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But hey, any movie that ends in a threesome is good in my book.
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Seduction, after all, plays pretty straight by noir standards. And granted Red Rock begins cleanly enough: Nicolas Cage drifts into a small desert town and finds himself in a classic noir setup. Murder for hire, mistaken identities, you know the drill. But after that familiar opening refrain, Red Rock's story roams like a sax solo around a familiar standard melody. From murderous to openly comedic to David Lynch and back again ... I'm sure the Germans have a word for "quirky, yet evoking genuine dread". Assume I used it here.
The real thrill is watching J.T. Walsh. Dennis Hopper chews scenery and Cage, well, he's busy perfecting the genial loser persona that would keep him employed for a decade. Meanwhile Walsh is calmly, malevolently centering every scene he's in. He wields a ... dark gravity. The mistake casting directors made with him later was in playing him as venal, or mad. Walsh is best here and in, say, The Grifters, where he is obviously, terribly sane. His death just five years after this movie was a real loss.
It's odd to see this flick sitting in a pack of movies like The Grifters and Last Seduction and the criminally under-rated One False Move. But while I love all of those movies for their momentum, I enjoy Red Rock precisely for its refusal to take itself too seriously. To borrow a gaming term, it's a beer and pretzels noir. Perfect for a casual Sunday download, and streaming now -- until November 30th -- on Netflix.
In these days of abundant waste Rupert Blanchard’s ingeniously revitalised furniture points the way to a responsibly stylish future. See his reworked Louis Ghost Chair and Rietveld Crate Chairs for samples of the man’s genius.
www.stylingandsalvage.blogspot.com
Having spent the last five years as an art director, graphic designer and illustrator at the creative collective Acne, Daniel Carlsten has recently set up his own studio.
Pictured is an invite he designed for the celebration of Acne Paper’s 5th issue, constructed to reflect the dress code of the event.
A bit of a winner of an idea here from New York’s Cardon Webb. Dismayed by the lack of vigour put into pasted up flyers and adverts in his neighbourhood, Cardon took it upon himself to fix the bland. Spending his own time re-designing hastily thrown together notes, he replaces the originals with some more handsome suggestions, which he calls a ‘Cardon Copy’. Pun-tastic.
tired
Today PeterMBall.com is a year old. This caught me a little off-guard when I went and looked at the archives, since it seems slightly inconceivable that I’ve only been posting to the website for a year instead of meandering around on livejournal (where, admittedly, this still blog runs a feed and much of the conversation happens). It got even worse when I realised that one of the first posts being made was “Horn has sold to Twelfth Planet Press,” which means we were one day shy of announcing Cold Cases a year exactly after Horn. Spooky. Between this moment of nostalgia and the Americans celebrating Turkey Day and the vising 80-point-plan of awesomeness, I came up with the following:
Awesome Things about 2009 (1/15): Pathfinder RPG
Stick with me on this one, because there’s a lot of introspection involved in it making the list.
Okay, to start with, this is probably important to know: I’m a big ol’ geek and Roleplaying Games have been a part of my life for about two decades now. That said, there’s only really been three game releases over the last decade that I’ve actually been so excited about that I’ve actually tracked the development and promotional material (that’d be Dungeons and Dragons 3E, Mutants and Masterminds 2E, and Pathfinder). There was something really nice about being able to get in contact with my inner game-geek and anticipate for the first half of the year. Pathfinder had me excited about gaming in a way that 4E didn’t, right down to the point where I briefly managed to get a group together and run a few sessions. Over the years I’ve turned into a stoic grump, so experiencing any of the child-like joy that comes from anticipating things is a rare enough commodity that it’s worth celebrating. Outside of the aforementioned gaming products and the occasional fiction book, I think the last thing I really anticipated can be summed up as “the first season of New Who.”
Then, around the middle of the year, Pathfinder arrived (just in time for Gen Con Oz, yet, but that’ll get its own entry). And it was every bit as awesome as I’d been hoping. I then, promptly, didn’t run a damn thing using the rules.
This was extraordinarily weird for me. While I had my brief flurry of activity leading up to the games release, running a few sessions with the playtest rules, the actual final release will probably be one of the first gaming rule-sets I’ve learned as a player rather than a GM*. In this respect Pathfinder represents something of a shift in the relationship between me and gaming – there’s been a couple of times this year where I’ve stepped back and thought “man, I’m just not gaming as much as I used too,” but the truth is that I’m still involved in as many RPGs as I used to be (about three regular games) and I’ve added a weekly session of Bloodbowl on top. The difference is that I’m not longer running games, and for about fifteen years writing campaign notes and preparing adventures was what I did with my free time.
Not that I didn’t run anything this year – I started the year running CSI Arkham for the Call of Cthulhu peeps – but trust me when I say this was less prep time and just plain *less* GMing than I’ve done in a long while. It stole tiny little fragments of time, rather than the extended hour or so I’d used to spend fine-tuning a session and creating monster stats. Running a roleplaying campaign used to be one of those activities that defined my days, now they tend to be defined by writing instead**.
Still, Pathfinder promised me awesome, and Pathfinder delivered. And even if I don’t get a chance to run it, I’ll still be using the rules to kick evil’s arse, Cleric-Style, in my friend Adam’s campaign.
*Okay, yes, so it’s not entirely apt, given that I ran the d20 version of DnD that forms the basis of Pathfinder, not to mention releasing a bunch of d20 products using the system, but trust me when I say there’s enough differences between the two to make relearning the game as a player a delight. Hell, trust me when I say learning the game *entirely* as a player makes for a great change of pace.
**Not that any of this should be read as “Peter doesn’t want to run Pathfinder.” In an ideal world, I’d totally dig running through one of the pre-written adventure campaigns I’ve got lying around, but finding four or five people able to commit to a regular game gets rarer and rarer as you get older and most of the players I know have already got their regular sessions spoken for***.
***Besides which, if I could find four players who wanted a regular game, odds are I’d still try and pitch a Mutants and Masterminds game first. ‘Cause there is an awful lot of Dungeons-and-Dragons-esque fantasy being played at the moment.
Originally published at Random Acts of Literary Vandalism. You can comment here or there.
Borders UK, the bookshop chain, went into administration last night, putting 1,150 jobs at risk and raising the prospect of a firesale before Christmas.
It also seems we might not be seeing further issues of Deathray, which is a shame:
As some of you may have heard, and others who popped along the shops to pick up the latest issue of Filmstar may have feared, Blackfish's two magazines, Filmstar and Death Ray, are currently 'on hold'. What this means is that there will not be another issue of either of them along for a number of weeks – or, likely, months. Indeed, whether there will ever be another issue of either is a moot point, and at this moment in time impossible to answer. But we hope so.
She still doesn't know exactly what she wants, so I'm more confused than ever.
It's slowed down a lot since I quit the job I had out near Curtin; I was doing 70-80km a week then. Now it's more like five or ten (one or two trips into the CBD, or occasionally heading in to Northbridge).
(this post is mostly for my own reference)
Drunk man, with fist in air: This is Sparta!
Young boy: I thought it was New York City...
--5th Ave
Rediscovering music. Been pulling out artists that I haven't listened to for a while, like Godspeed You Black Emperor, and Air, and Laurie Anderson, and loving it.
A nice stereo at home, and a cute little one in my office, to facilitate this.
Catching up with old friends that I haven't see for far too long, which I did last weekend, and yesterday afternoon.
My wonderful, hardworking (in lots of ways at the moment), caring, resourceful wife.
Good friends and long-running roleplaying games.
Good food available within easy walking distance
The advances in medicine that offer viable treatment and hope for the future to so many people I know with chronic and/or life-threatening medical conditions
Delicious beer. I have monk beer from New Norcia.
And OK, just a little bit of schadenfreude at the Liberal Party implosion. OK, maybe a lot of schadenfreude. I'm actually kind of pleased that the showdown is over climate change. If it was over any other issue, we'd see the delusionist disease continue to fester in the heart of the party rooms, but the way things are going, in a few months it might be driven out of mainstream politics. Either that, or the Libs will be consigned to being even more unelectable. Either is good.
Library and Archives Canada has released a whole ton of WWI images to Flickr, including some stunning color paintings of Vimy Ridge and related places.
LAC / BAC's photostream (via Resource Shelf)
(Image: Anti-conscription parade at Victoria Square / Défilé anti-conscription au Square Victoria)
- Radiohead Song in memory of Harry Patch, WWI survivor and pacifist ...
- Satirical WWI maps - Boing Boing
- War Vegetable Gardening book from WWI - Boing Boing
- Draft cards of famous people from WWI - Boing Boing
- Boing Boing: Razzle-Dazzle: WWI cubist paint-jobs for battleships
- Boing Boing: Project Facade: Post WWI surgical facial reconstruction
- Fantastic gallery of WWI/WWII propaganda - Boing Boing
Interviews/Profiles
- Eric Rosenfield interviews Jeff VanderMeer (Finch).
- Command Line Podcast interviews Cory Doctorow (Makers).
- Stephen King Announces sequel to The Shining, but warns fans "don't hold your breath". [via Locus Online]
- Black Matrix Publishing is launching four magazines full of action, adventure, romance and suspense: Encounters (Contemporary or dark fantasy,scifi, horror and stories with a paranormal twist), Realms (traditional fantasy), Night Chills (creature-oriented horror), and Outer Reaches (stories of high adventure in the deepest reaches of space). [via Lou Antonelli]
- Patrick Rothfuss details the Worldbuilders fundraiser.
- Twelfth Planet Press On publicity and promotion.
- Rochita Loenen-Ruiz on Five months later, I'm still thinking of Clarion West.
- New Scientist on How Our Brains Learned to Read. (via Booksquare)
- The Guardian on Why does Mandelson favour the Analogue Economy over the Digital?
- The German website Fantasy-Atlas.org has dozens of maps from various genre books. [via Marooned]
- Here's a trailer for Hardcore by Andy Remic.
- Kristine Kathryn Rusch on The Freelancer's Survival Guide: Postponing Your Dreams.
- Reasons why the list "100 Reasons Star Trek XI Sucked" Sucked.
- Lev Grossman's 6 greatest fantasy books of all time. [via John Anealio]
Welcome to the sixth serialized installment of J.C. Hutchins' human cloning thriller 7th Son: Descent. If this is your first exposure to our free serialization of 7th Son, you can easily catch up by experiencing part one, part two, part three, part four and part five. You can also dive in right
away, thanks to...</p>
THE STORY SO FAR: John,
Kilroy2.0, Father Thomas and four other unwitting human clones have
been assembled by the U.S. government to track their villianous
progenitor, a psychopath responsible for the murder of the president.
His plans of terror are just beginning.
In the last episode, the clones continued to decipher John Alpha's
Morse code clue. Meanwhile at a military base in the Russian
wilderness, a former CIA agent named Doug Devlin reminisces about his
past -- and his current alliance with Alpha. A much larger conspiracy
is unveiled.
Check out this week's installment below. If you're enjoying this serialized experience, support the book by purchasing a copy at Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Borders, or printing this PDF order form and presenting it at your favorite bookstore. You can learn more about the book at J.C.'s site.
Clever Cake Studios made this smashing game-themed, Tetrisoid cake for the opening of a local Play'N'Trade store -- the little faces are caricatures of store employees.
What is it with them that they can't freaking turn up when they say they are going to? Why is it that you've got to freaking ABUSE the company to get them to turn up at all? Why is it that you get promise, after promise, after promise, and when they turn up they have NO FREAKING CLUE what they're doing?
Case 1:
We had airconditioning installed two weeks ago. But the fan doesn't work and half of the house gets no air. They've taken our money (for the machine), some is still owning, but all week, we've been trying to get them to come back to fix the problem. The reality is: they don't know. Last Friday, two clowns who were here couldn't program the controller and they had to wait for instructions from this company Brivis in Melbourne who must have the WORST bloody customer service in the world. Seriously. Anyway, over the weekend, I programmed the machine. Like I'm a tradesman, right. It's not that freaking hard. But they made a mistake installing it, and it still doesn't work. The guy was going to come today. Tomorrow, we've invited the neighbours, and it's going to be 35C. That doesn't bother me, but the elderly neighbour has emphesema (crap, how do you spell that?) and gets stressed very quickly. If there's no alternative, we'll have to cancel. It will be too hot for him for comfort.
Case 2:
Something is awry in the pool filter with the timer. The pump needed fixing, and when the guy came to put it back in, he not only warped the cabinet, but the knocked something so now the electronics are stuffed. Sorry, I'll pull a pump apart, but I'm not getting too involved in electronics. I've done as much as I can myself, but it still doesn't work. I've been ringing and ringing the shop. They keep promising me to turn up, but they're not.
WRAAAAA!!
A lovely simple but surprising mathematical problem this week (via Timothy M) …
Imagine you have a piece of string long enough to stretch around the earth (40,074 km or 4,007,400,000 cm). Then you take an extra meter of string and add it to the string around the Earth. Now you spread this extra string around the Earth, supporting it somehow, so that the string forms a circle off the ground.
How high off the ground would the string be?
As ever, please feel free to say if you think you have solved it, and how long it took, but please do not post your answer. Solution on Monday. Oh, and for an extra 10 points, what is the surprising aspect about the answer?
Another short post. Sorry folks.
But not so much to report today, though he is doing most excellently well, by any objective measure–he is walking, and making his breathing-in-the-little-machine quotas, and eating solid food, and speaking to us all very coherently, and progressing in all the standard measurable ways.
Unfortunately, he is also in a lot of pain, which is only sort of half-assedly managed by the pain meds, which also make him feel groggy and stupid and not himself (though I assure you, he is himself, just…well, drugged), and, being ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
jaylake , he is already very impatient and ready to be functioning at his more usual 153.7%.
I am not being as good as I could be on keeping the interwebs posted with updates….especially twitter. I am not a terribly reliable tweeter (which should surprise none of my twitter buddies in the least). Plus I am dealing with a brand-new computer (because I NEEDED to take on a new challenge this week, right?) which confuses me.
I remain overwhelmingly relieved that he has (we have) so many, many loving friends and family members who are here to be with him, to take care of me, to drive and cook and call and stop by and offer internet support and text messages and phone calls and and and and….
And it is, once again, time for me to sleep. Thank you EVERYONE for all your loving LJ comments, and jaylake thanks you all too! 
Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
- Location:Nuevo Rancho Lake
- Mood:
exhausted
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