All entries written in January, 2008
January 30, 2008 at 4:37 pm · Filed under Misc, Thoughts
I watch a lot of Family Guy on TBS, a station that seems to run trailers for the upcoming movie Strange Wilderness more often than most others. In fact, this may be the only station on which I’ve ever seen a trailer for this movie. Anyway, you can watch it on Youtube here, but the part I really want to draw your attention to is the last little bit, which starts immediately before the title card and then continues afterward.
This shark joke actually made me laugh out loud the first time I saw it; I still think it’s funny, despite the fact that the rest of the movie looks like the sort of thing my beer-swilling friends from high school would enjoy. But that one joke, the sort of random way it makes fun of something plain in the environment, is so my sense of humor. Watch it be the only funny thing in the whole film (if I’m right, that’s why the TV trailers I’ve seen recently no longer seem to use that particular scene).
January 28, 2008 at 9:07 am · Filed under Reviews, Thoughts
I think I liked this movie a lot better than my friends did. We just have different standards.
“The first 20 minutes sucked, right?” asked one of them the day after I went to the local theater. I disagreed–love ‘em or hate ‘em, the kind of post-collegiate, twentysomething “party people” who are the center of this film behave a certain way, and the opening scenes of Cloverfield capture it as accurately as if the movie were unscripted and real. Behaviors, melodramatic reactions born from a life of watching TV, and above all, the dialogue are all completely believable.
Less believable are later scenes where this same group of kids braves certain death to stick together and save one of their own, and each other. People my age may talk big, and there are certain cases (typically involving alcohol) where they do throw caution completely to the wind, but there’s always a logical limit. That point should have been reached when the movie’s protagonists reached their destination and found it leaning up against the building next door. That was the time for them to sink down on the grass in Central Park or something and try to process the sinking feeling that they’ve reached the end of what they can do. Instead we got a tense but supremely improbable rescue mission; at least the way the idea was introduced drew some laughter.
Keep reading….
January 23, 2008 at 9:00 am · Filed under Announcements
Hi, everyone! Well, as of this Friday, Bad Company will officially have drawn to a close, making it the second episode of School Kids SG to be completed on this website.
Just like last time, there will be an intermission before we go on to episode three. Starting Monday, January 28th, the site will feature two (possibly three) weeks with the same update schedule, but no regular story content. This will be my chance to treat regular visitors to some special posts and other updates that I’ve been saving until now, plus a few new things that I just thought of. Here’s some of what you have to look forward to between episodes two and three:
* New SKSG production art and world-building material
* New nonfiction and irreverent personal observation by yours truly
* The beginnings of an easier-to-navigate site and cast page
* A super-cool new interactive extra (I’m working on it now…depending on how things go, this may show up during the intermission, but certainly soon after at the latest).
* And, best of all, a brand-new chapter that serves as both the epilogue to Bad Company and the prologue of episode three! Taking a term coined by the infamous Ken Penders, I’m going to call this chapter the “midlogue.”
Hopefully, that’s enough to keep you all coming back regularly over the next few weeks. Before you know it, it’ll be mid-February, and the School Kids SG saga will continue! I’m looking forward to sharing episode three with all of you…thanks for continuing to come and support my site!
January 22, 2008 at 2:36 pm · Filed under Personal, Thoughts
This is a little bit of a follow up to iSwitched. Basically, I’m loving the iPod, and one of the first things I did when I got it was start on a music project I’ve been kinda/sorta wanting to do for a long time: organizing and naming all my homebrewed mixes from college. I’ve imported them all to iTunes now (except for one CD I’m missing), and soon, I will have a working, chronological, aural record of my entire four years at Bard, plus the year immediately after my graduation.
It’s been fun–I’m finding that a lot of old memories get called to the surface as I go through these CDs and songs. In particular, the music makes me see various times of year or recall incredibly-specific nights, and all of this helps me give names to the CDs, most of which were untitled before.
There are also some funny things that come up, things that were funny at the time but which I had forgotten until now. For instance: there’s a song on one of the year 5 mixes by a band called Live, called either “All Over You” or “All Over Me,” I can’t be sure. But anyway, there’s a part of this song where the lyrics go like this:
Our love is like water,
Beaten down and abused for being strange.
What? How is that anything like water?
January 14, 2008 at 9:09 am · Filed under Reviews, Thoughts
I hope that’s a title that will alert some RSS readers to what I’m talking about. But yeah, it’s true (though not in the way you might think).
My whole life, I’ve been a CD listener, CD burner, CD thinker. Spread across my house 
are nearly 10 years’ worth of homebrewed mixes that trace the emotional chronology of my life, my stories, and my college years in particular. In fact, I have every intention of posting relevant songs and ordered track lists when the portions of School Kids SG they helped to inspire are posted. But anyway, the concept of the CD was perfect for me, especially given the erratic and often-unlabeled way I organize the music on my computer. Even when peer pressure made me flirt with the idea, I never seriously considered switching to an iPod.
But yesterday, I did. And it really is great.
Keep reading….
January 7, 2008 at 9:07 am · Filed under Extras, Production Art
If you’ve been following Bad Company, you might already have guessed that the second episode of School Kids SG is starting to reach its climax. In fact, the story will wrap up this very month. Like The Gauntlet, I plan to release Bad Company in print format, but what’s different this time is that Bad Company will appear in print together with the forthcoming third episode, A River of Darkness. That means that you won’t actually be seeing the second book for a while longer.
I’ve already been putting it together on my end, though, and it’s actually almost done. If all goes well, that means book two should be released with much better and faster timing than The Gauntlet was. Today, I want to share some of the pencil art for book two’s cover with you–click the images to view them full size.
More to come during episode three!
January 2, 2008 at 9:06 am · Filed under Announcements
First of all, let me say thank you to the half-dozen or so people who entered the win a free book drawing. Secondly, I want to thank the other small handful of people who skipped the contest entirely and just bought a copy of The Gauntlet. Thirdly, even though this site is still a few weeks shy of its one-year anniversary, I want to say thank you to everyone who visits here and takes the time to look at or read my work. I haven’t even started to buy Internet ad space yet (that’s early 2008’s project), but I have to say, this has been a very encouraging first few months, and I couldn’t have done it without you.
But now, on to the winner! The free copy of The Gauntlet goes to Jeff Iversen, who is incidentally the only person who entered the contest by leaving a comment here, rather than emailing me. Readers who never leave comments, take note! We now have semi-empirical proof that leaving comments on School Kids SG makes you lucky!
Mr. Iversen, congratulations, and I’ll be sending you an email tonight to work out the details of how to send the book to you. Everyone else, thanks again for playing, and if you’re still interested in The Gauntlet, don’t forget that it is both available for sale in print and available complete on this site.
Happy New Year!
