Listen To Me!

The Neko Case posting below exposed me to some different ways of presenting music files to the blog -- legal ways, of course.

The link below will bring up an experiment I ran a couple of years ago with the Electroplankton music software for the Nintendo DS.

CAUTION: Laurie Anderson talked about "difficult listening music" in reference to tuneful works which might make you think. The thoughts engendered by listening to the following are probably less beneficial to the world at large.

Click this to hear my Electroplankton Experiment

More sophisticated use of the DS and Electroplankton can be found in the video below:



Or how about this use of the new Korg synthesizer software for the DS? Some might say it sucks...



...But not me!

BTW, both videos are the work of musician Jetdaisuke. More info here.

Gon Today

Ain’t he sweet? Cute, loving, and full of mischievous fun, Gon is definitely the kind of carnivorous little dinosaur it is a pleasure to know. However, if you tick him off (or, in one case, if his temper takes off when he is stuck with a tenacious tick) you might as well say “so long” to life as you knew it.

Nothing stops Gon from getting what he wants, whether it is the biggest fish, a pile of fresh fruit, or the most horrifying revenge you could imagine. Whole forests destroyed and mountains topple down in his wake if that is what it takes to complete Gon's current quest.

Created by Masashi Tanaka, he first appeared in Kodansha's Morning magazine in 1991. These completely wordless stories of a tiny orange dinosaur, anachronistically alone in today's wilderness, draw you effortlessly along with their amazingly lush and detailed illustrations. Frenetically paced action, occasionally slowed down by sometimes-sappy rest stops, mix together well with a dark sense of humor.

Make no mistake about the word “dark” and do not let the cute picture above fool you. There occasionally pop up in Gon stories what some consider overly graphic depictions of violence, but nothing worse than actions frequently seen on Animal Planet -- plenty of ferociously chewing teeth, head-butting and bloodied claws. Gon has a temper. He is not a role model, unless you use his actions to point out how a serenely peaceful scene can be completed destroyed by one person’s temper tantrum.

Not much on the Internet available about Tanaka, and Gon himself seems better known as a playable character in the Playstation Tekken 3 game. DC Comics reprinted several volumes of the Gon stories beginning in 1996, but I have not found any information on whether this collected all of the Gon stories, or whether Tanaka is working on new material with the character. DC began reprinting their reprints last year, but in the original manga flipped format, and there has been more talk about an animated movie.

Speaking of which, thanks to the recent Starclipper blog's Gon posting, I found an “end video” from the Gon chapter in Tekken 3. I never would have imagined Gon animated so faithfully well. If you want a quick look at what the Gon books are like, in spirit and character, this clip tells the tale. For those who are already fans: be prepared to smile.

Meet the New Boss...

I love Metroid games -- more so for the puzzles than battling the bosses (bigger badder characters you need to beat if you plan moving further through a game) because I'm not much good at beating the boss creatures for some reason. I've tried Metroid Prime 2 on the Gamecube, and Metroid Hunters on the DS, but I just can't beat a boss. OK, I beat the first boss on the DS, but couldn't get past the second one. My hope for the Wii was that the controls would give me an easier time with these foes along the way. So far so good, as I finally survived my first Metroid boss battle, but I also survived long enough to succeed against Boss Rundas in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption!

Here's a Gamespot video of how I should have handled it. The video only lasts about 4 minutes -- it took me about 10 times that long to succeed. Oh well, success is success...

What Are You Looking At?

When you squeeze and squint your eyes to focus, is it something in your mind trying to make your eyes smaller? Is it because when you had tiny eyes, when you were a child, you could see much more?

Try to see again as a child, walking to work – all the details: grass, hedges, fences, but then try harder, forcing your sight into more of a focused lens closer to blades of grass, leaves and branches of hedges, painted wooden-pickets of fences.

Then tighten more your gaze that you might see:

Black busy bugs travel over, under, and around each towering green and brown-rusted blade bending beneath the weight of their eternal unknown mission. Twisted hedge trunks turn in synch with its community of leaves -- each uniquely shaped from the other but all working together to embrace the changing sunlight. Dimpled white daubed spackling of rough-cut wood smile back at you with what an untroubled mind now recognizes as a sea of happy faces.

Slow down and try to see the details again, become less goal oriented, and try to take in what wonders there may be before you. Do not cloud your mind with what you expect awaits at the end of the trail. Forget about the pending deadlines, the scheduled appointments, and what-might-go-wrong. Let yourself go to the unexpected pleasures of the moment.

Playing the Nintendo WII game “Marvel Ultimate Alliance” in co-op mode, with younger people:

The game allows you to play as a character from the Marvel Comics’ “universe” – you can be Spider-Man, Daredevil, Wolverine, or one of the Fantastic Four, and your mission is to battle an army of monsters and villains through the levels of cityscapes and underworlds and places-that-have-never-been.

Because it’s co-op mode, everyone must move together. If one person lingers on one side of the screen, the other players are unable to move further down whatever path lies ahead. This can be frustrating if you are the adult in the group. Your mind automatically steers toward the future, to the goal needed to continue the game.

Generally when playing with the younger set, however, you often find yourself stuck, unable to move on because one of the children remains on his side of the screen. “Could there be some secret treasure or insight I missed where he lags?” I wonder. Looking to where his character remains on the screen to discover what my group member has found, I see nothing but joy. “Look at me, I’m Spider-Man!” he shouts gleefully, pressing buttons and moving the controls – exhilarated by his ability to skillfully manipulate the hero into shooting webs and bouncing off walls.

He does not care where he's going -- what he's able to do now is what's most important.

Trying to see as a child can help you appreciate more the work of certain artists, as well. Look past the uncomfortable sights and sounds of David Lynch films, for example – forget about goals and fulfilling resolutions before “The End.”

Lynch’s eyes also see as a child. He marvels at not only what his story-telling technology can do with lights, movement, and sounds, but also how they can change the original meaning and mood into something even more marvelous.

His most recent work, “Inland Empire”, is now on DVD, and the extra features reveal no more of the film’s meaning than the film itself – their revelations instead light up the eyes of Lynch, telling us how we should view not only the movie, but perhaps the world itself.

In the extra feature, called “Quinoa” Lynch prepares one of his favorite meals for us: a grain and broccoli delight that cannot possibly taste as good as Lynch’s pleasure in preparing it. Every detail and step is slow and precise.

Patiently observe the director tapping out a small amount of vegetable bouillon cubes. “I’m gonna set this right here – prepare it for later. I’m going to open that drawer, right here, and get a little knife. Then I’m gonna just bust this up, like so, into little pieces. Then I’m gonna let it wait there. It’ll be happy waiting right here.”

He continues: “Then I’m going to go over here and get these paper towels. And I’m going to get a paper towel and fold it for later ‘cause that handle gets so hot you can’t believe it!”

Later as he waits for the dish to complete its cooking, he talks more about the making of the film:

“It was a phenomenal world that appeared in this regular warehouse that became a magical world. So many magical things came out of that, and it grew and grew and no one will ever know how it grew that way ‘cause nothing was planned. It was partly planned but the final thing, you couldn’t have planned it like that. No one could have ever planned that.

“When you do something you don’t know where it will end up and how it will marry to something -- how it could marry to something in the future. So no matter what you do – some things you do and maybe they don’t feel so correct -- when you do it feels finished or kind of finished. Or something’s not quite right, it isn’t finished – for whatever reason you sort of walk away from it and later unbelievable things can come out of that."

"It’s just like the perfect thing you’ve been looking for.”