Tom Waits was on Letterman last night. If you're interested in turkey vultures, watch the first video. Otherwise, the song is in the second video.
Tom Waits on David Letterman - Pt1


Tom Waits on David Letterman - Pt2

I'm getting back to normal now, not missing the bus and getting used to the food here again. I never noticed how used to the food I was, that everything tasted the same to me after two years of eating the same four meal combinations in rotation. The Terri Dreams project is coming along nicely. My segment director made a rough mockup video with the storyboards timed to the music for reference. I worked a little more on the models and messed around with blend shapes to get the right motion. If nothing else, it fills my time with something fun and constructive.

After work on Friday I drove home to Fort Wayne to greet my brother and a dozen other students known collectively as the Cornerstones, a vocal group from Kenyon College. I say "vocal group," because (a.) I don't think I've ever heard Michael refer to them as a "choir;" and (b.) their arrival could be described as "vocal." Semantic issues were quickly forgotten as two minivans and a station wagon all bearing the Kenyon crest filled our driveway and a flock of students began to emerge. A series of them greeted me with a hearty handshake and a name- a nice gesture even in the dark where I couldn't see their faces very clearly. An indoor reintroduction and a group 180° allowed Mom to read their group shirts with nicknames emblazoned on the back, each an inside joke born of camaraderie and caffeine. Cornerstone custom is to perform unannounced in a public area the night before the scheduled performance. Fort Wayne is almost completely shut down at 10:00 PM, save for an area in the Jefferson Pointe mall by the theater that served as a performance space. Even in the cold they managed to attract spectators. Most people paused to listen for a few minutes before moving on to someplace warmer, but a few guys sat on the steps nearby and seemed to thoroughly enjoy the show. I found that this unscheduled performance fit with my research from my immersion in Chicago: more than one person walking to or from the theater wondered aloud if these were carollers for the holiday, despite a lack of seasonal music. In a near sphere of commercialism and carefully metered culture, the Cornerstones were something unscheduled and genuinely independent. This garnered some predictably strange looks from older movie patrons, while the highschoolers seemed more accepting of a deviation from the norm. The concert the next day was great as well. I recorded the show on my Dad's laptop with a cheapo microphone from Radio Shack. They didn't have the one I wanted, but the recording might still be okay. I'll do what I can over break.

I'm pretty tired tonight, as I couldn't get to sleep last night on account of a still-huge stack of comic books saved up over the last month while I was away. I just feel the need to update this blog before it gets to be a month between posts.

It's been strange being back this past week. I wasn't gone to Chicago for that long, not a semester, certainly, but I've had to readjust to life here. The bus comes twice an hour, not every eight minutes. With the exception of Thai Smile, the Asian food isn't as good. I'm not in constant line-of-sight range with a Borders, Barnes and Noble, or other bookstore. If I was at all employable I wouldn't still be in Muncie. I'm quite sure I could live in a big city now.

I watched On the Waterfront the other night. It's entertaining and intelligent, despite a heavy-handed tendency to beat the audience over the head with every possible symbolic reference the writer could think of. It works, though. I also devoted two nights to working through Gears of War with Scott on his Xbox. Despite the immaculate level of detail afforded by next-gen graphics processing, the game still operates under the same principles of the eight and sixteen bit games of the past two decades: run around, blow stuff up, wait for the talking heads to run through their script to give some semblance of plot, repeat. Beyond the graphics, there really isn't much to the game. Plot and narrative issues are hard for designers to work out, but they're also the cheapest problems to solve early in the production process. It's why the Halo series takes so long between games- the designers care deeply about creating a world for the player to work in. This is also why the first Halo was still on the best seller list when Halo 2 came out.

Well, I'm here in Chicago now, so all my blogging for the next three weeks will be over here.

Sepultura Refuse resist
Nobody has ever rocked this hard in a pokemon shirt. If there was ever proof that music is good for kids, this would be it.

Every now and then an opportunity comes along here at BSU that allows me to do what I came here for- production and interdisciplinary learning. I'm working on an animated short for a giant project here called The Terri Dreams. The site explains it, but it's basically a series of five dreams. My part in this is the beginning of the second dream, with two pairs of lips and the universe. Or something. The segment director has it all planned out and storyboarded, and it doesn't look too complicated. (DN article)

I'm getting close to my cultural immersion. The brain trust that designed the DS program way back when decided to require a big expensive trip to a foreign culture. Sharper minds have since refined this to mean any culture that can be justified through rhetorical study (or somesuch). I'll be going to Chicago to study the art and music culture, and blogging the whole deal on a separate blog from this one. While I still can't shake the notion that this is essentially buying a grade, I am looking forward to the trip, as it is something I've always wanted to do somehow. Chicago is revered in almost hushed tones in Fort Wayne- if someone garners enough local acclaim for their creative endeavors, the buzz starts that they're going to Chicago to make it big. It's how 18th-century immigrants used to talk about America. I'll post a link to the immersion blog in the next week or so, once I find a good template.

Why? Because nature hates me. It's not enough to fill the outdoor air with pollen anymore. I woke up last week to find this on my toothbrush. Thanks to my morning disposition and indoor plumbing, it won't happen again. Now I need a little "Keep Off" sign for my new toothbrush. This is what I get for living next to ever-encroaching nature.

Barring postal holiday delay, Wednesday is new comic day. The day when all misanthropic sons of Krypton fully and gladly expect to shell out between three and thirty dollars for the latest dead-tree serialized entertainments. Today, though, as Gerry and I pulled in to the lot at Alter Ego Comics and approached the door, we were halted by a sign on the door stating that the shop was closed on account of the owner's daughter being born. We stood there for a minute, staring blankly into the dark window of a shop known for being well-lit. Even the neon Superman logo was turned off. We just stood there for a good two minutes, like Jay and Silent Bob, waiting for someone to come let us in to buy our comics, eventually leaving to go eat dinner. I called later to see if the shop was open after 6:00, but no answer. (Yes, "Alter Ego" is the first name in the alphabetical list in my phone, meaning I can call to inquire about the next issue of, say, Ex Machina, easier than I can call my parents or any hypothetical woman my age.) While I'm happy for Jason, the owner and proud father, I do wonder what kind of strange fate finds the culmination of human gestation on the same Wednesday Joss Whedon's "Astonishing X-men" comes out. I was even going to buy the new Brian K. Vaughn graphic novel- the sort of higher-end purchase a newly christened father of two would appreciate. Divinity forbid I should have to wait until 11:00 tomorrow morning to get my comics.

I watched a documentary last night called "The Commedians of Comedy," about the tour of the same name. I got it because I like Patton Oswalt's stand up, and I wanted to see who else was on the tour. During some road footage, he talks to the camera in a group interview about starting out, and he said that in order to get really good at something, you have to immerse yourself in it for two years. This is encouraging, as my academic career is now in extra innings.

The Black Keys have a new CD out. It's really good. Pick it up if you like their stuff.

"Overweight people now outnumber the undernourished." Link
Should I be nervous?

Last night, under the fog of a head cold and in lieu of doing anything constructive, I watched the movie Brick. I haven't been this enthusiastic about a movie since Primer. It's a film noir set in a California high school, but it really isn't a teen movie. The dialogue is all based on the prose style of Dashiell Hammett, so the lines are all in short clipped sentences. It's tough to describe, but I'll probably buy this one, so hit me up some night if you're bored and want to see it.

I'm really out of it after taking some medicine last night. It's a good thing I don't drive to school.

Since I can't ever actually take a vacation from the warm glow of a computer, I've spent my holiday break searching for music videos. These are my favorites:

Hurra Torpedo- Total Eclipse of the Heart I hate this song like poison, but this version is one of the coolest/funniest performances I've seen online.

Smashing Pumpkins- Pug This is my favorite live performance video from the Pumpkins, and I've seen a lot of them. They did a similar version when I saw them at Purdue.

Motorhead- Ace of Spades Exactly how much rock is too much?

Yup, it's true.

I've been reading The Long Tail, a book about the new economy evident in the online marketplace. It takes a book to explain it if you aren't a digital storytelling student, but here's a good example: (link) The "long tail" comes from the sales graph (say, from iTMS) where online sales peak with the predictable popular hits, then drops off sharply with the less popular songs. The graph never quite hits zero, though, and those low sellers add up like mad after a while. Niche markets hold more sway than they used to. The aforelinked article shows this, where casual gamers make up an estimated %76 of total game sales. This figure is broken down further, but the vast majority of people aren't as committed to gaming as the people video games are marketed to. This is interesting to me, anyway.

It's new comic day today. I got some good ones, the standout being Doc Frankenstein, a comic written by the Wachowski brothers that hasn't come out in nearly a year.

The mass influx of denim-clad academic acolytes to this jerkwater burg signals the start of the Fall semester once again. I've seen a few people I know walking around, and I can't help but notice the looks I get suggesting that people had thought I graduated. Not yet, kids- I'll be leaching off the state until December. In the meantime, I have plenty of projects to keep my busy, many of which will be documented online.

The last couple of times I've been to Best Buy, I've noticed an alarming trend in the music section. The employees are getting agressive now. It used to be that they'd troll the aisles and make their presense known now and again, similar to sharks off the coast of Hawaii. For some reason, they're now in full-on South-African-great-white mode, aggressively pouncing on anything in or near their territory. The first time it happened, I was digging through the middle of the alphabet in the rock/pop section. A blueshirt came up to me and asked me if I needed help finding anything. I said no without looking up, thus upholding my end of the social contract to at least the minimal standard. He pressed the matter, asking me what I was looking for, and I said I didn't know. He then asked me what kind of music I'm into, as if the Metalica-fan circa '93 hair/beard combo wasn't at least a clue. I'm pretty good at blocking out people I don't want to deal with, but this one actually tripped my old "don't talk to strangers" reflex. I looked up at him, said "lots of kinds," and moved away from him.

The second incident in recent memory was a week ago. I was looking for the Metric album that got a good writeup in the New Yorker, when someone came up behind me and said "hey, how 'ya doing?" Students had been filtering back in all week, and I figured I would see somebody I knew in public at some point, so I stood up and turned around to see a complete (albeit cute and female) stranger standing there in a BSU shirt. It threw me off, as her nametag was partially concealed by her hair. The faux-familiarity seemed presumptuous, and I gave her a weird look, as I was genuinely thrown off by her manner. I walked out of the store a little mad about this. The guy at the independently-owned Villiage Green didn't bug me when I ultimately bought the CD I was looking for in the first place. I like owning physical media, but iTunes and Amazon don't take the piss out of me when I purchase online.

My first attempt at 3-D modeling in Second Life:


I had to fight it a bit because the shapes can only scale down so far, and the ability to make 2d shapes is conspicuously absent (a low poly-count is desirable, one would think), but I'm happy with the result so far. For those of you who haven't read Warren Ellis's early-career Transmetropolitan comic, the odd-shaped glasses are a prominent character feature of the protagonist. I'm not %100 happy with this yet, and I may just break down and pay the $.34 to upload a 2-D image of the glasses. Thus far, I'm really impressed with Second Life.

Oh, how I want a burrito now.

The new apartment is quite nice, though I'm not totally settled yet. I'm working more until the semester to finish a couple big things at work, so I'm usually tired when I get home and end up going to bed early in order to catch the first MITS bus I can in the morning. The bus isn't bad, and the human menagerie is entertaining enough. I'm lucky to be on a line that stops right by the building I work in.

I opened the door the other night to find a huge spider web across the top left corner, complete with a large spider. The little bugger had spun the entire thing in the span of a few hours since I had last opened the door. I cleared it away, but the web was back the next morning for me to walk through. This was a formidable spider, with exponentially more legs than me, so I waited until it turned around (thus exposing the belly) and then clobbered it.

One more thing- I tried out Second Life to see what the character creation options were like. Here's my avatar after some rudimentary tweaking:

I think I'm happy with it. Now I just have to make some clothing textures.

This is intentional, don't worry:
Read that last line carefully: why would the IRS need a copyright? I found this spam in the BSU question/comment e-mail account that I've been working in. I don't normally read spam, but this one caught my eye because it was funny. Also note the processing time of 6-9 days. I don't think the IRS can change a coffee filter that fast.

Like the Flannery O'Connor story I read and forgot in undergrad, I am currently a displaced person. See description: that's me, but not in Africa. My landlord needed me to get out when my lease expired right as my employment status solidified for next semester, so I've been scrambling around with the help of several friends and family to move out and find somewhere to live. My next apartment won't be available until August 5th, so I'm currently crashing at "Gerry's Pad," so named by the red LED persistence-of-vision clock that flashes at me from my vantage point on the fold-out sofa. We ate at MCL last night "for the experience." Also for the blue jello, if I'm honest. The manager in the buffet line complimented my grey Fender shirt, which was nice, as I imagine the employees get sick of the aggressively quaint decorum. It makes me wonder what "quaint" and "kitsch" will look like when I'm old. Will we have pictures from the good old days of two-dimensional Doom sprites and the Google logo from before Google bought the Catholic church in 2016? Instead of depression-era Coca-Cola ads on the wall, will we have current recession-era ads? It's probably not too far off. After dinner, Gerry and I compulsively stopped in Hot Topic to look at shirts for bands we've never heard of. I ought to write down a few names and ask the Wundergrad if he knows them, but that would require me to care about bands formed after 1997. Then we went to the bookstore and bought books, proving that we do read after all. He got the Superman Returns shooting script and I got a book of essays about "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg. Fun stuff.

I'm setting up a photoblog with a template that will allow for larger photos to be displayed. The template is simple, but I'm still having trouble with the formatting.

We left the pristine grounds of Chautauqua yesterday and drove straight on to Taco Bell in Cleveland for food served on cardboard by teenagers who were neither pretty nor talented- a sharp contrast to the previous week of watching children play Mozart's recognizable hits in the park while eating grilled veggie sandwiches. Before we left we attended a Q&A with Arlen Specter and Lee Hamilton, and the day before that a speech by Arthur Sulzberger Jr. They were all as interesting as one would expect, which means a lot coming from me, as I generally don't want to hear about any political issue not covered in a Metal Gear or Splinter Cell game.

Here are a few more pictures from the past few days:

Things old people like:
High waistlines
Sitting
Ice cream
Walking slowly and looking around
Paying attention to anyone who happens to be talking
Large glasses
T-shirts with buttons
Flowers, both fresh and as floral print on wallpaper and clothing
Breakfast
Eating together (any meal)
Nodding at things
Where they used to live
Their grown children and each offspring’s marital state and vocation
The term “Digital Storytelling”
Church at any hour of the day, any day of the week

Things old people don’t like:
The internet
My brother and I until they find out that we still read books, then we’re “very nice”
Poor restaurant service
Restaurant service that reminds them of previous poor service
Rain
Hot weather
When people take their scooter parking, even when they clearly have reserved scooter parking

This much has been clear, so far, here at Chautauqua. As for me, I’ve enjoyed the past couple of days. Today I took a watercolor class with a room full of flower painting geriatrics, a guy who makes charts, and a landscape architect guy from Florida. Turns out I still have my layout and design chops, even if my brush technique is a little shaky. Last night I went to an opera for the first time if my life. Now, I enjoy the theatre and the musical as much as and perhaps more than the average heterosexual male, and I’m not entirely sworn off opera for the rest of my life, but damnation The Marriage of Figaro is long: three and a half hours with intermissions (plural) and enough time between relevant plot points to work out a Thursday NYT crossword. Superman Returns moves like an episode of Robot Chicken by comparison. On the other hand, the performers were all amazingly talented, and getting to hear the famous prologue piece live complete with a real harpsichord made me giddy. I also went to the ballet, which was quite enjoyable. The highlight of the evening was a huge group performance of Ravel’s Bolero done in a cool Spanish style. Apparently this was the world premiere of this particular arrangement mixed with this particular choreography, for what that’s worth. More harmonica class tomorrow, and I might have time to drive to a comic shop to buy 52. All this high-class living is giving me the shakes for some good-ole low culture like I’m used to. I make a habit of re-dumbening a bit at the end of the day with a little Mario Kart DS, just to keep my center.
Curiously, I seem to be in social demand in Indiana during the one week in several months I happen to leave. For those who have asked, I’ll be back on Monday definitely, and maybe Saturday or Sunday, depending on whether or not I go to Chicago. In short: you know me and concrete plans, so I’ll see you when I see you.