Originally published at KJToo. You can comment here or there.

I don’t have any particular aversion to needles, but I don’t feel any desire whatsoever to submit myself willingly to the tender mercies of what passes for a brush in the hands of a tattoo artist. I have my reasons, at least one of which is that I don’t trust my body to leave a tattoo where the artist puts it. The last thing I want is a faded sketch of a crippled stork on my hip that began its sad life as an awesome dragon on my shoulder.

In “Orifice“, author John F.D. Taff posits (through his narrator’s girlfriend) that any time you poke a hole in something, there are things that will want to get in or out through that hole. And what are tattoos if not hundreds—perhaps thousands—of tiny holes?

A word of caution: This story contains adult language, adult situations, and holes where they ought not be.

Originally published at KJToo. You can comment here or there.

When I first heard about Left 4 Dead I didn’t think it would be a game for me. Zombie survival? Please! I want to shoot Nazis and aliens!1 I’m the guy who loved all of the “realistic” missions in Return to Castle Wolfenstein but turned on “God mode” as soon as the lightning-launching Frankensteinien horrors showed up. Sure, I’ve played plenty of Half-Life in my day, but those things shambling toward Gordon Freeman aren’t zombies, they’re alien-infested humans that just happen to act a heck of a lot like zombies. That distinction makes a big difference, right?2

Enter Left 4 Dead. Sure, I’d heard about it on The Video Game Show, but I only listen to that podcast because I work with one of the hosts; I don’t actually care about their opinions!3 But then P.G. Holyfiend started hinting (subtle fellow he is) that the Olde Fartz try a little zombie survival some Thursday night. Hey, we might like it! I gently rebuffed P.G., because Left 4 Dead is one of them new-fangled games4 and the whole point of Olde Fartz is to provide an opportunity for those of us who can’t afford a new gaming rig every six months to get together on a regular basis and play some of those not-so-new-and-shiny games we love.5

Never mind that I rebuilt my PC last summer and it kinda-sorta meets the requirements to play some of these new-fangled games.

The final nail in the coffin was driven by my fellow Evil Overlord, Chris Miller,6 who—out of what passes for some sick, twisted facsimile of “kindness” that lives in the sick, twisted flesh-pump that passes for his “heart”—gave me a copy of the game on Steam.7 And so it came to pass that one Saturday night I was drawn into the world of zombie survival with Overlord Miller and Air Commandant Moore, and we—along with an array of projectile weapons and no small number of improvised explosives—battled our way through a shambling (and often not-so-shambling) horde of the restless undead.

And we did the same the next night; at least until Miller said something about having to get up for work in about as many hours as there are fingers on one of his hands.8 Our merry band…well, disbanded,9 but I’d not had enough of the zombie-killin’, so I played through the first mission in the single-player campaign, which turned out to be nearly another two hours and no, we don’t need to discuss what time I went to bed that night and that will be quite enough out of you, say please and thank you.

The game was a lot of fun, but it ran a bit slow on my PC. I attributed the less-than-stellar performance to my on-board video adapter.10 So, the first thing I did after we finished playing that Saturday night was get on NewEgg.com and order a new EVGA GeForce 9400 GT PCI-express video card w/1 GigaBoogle of RAM. Hey! It was on sale! Don’t you judge me!

As I predicted,11 game performance increased dramatically with the introduction of the new video card, and I decided to put these new, fancier pixels through their paces by playing through a couple of the single-player campaigns. What I learned is that Left 4 Dead is a different game when I’m not following in the wake of an experienced player.

For one thing, it takes me about twice as long to complete a mission. I tend to proceed with caution, exploring every nook and cranny of the level, using the echoes of my shotgun blasts to build a complete, three-dimensional sonar image of my surroundings in my head, like a 12-gauge Man Without Fear who never went to law school and isn’t acquainted with anyone named Foggy.

The cooperative multiplayer mode in Left 4 Dead is the Campaign. Each Campaign is broken down into five stages; each stage consists of making your way from one safe room to another, fighting off wave after wave of undead horrors until you find someone to get you the hell out of Dodge.12 Between safe rooms, you may be running through a railyard or the main street of a small town or ducking in and out of the various buildings that make up a typical urban landscape. The goal for the first four stages is always the same: survive until the next safe room.

Safe rooms bring only a brief respite from the zombie apocalypse; a few minutes to gather your wits about you, heal your fellow Survivors (always four, there are: Bill, Francis, Louis and Zoey) and stock up on ammo. In some cases, there may be better weapons stored in the safe rooms, too, but they are all alike in one respect: none of them have a rocket launcher.

Once all of your boo-boos are bandaged and your guns reloaded, it’s time for another mad dash to the next safe room. Along the way you may find pipe bombs and molotov cocktails, both of which make satisfying kabooms that don’t quite make up for the total lack of rocket launchers. There are also opportunities for improvised explosions from gas cans as well as propane and oxygen tanks. These can all be picked up and moved around, so as to lay traps for the feckless undead. Simply drop a gas can in a doorway and when the next wave barges through, one well-place pistol shot will set the whole gang aflame.

In some areas, the only way to move on is to trigger an event (lower a bridge, raise a platform, open a door, etc.) that will unleash a multi-pronged zombie attack. There is ample warning that the trigger will unleash the horde, so the Survivors have an opportunity to find the best vantage points from which to see (and shoot) the incoming zombies, lay traps, and stock up on deadly, deadly bullets (there’s almost always an ammo dump near the trigger point).

To make things more difficult for our heroes, there are special zombies. Yes, there are seemingly endless waves of your standard moaning, shambling, and sometimes sprinting undead, but there are also Boomers, whose vomit is a potent zombie aphrodisiac; get any on you and every zombie in the area will jump your brains. Then there are Smokers—so called because they hack and wheeze constantly and explode in a puff of noxious smoke when killed—who snare Survivors with their long, frog-like tongues, dragging them kicking and screaming to a gruesome end. Hunters are hooded hooligan zombies who skitter around on all fours and then pounce, pinning unlucky Survivors to the ground and wailing away at them until someone comes to the rescue. The Tank is a huge, grotesque zombie that throws chunks of concrete, plows through parked cars and has a wicked, wicked backhand. Then there is the Witch. When you hear her crying, don’t try to console her—she is emo, and for her, undeath is filled with pain that you could not possibly understand—just turn off your flashlight and tiptoe around her. Do not startle the Witch. She will, given the slightest provocation, seek to deliver her pain unto you tenfold.13

Survivors who are pinned by Hunters, snared by Smokers or just generally incapacitated can be assisted by their fellow players. Shove the Hunter, Shoot those Smoker (or even just his long tongue, though this means he’ll live to lick again), or simply give your buddy a hand up. You can also dole out pills (which provided a temporary health boost) or administer first aid (though someone will have to watch your back, as this takes a few seconds).

All of this—shooting and running and healing and shooting and ducking into safe rooms and shooting some more—leads up to the fifth stage: the final showdown, which usually involves contacting a rescue vehicle (helicopter, boat, ATV, etc.) and then having to hold off a tsunami of zombies while the Survivors wait for the vehicle to arrive. If you’re lucky, you’ll live to fight another day. If you’re not so lucky…well, maybe you’ll wind up on the receiving end of a shotgun blast in Versus mode.

Ah, Versus mode. It’s all well and good to cooperate with three of your friends as you battle waves of zombies that gently lap at your brains, but there are times when cooperation just doesn’t cut it.14 Sometimes, you just gotta shoot your friends in the face or eat their brains. Versus mode separates your foursome into two groups of two:15 a pair of Survivors versus a pair of special zombies. [EDIT: I've been informed by sources of dubious reliability that Versus mode can be played four-on-four. I'm going to blindly accept it as fact and report it here.] The Survivors attempt to make it to the safe room while the zombies use their dirty tricks to stop them. With the exception of the Tank, the special zombies can be killed without much trouble—the Witch, whose hardiness is rivalled only by that of the Tank, is not playable in Versus mode—so the zombie players can respawn in a location of their choosing as a random special zombie a few seconds after they’ve been killed. Once all of the Survivors have either died or made it into the safe room (or a combination of both), the game resets and the roles are reversed. After both teams have played the Survivor role, each team receives a score based on how well they performed as the Survivors and a winner is declared.

The final game mode is Survival, which—as of this writing—I have yet to play. My understanding is that Survival mode replaces the “get to the safe room” objective with “just survive as long as you can against an unceasing flood of zombies”. I’ll update this post once I’ve had a chance to play.

The game I envisioned when people talked about Left 4 Dead and the game I wound up playing are pretty much two different beasts. The latter is much, much better. Which means that other people suck at describing awesome things. Heck, I probably do, too. It’s a fun game. Not for the kids. There are gallons upon gallons of blood and the language is pretty rough, so if that’s not your bag you probably want to avoid Left 4 Dead.

But if that is your bag, you may be able to find us on Steam, and we may need a fourth gun some evening, and we’d love to have you. Because, quite frankly, I am sick to death of being consistently one-upped by an AI player. Honestly, it needs to stop.

We’ve got a group on Steam: The Secret Lair Fragfest. If you’ve got a Steam account, join us. Even if you don’t have Left 4 Dead, ’cause we might play something else.16 There’s always a chance. It could happen.

Portions of this post originally appeared on The Secret Lair forums.

1. Notable exception: Arcade shooters. Especially House of the Dead. It’s different when my involvement in the game is limited strictly to shooting stuff with a big gun and the whole “moving around” business is conveniently handled by the game. [back]
2. Yes, the resistance fighters in Half-Life 2 refer to humans controlled by headhumpers as “zombies”, but they’re wrong. Wrong, I tell you! [back]
3. I kid. It’s a good show. In fact, it’s the only video-game-related podcast I listen to. [back]
4. With graphics and everything! [back]
5. Like WarCraft III and Neverwinter Nights. [back]
6. He has a special hammer just for driving final nails into coffins. [back]
7. When the man wants to be entertained, he will be entertained. Money is no object. [back]
8. Hint: less than six. Well, on the right, anyway. [back]
9. Temporarily. [back]
10. An nVIDIA 7100 to which I’d allocated 512MB of system RAM. [back]
11. I’m an amateur technomancer. [back]
12. In other words, it’s exactly like Senior Prom. [back]
13. I know what you’re thinking, but it’s a fool’s errand. No boombox or portable MP3 player can deliver enough of The Cure to soothe the Witch once she is startled. [back]
14. Not something you’ll likely hear David or Susan admit on Sesame Street. [back]
15. Just like God intended. [back]
16. Like Half-Life 2: Deathmatch. [back]

Originally published at KJToo. You can comment here or there.

I had a Chinatown moment recently while watching one of the Star Wars movies with Kyle, my three-year-old son, and I realized that George Lucas is the Jake Gittes to my Evelyn Mulwray.1 It’s not that much of a stretch, is it? George delivered three prequels like so many slaps to the face of die-hard Star Wars fanboys like myself, and they hurt.

Before Kyle was born, I banished the prequels from my home. Even after I began his training—introducing him to the space opera by way of the LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy video game on my old Xbox—I was determined that the prequels would not sully my DVD player. We played the entire game together, and he experienced Tattooine, Yavin IV, Hoth, Dagobah, Cloud City and the forest moon of Endor in a multitude of interlocking bricks. When I upgraded to an Xbox 360, I decided that there was little harm in upgrading to LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga as well. I’d played through the prequel trilogy LEGO game before my son was old enough to pick up a controller and found that (surprise!) it’s much more entertaining when there’s no intelligible dialog.

A few months ago, we graduated from the video game to the movies. Despite a few bumps (he’s not terribly fond of the Wampa ice creature in The Empire Strikes Back; ditto for Luke’s encounter with Vader in the tree-cave on Dagobah and Jabba the Hutt’s menagerie in Return of the Jedi) the movies are a big hit at the International House of Johnson, and I get requests to watch them on a daily basis.

Then a couple of weeks ago I decided to lift my ban on the prequels. I realized that as much as I reviled them, the prequel films would be right up my son’s alley. He’d already been inoculated: he loves Yoda in all of his puppety glory, pretends to be Han Solo and Luke Skywalker,2 refers to a Belle (Beauty & The Beast) PEZ dispenser as “yellow Princess Leia”, runs around the house yelling “Open the blast doors!” and “Oota goota, Solo?”; he even knows who is “in Darth Vader”. But there was an entire trilogy’s worth of characters that he’d only ever seen in LEGO minifig form.

So I borrowed Star Wars: The Clone Wars from the local library. He’d seen the endless advertisements for the series on Cartoon Network and would often strike a Power Rangers-esque stance while yelling “Star Wars the Cone Wars!”—he’s not so good with the letter L just yet—so I thought we could ease into the prequels with the animated adventures of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker. The reaction upon seeing the Star Wars logo was pretty much what I expected—an explosion of ecstatic joy—but the movie didn’t really hold his interest beyond a few oohs and aahs during one of the lightsaber battles.

I suspected that my son would be more interested in the familiar characters and situations in The Phantom Menace, so I picked up the DVD from The Exchange, my local used music/movie/video game store. We watched the movie together and I saw everything that made me hate it: Jake Lloyd’s horrible acting, Natalie Portman’s inspired impersonation of a woodcarving, the utterly ridiculous Trade Federation droids.3 All of it.

And my son loved every last minute.

I’ve watched bits and pieces of The Phantom Menace three or four times since then, and it still makes me cringe to hear Anakin Skywalker ask Padmé Amidala if she’s an angel. Something screams inside me anytime midi-chlorians are mentioned.4 And when Yoda appears, his face swollen and his features distorted as though he’s in the midst of a horrible allergic reaction—possibly to a gundark bite—I just shake my head.

But it’s still Star Wars, and my son loves it. And while we were watching it together one night before bedtime, I suddenly felt like Evelyn Mulwray.

I love it!

*slap*

I hate it!

*slap*

I love it!

*slap*

I hate it and I love it!

Lucas has always maintained—despite the froth and fury of fanboys like myself—that the prequels were geared toward children. Watching my young apprentice’s reaction, it’s clear that Lucas wasn’t just blowing smoke; I am a generation removed from what passes for Star Wars these days, but experiencing them with my son has brought an unexpected appreciation for something I was convinced I loathed.

This was originally written for Whateveresque, a web forum maintained by author John Scalzi. It is reprinted here—in a slightly altered form—at my wife’s request.

1. If you haven’t seen Chinatown, starring Jack Nicholson as J.J. “Jake” Gittes and Faye Dunaway as Evelyn Mulwray, you should; this analogy makes more sense if you have. Go ahead: put in in your Netflix queue or run down to the corner video store. This blog will be here when you get back. [back]
2. I have yet to convince him to pretend to be Lobot. [back]
3. ”Roger, roger!”? What kind of nonsense is that? If the droids are all controlled by a giant ship in orbit and every last one of them shuts down when that ship is destroyed, why do they need to communicate verbally with each other at all, much less in an idiotic homage to Gomer Pyle? [back]
4. Riddle me this, George: If the Jedi believe the Sith have all been wiped out, do they not understand that one who will “bring balance to the Force” is going to have to kill a cubic buttload of Jedi? Why would any Jedi in his right mind want to find such a person? [back]

Originally published at KJToo. You can comment here or there.

Episode 135 of Pseudopod features “The Duel“, by Michael James McFarland, a tale of fraternity, brotherhood, time-honored tradition, upper-class twits and firearms. I think we’ve probably all had a friend who was mad at us, seemingly for no reason at all. Be glad they didn’t take the Burr/Hamilton tack when resolving whatever wrong we may have inadvertently done them.

Originally published at KJToo. You can comment here or there.

Is it still hip to be square? I’m thirty-six years old as of two days ago, and I won’t be this square again until 2022 (when, one could argue, I will be even squarer). Regardless of my shape, I am blessed with incredibly generous family and friends, and I now present the annual rundown of my birthday loot:

• Iron Man (Ultimate 2-disc Edition). Iron Man currently ranks Number 1 on my list of OMG Teh Best Superhero Movies EVAR so I figured it was time I picked up a copy of the movie. The combined power of Robert Downey, Jr. and Jeff Bridges’ beards compelled me. Plus, I still haven’t spotted Captain America’s shield on Tony Stark’s workbench and I need to be able to say I’ve seen it. Yes, need.
• The Incredible Hulk (3-disc Special Edition). The third disc in this set is a “digital copy” of the film; a special copy that can be imported into iTunes or Windows Media Player. I really, really wish there had been a 2-disc version, as the digital copy is pretty much wasted on me. Nonetheless, I imported it into iTunes and watched it Friday night. Why? Because I’m an idiot, that’s why.
• Bram Stoker’s Dracula (2-disc Collector’s Edition). I saw this movie three times during its theatrical run and have purchased the soundtrack twice (on cassette and CD). This despite the fact that the film features Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker, a casting decision that Francis Ford Coppola has alledgedly admitted was made almost entirely based on Reeves’ popularity with the ladies at the time.
• WWW: Wake by Robert J. Sawyer. I think I read about this one on Tor’s website not too long ago. I’m lead to believe that the novel involves the Internet achieving consciousness, which is probably not a good idea. This is an unabridged, multi-voice audiobook that I purchased with an iTunes gift card. It should have been a simple matter to transfer the book to my iPod, but thanks to some quirk of my particular installation of iTunes it took me the better part of 90 minutes (some of which was spent completely reformatting my iPod’s hard drive) to arrive at a point where synchronization occurred without iTunes claiming that my computer was not authorized to play the files (and thus not authorized to copy them to the iPod). If iTunes had a face, I would have struck it repeatedly with my fist last night.
• Personal Effects: Dark Art by J.C. Hutchins and Jordan Weisman. This one is a pre-order, as the book won’t be released until June. If you’ve read this blog long enough, you know that I absolutely loved J.C. Hutchins’ 7th Son trilogy (which has been optioned by Warner Brothers). Hutchins has been pimping the hell out of Personal Effects: Dark Arts (and its podcast prequel, Personal Effects: Sword of Blood) for months on Twitter and he pretty much badgered me into buying the book.
• Agent to the Stars by John Scalzi. Interesting fact: Hugo-award-winning science-fiction author John Scalzi and I not only live in the same state, we also share a birthday; I have now spent thirty-six years on the planet and he has been here for forty, which may mean that he is currently winning. I’ve read five of Mr. Scalzi’s novels in the past six months or so, and they’re all very satisfying.
• Shambling Towards Hiroshima by James Morrow. Here’s an interesting premise: instead of developing the atomic bomb as a means to end World War II in the Pacific Rim, the United States develops giant, fire-breathing lizards, then sends a Godzilla-esque film (featuring an actor in a rubber monster suit, of course) to Japan as a warning. This book was recommended to me by one “willywoollove”, though I strongly suspect that that is not his real name.
• The Big Book of Hoaxes by Carl Sifakis. I enjoy the Factoid “Big Book of…” series; I have Urban Legends, Weirdos and Conspiracies in my library.
• Idoru by William Gibson. I read Gibson’s Spook Country a few months ago, and I recall someone saying that Idoru features some of the same characters, so I thought I’d give it a look. Spook Country, as an aside, felt kind of like Elmore Leonard doing a cyber-thriller to me. In a good way.
• A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 2) by George R.R. Martin. News that Peter Dinklage (The Station Agent, Threshold) has been cast as Tyrion in the pilot for HBO’s A Game of Thrones series reignited my interest in the books (A Game of Thrones is Book 1 of A Song of Ice and Fire). I have an ARC of A Clash of Kings, but it’s too bulky, so I figured it was high time I picked up the paperback.
• Storm Front (Book 1 of The Dresden Files) by Jim Butcher. I read my brother’s copy of Storm Front a couple of years ago while vacationing in the Upper Peninsula. Shortly thereafter The SciFi Channel aired their short-lived The Dresden Files series, which Laura and I both enjoyed. I picked up the book because I know Laura wanted to read it and I wouldn’t mind giving it a re-read before digging into Fool Moon, the second book in the series.
• Grave Peril (Book 3 of The Dresden Files) by Jim Butcher. Because I have a feeling we’ll tear through the first two pretty quickly.
• Pants! Also: two belts and six pairs of socks. I thought about saying something like “because my lower half needed some birthday lovin’, too”, but I wouldn’t want that misconstrued.
• Sony MDR-V150 Monitor Series Headphones (with Reversible Earcups). Because I needed some new headphones for when my cohort and I record The Secret Lair. It’s a podcast, you know. Do I need reversible earcups? Only if I want to look like that guy. But I do need a 6-foot cord, because anything shorter would mean sitting on Miller’s lap while we record, and that would just lead to more rumors.

I also received a most excellent birthday song from my Toledo-based nephews via voicemail. How excellent? Well, it features “The Imperial March” from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. You know: Darth Vader’s theme. It was only the intense feeling of nerd-pride that prevented me from calling them back, Force-choking my eldest nephew over the phone and promoting one of his younger brothers. “You’re in charge now, Admiral Gabriel.”

Originally published at KJToo. You can comment here or there.

When I asked Chris Miller if his return to Cleveland would be similar to his arrival in Los Angeles nine months ago—specifically, heralded by the blasts of ten thousand trumpets as he rode atop an eight-story-tall flaming lion-bear-shark hybrid attended by a squadron of Mark V rocket-propelled android shock troopers—I was not at all surprised at his simple, yet elegant, response.

“No,” he said.

I asked if he would instead descend from the sky in a massive dirigible, bristling with armaments such as have never been seen even in the pages of Soldier of Fortune magazine, surrounded by a swarm of insectoid attack drones, and again he responded in the negative.

“Besides,” he said. “That’s David’s schtick.”

Would he rise from the depths of Lake Erie in a submersible, escorted by an exotic array of cephalopods, cyborg sharks and the entire race of freshwater mermen we recently subjugated? Again, no.

“I get a little queasy around watercraft,” he said. “And that’s more Natalie’s bailiwick, anyway.”

Yes, the man said “bailiwick”.

“So what’s the plan?” I asked. “Ride a spout of molten lava through the Earth’s core?”

“I’m not going for a big entrance,” he said. “Nothing too flashy this time.”

“Well how the hell am I supposed to know you’re back?” I asked.

“I will slip in quietly,” he said, “like a ninja in a minivan. The setting of the sun in the West will announce me, and as dusk descends upon northeast Ohio you will know that the passing of the light marks my arrival, for as the day is laid to its eternal rest so shall I rise again to conquer all upon which I have set my eye, my heart and my will.”

“Sounds good,” I said.

“Also,” he said. “I’ll send you a text.”

If you’re wondering whether I received that text, the answer is yes. Nearly two days ago, in fact. Why did I not disclose its receipt until now? Because I wanted to let the feeling of dread that undoubtedly descended upon you at 11:33pm on Monday the 20th of April sink in—absorbed like so much moisturizing cream of evil into your parched skin—for a while before I let you know what caused it. That’s how I roll.

Mr. Miller is back.

Brace yourselves.

Originally published at KJToo. You can comment here or there.

Rogue (2007)

Starring Radha Mitchell, Michael Vartan, Sam Worthington, John Jarratt, Caroline Brazier, Robert Taylor, Stephen Curry, Celia Ireland, Heather Mitchell, Geoff Morrell and Alice.

Directed by Greg Mclean.

Music by François Tataz.

Rogue is one of those rare beasties: a movie that exceeded my expectations on every level. Rarer still, it’s a giant crocodile tale that manages to escape from the realm of the B-Movie, by my accounting a feat that’s happened only twice before.1 The killer crocodilian is one of my favorite movie genres, but to love these films it’s necessary to embrace bad acting, fountains of fake blood, dodgy special effects and scripts that are—to be kind—less than polished; in other words, you gotta love schlock.

Writer/director Greg Mclean’s tale of a tour boat running afoul of a 7-meter rogue saltwater crocodile in Australia’s Northern Territories is decidedly not schlock.

The acting is fairly solid, with fine performances from Radha Mitchell (Pitch Black, Silent Hill) as Kate Ryan, the guide who leads a boatload of tourists to their unfortunate encounter with the titular rogue crocodile, Michael Vartan (Alias) as Pete McKell, a travel writer who is anything but thrilled with his current assignment, and Sam Worthington (Terminator Salvation) as Neil Kelly, the rowdy local who pesters the tour boat only to find himself stalked by the same killer croc. The rest of the cast is a decent mix of personalities, complete with the quiet guy, the weirdo, the jackass you really want to see get eaten, the lady who’s probably going to freak out at any moment, the kid, the heroic guy who you weren’t expecting to die so soon, and the dog. Of course there’s a dog.

Blood? Sure, there’s blood—being eaten by a crocodile is bloody business, and this isn’t an Australian retelling of Alive; those tourists aren’t gonna eat themselves (or each other)—but it’s not the typical Festival of the Spurting Artery you (if you’re the type who watches these films) may have come to expect. There are really only four bits of gore that I can recall in Rogue—one done strictly for the shock, the second and third to emphasize just how badly the characters are injured and the last to emphasize just how dead the giant crocodile is2—and they all occur in the last 10 minutes of the movie. I appreciate a horror flick that doesn’t feel the need to spray blood and other stuff that really should stay inside the body all over the scenery. Rogue relies on the looming threat of a monstrous, lurking predator to provide the chills and leaves the fountains of gore to lesser films, like the ill-advised splatterfest, The Care Bears vs. The Killer Unicorn.3

Another hallmark of creature features is special effects that look like they were ripped off from a bad episode of Land of the Lost,4 complete with a critter that most likely started its life in the discount bin at Pat Catan’s. The crocodile in Rogue is a blend of computer-generated imagery and animatronics, and both methods are put to good use. The DVD extras include a breakdown of one particular croc-chomping, and the mixture of elements (wire-work, stunt actor, real actor, computer-generated imagery, etc.) is impressive; there’s a lot going on for a scene that lasts all of ten seconds. The digital legerdemain used to make it appear that the last half of the movie takes place in the same environment as the first half is impressive, too. The effects don’t look at all like effects, and until the curtain is drawn back you may not even be aware that the curtain was even there in the first place.

But it takes more than whiz-bang special effects to make a good movie,5 and even a competent ensemble cast isn’t going to be able to do much if your script is crap.6 The story in Rogue isn’t likely to win any awards for writing, but it does the job, which mostly entails getting the characters where they need to be in order to set up the buffet without stretching the bounds of feasibility and then letting the crocodile do the rest.

Rogue has a couple of other things going for it that didn’t even make the schlock vs. non-schlock list: stunning scenery and an excellent score.

The scenery rivals—hell, surpasses—the New Zealand vistas into which Peter Jackson dropped hobbits, elves, dwarves and orcs for his Lord of the Rings trilogy. Mclean shot Rogue in some areas of Australia that, if you believe his audio commentary and some of the DVD special features, have rarely been captured on film. The landscape—high, rocky plateaus surrounding heavily-forested lowlands with a wide, calm river running through it—is breathtaking, and certainly like nothing I’ve seen before; especially not in a horror film.

Likewise, the musical score by François “Frank” Tataz and featuring aboriginal vocals by Jida Gulpilil is miles away from anything I’ve heard in a horror film. Sure, there are a lot of the familiar tropes—pizzicato strings during some of the more tense, prickly moments and a low, ominous cello-based motif for the crocodile—but the tropes are done really well, and there’s also a beautiful suite that accompanies the first third of the film, a haunting piece that provides a perfect accompaniment to the vast, lush landscape. It’s the first horror score in memory that I’ve wanted to own on CD.

In case it’s not readily apparent by now, I thoroughly enjoyed Rogue. I’ve seen enough killer crocodile movies to recognize a true diamond in a genre that falls, by and large, almost entirely in the rough. It’s not a perfect film—I thought the close-ups of the rising tide looked particularly manufactured, there’s a line of dialog shortly after the tour boat is disabled that seems to allude to a croc-chomping that never happened, and the crocodile would have to have one hell of a big appetite to eat no less than three and a half full-grown adult humans over the course of just twelve hours—but when compared with the rest of its ilk it comes pretty close.

1. Lake Placid and Primeval, though I wouldn’t argue if the former—intentionally campy as it is—were classified as a B-Movie homage. [back]
2. Oh, hey, SPOILER ALERT: the croc dies. [back]
3. This film is not yet rated. [back]
4. I know, I know, that implies that there were good episodes of Land of the Lost. I’m blinded by nostalgia. [back]
5. I’m looking at you, Wachowski Brothers. And you, too, Frank Miller. [back]
6. Your turn to receive my glare, X-Men 3. [back]

Originally published at KJToo. You can comment here or there.

My first employer after I moved to Ohio was Micro Center, “The Computer Superstore”, where I worked the sales floor in first the accessories, then the software and finally the peripherals department. It’s been nearly twelve years since I moved on from the store, but Micro Center has remained my primary destination when I want to purchase computer equipment. I know several of the people who work there and I trust them to know what they’re talking about and not feed me a load of crap; unlike some other computer retailers, I don’t immediately feel like I know more than the sales associate when the conversation begins. I have nothing but positive things to say about the staff at the local Micro Center, particularly the handful of people who I know from my days roaming the sales floor.

I wish I could say the same about the people who service their extended warranties.

When we purchased Laura’s computer two years ago, we also purchased a three-year Micro Center Protection Plan, which includes (per the information card we received):

• Priority repairs for carry-in service.
• 24-hour, 7-day Toll-Free Technical Hardware Support.
• No deductibles, no hidden charges, no out of pocket expenses.
• Power Surge Protection.
• No Lemon Guarantee.

When the laptop died recently, I was pretty pleased that we’d spent the extra money on the Protection Plan. I dug up the information card, Laura found the receipt for her computer, and she called the Toll Free number for service.

That’s when the trouble started.

After running her through some troubleshooting that resulted in a still-dead laptop,1 the Customer Service Representative informed Laura that someone would be contacting her in two business days about arranging for repairs.

Wait. What? Two business days to arrange for repairs? Where is that in the features of the Protection Plan?

Several days later—there was a weekend between the two business days plus a couple of extra business days on the other end of the weekend, which I assume were thrown in at no extra charge—Laura received a call to inform her that a box was on its way; a box into which her laptop should be packed and shipped away for service. I cannot begin to speculate why it took nearly a week to arrange to have the box shipped, except to say that perhaps the one-size-fits-all foam insert was hand-made in Guatemala, or perhaps the shipping label that appeared to be computer-generated was, in fact, drawn by an eyeless Mole-man in the deep recesses of an underground cave where the light of the sun dares not venture.

After retrieving all of Laura’s documents from the laptop’s hard drive2 I packed the laptop into the box, along with the power adapter and the system restore discs, and Laura shipped it to Micro Medics, the company that would be performing the repair.

To their credit, the response from Micro Medics was very quick: the motherboard was damaged due to a power surge3 and the unit was beyond repair. Micro Medics was kind enough to dispose of the laptop (read: part it out for other repairs) and offered to ship the hard drive back to us. They also informed Laura that someone from Micro Center would be contacting her about a “buyout”.

The hard drive arrived in the mail on Monday. Micro Center did not call.

March went out like a lamb on Tuesday. Micro Center did not call.

April Fooled us on Wednesday. Micro Center did not call.

Nothing at all interesting happened on Thursday. Not even a call from Micro Center.

Around the world, corporate drones thanked their maker(s) in unison that it was Friday. Micro Center did not call.

This afternoon, I decided that perhaps Micro Center needed a gentle reminder, so I called the Toll Free customer service line, waded through the automated menu, and was connected to a customer service representative who informed me of two things:

1. The matter is now in the hands of the claims department.
2. The claims department is not open on the weekend.4

Now, I will admit that once these facts were conveyed to me I became a little irate. Two business days (that turned into more like four) to arrange service was annoying, but five-plus business days without a call after the laptop was declared unrepairable really got under my skin. So, I let the CSR know. And I wasn’t particularly kind or gracious about it. I understand that she was—to the limits of her capacity—trying to provide assistance. But I didn’t care. I let her know that the process was pathetic, the delays were unacceptable, and I wasn’t anything approaching pleased about it. She was more gracious than I, and I give her credit for maintaining a professional demeanor. I was nowhere near as scathing (or foul-mouthed) as I could have been (or wanted to be), but I lost my temper and she did not stoop to my level at any point. She informed me that she would send an e-mail to the claims department and that we would receive a call first thing Monday morning, asked me if there was anything else she could do, and bade me good day.

And now we wait to see what will happen on Monday morning. Given the level of attention and concern Micro Center has afforded the matter thus far, I fear that the “buyout” amount they’ll offer for the laptop will barely cover the price we paid for the Protection Plan in the first place.

What’s truly sad about this whole experience is how poorly it reflects on Micro Center. I’ve always been very happy with the sales and service in-store. As I mentioned previously, I know several people who still work there, and I trust them to be straight with me. When Laura was looking for a laptop, there was never any question about where we’d go to buy it. When my mother was looking for a laptop, she made a special trip here from the Upper Peninsula so we could go to Micro Center together and buy one. When my mother’s laptop turned out to be a lemon, Micro Center replaced it; granted, I had to ruffle a feather or two to convince them not to ship it away for service, but in the end they replaced it, going out of their way to make me a satisfied customer. That’s what I like about the store: they know how to make their customers happy, and they’ll go out of their way to do so; I experienced that time and again when I was working there. It’s too bad that spirit doesn’t extend to their Protection Plan services.

UPDATE: I was not particularly surprised that the Micro Center Protection Plan claims department didn’t call on Monday. Disappointing follow-up has been pretty much par for the course upon which we unfortunately find ourselves. I resisted the temptation to call and raise another ruckus, as I don’t think I would have been able to display even a modicum of poise at that point.5 I opted to let it go and give them another day, and they finally called sometime Tuesday afternoon (or perhaps it was late morning). I wasn’t home when they called, so I have no idea whether the claims representative was at all contrite, but I have my doubts.

The matter has been resolved to Laura’s satisfaction. We’ve been issued what amounts to a Micro Center store credit for nearly the entire base value of the laptop when it was purchased, and we’ll put that toward the purchase of a new laptop. As with all things computeralogical, advances have been made in the past two years, and a laptop with specifications similar to Laura’s Acer Aspire currently fetches about half of what we paid for it in January of 2007. The upshot is that Laura will be able to get a better laptop for the same amount of money.

I fully expected that whatever settlement we received from the Protection Plan would be in the form of a Micro Center store credit. After all, why send us elsewhere for a new laptop? I’m pleasantly surprised at the amount of the credit, as my biggest fear was that we’d get some manner of depreciated value that wouldn’t be nearly enough to purchase a replacement.

I’m pleased with the end result (I’ll be more pleased when Laura has her own computer again), but I still feel the process is abominable. The delays—all on the part of the Micro Center Protection Plan organization; Micro Medics was very efficient—were ridiculous. Laura has been without a laptop for several weeks, and the matter—even accounting for shipping the laptop away to Micro Medics—shouldn’t have taken more than a week and a half: overnight us a box, we ship to Micro Medics, they diagnose (this took all of three business days, including shipping) and report back to the claims department, claims department contacts us with the settlement. Done. Instead, we got…well, you know what we got: jerked around for a couple of weeks.

I should note that I’m perfectly content to go back to Micro Center for the replacement laptop. As I mentioned before, I’ve always been happy with the local store and the people who work there. And, given the trouble Laura had with her Acer Aspire, I’ll probably recommend that we purchase another Protection Plan. Ultimately, it appears to have been a wise investment, even if actually using it was nothing but a pain in the ass.

1. I strongly suspected a dead motherboard after my own attempts to revive the thing were unsuccessful. The unit would power on, but performed no POST and did not boot to the operating system. [back]
2. Courtesy of an IDE/SATA-to-USB adapter I purchased specifically for the task from, you guessed it, Micro Center. [back]
3. Hey, our Protection Plan covers that! Right? Right? [back]
4. So much for 24-hour, 7-day support. [back]
5. I wasn’t surprised, but I was very, very irritated. [back]

Originally published at KJToo. You can comment here or there.

There’s plenty brewing over at The Secret Lair, most of which is not coffee. While the hosts attempt to establish a more regular podcast release schedule, the Secretary of Artistic Propaganda continues to produce and publish their illustrated adventures. As of this writing, the most recent episode of the podcast involves the movie Watchmen, the series finale of Battlestar Galactica, and the adaptation of various media to film, while the webcomic deals with the upside of radioactive waste.

The Secretary of Artistic Propaganda has also created a number of images suitable for use as wallpaper on your desk- or lap-top computing device. The images can be found in the show notes for Episode 0020 of the podcast, and were one to actually listen to that episode, one would be treated to a review of the classic science-fiction film, Silent Running (so long as one has a fairly generous definition of the word “treat”).

Finally, the Overlords have created an Intertube forum that interested individuals (or hive minds) may join so as to express their thoughts on various matters of interest to thirty-something geeks. While it is not a requirement that one be a thirty-something geek to join this forum, it may be advisable to spend some time (a la Jane Goodall) with a small group (or tribe) of these geeks in order to learn their ways before attempting to communicate with the larger community.

Originally published at KJToo. You can comment here or there.

John Scalzi, a science-fiction author whose works (Old Man’s War, The Ghost Brigades, The Android’s Dream) I’ve been enjoying over the past several months, has a column over at AMC’s SciFi Scanner section. Today’s entry is entitled “Doom for Dummies or How Hollywood Makes Video Game Movies“.1

Now, there’s been some debate recently about whether slavishly reproducing the original source for movies adapted from other media is good or bad. Movies like Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone and, more recently, Watchmen, tend to hew very close to their source, whereas films like The Lawnmower Man and Blade Runner bear very little resemblence to the works from which they are derived. Video games tend to fall into the latter category, as what’s ultimately delivered to theaters (or straight to the shelves at Blockbuster) often shares little more in common with the game than the name. For a fine example of this, see In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale.2

Now, having recently seen Watchmen, which is a movie adapted from a comic book mini-series, I’m of the opinion that sticking as close as is reasonably possible to the source material can result in a pretty good film. On that basis, and that basis alone, I am recommending that filmmakers attempt more faithful recreations of video games when adapting them to the screen. There are some elements that simply won’t transfer well—such as the character’s health bar and the fireworks display any time he or she levels up, or the constant chugging of mana and health potions—but I think there’s one common video game element that filmmakers consistently overlook when adapting from console to screen, an element that is well within a director’s ability to recreate faithfully, a nod to fans that is both simple to accomplish and will be instantly associated with the source material.

I’m talking, of course, about crappy camera angles.

If Lara Croft were, in the midst of a potentially deadly encounter with one of the many dangerous creatures one comes across while raiding tombs, suddenly obscured from view for several seconds because the camera swooped behind an outcropping of rock for some damn reason, anyone in the audience who had actually played the game would instantly identify with the moment.

If Max Payne were to duck down an alleyway and disappear because the camera didn’t follow him, only to be brutally attacked by a hidden, hellborn beast that the audience couldn’t see because why the hell isn’t the camera moving? I can’t see what the hell is happening! the audience would know beyond a doubt that the original source material had been treated with kid gloves. “Yes!” they would cry. “Yes! At last, here is a filmmaker who understands the video game experience!”

The only way to further immerse the audience into the events unraveling on the screen would be to give them controllers to throw at it.

1. I don’t want to spoil the column for you, but if the title were a question (a la, “How babby is formed?”) the answer would be “badly”. [back]
2. Actually, don’t. Really. Skip it. You’re better off not knowing. [back]