Doomtree Blowout V

Branny and I attended the annual Doomtree blowout on Saturday night. It was easily one of the best, most energetic concert experiences I've been a part of.

I enjoyed the format of the show, with the entire group performing for about a half an hour, then splitting into individual sets for each of the members (with extremely short interludes in between), before coming back together for the grand finale. The group has great chemistry, and since this was the first time they'd all been together since the previous year's blowout, you could tell they were really feeding off each other and the excitement of the crowd.

I've been a big P.O.S. fan since seeing him live a couple years ago, but I had no idea that the rest of the Doomtree crew was that good. Cecil Otter had a great set, playing with live instruments, which really accentuated his metered spoken word style. Dessa commanded attention every time she opened her mouth, I'll definitely have to hunt down some of her stuff. Sims and Mictlan put on good shows, too (even if the planned world premiere of Mictlan's new music video kept experiencing technical difficulties - it got funny toward the end, when the show was effectively over, the problems let up and we got to see what ended up being a fairly blase video).

P.O.S.' Never Better will almost certainly (spoiler alert!) be my number one CD of 2009, but it still can't even touch the raw sound it has when he's rapping live. He has a fire that I haven't seen from many other performers. He only did 5 or 6 of his own, songs, but he touched on all the biggies (thankfully, he got everyone together to sing "Low Light Low Life", a personal favorite of mine off Never Better.)

The crowd knew every word to every song (seriously, I'm not sure I've ever seen such audience participation at a show before), and more than once, you could see the performers looking at each other in disbelief at how stoked the crowd was to be there.

Seriously, anyone from the Cities area who's even remotely a fan of this group owes it to themselves to check out next year's blowout. For fans of the Doomtree collective or any of the individuals that make it up, it is not to be missed.

Chip Caray: Epilogue

I had this post saved instead of posted for whatever reason. Still relevant, and I still think kittens are awesome... so... it gets posted. Joe Buck sucks.

You may remember that I spent a good deal of time complaining about TBS' coverage of the baseball postseason - Chip Caray in particular. Therefore, Monday's news that Mr. Caray and TBS have 'parted ways' makes me extremely happy.

How happy?

Almost as happy as this GIF makes me. Not quite, though... kittens are awesome.



Also, I find it amusing that every time the baseball playoffs rolls around, searches for the phrase "Joe Buck Sucks" skyrocket.

To all those who have happened upon this very blog because of that search string I say this...

yes... yes he does.

Thanksgiving Rules

I've always liked Thanksgiving.

Today, I ate a ton, drank more beer than I can currently remember, and slept for an hour, snoring in front of everyone.

Now I'm drinking Apple cider and cinnamon schnapps, listening to Burial.

This holiday rules.

What the Carlos Gomez Trade Really Means...

12 walks, 92 strikeouts last year...
Roller-skate defense....
Minnesota Twins starting left fielder... for ALL of next season.

Ladies and gentlemen, Delmon Young!!

Goodbye, Go-Go

MLB.com is reporting that the Brewers have traded J.J. Hardy to the Twins for... Carlos Gomez.

I have to admit, I'm a little bummed out about this, not because of anything J.J. Hardy may or may not be able to accomplish on the baseball field, but because it was just so fun to watch Gomez play baseball. The guy played the game as if it was the most awesome thing in the world to be doing. The picture at the top of the post, taken just a few weeks ago when the Twins won the division, captures it perfectly.

Baseball-wise, this probably makes sense, but I'm going to miss the bat-smelling, crazy "how-in-the-hell-did-he-catch-that" plays, and the ridiculous enthusiasm Gomez had.

Indie Game Review: I MAED A GAM3 W1TH ZOMBIES 1N IT!!!1

About a year ago, Xbox live introduced the "Community Games" feature along with its new interface. For about 10 months, users were 'treated' to every manner of hackneyed user-made games including (but certainly not limited to) Super Mario ripoffs, classic arcade ripoffs, and a truly frightening number of apps that simply vibrated your xbox controller. There's a few games worth noting amongst the mess (I hope to shed some light on those in the near future), but finding one of those precious few bright spots is often times very difficult.

This game could change all of that. The amusingly-titled I MAED A GAM3 W1TH ZOMBIES 1N IT!!!1 is a true gem. Its controls are incredibly easy (it's a twin stick shooter in the vein of Smash TV), the interface is clean, and the game itself is smooth and beautiful. Waves of zombies rise from the grave and shamble towards you, and you gun them down. Powerups are available, ranging from speed boosts, to shields, to (of course) kickass weaponry.

If this doesn't sound particularly new or inventive, it's because it's really not. The aforementioned Smash TV did all of this almost 20 years ago, and a host of imitators have done it since then. So what makes IMAGWZII! so fresh and awesome?

It's actually sort of hard to say, but I think a large part of it is that this game simply wants you to enjoy yourself. Smash TV was created with the obvious intent of being a quarter eater. It starts out brutal and gets unfair from there (and that's the element most of its successors have keyed in on). ZOMBIES is different in that it's not out to punish you, it has no intention of becoming an endurance test (a fact underlined by the fact that the game ends at 13 minutes and 37 seconds no matter what the player does). This isn't to say the game doesn't carry any difficulty or challenge (it certainly does), it's just that the challenge doesn't get in the way of the entertainment.

All of that, and I haven't even mentioned the two main reasons that this game is such a hit - the music and the price (hint: it's a dollar, a fact which the song states). Playing along the duration of the game is a rock song made by the game's creator. In it, he welcomes you to his game, noting that you'd better move quickly and shoot the zombies before bursting out in an anthemic chorus of "I MADE a GAAAAAME WITh ZOMBIES IN IT!!". The game matches pace with the song, picking up the action when there's a particularly rocking portion, or letting the player catch their breath when there's a lull in the song. When the song reaches its end, the game is over.

Put all these elements together and you have a game that  is easily head and shoulders above anything else that the indie games feature of Xbox Live has to offer. If indie games are going to survive on the Xbox console, more people are going to have to take a page out of this playbook. I MAED A GAM3 W1TH ZOMBIES 1N IT!!!1 isn't just a good independently-made game, it's a good game period - easily worthy of your time and money.

 
After all, It's only a dollar...

'Tis the Season...

The elevator at the hospital seems to be getting into the Halloween spirit.

* When you attempt to call the elevator, it will occasionally simply not open, even though you can see it sitting (doing nothing) on your floor.

* Sometimes it simply won't open its doors... this goes on for 4-5 minutes sometimes. It'll be at a floor - any floor - with its doors shut, just waiting.

* Occasionally, it will send you in the opposite direction you requested, change its mind without opening the doors, and then send you where you wanted to go in the first place.

* Creepiest of all, on rare occasions, it will simply open its doors as you begin to walk up to it, even though no one (including you) had called it.

This morning, I got on the elevator and tried to go down one floor. The elevator decided that instead of doing that, it was going to send me to the top floor, not open its doors for five minutes, then send me to the floor I had actually requested. I was about to call engineering (or, failing that, a priest) to see what I had to do to appease the infernal beast and make it let me out. I didn't even care which floor.

 

Maybe I'll take the stairs from now on.

BrainDump 10/13/2009

* Here in Alexandria, we were treated to a snowstorm on Friday. I like winter a lot more than most folks do, but it's fall right now. Besides, I need to get the deck stained and the patio pavers laid. The fact that the snow started getting heavy right as Joe Nathan was serving up A-Rod's back-breaking home run could only be a foul coincidence, right?

So yeah, I'm thinking I probably should have done those two things sometime this summer, instead of all that sweet golfing action I was enjoying.

* Single-season wins record holder and all around dapper fellow Old Hoss Radbourn has a twitter account. It's good to see that he's not letting his 1897 death get in the way of being hilarious and insightful in an old-fashioned way.

Highlight: This #Posada feller is awful. If my battery mate made so many errors, I'd be forced to challenge him to a duel.

* I've been listening to a lot of the song 'Surf Solar' by Fuck Buttons of late. It's over ten minutes of droney goodness with an almost robotic sounding digitally altered female voice. If that made it sound boring or strange, trust me, it's not. Ten minutes almost doesn't seem long enough. Check out the drastically shortened clipped version (which weighs in at a pansy 3 minutes 41 seconds) - where else - at imeem.

Note: I link to imeem because you can find most everything there. For a lot of the songs, you need to sign up for a free account. Do it. It's worth it.

* Finally, I will literally never get sick of watching the Ibanez Fielding GIFs. Never. I've been staring at the screen laughing for the last ten minutes, and I've already seen these no fewer than 20 times.

Ron Darling Needs Physics Lessons

The Twins were predictably eliminated in painful fashion on Sunday. They got the lead for the third straight game, only to follow the script straight through to the part which called for A-Rod to bludgeon our pitching staff into submission.

Rather than complain about the Twins losing in the playoffs (I had them pegged for 75 wins and for most of the season, it looked like I was right), I'll make fun of the announcing staff.

During the early innings of last night's game, Ron Darling made the comment that ground balls hit on the Metrodome turf "gain speed" as they approach the infielders. Even if that didn't violate the laws of physics, such a field would be ridiculously dangerous. Imagine - bunt hits gaining momentum until, by the time they reach the outfield, they are hurtling at devastating speeds. Fielders daring not bounce their throws on the turf, lest they decapitate the intended recipient of their throws. Maybe he meant that the turf slows the ball down less than grass? Mmm.... no, I'm quite certain he meant it this way.

Of course, I'm being more than a little pedantic, but the team of Ron Darling and Chip Caray (particularly the latter) are quite possibly the worst announcers to listen to. I'm including Hall of Shamers like McCarver & Buck (Joe, of course, not his dearly departed father) in this ascertation. They get facts wrong, they (especially Caray) act as homers for all things Yankee, and worst of all, they bring absolutely nothing to the table. They're certainly not informative, they're just sort of... there (and the way Caray refers to just about every bloop hit as being 'fisted' is creepy to me).

Sour grapes notwithstanding, that was a pretty disgusting end to a season that defied expectations. You can't beat the Yankees by leaving 17 men on base in one game, or by blundering your way out of at least 2 runs by simply not paying any attention on the basepaths, or by hitting a grand total of zero home runs after putting up decent power numbers all year - and guess what......we didn't.

Ah well..... we'll always have last Tuesday's game.

Note: This gets the "Joe Buck Sucks" tag, because boy howdy does he ever.

Ouch.... ouch ouch ouch

Note the position of the umpire as he calls the clearly fair ball foul.

Great game by Blackburn. Too bad that it all has to wind down in the shittiest way possible.

On a sidenote, I overheard Ron Darling saying after the team's MVP Justin Morneau went down with an injury, it was guys like Michael Cuddyer, Jason Kubel... and Delmon Young that pulled the Twins into contention.

Joe Mauer, meanwhile, selfishly hit .354/.471/.487 - to be clear, that means he was getting on base almost as often as he was getting out over the critical playoff drive. What Cuddy did was great, but he and Kubel aren't getting RBIs if Mauer isn't setting the table for them. To act as if the soon-to-be AL MVP had less to do with the Twins eventual division title than DELMON YOUNG, is cockflickery, my friends.

Also, in what universe do people still think the MVP of the 2009 Twins is Justin Morneau??

What a complete disappointment... let's pick up at least one from this very beatable team, shall we, gentlemen??