Greater Satellites

Comments welcome…

1. The Faint - Desperate Guys
2. Hooabstank - Can I Buy You A Drink
3. The 88 - All ‘Cause Of You
4. Incubus - Stellar
5. Zolof The Rock & Roll Destroyer - Argh… I’m A Pirate
6. The Cure - Friday I’m In Love
7. Reggie And The Full Effect - Congratulations Matt & Christine
8. Minus The Bear - Absinthe Party At The Fly Honey Warehouse
9. Weezer - El Scorcho
10. The Postal Service - Brand New Colony
11. Jimmy Eat World - The Most Beautiful Things
12. Smashing Pumpkins - Tonight, Tonight
13. Muse - Feeling Good
14. THe Juliana Theory - Top Of The World
15. Gin Blossoms - Until I Hear It From You
16. Cave In - Joy Opposites
17. Hopesfall - It Happens
18. Weezer - Only In Dreams
19. Thrice - Carol Of The Bells

I believe that it’s written somewhere in the Bible that when we see something that is wrong or evil, it is our duty to be angered and speak out against it. This is what’s known as Righteous Indignation. I believe Righteous Indignation is also a rock and/or roll band from England, but for the purposes of the following let’s regard the former as truth and the latter as bullshit.

Fact: Andrew Gormley is a huge nerd.
Fact: Andrew Gormley plays video games as a leisure activity.
Fact: Andrew Gormley has an eye for film, an ear for stories, and a heart that’s pure and true.

Now that the facts are established, allow me preface by expressing my deep affinity for video games. I’ve had almost every mainstream console there was to have since Atari, with the exception of Xbox. Currently hooked up to my TV is a PS2, a Gamecube, and an SNES cleverly tucked out of sight. I play video games with substance (read: RPGs, action, adventure) and appreciate a good story just as much as the next guy. Just like with many movies, some video games try to cover up their plot hole-ridden scripts with fancy graphics and insane amounts of eye candy. Fortunately, as with movies, it’s easy to spot a game that’s sub-par and avoid it. Here are some examples of games that have excellent story lines: Final Fantasy (series), Resident Evil (series), Silent Hill (series), Max Payne*, Metal Gear Solid* (series), Bloodrayne, Doom (series… ok, not really a great story, but fun as hell), Alone In The Dark (series), and Mario (series). A lot of you who don’t share my proclivity towards video games may recognize some of those titles instantly because they all share one thing in common: Some asshole writer/director couldn’t come up with a story of his own so he decided to rape and pillage the oft-immensely entertaining stories of these select games and make movie adaptations which receive ratings ranging from “horrible” to “almost watchable”. I think I’ve successfully set the mood of the piece as well as established my thesis (take that Mr. Oliver! You English teaching, B- giving bitchbastard!).

Due to some erratic and volatile mixture of boredom, exhaustion, and sheer lassitude last night, I ended up watching the movie Doom for the first and definitely last time. I couldn’t help but laugh out loud during some parts, which in and of itself is funny because the mood the director was trying to establish was, most likely, deadpan. I’ve played many flavors of the Doom games and believe me, there are many of them. All of the titles had stories that, while not being exactly plausible due to the futuristic nature, were entertaining and moved the story along at a reasonably fast pace. With the exception of one scene in this movie (which, ironically, was the scene that paid homage to the game via a first person perspective) it was a total disaster. First, the “creatures” looked to be lifted from every other alien movie ever made. Namely, Alien. Second, those infected with the “alien virus” turned into… What’s the word I’m grasping for? Ah yes, ZOMBIES. There were no zombies in the Doom games. Every game took place on Mars or one of its moons (Phobos and Deimos, thank ya muchly). Why would one feel the need to write zombies AND aliens into a movie? The two ideas individually don’t make any fucking sense, combining them just makes it more absurd. While they’re at it, they should just make a movie about Alien Vs. Predator… wait a God damn minute…

My third and final gripe is actually applicable to all movie adaptations of video games, and that is: You can’t expect, regardless of how well you write, direct, or act, to illicit the same responses you get playing video games from watching a movie. Final Fantasy games, for instance, can take anywhere from 40 to 100 hours to complete. The Resident Evil series averages anywhere from 4 to 12 hours depending on the difficulty and the skill level of the player. The same 4 to 12 timeframe goes for the Silent Hill games as well. My point is that you can’t expect to chop hours and hours of story, keep the best parts, add and subtract characters/plot elements as you see fit, and repackage it as something that will be incredible because the truth is that it’s merely a hollow shell of what it once was. Not only are you losing the control element that you possess when playing the games, you’re losing a majority of the story and all of the things that made it such a great experience in the first place. It’s easy to be inspired by what you see in games, but it’s a whole different story trying to interpret and adapt the game to a nice, neat, two hour time frame so the studios and audiences are kept happy.

That’s the end of the well-formed rant, but I had some other things to say that were more of random musings and can’t really be extrapolated to more than a few sentences:

• Not all video game movies are horrible. Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children was a fantastic video game movie done entirely in CGI. The catch is that it would only make sense to those who actually played and understood the intricacies of the original, Final Fantasy VII.
• I admire Paul W. S. Anderson (writer/director of the Resident Evil movies, as well as Mortal Kombat) because he actually plays the games and has a pretty decent knowledge of the backstories, which is more than can be said about some of these other clowns. However, I still stand behind my position that he raped the Resident Evil series and took bits and pieces that he liked and threw away the rest. Oh yeah, the main character of the movies, Alice, (coincidentally played by his hot fiance) has never appeared in nor was mentioned in ANY of the Resident Evil games.
• Silent Hill wasn’t a bad movie. It just wasn’t as good as the games.
• Super Mario Brothers was, without a doubt, THE WORST VIDEO GAME MOVIE EVER MADE. There’s no debating this, it’s actually carved on the back of the second tablet containing the latter five commandments.

That’s about everything. I’m hoping the next Resident Evil movie will be better and God help them if they fuck up the Max Payne series, those games are the shit.

* - These movies are currently in production. I have no bias against them because I know nothing about them… yet.

Note: I’m a little stoned. This is a work in progress.

After much deliberation, I’ve come to the conclusion that the American Dream is dead, or at least on life support. I suppose the dawn of the American Dream started with, well, the dawn of America. What were the hopes of the first immigrants to our great country? One could argue that it was because there were distinct social, religious, political, and economic structures in place that were totally new and innovative (see: radical) as compared to the oft-archaic policies of their former European homelands. So torrents of young, hungry families trekked across the pond here to America to pursue “the dream”. The dream, back then, was very simple: to own the land you lived on. As serfs back in fuedal Europe, the people who worked the land were never given the opportunity to own it and were taxed heavily just to dwell on it. In egalitarian America, they lived on the land, worked on the land, and were not taxed to be residents (although they were required to send goods back in the form of crops, textiles, and various other foodstuffs). It was a perfect setup because their respective governments were literally an ocean away. Do we own the land we live on nowadays? No. Furthermore, we’re (ironically, once again) taxed (in some states more heavily than others) to live on the land (history does repeat itself). So have we progressed since the days of (pre-America) America? Tough question. Let’s delve into the other definitions of the American dream for a moment…

In more recent times (19th century, so not that recent), writers like the great Horatio Alger used to pen books that glorified the American dream. He wrote about people who literally came from nothing but possessed three outstanding qualities that eventually led to their success and fortune:

1. talent
2. intelligence
3. a willingness to work extremely hard

Prime examples of this include Andrew Carnegie and the tycoon John D. Rockefeller. It seems that after the establishment of a unifed, centralized government, the definition of the American dream shifted from owning the land to making enough money to afford the land. The acquisition of money is often criticized in many works of literature, however, as not being a true American Dream. See Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” as a prime example of a story delineating the old addage “money can’t buy happiness”, a direct commentary on the modern American Dream.

The further convolution of the American Dream came after World War II. The soldiers who fought bravely to protect our country simply wanted to live in comfort, have stability, and start families. These families (the ideal archetype being happy wife, happy husband, happy son, happy daughter) were all one could hope for, a truly respectable dream: find a mate, get married, have kids, raise them well, send them to school, lather, rinse, repeat.

In current times the dream seems so superficial. People want to make the most amount of money for doing the least amount of work. At some point you should question the validity of social Darwinism. It’s nice to have dreams, but it’s even nicer and more rewarding to have a firm grasp of reality. I, too, am guilty of putting a lot of stock into gaining some sort of fame or fortune, but in the words of one of my most quotable heroes: “We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact.”

Although I’ve been jaded with naysayers, skepticism, and criticisms, I would love to spend my life looking for and documenting the American Dream, like the late Hunter S. Thompson. I enjoy entertaining the belief that it still exists in some form remniscient of it’s early stages. Maybe someday in my lifetime it will be reimagined as something greater than anyone could ever hope for.

xAndrew

Well, let me tell you that Thanksgiving dinner was deeeeeeelicious. Props to mom for creating such a scrumptuous meal.

Let’s see what’s new…

1) dark driving designs, or d³ as I’ve been dubbing it is coming along quite nicely. I intend to create an accompanying Gallery and Wordpress-powered weblog system (that could very well replace this blog, if the features are to my liking). The basic design of the new site can be found here. It’s quite far from complete, but you can check it out to get a great idea of the direction I’m heading with it.

2) You can now freely listen to X-mas music without fear of mockery and ridicule from me.

3) I have overdosed on tryptophan, I’ll be asleep for weeks.

4) “Holiday Spice” wine is pretty… blehck.

5) School is awesome. My lowest mid-term grade is a B-. Go me!

6) I’ll make a better post later tonight… If I’m still alive at that point.

“Roll the window down, this cool night air is curious…”

I am now taking any donations people may be willing to give so that I may purchase the following items:

One (1) Apple iMac G5 20′ with built-in iSight and Remote Control
One (1) Apple Powerbook 15′
One (1) 60GB iPod Video, White. Engraving TBA
One (1) Apple Airport Extreme Base Station and
One (1) Apple Airport Extreme Card

Shipping: Free (isn’t that swell?)
Grand Total (With Student Discount): $3525.00

I accept checks, money orders, and credit cards. If you’re using a credit card, just leave the numbers in a comment. I promise nothing bad will happen.

I’m fighting every single urge to fall asleep or take a nap until at least 10pm. The only reason I’m so tired is because I’m not yet on what is described as a “Living, Human Being’s Sleep Schedule”. I have a good 3 hours sleep in me, and I’m still up throughout eight hours of classes today as well as a commute and a bit of a drive I had to take upon arriving home.

Now, in regards to the title. The deed that is done is, simply put, the completion of this blog. I finally integrated every digital weblog I’ve ever kept on to this here Blogger. That means I could easily reference just about any point in my life dating all the way back to 2001. Pretty neat, huh? In case you were curious, these are the journals that were integrated…

• lost in the air, version 1.1 (the one I had on Geocities)
• lost in the air, version 1.2
• lost in the air, version 1.3
• early dark driving entries
• all deadjounal posts
• the few livejournal posts I actually made
• four exclusive posts that I call “The Lost Entries Of Andrew” (they were actually behind the couch)
• random personal journals i created using Word or TextEdit

With all of this material, I was thinking of being a pretentious bastard and creating a “Gorm’s Greatest” post in the near future, where I link back to some of my favorite journal entries. Some of the crazy shit I used to write just made me laugh as I skimmed through it. So be on the lookout for that.

While I’m still feeling a sense of nostalgia, let me just pose a question for you all to reflect on: Have you ever gone back to read something you had written in the past just to find that you’ve improved greatly as either a friend, individual, author, or even a storyteller. Looking back on things I compiled two and three years ago really makes me appreciate all the work I’ve done between then and now to improve myself overall person as well as my writing skills (I went through a “i hate capital letters” phase for close to two years!).

“Find your faith and dive deep, through living gateways pass. Lined with death and ivory, and hold fast, hold fast…”