic securities. Your Job owns a bit, your boss owns a bit, your credit card company owns a bit, your mortgage owns a bit, your wife owns a bit, your ex-wife owns a bit, your kids own a bit. You -- you've got exactly nothing left of your own life.

My goals are esoteric and big. I want to do something that matters with my life and I want to leave something behind so when I die someone actually gives a shit. Maybe even says to themselves, "Hey, Larry left something behind worth reading or watching." Beyond that I don't care all that much about how big of an apartment I have or what kind of car I drive. I don't want kids and I don't want to get married. Especially to a "nice girl'.

Lately, though, faced with various personal crisis, I sometimes wonder what I want for me, personally. This usually happens around 3am, stirred from sleep by a weird ass dream about being in Bangkok for a video game convention with the 1Up Yours guys and having "One Night in Bangkok" running in a loop in my head.

I want to keep writing and I don't want to do much else. I'll work doing whatever when it comes to filmmaking but I just want to write mostly and be left alone.

I want to make enough money, somehow, where I don't have to worry about money again. No, not rich by any means. I mean not worry about whether I need to by canned peas over frozen peas because I need to save money. That is another thing -- I don't want to be a slave to a household budget, or a grocery budget, or any kind of personal budget ever again. Bu. rich? No. I simply don't want to let my life be ruled by golden rules.

I want to find a woman. Girl. Whatever. Settle down. Or whatever a guy like me does when they start moving a half step slower. Someone that gets me through and through and wants the same thing in life I want. Someone that doesn't want kids and doesn't want to chase possessions. A naughty girl with round hips and a nice rack, not too fat and not too thin. French , maybe. Or French-Algerian. With a nice house in the French Countryside maybe.

Yeah, that's all I want in life and if I had it I could be happy. Even if it was just a ten year lease your soul to the devil arrangement.

Ah, it is nice to want things I guess...

Keep it Sexy, America.

That Pretty Much Sums it Up...

noreply@blogger.com (Larry) — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 02:45:00 +0000

I haven't been doing a lot the last couple days. Mainly screwing around with the Nintendo DS I got for Christmas and re-living my childhood through new, dual screen versions of Mario and Zelda.

I also grabbed the five leaked episode of the new season of "The Wire" (incredible as usual, probably the best season since the first). I was looking something up on Wikipedia Wire-related and ran across this great David Simon quote on what motivates him to write:

"Anything I've ever accomplished as a writer, as somebody doing TV, anything I've ever done in life, down to, like, cleaning up my room, has been accomplished because I was going to show people that they were [bleeped] up, wrong, and that I was the [bleeping] center of the universe and the sooner they got hip to that, the happier they would all be."

That is a writer.

Keep it Sexy, America.

I Don't Even Know What to Say...

noreply@blogger.com (Larry) — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 14:57:00 +0000

"Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" Review

noreply@blogger.com (Larry) — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 18:39:00 +0000

Every child is a child of their Parents and of their surroundings. I was born in 1979 and growing up in the 80s means that my movie-going life spun around three massive Sci-Fi franchises: Star Wars, Alien, and Terminator. You thought I was going to say Highlander, didn't you? Silly Highlander fans.

They all have special places in my heart and creative make-up. I cannot give you a reasoned, thesis-like explanation of why Terminator resides so highly in my esteem like I can for Star Wars or Alien or Blade Runner. Nah, "Terminator" was just cool that feeds off too much testosterone. Robots from the Future that do Nothing but Kill. F' YEAH!

I have actually been waiting in anticipation for "The Sarah Connor Chronicles". Hell, I knew about it when it was just a script and an idea. So I did what everyone with a brain and a decent internet connection does -- went on a Torrent site and pinched a copy of the Pilot.

Thanks anonymous Tape Jockey from Level3 Post for uploading it.

And, you know what, it isn't Bad. Not great certainly. Nowhere near the movies. But as a bit of tangential and apocryphal side story "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" works.

Let me get this out of the way early and often. If you are one of those fans -- you know, one of those Sci-Fi Fans that posts on message boards, or better yet newsgroups starting in rec. or alt. arguing about which "Star Wars" books are part of the unofficial extended universe and which are part of the Official Canon... If you are one of those Sci-Fi Fans that has a complex flow chart accompanied by Venn Diagrams that resolve all the conflicts and provide an integrated explanation of how "Highlander" the movies and "Highlander" the TV Series fit together... Just Don't.

Save yourself the brain aneurysm and go to the anime convention instead. Don't watch "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles".

Even though it is sold as the events between "Terminator 2: Judgement Day" and "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" this show really isn't. This becomes especially clear in the beginning where the whole thing about "stopping Judgement Day so why are we running?" in Terminator 2 is completely avoided and at the end of the Pilot Episode there is a plot twist that causes such a story paradox with Terminator 3 that makes linking the show with the movies in any sort of logical story is impossible.

Think of "The Sarah Connor Chronicles" instead as "Highlander" the TV series; a world populated by the same familiar characters and a similar story that doesn't quite line up to the big, cinematic brother. However that can be really hard to do at times, even for the casual viewer, and the lack of fidelity to the source material tends to be this series big weakness.

The show starts off and when meet the "new" Sarah Connor played by Lena Headley. Sorry, Linda Hamilton fans. Right from the start this is a very different Sarah Connor than the Sarah Connor of Terminator 2. Not just talking about the Waitress Mini-skirt ensemble in the opening scene.

Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor by Terminator 2 was hard as nails and bat shit crazy, driven insane by her foreknowledge of a future Holocaust and her role as a real life Mother Mary of the Future. She was breaking out of mental hospitals, consorting with Mexican Gun Runners, and pump racking shotguns with one hand. That was just Linda Hamilton off set.

Everyone thought Terminator 2's Sarah Connor was crazy because she saw the future for what it was and because she saw the future for what it was it drove her a little crazy.

Lena Headley retains the hard as nails Sarah Connor while keeping the insane Sarah Connor locked up in the padded room. Gone, I'm afraid, are the Sarah Connor that threatened to shoot up her shrink with a syringe loaded with cleaning fluid if that door wasn't opened. Lena Headley's Sarah Connor isn't so much tormented by the future as much as she is really concerned, in loving Mommy way, for her son, John Connor (this time played by Thomas Dekker who does a competent job as the bridge between Eddie Furlong and Nick Stahl).

Linda Hamilton was a warrior queen that wasn't much of a Mother. Lena Headley's Sarah Connor is a bad-ass MILF who knows her way around the barrel of a gun, but would fit in nicely on Wisteria Lane. Well, before the Killer Robots from the Future showed up and ruined Bree's dinner party.

Within ten minutes the show goes through the stock Sarah Connor nuclear holocaust nightmare and then Sarah Connor bounces out on some finance guy we don't care about in suburban America. Why is this Sarah Connor hanging out with a lawyer-type in Suburban America when in Terminator 2 she was consorting with random mercenaries, allow me the use of video game parlance, to level up John Connor's subversive abilities?

Like I keep saying "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" has nothing to do with the "Terminator" movies. Even though they are... Sort of?

Sarah and John Connor on the run from the law and a guy from the FBI who provides the necessary backstory of how she is blamed for the death of Miles Dyson (from Terminator 2) and the destruction of Cyberdine Systems in one of those quintessential TV scenes where the necessary backstory is provided for the 10 people that never saw a Terminator movie. And like all good people on the run from the law Sarah and John Connor soon find themselves in New Mexico under assumed names -- John and Sarah Reese.

That'll fool 'em! I'm sure that the Killer Machines don't know John's Dad was named Kyle Reese, right? But the fans will and it will be like clever!

So much for the whole idea fostered by Terminator 2 and 3 of living off the grid. To Josh Friedman, the show's writer and Executive Producer, living off the grid seems to be synonymous with being working class. Hey, in Hollywood that is like living off the grid! So lets have Sarah Connor work at a diner! No one will ever find her their. And lets have John go to a public high school.

School?

Yeah.

John Connor is sort of a pussy this time out. Gone is the rebellious John Connor that skipped school, hot wired mopeds, and hacked ATMs so he could go play After-Burner. No. This John does what his Mom tells him, seems totally unaffected by his own backstory and the possibility of his future, and goes to school like a good kid always does on Network Television.

Oh, but then again, "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" has nothing to do with the "Terminator" movies... even though it does. Sort of.

Pretty soon though we are made aware of two facts (SPOILARS!): There is a Terminator looking for John Connor and that is there is a Terminator in the guise of a hot, teen girl classmate (Summer Glau) that is sent to protect the Connors. Yeah. Back to the Terminator on Terminator story that was really original in T2 and got a bit old in T3 but was made interesting because the bad Terminator was a Hot Chick. Now its just ... passe.

Does everyone forget about the original "Terminator" and forget that the guy (Kyle Reese) sent through time to protect was in fact a guy? Not a robot? Why not rip off the plot to the first movie for a change? The Terminator Vs. Terminator plot was fun only because you wanted Arnold Schwarzenegger play the good guy and beat the career out of Robert Patrick and Kristina Loken.

But there is no Arnold in "The Sarah Connor Chronicles". So, why oh why, did we need a Teenager Terminator? Why not a Teenage Human Soldier sent back in time? Of course, you can't do that cool scene where the two robots toss each other through break-away walls for ten minutes. Or the inevitable subplot of John Connor's sexual awakening with a cyborg.

When the two Terminators turn up the "The Sarah Connor Chronicles" starts to show the creak in the metal endoskeleton. Sure, there are all the great action sequences we know and love from the Terminator Franchise (toned down for Network TV of course). But the plot begins to get rusty and curiously distanced from its cinema backstory.

When Summer Glau's Terminatrix and David Kilde's Terminator shows up Sarah Connor are like, "Oh, hey! Knew you would show up!"

Neither John or Sarah Connor question how this happened, or why, or why they are making hot Teenage Girl Terminators, or maybe they can't stop it so why not go into hiding instead because John Connor is, you know, Humanity's Only hope. Nope. Only a brief mention of "Stopping judgement day" in T2 and soon the intrepid trio are off to stop judgement day again.

Totally ignoring the events and timeline of Terminator 3, of course. But then again The Sarah Connor Chronicles has nothing to do with the movies.

Exactly.

This is where "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" tends to fall down. Only the barest lip service is paid to the events of Terminator and Terminator 2 even though the TV show is directly tied into both films.

Parts of the plot don't really make sense when compared against the movies and the world feels vaguely incomplete like someone came into your house and re-arranged the furniture... Why does Miles Dyson's Widow think Sarah Connor murdered her husband when she knew what happened? Why are the Machines in The Sarah Connor Chronicles more human acting than they ever have been before? Why does no one talk about the first Terminator, i.e. Anuld?

The writing feels really lazy when it comes to knowledge of the original material and the lack of fan service. Or like writing that was sculpted and shaped to reference as little as possible to avoid paying out any un-due residuals. And in the end... "The Sarah Connor Chronicles" isn't as good. There is nothing original here and nothing new brought to the Terminator table.

Sure, every show deserves to be judged on its own merits. On its own merits "The Sarah Connor Chronicles" is pretty decent Network T.V. Not brilliant or great by any means. Watchable definitely. Much in the same way the "Highlander" TV series and "Stargate SG-1" are highly watchable. But is that the best a TV series can offer when it comes with a pedigree?

Keep it Sexy, America.

P.S. STEALTH EDIT: Apparently the Creators of "The Sarah Connor Chronicles" have openly acknowledged that they are tossing out any continuity with Terminator 3's story. Even though C2 and Mario Kassar were behind "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" and "The Sarah Connor Chronicles". And, to add confusion on top of disarray, "Terminator 4" with Christian Bale will directly continue from "Terminator 3" even though we may never see "Terminator 4" because of a giant lawsuit between Halcyon Entertainment (who owns the movie rights to the Terminator film sequels now) and MGM.

Have a Patrick Swayze Christmas!

noreply@blogger.com (Larry) — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 16:33:00 +0000

Everyone has their own Christmas Traditions and memories. Especially when it comes to Christmas Well, most tend to be the exact same memories of "Its a Wonderful Life" and "White Christmas"... For me it is "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" brought to you by Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Now thanks to a couple intrepid YouTube users, re-broadcast to you and yours. And remember all I want for Christmas is to Decide Who Lives and Who Dies.

Keep it Sexy, America.

(And Keep Circulating the Tapes.)

Team Fortress 2 Griefing

noreply@blogger.com (Larry) — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 16:39:00 +0000

Keep it Sexy, America