You'd think with a few weekends gone by that I'd have more to sum up than, "I worked a lot." to say but that's more or less it. Regular hours and Summer Camp Cinema hours, garden time and maintaining house took up a great deal of time. Made some cookies. Had to do some family stuff for my birthday. A garden gnome was acquired. Tomato, Eggplant, Peppers, Corn, and even the pumpkins are kicking ass. Kevin and I helped Brenner move into his new place. It's really nice. It's almost exactly like Hannah's old place. Rubino has finally joined the rest of his nerd bretheren by getting himself a big flat HDTV and even went so far as to hook a 360 up to it. Congrats, Dan, you are now up to date. It took you long enough.
Ron had asked if I'd contribute some work to SleeperHit, a sassy new site dedicated to providing a social commentary that's relatively unseen in the gaming-news community and basically argue with each other while waxing poetic about off-topic industry trends. Games as art, games versus movies, finding our philosophy, weeding out rhetoric, viable storytelling methods, author intent - things like that and some standard reviews. Apparently it started well because the article was submitted to Slashdot. SleeperHit received a lot of very unexpected traffic as it rounded it's second week of existance. Not bad. Hopefully we'll be able to disagree about more stuff in the future so we can conjure up some readers.
Good weekend was very good. Everyone at Joe's, I missed you guys.
He needs a name.
Spent a lot of time this week behind the house doing assorted yard and garden work. The death tally for our yard keeps climbing with two more bird carcasses and to my surprise, a hollowed out turtle. I think it may be a fox or some raptors. Probably raptors.
I found a turtle except there was no turtle.
Started the week off with some Prototype playing on my laptop. It's a lot of fun but lacks structure. I haven't played nearly enough to really come to a proper conclusion about it yet but I could really get into losing some sleep with this game. I've spent quite a bit of time in the garden this week. Which is still something I'm getting accustomed to actually saying and realizing, in the process, that it's not an in-character thing for me to do. Hope the grapes work out. Speaking of, we found a large patch of wild grapes in the backyard and transplanted them. Last week it was a turtle - this week it's grapes, raspberries, and a frog. My yard is pretty cool.
Started the week off by working twenty hectic hours (Sunday afternoon to Monday morning) followed by some sleep and finally finishing up Metal Gear Solid 4. It was the only game I got when I first purchased my PS3 and I purposely put it aside to play other games because it simply was not fun. I drew my conclusion after seven hours of gameplay. It's not like I threw the disc in, sat through the first cut scene and took it out. Oh no, I'm a big fan of the series and sat through and played for seven hours. Then I took it out. I took the disc out and gave it the same look you get from your parents when you get into some serious little kid trouble. The kind of trouble that, you know, you're old enough to know better but you did it anyway. The kind of look that says, "I'm not really mad at you, but I'm really dissapointed."
That was a little over a year ago.
I picked it up once again deteremined to finish it whether it was continuous crap or not. I'm glad I did. I'm not saying it wasn't continuous crap - I'm saying that I'm glad I sat through the MGS4 - GotP "experience" to completion. I'll preface my rambling with one simple statement then explain. I love the game Metal Gear Solid 4. There are plenty of people who love it. Lots, really. The series has an incredible following and this finale in it's grande opus is the culmination of everything all the fans have become fans over. Multiple story lines are completed, character development ceases, all that encompasses the ongoing construction of a very living world that has been designed for well over a decade comes to fruition. All ends are finally tied.
It's a beutiful thing. Very few, if any, questions go unanswered. Had this been a movie I would have left the theater, purchased another ticket, and watched an incredible story come to life all over again. I'd review it as a triple A title. Metal Gear Solid 4, however, was not a movie. It was a video game. I loved the game and I loved the story. The two should not have been combined so liberally. Imagine a dvd that you really wanted to watch but to get to each scene in the film you had to complete a level of a video game. You'd never watch it. The flow of the film would be exhuasting to follow and the entire experience would be ruined. That's what Metal Gear Solid 4 is to me. A game that I love and really want to play and really want to enjoy. It won't let me though. I have to go back to the menu to skip the movie that's interrupting the flow of my game.
No game developer would publish a game like this if not for the incredible back catalog and fanbase that it's history has developed. Imagine a new IP with incredible gameplay, superb plot, star quality acting, breathtaking graphics, and character developement you care about. Got it? Now throw in sequences of play that must stop every 30 to 45 minutes to tell a 30 to 45 minute long story to further the plot. You may still play it, but you aren't going to watch any of those cutscenes if that game is really fun. You won't care. That' my problem with MGS4 - I do care. I want to know what's happening but I don't want to stop playing to know why I'm playing.
I'm still playing it from beginning to end over and over but I'm skipping all the bullshit.
/end rant
Jeff, Kevin, and Mike had a really good show with My Black Boyfriend.
Best part of the week? Joel and I found a box turtle hanging out by the murder sheds in the backyard.
This stuff happened in June:
- Rain.
- Rain.
- Went shooting at the Vanderbuilt.
- Rain.
- Kevin and Jeff celebrated their anniversary.
- Rain.
- Rain.
- Got some Grape soda
- Rain
- Will turned 27.
- Rain.
- Rain.
- Thunderstorm.
- Realized one of the paintings in our house is straight out of Resident Evil 4.
- Acquired new lighting equipment.
- Rain.
- Scattered Showers.
- Worked like a madman during the Repo! Genetic Opera Shadowcast Summer Camp Cinema Extravaganza.
- It rained a lot.
I realize I haven't written anything for quite some time and there's only one reason for that, being really lazy when I'm not really busy.
This stuff happened in May:
- Ditched Cable for FiOs. Success.
- Rain.
- Went shooting at the abandoned air hangers again.
- Shoot at Avalon Park in Stonybrook
- Anna and Alberto went to their wedding (see earlier).
- Jeff played with Cortez again.
- Discovered that someone or something is leaving panties hanging in the trees in the woods beyond my backyard and that birds are getting wrecked left and right. Events possibly related?
- Attacked by lobster
So this happened today:
Took a ride out to the abandoned air hangers for a few pick-me-up shots. All I could think of while there was Gurren Lagaan and the Storm Eagle stage of Mega Man X. I am so cool. Nerd face, nerd palm. I'll have photatos up on flickr in a day or two along with about a month of others that I never got around to doing.
Who the hell do you think I am?
Working 'till five in the morning every weekend is killing my social life. What little remainder of one that I had anyway. I should start doing things during the daytime hours. Other than sleep and work. Had a productive photoshop day and will do some flickring later in the week when I'm fully caught up.
A conversation I had with Mo on Saturday at work:
Rob: Hey you know Aj left for Venice and Greece with Maryann on a free trip?
Mo: Yeah, I heard.
Rob: His company is fronting the bill from an award he received. I forgot about the whole thing.
Mo: Yeah, it's awesome.
Rob: The lucky bastard. They're coming back engaged. It'll be awesome.
aaaaaand today on Aj's twitter:
Oh man, I am so fucking happy for you two I feel like I could take on the whole empire myself.
Fuck. Yes.
