Story Challenge, Day 1

So here is the first of the short stories for the 14-day writing challenge I'm participating in. The story prompt for this story was to write a story where a dragon is the hero, but is not perceived to be the hero. Enjoy!

Teasing the Humans

The dragon glided through the air currents, only occasionally giving his wings a lazy flap in order to keep himself airborne. It was such a lovely day, the sun warming his scales, a nice breeze to keep him aloft. Days like this it was good to be a dragon.

Below him he could see the river. The humans had a name for it (humans had this strange need to name everything, something the dragon simply could not fathom), but the dragon couldn’t be bothered to remember what they called it. Eventually the river would reach the lake, where could be found the human fishing village.

The dragon caught a down draft that let him drop almost to the ground, and he skimmed across the surface of the river, picking up as much speed as he could, sending up a spray of water on both sides of his long, lean form. Ah, that felt nice, very relaxing.

“What should I do to occupy myself on this fine day?” the dragon wondered aloud, frightening the local wildlife (who, naturally, didn’t speak dragon, and so only heard a terrifying roaring). “I know. It’s been ever so long since I visited the fishing village. I’ll bet they missed me!”

The dragon couldn’t help but smile at this. He hated to admit it, but he took an inordinate amount of pleasure from teasing the humans. They were just so frightfully serious about everything. Any time he’d wander past they’d start screaming and shouting and running around in a panic, and shooting their tiny little arrows at him (most of which never came anywhere near him, and the rare one that actually found its mark would simply bounce off – he never could quite figure out why they bothered).

Their reactions hadn’t ever made much sense to the dragon. Oh sure, he’d kill the occasional sheep or goat (but a dragon’s got to eat, same as anyone else). But it wasn’t like he’d ever killed one of them, and the one house he’d destroyed had been purely by accident. Surely they couldn’t hold that against him forever, now could they?

Yes, the more he thought about it, the more he knew today would be a good day to tease the humans. He beat his wings faster, lifting up away from the surface of the water and into the air. He darted through the cross breezes, twirling and spinning, just enjoying the thrill of flight, feeling the power in his wings as they propelled him through the air.

Maybe that was why humans were always so serious. They were perpetually stuck on the ground, plodding along on their little legs. If only they could experience the joys of flight, the freedom of soaring above the clouds, maybe then they’d be happy and carefree, like he was. Of course, knowing how humans were, even if he did try to show one of them the joy of flight, they’d likely as not just start kicking and screaming. That’s just how those silly humans were.

Before long he could see the lake, and the human village, which sat right at the mouth of the river. He gave a loud, joyous roar as he dive bombed out of the clouds. He’d dropped to treetop level just as he reached the outskirts of the village, and he skimmed just a few feet over the tops of the highest buildings as he made his first pass.

As expected, the humans were already running around in a panic, pointing up in the air and screaming. The dragon sailed over the village, then banked hard and circled back around to give it another pass. And look, there were the guardsmen with their little bows and arrows, right on queue! Maybe if he slowed down a couple of them might even hit him.

The dragon just couldn’t resist. He circled around and stopped himself over the middle of the village, just casually beating his wings, hovering above the village marketplace.

“Come on, boys, here’s your chance. Shoot the dragon, win a prize!”

And shoot they did, firing arrow after arrow up into the sky at him. Several of them even managed to hit him, the arrows bouncing harmlessly off his chest. If only they spoke dragon, then he could tell them just how much fun he was having. He made another circle of the village, then winged away. Yes, that had indeed been a great idea.

He floated lazily along on the breeze, headed towards the mountains. Now that he’d had his fun, he was starting to feel a bit peckish. A nice tasty deer would just hit the spot. He scanned the forest, his senses focused as he searched for his lunch. He noticed a strange smell, and not a pleasant one. What was it? He inhaled deeply. Ugh, goblins! Nothing quite so smelly (or nasty tasting – the dragon had only made that mistake once) as goblins.

Curious to see what sort of mischief the vermin were up to, he veered off his course, heading towards the smell. And in no time at all, he found them. It was a larger band, several dozen at least. They were just entering the corn fields outside the human village. The dragon passed high overhead, not wanting them to see him (not yet, at any rate). There they were, weapons in hand as they marched forward, yammering to each other in goblin (a language the dragon had never felt any need to learn – what worthwhile thing could one possibly overhear a goblin saying?).

The goblins were marching straight towards the human village. And their numbers were great enough that if they caught the humans by surprise it would be a slaughter. Well, the dragon wasn’t having any of that! The humans were much too fun to have around to let them be slaughtered by a bunch of obnoxious, smelly goblins. Something would simply have to be done.

The dragon dropped from the sky, his wings pressed up against his body, roaring down towards the goblin formation. He pulled up several yards from the ground, unleashing a stream of dragon fire as he tore through their ranks. He grabbed a pair of them in his claws as he turned skywards, crushing their feeble bodies, then dropping them as he banked in the air and came around for another pass.

The goblins scattered and were fleeing towards the hills. The dragon smiled. A job well done. Not that the humans would appreciate it. More than likely they’d be too upset about their corn fields to pay any attention to the dead goblins (okay, yes, his flames may have set their corn fields on fire, but he was sure they could save most of them. They were right next to a lake, after all, so it wasn’t like they didn’t have ample access to water).

The dragon flew past the edge of the village as he returned to his search for lunch. He could hear the humans down below, screaming about the fire and the horrible menace that the dragon was. No appreciation at all. But that was to be expected from humans. Not that the dragon minded. For all their faults, the world simply wouldn’t be as much fun without them!

. . . The more they stay the same.

So here we are yet again, with me jumping back into my blog after far too long away. And once again, I'm taking my blog in a new direction from before. And this time I'm taking it in a really, really new direction.

Gone are the movie reviews/commentary, gone are the more random music/book/video game commentaries that made up my last iteration of posts (okay, so the actual posts I've made aren't going anywhere, I'm just not doing any further posts of that sort. Well, probably not). Nope, now we're really going somewhere completely different.

What prompted this return to the blogosphere, you ask? Well, I finally decided it was time to stop being a hobby writer (who spent way, way less time writing than he really wanted to). So I've decided to challenge myself to step up and become an actual serious writer. What does this mean? Well, first and foremostly it means writing each and every single day. It also means that I'm trying to write a novel - maybe even one that I can someday self-publish (although that's probably way further down the road).

My first attempt at a novel has been a struggle, but it is moving slowly (if unsteadily) forward. As a distraction (and to hopefully help jump start my creativity), I've joined in on a writing challenge on a forum I'm a member of (http://mythicscribes.com/, for any fellow fantasy writers out there). The challenge? To write a short, short story every day for 14 days straight. Each day has a specific story prompt that you need to use as the basis for that day's story (and there are some interesting ones, so this will be quite a challenge, indeed).

The challenge started today, and I've got the first story completed. I should have a copy of it posted here later today. Then as the challenge goes on I'll continue to post the stories here, for the reading enjoyment of whoever happens upon this blog. Once the challenge is over, we'll see what I post to the blog, but I do want to continue with at least the occasional story post (or random thought post, as ideas come to me). My more day-to-day posts (mostly updates on how my writing is going) will appear on my Facebook page. So stay tuned, and I hope you enjoy the stories.


As a postscript, I suppose I really should think about changing the name of the blog again as well (so that I'm no longer ripping off Monty Python's Flying Circus), but it's just such a great quote (and Lord knows it still fits this blog well enough). Have to give that one some thought. If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to drop them into the comments.

This Post Brought To You By Pandora.com

So now that the craziness of the holiday season is out of the way, I’ve finally gotten around to putting together a new blog post. And in the spirit of expanding the nature of my blog, this week I’ve decided to talk about music. Specifically, I wanted to talk about the varied and often unusual sources I have for finding new music (well, new to me, at any rate). The first of these, and one of my main sources these days, is Pandora.com. For anyone not in the know, Pandora.com is an Internet radio site (another similar site is last.fm, but I haven’t really spent any time on that site, so I don’t know how they compare). What I love about Pandora (especially compared to traditional radio stations) is that it lets you build your own stations, based on the types of music you want to listen to.

The way it works is you pick a musician, or even a specific song, and you use that as the baseline for your station. From there, Pandora then builds a list of songs that share similar musical qualities to the song (or the songs of the artist) that you started with. As the songs play, you can give them a thumbs up or thumbs down, and Pandora uses these decisions to further tailor the station, to better give you exactly the type of music you want. And you can build as many stations as you want, and then listen to whichever one suits your current mood. I have a couple of country stations (one alt. country/country rock, the other old-school country music), a Celtic rock station, a Goth rock station, a couple of modern rock stations, and a few others (and I just recently added a Reggae station – can’t believe I didn’t think to put that one together sooner!).

I’ve discovered a number of great singers and groups that I’d never heard of before this way. And many of them are artists who’ve never made it big enough to show up on the Top 40 stations (which seem to play the same ten songs over and over and over again, I swear). It amazes me sometimes just how much great music is out there if you get away from the local radio stations and look for it (especially when you're living in the back woods of Montana -- we're not exactly on the cutting edge of music out here). One of the singers I discovered on Pandora that I absolutely love is Sarah Borges. She sings alt. country/country rock music. After hearing a couple of her songs on Pandora, I bought one of her CDs off of Amazon, and loved every song on it. The amusing part (for me, at least) is the fact that I mostly have the HBO show True Blood to thank for discovering Sarah’s music. The reason for this is that the song I used as my starter song for the station I heard her on was the theme song to True Blood, “Bad Things” by Jace Everett (another country rock artist I’m starting to really like, although I haven’t gotten around to buying one of his CDs yet).

Which brings me to my next source of music, my television. I’ve run across all kinds of great songs while watching TV, and from such odd sources as TV theme songs, background songs during shows, and of all things, commercials (as commercials have gotten away from the old-fashioned “jingle” and more into using songs from actual bands, a surprising number of really good songs have started showing up in commercials these days). A great example is the band Dirty Vegas, who I was first introduced to through a Mitsubishi Eclipse ad which featured their song “Days Go By”. After hearing that song I tracked down the album, and loved all of the songs on it.

An especially good source of music on TV is movie trailers. I’ve lost track of how many great songs I’ve first heard playing in a movie trailer (and as a flip-side to that, I think the majority of the most memorable movie trailers I’ve ever seen featured a great, memorable song). An interesting thing about movie trailers, though, is how often the same songs are used over again for different movies. Even better are the songs that get tapped repeatedly for trailers, actual movie soundtracks, video game soundtracks, TV shows, etc. I don’t know if certain songs just really lend themselves to these things, or if it’s just that some bands really take advantage of these avenues to get their songs out there.

A classic example of this is the 80s gem "Oh Yeah" by Yello (and even if you’re too young to remember the 80s, you’ve almost certainly heard a clip of this song somewhere). It was first featured in the film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in 1986, and then a year later in The Secret Of My Success. I personally most remember it from a series of Twix commercials that came out right about that same time. Well, I looked it up on Wikipedia (because I was pretty sure I’d heard it other places, and wanted to see where else it had turned up), and here’s what they have listed for it – it has been featured in at least a dozen movies, almost a dozen TV show episodes, numerous commercials, and the video game Gran Turismo 4 (it is also the theme song for Duffman on The Simpsons). Now that's what you call a popular song! (I'd love to know how much the band has earned in royalties off of that tune).

A more recent example is “Running Up That Hill” by Placebo (a cover of a song originally done by Kate Bush, a great artist that I’ve been a fan of for years now). I first heard Placebo’s version in the trailer for Daybreakers (and quickly purchased the MP3 from Amazon), but it has also featured in episodes of several TV shows. One final example (and one of my all-time favorite movie trailer songs) is “Club Foot” by Kasabian. I first heard the song in the trailer for Serenity, but it also appeared in another movie trailer, in a couple of TV show episodes, a couple of movie soundtracks, and in several video game soundtracks. I loved this song enough I actually tracked down the original album it came from at Amazon.uk (and had it shipped to me from England). And the entire album is absolutely brilliant.

On the subject of movie trailers, here’s a random bit of trivia for you – generally, songs featured in movie trailers aren’t actually on the movie’s soundtrack. However, a surprising number of movie trailers I’ve seen feature songs from a DIFFERENT movie’s soundtrack. This is something I’d noticed in the past when I’d track down songs from movie trailers to purchase, but while I found it to be an interesting phenomenon, I never gave much thought about why that was. While I was doing some research for this blog (yes, believe it or don’t, I actually do research the things I write about for this blog – this is one of the reasons I’m such a huge Wikipedia supporter), I came across a write-up on Wikipedia about movie trailer music. And it turns out that the reason the trailers generally don’t feature music from the movie itself is that the score/soundtrack for the film is finished very late in the post-production process, long after the trailers have been edited together and released, and so they have to go to other sources for the trailer music.

Another surprisingly good source for great music is video games. And I’m not just talking about Guitar Hero and Rock Band (although both of these games have certainly introduced me to some fantastic music). Red Dead Redemption, for example (which I gushed over in my previous blog post), featured a couple of songs that I enjoyed enough that I bought them on Amazon.

One genre of game in particular that features great soundtracks is racing games. I own a number of MP3s of songs that I first heard in Burnout 3: Takedown and Burnout Revenge. Another song from a racing game that I love is “My Favorite Game” by The Cardigans, which is the opening credits song for Gran Turismo 2. Interestingly enough, the song originally appeared on a Cardigans album titled “Gran Turismo”, which was released a year prior – a CD title that is in no way connected to the video game series (and is itself a brilliant album – it’s also the only Cardigans’ album I really like, as their previous music has a much more bubblegum pop sound to it, whereas Gran Turismo has a darker, more electronic sound that I absolutely love). “My Favorite Game” is probably my favorite song on the album (a close second would be “Erase/Rewind”, a song which has featured in several movie soundtracks).

It pretty much goes without saying that music games (AKA the Rock Band and Guitar Hero franchises) are great sources of music. For me, though, it’s not about the big-name, popular songs that we’ve all heard before. No, for me, the best music in Rock Band and Guitar Hero are the “bonus” tracks, which feature artists most people probably haven’t heard of before. One of the things I loved about Guitar Hero is their inclusion of songs by European singers. Even though they’re singing in German or Spanish or Italian (so I have no idea what the singer is saying), the songs are still really fun to listen to. Between the two games, I’ve discovered a wealth of songs I’d never heard before that I fell in love with.

On the subject of foreign music, another type of music I really enjoy is Japanese pop music, or J-Pop as it is generally referred to (there’s a long and not that interesting story behind my discovery of J-Pop, which I won’t go into here). Again, for the most part I have no idea what the singers are saying (although a surprising number of Japanese songs I’ve heard actually jump back and forth between Japanese and English lyrics), but that doesn’t prevent me from really enjoying the music (on a side tangent, I’ve never had much respect for people who criticize music of a genre they don’t like (heavy metal haters seem to love this one) by complaining that you can’t even understand what the singer is saying. My response to this argument has always been, “So what? Understanding what the singer is saying has nothing to do with whether or not you enjoy listening to the music.” But that’s just me).

Among the Japanese musicians that I enjoy are Judy and Mary (an interesting choice for the band’s name, as the band is comprised of four people, and to my knowledge, none of them are named either Judy or Mary – no idea where the name of the band came from), aiko (who's song "あした" is the first J-Pop song I ever heard, and the song that got me into the genre), and The Brilliant Green (an absolutely fantastic band, probably my favorite J-Pop group).

Before I close this thing out, I couldn't do a post about music without giving a quick shout-out to a fantastic Celtic rock band -- Amadan. Hailing from Corvallis, OR, I first saw them play at Sean Kelly's Irish Pub in Missoula. They absolutely rocked! I was a fan from the very first song (I mean, how many rock bands do you find that have a didgeridoo player?). They are just a great, fun band. All of their CDs are well worth a listen, and they're great to watch live (okay, I have to admit they're not quite as good as they used to be, as several of their original members left the band when they graduated college, but they're still a hell of a good band).

Well I think that about brings another blog entry to its inevitable conclusion. And I’ll finish by mentioning the latest song that I’m really digging – "Panic Switch", by Silversun Pickups (which I first heard in the trailer for Sucker Punch, a movie I can’t wait to see!!).

Red Dead Redemption

So in my previous blog post I mentioned that one of the reasons I’d been away from my blog for so long was that I had too many other things going on in my life. Well, one of those things (which has sucked up hours and hours of my life) is the video game Red Dead Redemption. This has to be one of the most engrossing and fun games I’ve ever played (a close second would be Borderlands, which is just way more fun than any game has a right to be). Red Dead Redemption (referred to hereafter as RDR for brevity’s sake) is based on the Grand Theft Auto game engine (and made by Rockstar Games, the same creative minds behind the GTA games), so if you’ve ever played any Grand Theft Auto, you’ll have a good idea as to the basic gameplay. The big difference, of course, is that RDR takes place in the Wild West instead of the gritty streets of modern America.

This western setting is a big part of what drew me to this game over the GTA series (which I would like to play at some point, but I’m not as excited to play them as I was RDR). One interesting twist that I hadn’t expected when I first bought the game – it actually takes place in 1911, so it’s a much later western era than I had expected (which is one of the themes of the story – the idea that modern technology/society is bringing the days of the “wild west” to an end).

Here’s the background of the story – you play John Marsten, a former outlaw who walked away from his gang after they left him for dead. He got married, had a son, and started a new life for himself with a small ranch. But his past has come back to haunt him – government agents are holding his family hostage, and will release them on one condition – John must hunt down and kill the three members of his former gang.

We begin our adventure in the territory of New Austin, which is basically a southern US desert environment similar to Texas or New Mexico. In the opening scenes of the game, you are shown the location of one of the men you are supposed to kill – he and his new gang have taken over an abandoned Army fort. His men shoot you, leaving you seriously injured, but you are rescued by a woman named Bonnie who runs a ranch in the area with her father. Your first goal of the game (well, as far as the main storyline of the game anyways) is to figure out how you’re going to get into the fort so you can kill your former friend.

Unlike most games of this sort, which generally feature a linear storyline that you move through with very little deviation, RDR features an open-world concept (inherited from the Grand Theft Auto games) which is pretty unique to Rockstar Games. While I don’t have enough experience with other companies’ games to make a definitive statement, from various reviews I’ve read and comments I’ve gotten from more die-hard gamers than myself, no other company has come close to duplicating the open environment that you find in GTA and RDR.

And so, instead of moving directly from one story point to the next, what you have here is an open map that you can explore at your leisure. And what an amazing map it is! The graphics are fantastic (I was surprised at how much fun I had just riding my horse, randomly exploring the landscape and enjoying the view). But more importantly, the game is rich in gameplay opportunities completely separate from the main storyline. There are all sorts of animals you can hunt and plants you can pick (and there are specific tasks to accomplish that allow you to move up through ten levels of such skills as hunting, survival, and sharpshooting). There is also a “treasure hunter” skill that you advance through by tracking down hidden treasures throughout the map (at each treasure location you find a cache of gold, and a map giving hints to the location of the next treasure).

You can take bounties in town, and then go track down the criminal on the bounty and either kill him or lasso him, hogtie him, and bring him back to the sheriff’s office (you get more money for bringing them back alive). And there are all kinds of people that you’ll encounter as you travel around. Most of them will ignore you as they go about their business, but often they will interact with you in various “world events” (as the game calls them). These are usually quick, simple encounters, such as someone who’s just been robbed, and wants you to chase down the thief and return whatever was stolen (usually their horse or wagon), or saving someone from bandits, or from a pack of wolves. Another common encounter features someone coming up to you asking for help, but then pulling you off your horse and trying to steal it (an obvious nod to the car-jacking that is such a core part of GTA).

Last time I checked my stats, I want to say I’d encountered almost three dozen unique world events (and a total of several hundred world events – most of the events are encountered numerous, numerous times over the course of the game). However, nothing says you have to complete these events, so if someone challenges you to a duel, or tells you his buddy is about to be hanged and he needs your help, and you’re headed in the opposite direction, or in the middle of trying to do something else (or you’ve simply run into that event enough times you have no interest in spending time on it), you are free to just ignore them and continue on with what you were doing.

The game also features longer, more involved side missions called “stranger missions”. These involve more time and effort than the simple “world events”. They also really showcase both the brilliant writing of the game, and the wicked (and very warped) sense of humor of the writers. For example (spoiler alert – skip this and the next paragraph if you’re planning on playing through the game and don’t want to read specifics on the stranger missions), in one mission you meet an old man who asks if you can help him gather flowers for a bouquet for his wife. You then get a mission to gather a certain number of three different types of plants (which are scattered across the map, so there’s a fair bit of travel involved in gathering them all. But that is one of the great parts of the game – nothing says you have to complete the mission right away, so you’re free to travel the map doing other things, and just get the flowers as you run across them, and then when you have them all you can get around to going back to the old man to complete the mission). When you return to the old man with the flowers, he takes you into his house to give them to his wife – at which point you are introduced to her desiccated corpse, which has clearly been dead for a while (but her husband very much interacts with her as if she were still alive).

This sort of dark humor and these kinds of bizarre encounters are very common throughout the game (for example, in another stranger mission – titled “American Appetites” – you’re given the task of trying to find a series of missing persons. What you discover (which shouldn’t come as a surprise, based on the title of the mission), is that the missing people have all been eaten by a cannibal). If you appreciate this sort of humor, you’ll really enjoy the many side stories in the game.

In order to move through the main story of the game, you bring up your map, where you’ll see indicators as to the locations of the main story events. To activate a story event, simply travel to the location shown on the map. Generally there are two or three story threads that run concurrently through sections of the game. You can do all of one then all of another, or you can jump back and forth between them. For example, after Bonnie rescues you at the beginning of the game, she takes you into town to get some medicine for your injuries, and tells you that the local marshal may be able to help you on your mission. From this point there are now two story indicators: one for Bonnie, located at her ranch, and one for the marshal, located at his office in town. Each has several missions that you complete in a set order, moving you forward through the story. Bonnie's missions are all related to ranching activities, and work as nice tutorials to help you learn how to do such things as ride your horse and properly use your lasso, whereas the marshal’s missions are all combat related. But while each person’s missions go in a set, linear order, you can do all of Bonnie's missions, then all the marshal's missions, or vice versa, or you can go back and forth between the two.

When these sets of missions are completed, you then open up access to three new characters. Again, each has a series of missions you complete with them, but you have the option to do all of each person’s missions one after the other, or you can bounce back and forth between the different characters, completing a mission for one, then doing a mission or two for another, then jumping back to the first. And of course as you’re completing these missions you are free to take time out to complete stranger missions, to complete the tasks required for your various skills, or to simply wander the map looking for random encounters.

As the story unfolds, you eventually unlock two other map areas – the first is in Mexico, and the second (called West Elizabeth) features a Great Plains area (complete with a herd of buffalo) and a forest/mountain region resembling the Northwestern US. Each new zone unlocks new stranger missions, new treasure locations, new animals and plants, and new people and places to encounter, as well as new events for the main storyline. There are literally hours and hours and hours of things you can do to occupy yourself, including playing such mini-games as poker, black jack, horseshoes, and arm wrestling. And as I mentioned before, the writing is just incredible. Not only is the main story really engaging and well-written, but the various side stories are also really well done. And the characters you encounter throughout the game are all colorful, well-developed, and for the most part very memorable individuals.

And just when I thought I couldn’t enjoy the game more (and released just before I finished the main storyline, so the timing was perfect), Rockstar released a major new single-player update for the game: Undead Nightmare. As the name implies, this drops your characters right in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. And like the main game, the update is brilliant. The main story is pretty straight-forward: John Marsten's are bitten by a zombie (at which point John is forced to tie them up and board up his house so they can't get out). John then sets out to discover what has happened and how to stop it. Along the way he helps to secure the towns and settlements, while encountering many of the main characters form the original game.

As far as general gameplay goes, Undead Nightmare plays in much the same ways as the original: you have your main story missions, plus various side missions (appropriately called “survivor missions” instead of “stranger missions” like they were in the main game). There are new treasures to go after, and new tasks to accomplish to advance through the levels of your hunting and sharpshooting skills. But instead of the survival skill that you had in the main game (which required you to gather various numbers of different plants), you now have the goal of finding and breaking the Four Horses of the Apocalypse (I first encountered (and consequently broke and rode) Pestilence, and I’m currently riding around the map on War, which is just unbelievably cool).

While I’m not necessarily a huge fan of the zombie genre, it is one I enjoy (I’ve played a number of zombie video games that were lots of fun), and Undead Nightmare really delivers. Zombie encounters are exactly what you’d expect – really easy when there’s only a couple of zombies, but suddenly really, really difficult when you make the mistake of getting in the midst of a large group of them. And I love the wild west setting (which is something I don’t think I’ve ever seen before in a zombie game, movie, etc.). One of the interesting twists that the western setting gives you is zombie animals -- you see undead horses and cattle roaming around, and have to fight off undead grizzlies and mountain lions.

About the only complaint I have with the game overall is some of the controls (this is definitely one area where I would say Borderlands is very much the superior game). There are times that it is difficult to get your horse to do what you want it to, and I find myself way too many times crouching when I triy to run because of how they did the crouch. Now admittedly, I’m sure that many of these problems are as much my lack of hand-eye coordination as they are actual problems with the controls themselves (and I’m sure if I were more of a die-hard gamer I wouldn’t have some of the problems that I do). But that’s still the main thing (really, the only thing) that I find annoying about the game, and the big area where the game could be improved.

I loved the original story, and can’t wait to finish Undead Nightmare to see how it plays out, and I look forward to future expansions to the game (as well as the inevitable Red Dead Redemption 2, although I’m sure that’s a ways away). In conclusion, if you’re a video game player at all, and you like a good western, then this is a must-play game. And even if you’re not, I still cannot recommend this game highly enough.

The More Things Change . . . .

Seems like forever since the last time I updated this blog (although 3 ½ months is certainly a much shorter gap than the almost 3-year break I took previously). The problem has been a combination of being busy with too many other things, and having a hard time getting motivated to write. In effort to address at least the motivation issue, I’ve decided to make a slight adjustment to the nature of ye ol’ blog, somewhat inspired by my previous blog entry. Instead of doing just a movie-centric blog, I’m going to expand the content to include movies, TV shows, comic books, novels, video games, music, horticulture (okay, maybe not horticulture); in other words, whatever random topics happen to catch my attention and inspire me to write. And with the change in format, comes a change in title. I’m taking the title of my previous blog entry and turning it into the title for the entire blog – “And Now For Something Completely Different . . . .” (and if you don’t know where that particular line comes from, well you’ll just have to look it up. Oh, and shame on you!).

For our first entry of our new and (hopefully) improved blog, I’m going with a spooky, post-Halloween theme (I’m only a week late, which for me is pretty good). Topics for discussion today include one old movie, and one brand new TV show. So last night I watched an old supernatural horror/thriller made way back in 1983 – The Keep. I picked up this movie partly because I love the cast, and partly because I vaguely recalled enjoying it the first time around (sadly, it doesn’t play as well 25+ years later, but it’s still not too bad a movie). The first surprise that I got as the opening credits rolled was that it was written and directed by Michael Mann (of Miami Vice fame). This certainly isn’t the type of movie you’d normally associate with this director (this is, however, one of his very early films).

The movie takes place in the mountains of Romania during World War II. A Nazi army captain, played by Jürgen Prochnow (an actor I’ve always really liked), is given orders to garrison his soldiers at a mysterious and forbidding stone keep blocking a pass through the mountains. After his men begin to die horribly one by one, a group of SS soldiers is sent in to deal with the problem, led by Gabriel Byrne (another brilliant actor). Other great actors in the film include Ian McKellen as a Jewish scientist brought in because of his knowledge of the keep, and Scott Glenn as a mysterious stranger who knows the secret of the keep. As the movie unfolds, you quickly learn that the keep was built to imprison a powerful evil that is desperate to escape its prison.

The visual effects for the movie are really cheesy, especially by today’s standards (and were probably at least a little cheesy even by ‘80s standards), and both the writing and acting have their weak, silly moments. What the movie really has going for it, though, is atmosphere. There’s an eerie, spooky feel that the movie maintains throughout, even during the cheesier scenes. Especially impressive is the keep itself, which really does look like it was built to hold some ancient evil. The other thing the movie really gets right as far as atmosphere is the music. The score was done by Tangerine Dream, a new age/electronica group that not only have done several excellent soundtracks (over 60, I was surprised to learn on Wikipedia), but have also done some great non-soundtrack albums (if you like electronic music, that is).

As I was watching the movie, the wannabe filmmaker in me (oh, if only I’d gotten into film in high school, instead of computers) really keyed in on the music. I don’t think I can over stress just how important a part of a movie a good score/soundtrack is. The right music can make an indelible impression on the viewer, forever tying the music to the film in the viewer’s mind. Ennio Morricone’s scores for Clint Eastwood’s spaghetti westerns is a perfect example of this; and who can forget Mike Oldfield’s theme song for The Exorcist?

Other musicians whose scores I really enjoy include Vangelis (who won the Oscar for Best Original Score for Chariots of Fire, as well as scoring Blade Runner and 1492: Conquest of Paradise for Ridley Scott – both phenomenal scores), Graeme Revell (who’s done dozens of great movie scores), and of course the brilliant Danny Elfman, who was the front man of Oingo Boingo before going into movie scores. He’s probably best known for his work with Tim Burton (having done the scores for all but two of his movies), but has done films and TV shows too numerous to mention.

But enough talk about music for today (although in some future blog entry I’m sure I will return to the topic of movie music) – let’s get back on track with our post-Halloween theme. At the beginning of our show I mentioned a brand new TV show. The show in question would be AMC’s The Walking Dead, which premiered on Halloween night. As the name implies, this show is about a zombie apocalypse (and thus, not for everyone). It is based on a very successful comic book series (one which I haven’t read yet, so no idea how good the original comics are, or how close the show is to said comics). I have to say, while not perfect, I loved the pilot for this show! Of course, the fact that it was written for the screen, directed, and executive produced by Frank Darabont (director of such classic films as The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile) probably has a lot to do with that.

Okay, let’s play TV/film critic for a moment, and get the negatives out of the way first. Sadly, there were a few aspects to the story that I found a bit derivative/predictable. The main character awakens from a coma in a hospital to find it completely abandoned, which feels a lot like the opening to 28 Days Later. This same main character later heads for Atlanta, which is supposed to be a safe haven protected by the military where the CDC is busily working on a cure, only to discover the city is filled to the brim with zombies (this is such a standard part of most zombie films as to almost be cliché, but it’s hard to be too upset about its inclusion, because it is such a standard that it almost wouldn’t feel right to NOT have it). The big story aspect that really disappointed me, though, is the tried and true “love triangle” – the main character’s former partner (both were deputy sheriffs) and his wife have assumed that he’s dead, and so naturally have become romantically involved. This is one of those silly story complications that has just been over-used to death. I’ll just have to wait and see how it plays out here before I pass final judgment.

Other than these few slightly weak story points, though, I absolutely loved this show. The cinematography and editing are both especially excellent. You really get to see just what a television show can accomplish when it’s done with cinematic sensibilities (clearly one of the advantages of having a film director on board as the main creative force behind the show). Let’s start with the opening scene. We see our main character, a deputy sheriff, leaving his vehicle and walking down a deserted highway carrying a gas can. Abandoned vehicles litter the street. He reaches a gas station, where we see a small, hand-written sign reading “No Gas” and more abandoned cars. Our hero hears something, and moves towards the noise. Looking under a car, he sees a pair of slipper-clad feet, and a small hand reaching for a teddy bear. Moving around the car, he sees a young girl walking slowly away from him. He calls out to her. She stops, then slowly turns around. Not surprisingly, she is a zombie. As she begins to move towards our hero, he hesitates for a moment, then pulls his sidearm and puts a bullet through the middle of her forehead. We watch her body fall backwards to the ground, then cut to opening credits.

And right there the show lets you know very bluntly and boldly (and surprisingly graphically, especially for a basic cable channel) exactly what it’s about. I loved it. Before the opening credits even roll, you’ve got a really good idea what you’re in for (so if it’s not your type of show, you’ll know it right from word go, and can change the channel before investing any real time watching). After the opening credits, we jump back in time to before the zombies arrive, where we see the main character sitting in his squad car with his partner (same guy who ends up involved with his wife later in the show). After a brief conversation between the two men to let us get to know a little about them, they become involved in a post high-speed chase shootout that leaves the main character seriously injured from a gunshot wound.

When the hero awakens in a hospital bed an indeterminate amount of time later, he finds the hospital both deserted and completely trashed (including dead bodies in the hallways and a line of bullet holes along one wall). He comes across a padlocked door spray-painted with the words: “Don’t Open. Dead Inside.” Finally he stumbles outside. The camera stays close in on him, focused mostly at his feet. You see him walk past a dead body wrapped in a sheet, then another, then another. The camera then pulls back to an overhead shot, where you discover there are dozens and dozens and dozens of dead bodies stacked up in rows outside the hospital. It is incredibly well shot and edited together to really hit you with the impact of just how many dead there are. It is one of the best scenes in the show, and I loved how it was done.

Things are pretty standard from there as he is saved from zombies by a pair of survivors, who explain to him what’s been happening (in brief, at least – they don’t go into as much detail as I would have liked; specifically, at no point does the man ask what date it is or how long the zombie plague has been going on, which in my mind at least is one of the first questions I’d be asking if I'd just come out of a coma – especially if I'd come out of it into such a bizarre and unbelievable a scenario). He leaves the pair to head off to Atlanta, where as mentioned above he discovers it is overrun by zombies. One interesting twist is that after his car runs out of gas, he finds a horse, and ends up riding into Atlanta on horseback, which had a retro western sort of feel that I liked. Of course, things don’t work out so well for the horse (but I’ll leave the details of that to your imagination).

And that’s about where the first episode ends. In the scenes of upcoming episodes, we see our hero connect with a group of survivors in Atlanta, while at the same time his wife, son, and partner are in the wilderness with other survivors also trying to stay alive. Based on what I’ve seen so far, this show has the potential to be really, really good, and I can’t wait to see the next episode. Of course, as the one review on the show that I read pointed out, The Walking Dead is likely going to have to pull in an entirely different audience from that of AMC's other hits Mad Men and Breaking Bad, and if it doesn’t it could have a hard time staying on the air (which would suck). We’ll have to wait and see how it does.

And thus concludes my return to the blogosphere. With any luck, by expanding the concept of my blog to go beyond the realm of just movies, I’ll be able to stay motivated/inspired enough to actually update the stupid thing on a more regular basis. Until then, “Be seeing you.” (another quote you’re just going to have look up if you don’t know where it came from)