ongoing

I haven't really had the motivation to write much... of anything lately, compounded with a random dabbling into a bunch of other things that have mostly preoccupied my time for the past several weeks. More serious post to follow later. But anyway, in no particular order:

- Puzzle and Dragons. Coworkers have been obsessively playing this smartphone game that plays like a cross between Pokemon and Bejeweled for the past couple of months, and of course with it being a combination of my two historically worst past obsessions.... (I still can't get over the fact that being late for EE40 that one summer cause I'd been playing Pokemon at home that day cost me a homework assignment that eventually brought me down a letter grade >_>)

But I got tired of farming marine goblins to try and max skill-up my Siren (she's only one skill rank away... and I think I've fed her ~50 goblins already) so I think I'm done with the game for now... aside from logging in everyday for the free pal points and rerolling the egg machine in hopes of getting a blue or white dragon. But enough esoteric game jargon.

- I bought a new laptop on a spring break deal a few weeks back (Lappy2's warranty expires this month anyway) and it finally came in the other day, so Lappy3 is now official. And it's so fast and quiet! I'm starting to warm up to Windows 8 - once you get past the annoyingly unintuitive user interface and figure out where all the configuration stuff is, it plays out pretty smoothly, although it still feels like it really wants to be a touchscreen tablet when it's not. I hear that the newest update coming up is meant to bring back the Start button again, so that'll be a plus once that comes around.

- Yo La Tengo round 2 in SF with Elan and the others was great. Not as mind-blowingly euphoric for me personally as Stars was, although I actually like Yo La Tengo more as a band. They played a mellow acoustic set matching the tone of most of their new album, Fade, following by a rock set in the second half, which meant that my ears were shot after the concert cause I happened to be standing right next to the speakers in front of the stage, and I could feel the sound reverberations pass through me. Most of my favorite songs of theirs are whenever Georgia sings... I love her voice so much. Even better when it's flowing smoothly on top of her constant drumming while Ira's pounding on his rock guitar.

On another note, I kind of have to learn to not feel disappointed when a band doesn't happen to play the song you want them to play, especially for a band like Yo La Tengo that's been around longer than I've been alive (Ira touted it as a joke during the concert haha) and whose discography and repertoire of cover songs is so big that I'm still discovering new songs I like from their older works. I was secretly hoping for From a Motel 6, which they apparently played the day before in LA, or Little Eyes... but they performed Beanbag Chair, which pretty much was high school for me, as a surprise (Ira: "The bad part of having a new album out is I don't often get to say stuff like this anymore... This is a song from I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass.") so I'm pretty happy anyway. I also got a second poster of them now! Now how to put those posters up...

They apparently did an encore performance with Damages the day after we saw them, which likely was due to a request made by a guy standing next to us at the merchandise counter when Ira was there talking to us. Ken asked him if the origin of the band's name having to do with a classic baseball story was true, and apparently although the story itself is true, the name choice was more because they don't speak Spanish and just like the sound of "Yo La Tengo." Figures haha.

- Ever since I introduced my brother to Gypsy and Into the Woods over winter break, every time I come home now he's singing songs from musicals. I've gotten him hooked, and I even surprisingly caught him singing from musicals that I'd seen but never mentioned to him before, such as Anything Goes and A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum. We have our own little inside joke recognize-the-reference hive mind going on haha. He even bought a book that indexes all of the Broadway musicals of the past century that he thought I'd like. :D

Speaking of Into the Woods, I'm really looking forward to the upcoming movie adaptation of it that Disney is doing.  Not sure how it'll turn out persay, but I'm hoping the book + lyrics will at least hold up anyway... even though the Sweeney Todd and Les Mis movies felt a little off in the past. Into the Woods is probably my favorite musical right now [not seen live yet, though] because I'm into those works that combine the different fairy tales into one setting, ever since seeing that one random episode of Rocko's Modern Life when I was little (although in retrospect, that show probably isn't appropriate for kids... I still shudder when I remember the nudist episode. and it aired on Nickelodeon of all places). And yes, I've seen the first season of Once Upon a Time on recommendation... it was okay. I don't really feel like continuing it though... unless I run out of other things to do, which probably won't happen anytime soon.

But anyway, up next on the works that run in this fairy tale style list, I've been meaning to start reading the comic series Fables since Telltale announced that they would be releasing a new episodic adventure game series for it, The Wolf Among Us, after their success with The Walking Dead. Should be fun.

- Speaking of comics, Free Comic Book day was on the 4th (first Saturday of May annually). I checked out a local comic book store and it turns out they just give out free sample issues made specifically for that day, although it's a good way to check out new series that you aren't familiar with and help pay patronage to your local store. I went ahead and bought the first volumes of Fables and Neil Gaiman's Sandman there, and noticed that the store had a decent selection of manga, or least Tezuka's works, and artbooks like Hyrule Historia also, along with a bunch of the Batman trade paperbacks I looked up a year ago when I was trying to figure out the chronological reading order I wanted to go through. I feel a little mixed though cause most of it's cheaper on Amazon... maybe I'll buy a bit from both.

I have a new craving now to add a comic book collection to my in-progress library... that's currently over-saturated with books I haven't gotten around to yet for a bookshelf that hasn't come in yet. But I kinda already started with the complete Calvin and Hobbes and the two volumes mentioned above. I also have a complete set of Tintin books sitting at home in socal from when I was growing up, and I'm looking into more manga also - namely Nausicaa, some Tezuka series like Phoenix and Buddha, Akira, One Piece, and maybe some Urasawa favorites [Pluto, Monster, 20th Century Boys] and Asano [Nijigahara Holograph, Solanin, What a Wonderful World] or Kitoh {Bokurano, Narutaru: Shadow Star] or Yukimura [Planetes, Vinland Saga] or even some Detective Conan for nostalgia's sake. Figured it would be nice to support the industry for once, considering how easy it is to find free scanlations going around online usually. I took a look at the Peanuts collection also but they're really expensive even for comics... but agh, too many to list.

- ongoing series progress:

1. Front Mission. Finally finished the second game, read up on the third and fourth games... which are more standalone and not as interesting to me compared to the first two anyway, and then realized that rather than using the PS2, which had a good life anyway, I could just emulate the fifth game on my desktop with better looking graphics and resolution. And it's so pretty now! compared to all of the previous games anyway; it came out in 2005 so it's still a little old relatively speaking. This will probably preoccupy me for the next couple of weeks.

It's hard to keep track of all of the subtle references that the fifth game makes to all of the other works in the franchise, as it's more of a final big picture kind of game compared to the spatially and temporally focused first four games, but I enjoy piecing all of the puzzle pieces together (and popped open the DS to revisit the first game at the same time). It's like seeing a decades long work in progress finally pay off, big time.

2. Been gradually going through Mobile Suit Gundam from the beginning - specifically the series in the original Universal Century timeline, so no Wing or other recent stuff (viewing order: 0079 movie trilogy, Zeta Gundam, Double Zeta, Char's Counterattack, and then Unicorn; I'm currently finishing up Zeta). It's odd cause when I was younger, I never really took an interest in mecha-related series. I did watch Evangelion and Code Geass in high school, but those were more for the drama than for the robotic suits themselves.

I kinda decided to watch the original MSG compilation movie trilogy on a whim last year and found myself really getting into the combat despite how outdated the art style was (see the original opening - I showed my friend this and he couldn't stop laughing at how campy it was with the music haha). The Amuro-Char rivalry that permeates the series feels very epic and is one of the more classic ones in anime history also, even though Amuro can be kind of annoying at times (but Kamille is even more annoying omg). I have to say seeing him reappear in Zeta for the first time perked me up a bit, if only because I like see continuity between successive works and characters that change over time, here in a literal sense, and seeing both Amuro and Char mature into legendary pilots over successive works separated by years is intriguing to watch.

3. Finished Battlestar Galactica. I enjoyed the ride, although I'm not sure what I was expecting out of the end - it didn't exactly leave a "void" in my heart like some others suggested (although I kinda blame Legend of the Galactic Heroes for setting the bar for that). I mean it ended well, but I guess I was expecting more from the antagonists considering how the series had been building up, for lack of spoilers. But it was fun while it lasted.

4. Rewatching Arrested Development in preparation for the fourth season coming out on Netflix. It's been so long since I last watched it all that it almost feels like re-experiencing the series for the first time, even though I still remember of the more memorable moments. It's even more funny catching jokes and references that you didn't get the first time around: I mentioned earlier that I watched Gypsy, and then in one of the first season episodes Lucille goes on a tirade singing lines from the finale of that musical, Rose's Turn ("Mama's all alone, Mama doesn't care"), and my brother and I both caught it. And even in a later episode she says, "How do you like them eggrolls, Mr. Goldstone?" So great haha.

5. Not really something I'm playing right now, but Ace Attorney 5 is coming to the US this fall!!! It's digital-only though, but I guess it's better than nothing. Aside from Phoenix and Apollo, Edgeworth and Trucy are coming back! So excited! Now if only they'd localize Layton vs. Wright...