It's Only A Paper Rose

• I've been on something of a roller-coaster lately, mood-wise. Monday I was pretty good, Tuesday I was feeling a tad out of it, Wednesday I was completely depressed (as sharp observers might've noticed), Thursday I was better, Friday I was great. And yet there wasn't anything hugely different that happened at any point during the week. Maybe I need to get my birth control dosage checked, or something.

• Part of the depression came from seeing Carl, I think. It was great to hang out with him, but it kind of made me realize how starved I am for socialization. Brian's not really the sort to want to go out to parties or bars (admittedly, neither am I unless there are people I know there), and we don't have too many close friends here in town, in large part due to the demographics. Kind of hard to find people you have a lot in common with when almost everyone in your age group has left. (Aside: Do I get a prize for complaining about something for the 1,000,000th time?)

• Doing pretty well with Wii Fit so far; I've used it for four of the past six days, including a couple of days where I really pushed myself on the strength-training. It's really a rather convenient setup - aerobics to warm up, strength-training, and then yoga to cool down and relax. I have to admit, though, that while I really dig the way it can tell you how you're balancing when you do yoga poses (and therefore give you advice), I miss the relaxing music that my mother's yoga DVDs included. Maybe I'll have to see if I can get a CD or something to put on in the background.

• Had sort of a bemusing experience yesterday. I was having a fun exchange on Ian's blog with a girl who was definitely towards the "Italian brick pizza oven" side of the hotness scale. Got her MSN, talked to her, discovered that she was funny and clever and sweet and intelligent and knew a lot of the same people I did. Started thinking "Hm, maybe Brian and I should try to meet up with her sometime," ....only to find out that she was Brian's ex-crush. (D'oh.) But hey, she's funny and clever and sweet and intelligent and likes to flirt with me, so I'll take what I can get. Even if that particular revelation did throw a wrench in the plans for any future threesomes...;)

• Thursday night Brian was feeling really frazzled due to a stressful day at work, so I offered to go get some really good pizza and a bottle of wine for dinner. I'd been reading an article on Slate about good wines for less than $15; while none of the ones named were available here in Juneau, the author had also given some more general advice for shopping in that category - specifically, avoid wines made in English-speaking countries, as (perhaps due to the familiarity of the grape names) there aren't very many good wines at that price point. Apparently there are, however, numerous excellent Spanish wineries producing very good wines on the cheap right now; with that in mind, I found the Spanish section and then followed the time-tested method of "look for a label that catches your eye". I ended up going with a 2006 Red Guitar Tempranillo/Garnacha blend, on the basis that the label was cute and that I couldn't pronounce either type of grape. And, surprisingly enough, it was absolutely fantastic - sweet and fruity but with a nice acidic kick to the aftertaste that cut the fat of the pizza very well. So when we got paid on Friday, we immediately went back and got two more bottles. Hooray for being out of debt and having a bit of spending money again. I've missed buying wine.

• Related, if puzzling: How in the heck have I gone this long without ever using a "wine" tag on my journal? Time to fix that.

(Or, Bored Early-Morning Rose Plays With the Character Map Program. Take your pick. ;)

• Thanks to an early-morning jaunt yesterday, I managed to finally snag myself a copy of Wii Fit. Fred Meyer charged me $90 for it, a full $10 over the MSRP. I was a bit annoyed about that, but more at myself than them. It's only logical that they'd raise the price on a high-demand item; were I a rational consumer, I would simply wait for demand (and therefore prices) to go down. But I wanted to get it now, so I pay a higher price in addition to getting up obscenely early for a Sunday morning. Le sigh.

• Wii Fit itself is pretty fun. Kind of a neat way of becoming more aware of how you stand, as well as how you move - at least with regards to balance. I've read some reviews complaining that the exercises weren't heavy enough, though I'll admit I'm not sure what they were expecting - you're doing these in your living room, after all. Personally, I found them perfectly adequate to break a light sweat. (Some of the strength-training exercises especially were tough - it's been bloody years since I've tried to do a pushup. Urgh.) On the whole, my first impression is pretty positive - I can see this working as a way to motivate myself to get up off the damn couch. We'll see how it works long-term.

• Speaking of early mornings, I was up even more obscenely early today to meet Carl, a friend of mine from high school who was stopping by on the ferry. We hadn't seen each other for eight years, and only recently got back in touch via Facebook, so it was really cool to hang out again (even if it was at five in the bloody morning). He's been living in the Portland area and decided to move back to Anchorage to pursue theatre and work on building a business with a friend of his. I have to admit I'm jealous - since we've seen each other last, I've gone from skinny kid to somewhat curvy (or chubby, depending on your point of view) adult, whereas he's gone from scrawny kid to lean-but-hot Abercrombie & Fitch model. Ah well. We had a great time catching up, and will probably see each other again soon because...

• ...speaking of Anchorage, Brian and I are going to be heading there over 4th of July weekend to visit my mother (many, many thanks to her for her generosity in getting us plane tickets). There are some really nice trails and things I remember from growing up there that I'd like to show Brian - I'm sure he'd love to get some pictures. And we can see Carl in his latest thespian endeavor, entitled The Head That Wouldn't Die. He was describing the plot to me this morning, and it sounds pretty hilariously silly. And we have plans to go out for pizza afterwards, so hooray.

• Brian and I are also planning a two-week jaunt through Seattle and the surrounding areas post-PAX - Nightwish is playing on the 10th of September, PAX ends on the 1st, and we'd been meaning to spend some time down in the Pacific Northwest looking for places to live, anyway, so it all pretty much worked out. I'm eyeing an entry-level TomTom GPS, since [a] I simultaneously suck at navigating and am absolutely paranoid about getting lost, so GPS is a godsend for me, and [b] renting one from the car rental company would be just as expensive as buying one of my own. Plus, it's updateable via the Internet, so hopefully it'd last through more than one road trip. So, if anyone wants to get me a birthday present...:)

• I've paid off my credit card in its entirety, and paid off the dentist - now I just owe Brian for my half of Mr. Jerry Brown's recent expensive. Then I'll be out of debt again! Really! Truly! I hope...especially since I never heard back from Costco after applying. I guess I didn't fill out their "employee attitude questionnaire" to their liking. Bah. Stupid corporate BS...I thought the whole point of having probationary periods was to assess an employee's attitude. Seems like actually interacting with someone day-to-day would work a lot better as an assessment tool than a bunch of multiple-choice questions. But anyway, assuming nothing else comes up (ha!), perhaps I'll be able to save for our trip, now...

Feeling rather grouchy this morning. I'm not quite sure why - I got enough sleep last night, and had coffee this morning. Maybe I need to eat something.

Part of this is probably stemming from being given the run-around by Fred Meyer. See, I've been trying to get a copy of Wii Fit - my mother was kind enough to give me the money for it for an early birthday present - and while supplies have been short, I've been told more than once that if I come by early Tuesday (after the barge comes in) they should have some in. Well, I go in this morning prior to work, and guess what? Now it's Sunday, because Nintendo is telling them they have to sell them on Sunday, or something. *sigh*

Admittedly, the shortages aren't their fault - Nintendo of America's been shipping most of their available stock to Europe due to the fact that the euro's much stronger than the dollar right now. And I can't exactly blame Nintendo; that's just good business practice. But still. Since I don't want to pay twice the market price for a copy off eBay, I guess I'm going in early Sunday. Argh.

Then, of course, I come in to work with the intention of venting in my blog, and we have no internet connection (hence the subject). Fortunately this was resolved within the first hour, so I can whine publicly just like everyone else. Hurrah.

I know this is a long shot, but if anyone else manages to nab an extra copy of Wii Fit, I'll happily pay you back plus shipping...

For the record, this set of "first impressions" comes after nearly twenty hours of gameplay. The fact that I'm only just now feeling like I've sampled enough of what the game has to offer in order to offer some preliminary thoughts should give you all some idea of the sheer size of the game.

So. First impressions, summed up:

Holy crap.

For all the game's myriad flaws, I can see why it is so many game review sites gave it a perfect (or near-perfect) score - the recreation of a living, breathing city of this size is not only hugely ambitious, a generation ago it likely wouldn't even have been possible. And yet, here it is: Liberty City (alias Totally-Not-New-York-ville) set before us, replete with mouthy taxi drivers, litterbug commuters, speed demons getting into fender-benders, prostitutes on the street corner, angry citizens spoiling for a fight, insipid reality shows advertised on billboards or radio, Internet cafés, and hundreds (if not thousands) of average folk lining the sidewalks, answering their cell phones, tossing paper coffee cups at the trash can (and missing), yelling about the latest political uproar, or just standing around watching the world go by. Rumour has it that the game took four years and $100 million to develop, and it definitely hasn't gone to waste. The scope of the thing is unlike any game I've ever played. Even Oblivion kept most of its characters sequestered in individual towns, separated by large swaths of rural countryside. Liberty City just keeps going.

Once I'd managed to pin my metaphorical jaw back in place, I decided to try some of the missions and see what this amazing Oscar-caliber storyline was all about. And from what small part of it I've seen, I can tell you that the voice acting is excellent, the character modeling perfectly adequate for storytelling purposes, the writing witty and occasionally heartrending. The only problem? Getting started, especially if you've never played a GTA game before and aren't familiar with some of the basic gameplay techniques, takes a really damn long time. There's a huge swath of tutorial missions, which helps, but finding your way around can be a tad tricky, especially if you're like me and have a crappy sense of direction in urban environments. The GPS in the corner of the screen helps a lot, but it only works for the driving parts; when you're near the marker but on foot trying to find which door of the fifteen identical nearby doors actually opens, well...it's enough to make one a bit homesick for Oblivion's occasionally over-zealous compass system.

On the whole, I'm incredibly impressed with what I've seen so far, and I'm certain I've barely scratched the surface. But anyone who's interested should take just that into account - this is definitely not a casual game. If you have the time and energy to put into it you'll be very impressed, I think; but if you're not the kind of person who can sit in front of a game for hours at a time (I'll admit, even I have issues with this occasionally) then this is definitely not the game for you.

But, seriously.

Holy crap.

Gamer or no, I'll admit that the Grand Theft Auto series has never held much appeal for me. I'm not certain exactly why; I like sandbox gameplay, generally speaking, and I don't really care about the violent content - I've known people who played it entirely for the purpose of listening to the hilarious parody radio stations. Frankly, I think it's the premise that didn't interest me much. Role-play a magic-using treasure-hunting part-elf? Sign me up! Role-play a small-time crook stealing cars and trying to work his way up the criminal ladder? Enh.

Premise, however, is always secondary to storytelling, and the latest iteration of the GTA franchise is rumoured to be the first one with a main storyline so compelling that it completely drowns out the siren song of sandbox gameplay. I've seen the term "Oscar-caliber" bandied about on no fewer than three different major review websites in reference to the writing and voice acting, and while I sincerely doubt it's a happy story (immigrant-drawn-into-criminal-underworld stories rarely are), I'm really very interested in experiencing it for myself.

Now to hurry up and get out of debt so I can justify buying yet another $60 game...

Thanks to some playing around with the formatting options of WordPress, I am proud to introduce my first fully illustrated post! So go have a look.

(And no, I'm totally not trawling for more hits on my other blog. Seriously. Despite how addicting it is looking at the nifty little graphs and charts and things move around as more people visit. =P)

Saturday was interesting. First off, we reindeer had a tech rehearsal, which is always boring for the actors. On the other hand, this was easily the smoothest one I've experienced, and it got done ahead of time, plus I had a book to read, so that was pretty cool. Come to think of it, this whole production has been one of the smoothest and most together shows I've ever worked. (In the interests of full disclosure, however, I should probably mention that the rest of my experience is limited to high-school productions - where you're dealing with, well, high-schoolers - and King Island Christmas, which was such a huge production with so many moving parts that the laws of entropy wouldn't let it go smoothly without a miracle involved. Hell, it was a miracle we got that show off the ground at all.)

On the other hand, Saturday we were doing costuming. All well and good, until I discover that I'm apparently allergic to whatever the costume shop uses for their detergent; I spent most of Saturday evening and night scratching all over. (Didn't get much sleep that night, let me tell you.) So Sunday I took my costume home and washed it in the perfume/dye free stuff we have here at home. Hopefully that'll do the trick - I guess I'll see tonight, since we're doing a full run. Then Tuesday night is the two-full-runs-to-polish-final-touches thing, so that we can have everything together by Thursday for the preview. And then Friday is opening. Blurgle.

The rest of the weekend went pretty well, though. We had another Rock Band night on Saturday, which was a lot of fun, especially when we finally unlocked a couple of songs that I actually knew ("Don't Fear the Reaper" and "Dani California"). And most of our Christmas presents arrived, so much time was spent cutting and wrapping and taping and ribboning and generally feeling festive. The pile of presents under the tree is starting to overflow, but hey! That's one of the joys of Christmas.

Anyway, off to lunch. I'll have to see if I can find one of the flyers for our show to scan and post...

So. Rock Band?

Easily the most fun I've had gaming with friends since those bygone days of Crash Team Racing on the Playstation.

Possibly the most fun you can have on a console, period.

It's pricey, sure, but for that $170 you get roughly eight megatons of pure compressed ROCK.

Buy it. Or go in on it with a friend. You won't regret it.

Back from Thanksgiving vacation, which was wonderful. The flight back on Sunday, however, was bordering on "horrendous" - but then, it probably serves us right for flying on a peak day. *sigh* At least it's over and we got here, even if it was eight hours late and after a four-hour puddle-jumper flight during high winds. Urgh.

Unfortunately, the house is still what we in the tech industry call A Fooking Mess - we took Monday off work with the intention of unpacking and cleaning up, but ended up spending most of it just recuperating, with a little grocery shopping tossed in for good measure. Fortunately I don't have rehearsal tonight, so we should be able to get it cleaned up. Which is most excellent, since we managed to get Rock Band while in Anchorage, and we'd planned to have our first Rock Band Thursday tomorrow. (Some of which I'll likely miss because I'll be in rehearsal. Phooey.)

Things are going well with the Reindeer Monologues; we've been blessedly spared of major hitches in the production (at least that I've been aware of). We had our first stumble-through last night and that went surprisingly well. So here's hoping the rest of the rehearsal process goes equally well.

Unfortunately, the same can't be said for my gym routine. The reason comes from a confluence of factors, really - the aforementioned price issue, plus lack of time (between work and rehearsal and vacation I haven't had much time even for gaming this last week), plus the writers' strike which means no Daily Show to watch while on the treadmill. I do plan to pick it up again after Christmas, though, Daily Show or no Daily Show. By then the Monologues and other various holiday events will be over, visitors will have gone home, and I can get back to something resembling a regular schedule again. I'll just have to trust that the price issue takes care of itself, and work out a budget for presents this year.

Brian recently bought Final Fantasy VI for the Game Boy Advance, which I've found myself rather more excited about playing than I thought I'd be. I played through part of it a few years ago on the Final Fantasy Anthology version for the Playstation, but at that point I'd already played through Chrono Trigger and much of Final Fantasy IV, and I was getting tired of the lag that was unavoidably prevalent in those emulated versions. Fortunately, the GBA port is quite well done by comparison, and the new translation makes for some interesting demonstration of how relations between Japanese and American culture have changed in the past decade. As an example, Cyan is now a Samurai with a Bushido technique (rather than a generic warrior with "SwordTech"); back in 1993, most people wouldn't likely have been familiar with the term, but thanks to the prevalence of animé and movies like The Last Samurai, terms like "samurai" and "katana" have become almost household in their use. On the whole, I dig the new translation - it feels much more fleshed-out and adult, probably due in large part to the fact that they're not aiming the game at kids this time around.

One of the things that the new translation really makes clear, though, is the caliber of storytelling that the game entails. In retrospect, the range of emotion expressed with just a few pixels, some text, and some background MIDI music is truly astonishing - these aren't just blocks of pixels, they're people, each with their own story, their own story, their own talents, and their own relationships. What with the release of Tomb Raider: Anniversary, I've heard a lot of people complain that remakes are pointless and just a symptom of lack of creativity on the part of a studio, and there's certainly an element of truth to that. But when a game is as far ahead of its contemporaneous technology as Final Fantasy VI was, I think it deserves a remake. Imagine, for a moment, an entire steampunk castle diving into the desert sand, rendered in Playstation 3-level graphics. Or the Jidoor Opera House done Phantom of the Opera-style. Or the sheer run-down rained-on wretchedness of the town of Zozo, with an orchestral rendition of the Slam Shuffle playing. Or the rooftop coin toss scene between Edgar and Sabin, a moment that defines the destiny of two brothers, done with real voice acting and a beautiful nighttime view over the desert landscape. And tell me you wouldn't buy a $500 console and a $60 game to experience that.

But for now, the pixels work amazingly well, and it's great to be able to play a game where I feel excited, not just about playing it, but about what's going to happen next in the story.

Surprisingly enough, I have something to talk about today that's not related to gaming, my cats, or politics: we've finally started rehearsals for the Reindeer Monologues. I'm feeling pretty good about the show's prospects so far; Alicia, a friend of mine from an acting class a few years back, is directing it, and while I hadn't seen her direct in the past I'm pleasantly surprised at her ability. Plus she's had some good luck with casting - when we did the first read-through, I could see that several of the cast members were very well suited to their roles. So we're off to a promising start. (But if, for some reason, it ends up sucking, I'll make sure to mention it so you won't waste your time. Because, y'know, it's so very hard for me to tell people when something sucks. ;)