The Last Candle

What happens when guitar god Joe Satriani holds a contest for the YouTube crowd to put the song One Robot’s Dream, coincidentally my favorite tune from the recent album, to a conceptual music video? Pretty thin gruel, evidently.

Most of the videos use all sorts of fancy transitions and digital effects, but lack a sense of cohesion and consistent design, failing to utilize the ambitions of a true auteur…

Oh, but what the hell — a lot of the videos are kinda fun. And the use of digital tools does mesh well with the robot, future-speak concept, I suppose.

My favorite of the bunch is probably contestant FussenKuh’s, who gratuitously applied a watercolor-blur filter for the entire video but makes up for it by employing pigs in bikini tops, aliens, and a rollercoaster ride during the song’s most excellent melodious solo.

Joe threw his own large hat into the ring with his latest live DVD: his own version of One Robot’s Dream is available at Joe’s place. Go and check out the master at work, or just enjoy the terrific tune.

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin: completed! And I just don’t mean completed, I mean completed. As in 100% items found, 100% beasts killed (including Dracula, the Crown Prince of Darkness HIMSELF), 100% skills mastered, and a fantastical 1000% of Dracula’s Castle explored.

Okay, so I didn’t beat any of the several modes and difficulties unlocked, and I didn’t fritter away my life by trying to beat 9999 of each of the 150+ enemies like some of the nutjobs on the GameFAQs forums. But hey: 1000% Castle! That’s pretty darn swell, methinks.

Besides the involving arcade-ish dungeon hack nature of these games, a great appeal of the 2D Castlevania series has been finding the many items — roughly 300 of ‘em in Portrait of Ruin, including hats, boots, and foodstuffs — and enjoying the little pixelated art and descriptions that come with each item. Previous games had some fun with the titles, but Ruin’s descriptions are especially humourous and enjoyable.

Evidence!, you say? Naturally! Here are my top 13 favorite items and descriptions from Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin (and I apologize in advance for the poor photography — I’m taking pictures of a tiny Nintendo DS LCD screen, for cryin’ out loud).

Must be Ohio-made — I’ve heard the meatstuffs used for ‘dogs from that region are…questionable.

If the ham sounds good from the description (I think it does), go take a look at the pictures for this famous Spanish pork’s Wikipedia article and let your appetite go free (as I did).

It does look mighty fine. Divine, even.

What are apparently the other two “great delicacies” — caviar and truffles — are also collectable items.

And hey, Dracula hates nothing more than being cracked smartly by a whip, so this is a fine complement for any vampire hunter’s attire.

I don’t remember seeing a fridge, but OK.

Of course! To wear such a fine thing would necessitate a similarly well-dressed companion, who would undoubtedly wear a…

Note: Portrait of Ruin does include both male and female playable characters — no transvestite Belmont fellows in this game.

A durian is evidently some kind of spiky, nasty-looking fruit.

On the durian’s odor, from Wikipedia:

The unusual odour has prompted many people to search for an accurate description. Comparisons have been made with the civet, sewage, stale vomit, skunk spray, and used surgical swabs….

This strong odour can be detected half a mile away by animals, thus luring them. In addition, the fruit is extremely appetising to a variety of animals, from squirrels to mouse deer, pigs, orangutan, elephants, and even carnivorous tigers.

These descriptions are, keep in mind, for a ripe durian.

But it does gives a nice boost to Health Points, which is all that I needed at the time.

Appeal for the Hot Topic market; might have been left behind absently by the Son of Drac.

I was indeed brave enough, and the game rewarded my courage by immediately deducting nearly all of my hit points.

During the difficult Boss Rush modes, where you have to battle about a half-dozen bosses consecutively, the game gives you a couple free items like a Potion and Tonic, which heal health and magic points respectively. You also receive a Rusty food tin, just in case the player is feeling especially bold and wants to self-inflict a handicap for the opposing team. Gee, thanks.

It’s pudding! In a bucket! What could be better?

How about the fact that pudding buckets actually exist (in Japan, natch)? This life is truly worth living.

Next game: Phoenix Wright: Justice for All, and not a moment too soon!

If you missed the Oscars yesterday, or if you watched the Oscars and didn’t have enough alcohol on hand to make it entertaining, here’s a good liveblog from Libertas, “A forum for conservative thought on film”:

6:00 – Will Smith’s son and Abigail Breslin are darling. But “Animated Short?” Who cares? [I do, but Pixar and Miyazaki can only make so many films. - Ed.] And to those of you out there who make animated shorts, I’d say that to your face. If you’re a girl. Oh, and Will, you may want to get your boy hooked on some phonics. Fewer movies. More school.

5:59 – Oh, the ole “The microphone is on!?!?” joke.

5:58 Two Oscars for Pan’s Labyrinth. One more person wins with one of these: (‘) over a letter in their last name and I’m calling immigration.

5:56 – I know I promised to live-blog but I did not sign up for this. Taking the hit’s one thing. This is Abu-Ghraib without the cute little chick pointing at my privates.

5:55 – E.X.C.R.U.C.I.A.T.I.N.G.

5:54 – Will Ferrell is actually making Jack Black not-funny.

I didn’t pay any attention to the Oscars this year, same as every year. Even if I did plunk myself down for the four-plus hour uber-svelt prima donna procession, I’d watch only to shake my fist at whoever won Best Picture in place of whatever completely ineligible film I was attached at the time (hint: my films may not win Best Picture, but they might win Best Foreign Film).

Case in point: This year’s Best Picture: The Departure. Decent acting overall (if you don’t include Nicholson’s scenery-chewing performance), good story, good direction, terrible plot and pace — a decent film.

But did you know The Departed is based on Infernal Affairs, a superior Hong Kong flick starring Tony Leung, and is both more tactfully directed (without insinuating that Scorsese lacks film chops, of course), better written, and doesn’t include overacting cranky old men in leading roles? Have we ever seen Infernal Affairs at these shows?

No. Of course not. Yet another year I didn’t watch the Oscars.

I don’t listen to too many podcasts, with the exception of TWiT, of which I’ve listened to just about every episode. After Leo Laporte and Friends’ entertaing shows, the Glenn and Helen show, featuring the well-known (well-known in the blogosphere, at least) Instapundit and his wife, is a close second. While TWiT covers modern tech and a bit of modern science, Glenn and Helen cover current events and culture.

Catching up on my G&H Show ‘casts, I listened a podcast that “aired” back in September 30, 2006 that featured Micheal Totten, a freelance journalist who’s currently spending extended periods of his life in the Middle East and a heckuva great writer.

In regards to this one particular podcast, I have to say it’s is one of my favorites podcasts out of all those I’ve ever heard. Totten’s commentary and anecdotes on the culture are interesting in that grassroots journalism kind of way — Totten doesn’t count deaths or stick mics in soldiers’ faces; he chooses to comment about findings about how the strife in the region has affected culture on the ground (e.g. Totten remarks on a bed and breakfast in Israel on the Lebonese border where you could talk in a normal voice to someone in Lebanon — the town was never hit because it was so close to Lebanon, whereas inner Israel was repeatedly bombed.)

Totten’s recollections and insights in this podcast are terrifically interesting — give it a listen.

But if you need something goofy with a bit of tech, I recommend TWiT #39, titled Alkaline, another of my favorites.

A user at Cyburbia — “The Planning Community,” which is the full extent I know about this site, besides the following link — features an incredible gallery of daily life New York City photography, mostly of the earlier half of the 20th Century. Terrific stuff. (Via Lileks, of course.)

In site news, the page for the Beating Old Games Project received a significant amount of work today. At today’s rate, the page will be done pretty soon; more likely, however, the page will be done at the pace of the last three months, in which case it’ll be completed within another three. And then the new blog design will start.