A Steller Effort
On my part has now resulted in a 12 Shine weekend on Mario. It’s the obstacle courses that hold you up, when you get past those you really can fly through. The end levels are normally pretty hard mind. I’m on one where you have to shoot balloons from a roller coaster, which is as hard as, well, shooting balloons from a roller coaster.
This movie looks like it has a lot of potential, documentary on the musicians who made the Motown sound. And it has Bootsy Collins playing with them. What more could you need? And having just read through the Bootsy site, just linked onto the Fred Wesley site. Another one of James Brown’s funky people.
From the makers of Stars and of Bubbles comes an earlier work, KittyFlip
I tend to stay up until two or three in the morning most nights. I used to stay up later than that, but in time I found it made me more depressed still if I was exhausted. I seem to now exist on a comfortable cusp of tiredness. I’d like to say that with all this extra time in my life I have much time to create, to think, to design. I tend to surf the internet a lot, watch a lot of television and play games.
I have lots of little flashes of creativity and inspiration. Its getting them to fruition that is such a problem. I would like the ability to convert even two or three of these a year into something of note, if only to me.
I spend a lot of time at a keyboard. Maybe 10 or more hours most weekdays, hopefully less at the weekend. I can remember when working with computers was a pipedream, something interesting other people did. I didn’t know what I wanted to do then. I think I do now, I far prefer this to selling.
Every time I think, I move something in my mind. It goes slow, it goes fast. Sometimes I feel like my mind stutters, like a badly-tuned engine. Everything is there, whole ideas and processes float past.
I met Nathan Matthers in London one day. I can remember seeing him in a documentary about his mother “Eminem’s Mom”. It said at the end of the show that he had now moved in with his older brother. I remember thinking that he had his brothers sense of humour, but perhaps was even better balanced than him, in some ways he had had far more to deal with than even Eminem. He was now 25, and had a recording career that was even more glittering than his brother. After courting some teen success at nineteen, and had the obvious but unfair accusation that he was riding on his brothers coattails, he had gone away for a couple of years, and came back with a massive album that took him into a new league. Serious, thought-provoking rap, musically leagues beyond his brother, but with mainstream success. It was the only album that anyone would remember from 2005.
Nathan had kept his feet on the ground though, had married his girlfriend he had met shortly before he released his first album. After his second album she became pregnant, and he had taken another break of a year or two to be with her and his new son.
Obviously, being slightly reticent in public life, and mammothly sucessful he had a certain mistique to the press, and was warey of them. It was quite a suprise to see him walk into a london bar with his girlfriend and bouncer, but just the three of them. It transpired he had asked some friends to point him in the direction of a quiet place he could have a drink.
I had arranged to meet a friend after a course in London, but had finished early, and had needed to kill a couple of hours. I was nursing a pint and reading the Guardian on my own, when they walked in. I looked up and recognised Nathan when he walked in, looking over and mouthing my suprise, but of course being English and shy did not approach them. They ordered their drinks and sat down at the table next to me.
I listened in to their conversation, which indicated that he was trying to find a place to live here, and was considering a small village outside of St.Albans. Apparently Stanley Kubrick had lived there, and his family had decided to move out.
He was going off to look at it.
I leaned over, and said “I’m sorry to intrude, but I’ve actually been there”. He looked catiuously at me. “I know who you are, and obviously I am a big fan, don’t worry I’m not going to make a scene. But I have been to that village. It is incredible, it is like the most picture-perfect place I have ever seen. If you are looking for something that is like the England you Americans have been sold on TV,
you just won’t find anywhere better. And that house is amazing, it has the biggest hedges around it ever. If you want privacy, that is the place.”
And so we got talking, he asked me about the area, and I told him how I remembered it.He then asked me about me, and I started talking about my interests in music. I mentioned Hendrix and we found we had a common interest there. I then brought up my respect for nineties dj’s like Cut Chemist and DJ Shadow, and we had half an hour discussing them, and the seventies soul records they loved. After a little while he said he was sorry but he had to go.
We shook hands, and they left. My friend showed up ten minutes later, and she was very jealous when I told her who she had just missed out on meeting. But she was amazed when I told he what a nice guy he was. It was a great little day, and I told all my friends who I had met.
I had told him about loving the bassline from Thank You by Sly and the Family Stone. Its the one that Janet Jackson borrowed for Rythym Nation.
Hoping for a more positive response than before, I moved slowly towards the door. I was tired. I’d started back on the patches, then taken them off to smoke a couple of fags, then put them back on. I felt wierd. Woosy. My heart was racing hard. Too fast. difficult to think straight really. Pins and needles in my feet. Neck ache. Lungs sore. Basically not a good reaction. Took the patch off, to try and calm myself down. I didn’t drink any more coffee for a little, I usually manage a few cups minimum in a day. But today was different, a couple of cups of tea had to suffice as a replacement. It didn’t feel like one. Smoking fucking sucks frankly. This is what cold turkey is like
I’ve just remembered. I can recall the first time I tried to give up ciggies with willpower alone. Being kept awake by the whiteness of walls. Rolling and suffering
Sleeping very weirdly with being back on patches. Night before last dreamt that I went to a games store to see the new Nintendo handheld. I’m expecting to see the GBA2, so a few extra buttons and a backlit screen. What I in fact see is:
The Nintendo Padewan
Its like a shell, but two octagon halves. When you open the shell out, all the buttons are the inner walls of the first shell. But the second shell is a holographic projector. The reason it is called the Padewan is that the launch title is a Star Wars game, and looks suspiciously like the fighting/chess game that they play on the millennium falcon in A new hope.
If anyone is listening I do actually want one of those. I don’t even care about copyright, no one would believe me if I said I thought of it first. I’d just be happy to have one frankly. Hurry up.
About a definitive a history of console gaming as you can get
John Leslie
Far more worthy, US site PRwatch
How the CIA started the war on drugs. By funding the dealers (okay, allegedly)
BBC 7, with a load of comedy, to launch. We need this now!
Also, today got junk mail from Omaha Steaks. Does this mean I have now progressed from Spam to Sirlion?
What I am going to try and do is have a hit single. Have decided to get around the problem that I cannot sing by making all the vocals out of other people. I want each individual word to be sung by a different person. Bit of a bugger on the editing, but I can do it. All I need now is to write a song, and to make music to go under it. I suck at both, but it hasn’t stopped many others
Let me crave your indulgence but a brief time and wander through the trapdoors of my mind. I await motion and hope for application of my braincells in some formative and useful manner. I hope for more and furthermore hope for something. Just trying to keep my greyest matter from seizure. Pondering nothing, my mind slows evermore.
Small fragments float around, possibilities, ideas, but many, so many float away. Want to capture more of them.
Tony Hawkes Pro Skater 4, Metriod Prime, GT4 (but I’m going to have a bit of a wait there), Phantasy Star Online, Pokemon Sapphire and Ruby (I know, but I’ve played ALL the other GB games, and they are classy little RPG’s), Soul Calibur 2 (again a bit of a wait, but not as long as GT4). That should do me for the time being. Oh go on then, Super Monkey Ball 2.
Cos that never helps. We’re also back at day two of not smoking, which I can explain, and it is not some temporal time-warp thing going on.
Okay so GTA3 Vice City is the game du jour. Fucking brilliant. A hell of a lot has been tweaked. Looks great plays great even smells great. Only complaint I can think of is that anything involving a remote control vehicle is fucking awful. How they can design a game with brilliantly simple and effective driving, and then add in elements of remote control driving and flying (a simulation within a simulation, if you will) and make it frustrating to the point of wanting to get the designers mobile phone number, calling them up, getting to know them, befriend them, go out for a few drinks and meals, introduce respective partners, get to know their kids, look after their pets when they are away, waiting ten years before finally killing them in cold blood by beating them solely in the face with a potato masher. Well it is frustrating. Other than that, fucking great.