FORT90

So it happened again this morning: from out of nowhere the water turned molten lava hot while taking a shower and I was seriously almost burned alive. This time I was able to react quickly enough, but I wasn’t so lucky perviously, which was actually one year ago this month. I panicked and slipped in the tub, with the side of my head smashing into the side (my tub is the kind from the 30′s thats separate from the wall and has legs, plus the bottom area is extremely shallow, making it very hard to get a good foothold normally). So when I fell, it caused the tub to move away from the wall, and the tiles that were in place to direct the water into the tub and not on the floor broke off.

Precise memories immediately afterwards are vague: I recall flopping like a fish why lying at the bottom (the water was still searing), awkwardly stumbling out of the tub, and feeling extremely ill, my head throbbing and feeling dizzier than every before in my life, hence why I think I might have had a concussion. When I made it to my bed, I recall my leg feeling very hot; I has assumed was my skin due to it being burnt, but I was surprised to find out it was blood which was freely flowing. One of those tiles that had broke made a nasty cut in my right leg.

Anyway, you’d think that would be enough of a sign to get the fuck out, right? I had been at the apartment for less than a month at that point, so I had yet to be fully exposed to the disgusting living conditions which are now almost legendary. So you’d think this morning would be another reminder again, right? Wrong.

Because I found out last night that I really do have to move out. When I noticed recently that the wife was pregnant, I knew even more headaches would be on the way. So I have just been told that the husband’s mother is moving in to help raise the child, meaning I have to make way and move.

If I actually enjoyed living where I do, I guess I’d be pissed, but in a small way I’m somewhat relieved to have an actual reason to find a new place. Other than the NYC public access and free high speed internet, I really cannot stand where I live. Yes, being in Manhattan is extremely convenient (and it’s easy on MK as well) but to be totally honest, my 30 from door to door commute to work has made me lazy, which as resulted me in coming to work over an hour late on a regular basis.

Though the main reason why I have stayed where I am is because I hate moving. It’s just such a toll, both emotionally and financially. Plus now more than ever, I just don’t have the time. Which is why I’m starting super early in hopes of not have to do decided at the which potential roommate is the least insane (and I’ve had a pretty poor record as of late).

So if you know you or anybody you know who’s nice and sane needs a roommate by April, please let me know. Personally, I’d be thrilled to have myself as a roommate because…

… I’m quite friendly and easy going. Serioulsy. And for those time I’m not in a good mood, I make damn sure to keep it to myself and to not let it spill over to other, unrelated things. If I have a bad day at work, I’m not going to scream at someone out of the blue for forgetting to buy toilet paper. Though if something is up, I’m not passive aggressive either, I can’t stand that shit. Which leads to…

… if there’s a problem, I like to actually talk things out, and without a hint of attitude or sarcasm.

… I’m a clean guy who looks after himself. I’m not a Nazi about it, but I make sure to clean up after myself and that the common area is devoid of my crap.

… I’m not a total sociopath. I want a cool roommate, but I’m not looking for a best buddy; I have plenty of friends, plus a girlfriend (who by the way is totally nice and normal and is not going to cause a stupid scene that will make everyone’s life a living hell).

… I can pay the bills on time.

… I’m practically never home anyway.

I guess the race is on.

- In other news, I’m almost done with the first Sandman collection and am really digging it thus far. I said I was going to try and get more serious about comics this year, so that means really tacking my backlog of stuff acquired at cons (which actually dates back to the first MoCCA). I still wish I had more time to actually draw, but I’m not bullshitting this time when I say I really don’t have time!

Plus I’ve made a new comic book friend. Her name is Rana and she’s studying cartooning in Minnesota. She IMed me out of the blue when she thought I was a colleague and asked how “my pages” were coming along, and not realizing the confusion, I assumed that she was talking about my submission to True Porn 2 (which like I said before, will not be appearing in it). But we got the chance to chat about “the scene”, both the negatives and positives. She was originally referred to me by Dave a whiles back as he was first getting into LiveJournal, and then I noticed shortly afterwards that she has some affiliation with the insert credit circle, which further shows that the world of comics and video games, which are both by themselves very small, are starting to merge.

Back to True Porn 2 real quick, Robin gave me a sneak peak at his collaboration with Katie, and I was totally floored. I fell in love with her work earlier this year and I have feeling that everyone else will finally do so as well when they see it. Robin said it best: “That girl is gonna be a star.”

And real quick, some game related stuff…

- Nintendo has a new media player called the Play Yan which lets the DS run music and movies, and starting today they’re offering a line downloadable games called “Garage Games”. You download them onto SD cards via a PC.

The first game is called Inset and there will be twelve in total (its been said a special thirteenth game will be available only to Club Mario members). For more info, check out the Garage Games site.

I haven’t seen any screen shots, but from the site, as well as the name, I get the sense that these are really low-fi titles, which sounds pretty cool. I’d love to see Nintendo also release older Game Boy games for the system since you can’t play GB or GB Color games on the DS. But mort of all, I’ve love to see Nintendo release this in America, but we all know that’s never going to happen.

- Sony just announced that the manufacturing problem in the PSP production which has been causing problems with the square button has been fixed. Furthermore, they said it was related to excessive untrimmed resin with the unit’s molding and coating.

That’s funny, considering the president of the company said the problem was there on purpose.

- Here’s the newest web-game sensation: Nanaca Crash.

- And not to come off as some know-it-all, but I really do catch wind of almost every bit of gaming news or hijinks as soon as it hits, I just don’t report it all. So it may be old to some (it certainly is to me), but for those who missed it the first time… Katamari Doh-macy and Katamari cosplay…

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- So I didn’t sleep last night. How come? I’ve just been so swamped with assorted projects as of late. Plus I got wrapped up in downloading ultra rare PSone games and reading comics. And yes, I have finally finished reading Scott Pilgrim, which I got as Xmas gifts from both MK and Raina Telgemier… even with two separate copies, it still took nearly two months for me to get around to reading it.

And as expected, it was indeed very much awesome. Its one of this things where people say “Listen Matt, you will love it” and they were totally correct. Though its not like I had any doubts, though this rather obnoxious review (which does make some good points but could have done so with 95% less words and without the desperate attempt to sound hip) did rain on the parade a tad bit.

But yeah, it was a fun read and I totally dug the art. Every characters was extremely well defined, and with just the smallest of details. And best of all, the video game references were not only smart but actually serviced the narrative (and in an original manner to boot). I can’t wait for volume 2, and even the movie.

Anyway, on an even more embarrassing note, MK lent me her collection of Sandman trades because… I’m ashamed to say…. I have never read a Sandman comic before. I’ve always known that the book’s amazing, I guess I’ve never gotten the chance to see for myself. Also, I guess it was a given among most of my friends that I had read it, so the issue never came up. So maybe now I look a bit hypocritical for giving so many people a hard time for never reading Watchmen. Or maybe not.

- As for the rest of the weekend, MK and I went down to Delaware Saturday night to hang with Andy and Morgan at their friend Winn and Cali’s apartment (which was the site of the Halloween party). There was plenty of booze on hand, so it was no surprise that drunk girl was also present. She was so drunk that she kept on grabbing MK’s breasts, and at one point even bit one of my nipples (she didn’t bite hard, but considering it was my left one, which was once bitten off before already, I had cause to freak out). The funniest moment had to be when I showed her a pin of a cartoon cat and she flashed it.

At first we tried playing Trivial Pursuit, but everyone was super sloshed which meant a lot of fucking around, and while that was funny at first, it just ended up dragging the game out, and by the end was pretty annoying. MK and I won, but that’s mostly because we were sober; after last weekend, neither of us are in any rush to get hammered anytime soon. Then we all went downstairs to watch the NY cable access tapes that I made for Morgan, and its always a joy to see new people being introduced to a show that features nothing but car crashes/strippers/explosions/breasts/the Olsen Twins (Winn, being a film guy, went “I know there that’s from!” every five seconds of Concrete TV), another that just has stuffed animals dancing to old records, even more strippers, this time with insanely bad boob jobs, and of course, Groover head-hanging to Du Hast.

Later in the evening, while I was in the midst of a forced session of dueling psycho girlfriend stories, Winn noticed that I my Red Dwarf t-shirt (one that was fan made, imported from the UK, featuring Zero G Football, which is such an obscure reference that absolutely no one at any of the sci-fi or fantasy cons I’ve been to has ever made the connection), so he showed me an old tattered Red Dwarf companion book that he’s had for easily ten plus years which featured some cool behind the scenes stuff. Plus, I ate at Wawa’s twice that night, which was beyond awesome.

- Also on Friday night, MK and I stopped by Target and I discovered Advance Guardian Heroes for $13, which I got of course. Never-mind that it’s been universally panned as piss-poor follow-up to the Sega Saturn classic or how I literally groaned when first seeing the game in action (visually its a horror-show, with poor animation, dull backgrounds, and tons of flicker). But once I found out about the story, I knew I had to get it; it’s like the Kickboxer of video games. Remember how Jean-Claude Van Dam was the star of the first one, but didn’t appear in the second? How they took his character, which the whole first film was built around, and killed him off real cheesy like in the first 2 minutes of the second film? That’s what Advance Guardian Heroes is like, a big “fuck you” to all the fans of the first one (and there’s nothing better than pissing off a small, dedicated fan base… its much more satisfying that pissing off a large bunch of casuals that ultimately don’t really notice or care).

- In other game related news, that rumor of a Mario Kart arcade game turned out to be fact. If you look right about the screen, you might see the camera that takes the player’s face for his or her avatar during the race.

And yes, that’s Pac Man in the last pic. Both him and Ms. Pac Man are in the game (Namco’s been sneaking Pac Man into racing games since R4: Ridge Racer 4). For more pics, just go here. As always, thanks to neo2046 at the GAF for the scoop.

- I know this old news by now, but for those who missed it: players of Everquest 2 can now order pizza directly from the game. As if MMO players didn’t already have a bad enough rep for being fat and lazy. Needless to say, as soon as this news hit, eveyone on message boards came up with their own cute play on the famous tagline from Gauntlet (such as myself; she title above).

- Well it seems that Ubi Soft listens to the public. Kinda. After the huge stink everyone made regarding the box art change for Lumines, they’ve decided to change it to this. It’s better I guess, though everyone can agree it still stinks.

Meanwhile, Mizuguchi was recently interviewed in Continue Magazine, perhaps the most acclaimed gaming mag in the Japan today, and some pretty interesting stuff was revealed, or at least that’s the word; since I don’t understand Japanese, I can’t verify or debunk.

The big news to is how his company is producing a game that’s based on an idea from a developer that’s outside of Japan. And this of course fueled speculation as to who, with many believing it’s Harmonix, producers of Frequency and Amplitude, two music driven games that I really wish I just couldn’t get into no matter how hard I tried (control is just art too cold and awkward for me). Adding to the speculation is the fact that the CEO of Harmonix and Mizuguchi are sharing a panel at the GDC.

But to me, the real interest tidbit was a comment regarding Lumines, in which he wanted to make people cry with it.

- One last thing on the game: here’s a track from the game that, and I swear to God, is the sweetest piece of “gaming music” I’ve heard since… since Rez really.

- There’s a guy who teaches game development by having his class create games for the NES. You can even play his students’ work, and I hear that some of them are quite good.

- This just in today: there’s going to be a Bone video game and it’s by the folks who were behind Sam & Max 2! After that game got the axe, they began working on a secret project, and I guess Bone was it. And I honestly can’t think of a better fit.

- So last night, when I fired up my GBA to play Advance Guardian Heroes (which was also the first time I’ve touched the system since Xmas), I noticed something: frozen pixels! Its a problem thats long been talked about, and feared, for the past few months during various DS and the PSP discussions and debates, and never once had I heard anything about it related to the GBA. It’s not horribly big or anything… it’s only one pixel tall. But… I just…. can’t stop…. staring at it.

My options are limited. Any action this point would be a bit of a waste, especially since the DS plays GBA games and I know I’m getting that soon. But still… I blame Advance Guardian Heroes!

- Also last night was the premiere of Robot Chicken, the new stop animated Adult Swim show from the folks behind Twisted Toyfare Theater, and overall, it was pretty damn good. I’ll be honest; I’m a total sucker for anything related to Transformers, hence why I just ate up the prostrate cancer PSA. Plus, regarding the Battlestar Galactica skit, it was just fun to see my old Cyclon toys in action.

Some of it was good, some of it not so hot, and a few things here and there was genuinely laugh out loud funny. It’s nothing brilliant, but solid, which from an Adult Swim show is fine enough for me, plus the animation is really quite nice (I dare say more work went into that one fifteen minute episode in an entire season of Sealab (sorry, I love the show and all, but it’s true).

Back to Transformers: Optimus’s death scene in Robot Chicken blows away the one in the movie.

- And back to comics real quick, everyone should check out this super cool online exhibit featuring many works from artists both now and way back whenever.

- Finally, here’s something I forgot to post for Mac nerds: an online simulator of OS 7.5.5. I think it’s pretty neat (ah, how far we’ve come!) but I really should have checked it a bit better before spreading it around via the GAF. If you’re at work, don’t look in the trash just yet.

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