Last Call for Rockin’

Danny Boyle on Geiger Counter

Spent the 4th watching Danny Boyle’s commentary on Sunshine and, man, does he say some smart things about how to set up a good survival horror flick in space. He says:

• The best films in this genre are 2001, Solaris (the original), and Alien. Steal horribly if you must but you have to at least pay tribute. Alien, in fact, invented this concept that the interior of space ships has to be industrial, dimly lit, and shot in grey, blue, and green colors. 2001 invented every airlock sequence / jump between two ships that you’ve ever seen.
• The core of these movies is A) a ship, B) a crew, and C) a signal they receive that changes everything.
• The beginning of these films HAS to be slow. You establish things and then let the problem creep up on you before all hell breaks loose.
• Once you establish the characters, “you can kill them in any order you like.”
• Deprive the crew of their captain first or very early on.
• Give each character a crisis that they either overcome or are destroyed by (not necessarily killed, but placed on a path of no return).
• You can hint at romance but no sex or kissing on screen.

I’m going to have to watch it again at some point and take notes so I can quote him in the actual game. Also, I feel like I should pick up some other classics of this genre and watch commentaries by their directors. Ridley Scott in particular seems like he’d have some great things to say.

The Board Game Version

In Case the Peasants Get Confused

Fresh Punch

Just found this Punch Brothers video and had to share. Second-best bluegrass band in the world, IMO (after Crooked Still), and they sound damn fine here. I was in the freshman talent show at Oberlin with the guitar player.

Agents of Marque

Melissa, John, and I have been working on a musical project for nearly the past two years now and finally have a MySpace page with demo tracks. We have a lot of stuff we’re still in the process of recording and about 15 songs total right now, so there’s a bunch more songs coming down the pipe eventually. These songs that are up are from our early “international spy” period, where we sounded like a James Bond lounge-funk act. Nowadays, our new songs lean more towards electro-folk and agnostic gospel, but we still play our earlier stuff too, so it’s an eclectic mix of awesome. If you still remember your MySpace login from 2003 (the Dark Ages!), you should totally Friend us.

Geiger at GoPlayNW

Apparently Ping, James Brown, Eric Boyd, and Matthew SB played Geiger Counter at GoPlayNW 2009 and had quite a time of it. It was even mentioned twice on One Cool Thing (since Jason was there to film his trademark video montage).

James Brown said: “Jonathan Walton, you bastard. Why didn’t you show me that game before?”

And Jeremy Tidwell, who didn’t even play the game, said: “And they had this map of this space station. They were drawing as the fiction went along. And they were adding in all these little bits and pieces, ventilations and… y’know… the wave of chaos was moving through it. But they were creating the setting as it progressed and that seemed really awesome. I really want to play this game.”

Rock. Major props to Ping and the boys for bringing the awesome!

Meat Lightning: Campaign Creation, Part 1

The Stormchaser (formerly HMS Investigator) is a decommissioned and officially condemned 118-foot ice-strengthened merchant barque formerly of Her Majesty Queen Victoria’s Royal Navy. While searching for remnants of the ill-fated Franklin Expedition in 1853, she became frozen in the arctic Canadian waters near Lancaster Sound. Only a small fraction of the crew survived the long nine months of being frozen in until the summer thaw broke the Investigator free. The ship limped home to England barely held together, having narrowly escaped being crushed and sunk by the expanding ice. The arctic death of Captain Warren and unproven rumors of cannibalism among the few survivors led to the decommissioning of the ship and its illegal sale into private hands, despite being condemned. According to official navy records, the HMS Investigator was intentionally sunk in the North Sea in 1855.

Did you eat the bodies of your dead crewmates in order to survive?
Did you kill any of them in order to eat them?
Did you kill Captain Warren?
Did you eat Captain Warren?

The decommissioned Investigator was sold, as is, to a research group led by Dr. Francis Caldwell and secretly funded by the Royal Society for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge. Caldwell had conducted pioneering work in the scientific study of animal magnetism and had sought to expand his research to include the magnetic field of the earth itself. Consequently, he hoped that the newly renamed Stormchaser would ferry himself, a handful of assistants, and a deviously ingenious magnetic engine of his own devising to the arctic, as close to the magnetic north pole as the weather and ice would allow. However, Caldwell could find no proper crew in England willing to sail north on a “cursed” ship whose true identity was readily apparently to any able British seaman. In the end, Caldwell was forced to make grand promises to the Investigator’s survivors so that they would return to their former posts and scrounge for the rest by hiring foreigners and ne’er-do-wells with no knowledge of the ship’s history.

Do you know that the ship is cursed?
What has Francis Caldwell promised you, that you would make this journey?
What do you hope to find or escape from out in the arctic?
Who will miss you while you are gone?

In October of 1857, the Stormchaser is frozen in for the winter 20 miles off the east coast of Boothia Peninsula, where Sir John Ross discovered the magnetic north pole in 1829. On November 12, Dr. Caldwell is in the midst of preparing to sledge his magnetic engine over the ice — and eventually all the way to the magnetic pole — when mutiny erupts. A dozen of the Stormchaser’s crewmen are secretly servants of the archon Asmodeus and have been charged with destroying Dr. Caldwell’s machine and killing all other members of the expedition.

Which side do you initially take in the mutiny, Caldwell’s or the mutineers?
Whose side are you really on?
Who leads the pro-Caldwell forces defending the good doctor and his infernal machine?

Okay, that character now begins their first mission. Your objectives are:
1. Protect the doctor and his machine.
2. Capture, kill, or drive off the mutineers.

Go!

JLC Muzak?

I’m sitting here in Bruegger’s Bagels and Jump Little Children’s Mexico just came on the speakers… but it’s not Jay Clifford singing but some female vocalist. Who in the world is it? Also, if I search for the song, how many of the tracks I find will be covers of James Taylor’s Mexico?

P.S. iTunes has failed me. I have no idea who that was.

U.S. 2 – Spain 0

In case you missed the greatest ever victory by the men’s US soccer team, the NYTimes has a great article summarizing the significance of the game.

Spain was the #1 team in the world, having gone unbeaten for 35 wins and ties and won their last 15 outright. The US had been very generously ranked at #14, probably higher than we deserve considering we play in a relatively week North American conference where our biggest opponent is Mexico. Spain has a dozen players who are household names all over the world: David Villa, Torres, Pique, Puyol, Xavi, Xabi Alonso, Fàbregas, Sergio Ramos. The US has a bunch of guys who play for mid-level European clubs and then a handful of standouts from the MLS.

Sure, this was a one-shot win, but something more than a fluke, a sign that American men’s soccer has grown some teeth and believes in itself. The team next has to play Brazil in the Confederation Cup Final (2pm Sunday, ESPN), which no one dreamed we would ever be playing in, and Brazil didn’t look unbeatable against South Africa this afternoon, only winning on a beautiful indirect kick by Dani Alves in the 88th minute (out of a 90-min game), who came off the bench just to plug one, it seems.

Time to start dreaming.