Democracy For America has our phone number. They’ve had it for months, ever since Howard Dean was collecting money with strangely inspirational cartoon baseball bats.
They call us on occasion, usually twice a week. We don’t always answer. The Caller ID always shows the same point of origin: St Cloud, MN. I don’t know anything else about St Cloud, but I do know they’ve a mighty dedicated volunteer phonebank.
They called this evening. I picked up on the third ring after spotting the origin.
“Hola,” I answer. It’s a bad habit of mine to salute callers in a foreign tongue.
“What?” It’s a young-sounding female.
“Hello,” I say. “Yes,” she answers, “is a Mrs Thomas there?”
Mrs Thomas? No. That would be my mother-in-law. My wife, however, is sorting laundry, so I reply, “She’s here, but unavailable right now. Can I take a message?”
Slight pause.
“No, thank you,” she says. “We don’t really have a message right now.”
With all of this recent talk about the cinematic fate of American McGee’s dark little Alice, I feel it is my responsibility to remind everyone of the original.
In the game, Alice hasn’t seen Wonderland in ten years. Most of this lost time has been spent in a recuperative asylum. You see, sometime after returning from the Rabbit Hole, her family died in a horrible fire. She was the only survivor and guilt haunts her to distraction. Meanwhile, events in Wonderland have taking a turn for the very worse. The Red Queen has declared herself ruler and only one person can take her down: a very bitter, very broken Alice and her even sharper knife.
Every situation, venue, weapon and creature is based in Lewis Carroll’s mythology, but twisted along a disturbingly logical path by McGee’s imagination. The score — by NIN veteran Chris Vrenna — serves to magnify this sense of lost innocence.
Suffice it to say … American McGee’s Alice is one of my favorite PC games of all time. And at just under $10, it is such a bargain — even four years later.
I have my doubts about the movie. When American McGee hasn’t been promising other games about other stories, he’s been talking about the theatrical possibilities of his Alice. So when I hear this week’s news about Sarah Michelle Gellar, I’m torn. I want to believe him, that he’s finally getting this idea off the ground and on the screen. But on the other hand, I can’t get behind Buffy as Alice. While it is true that this envisioning of Wonderland is incredibly violent and requires the kind of ass-kicking that a Slayer can deliver, it’s also incredibly rich with neuroses and psychoses, with bleak situations and repercussions that might prove too much for the girl from Sunnydale.
In the meantime, I’ve still got the original — complete with Cat.
Today’s Track: “Flying On the Wings of Steam (remix)” - Chris Vrenna (2001). The original “Flying On The Wings of Steam” (as well as this remix) can be found on the Original Score to American McGee’s Alice.
1989’s Batman was the best filmic rendition of the Caped Crusader’s story ever.
But not any more.
My spoiler-free review of the newer (and even better) Bat is up at JIVE.
Last night, the 2005 Concerts in the Garden series at the Atlanta Botanical opened with a sold-out solo performance by Rufus Wainwright.
I’m still not quite awake, so a full recap is out of the question. Suffice it to say that I haven’t seen or heard a show that incredibly good in a long time. Combine that with a beautiful venue, an appreciative crowd and great friends — that’s a perfect evening. And I want it to be known that I tried thrice to make an AudioBlog post from the concert, but got a busy-signal everytime. So for now, I’ll just share the setlist.
- Grey Gardens
- Pretty Things
- Vibrate
- Matinee Idol
- 11:11
- The One You Love
- Want
- Gay Messiah
- Cigarettes & Chocolate Milk
- Memphis Skyline
- Hallelujah
- California
- Peachtrees
- Crumb By Crumb
- Beauty Mark
- Little Sister
- Dinner At Eight
- Art Teacher
- Foolish Love*
- Danny Boy*
- This Love Affair*
- Rebel Prince**
- Poses**
* - First Encore.
** - Second Encore.
This is just cool.
Choyce, the JIVE Magazine HTML Wrangler, has been making some serious modifications to the mechanics of the website. Ground effects, hydraulics, spinning chrome rims, subwoofers, a WYSIWYG content editor and best of all:
Work-at-a-glance profile pages for each JIVE writer.
Will it turn me into a gangsta? I doubt it.
(Homies.)
(During in the frontier days of the Internet, there was no iTunes. Napster was still a sleeping giant. In those dark times, courageous hunters had to seek out music in the curiosity shoppes and seedy dens of FTP sites. Given the staggering wait of a 28K connection, choices had to be made wisely. Winnings were cherished. I hoarded my share …)
Today’s Track: “I Think She Likes Me” - Treat Her Right (1986)
She listens to every word I say.
I look at her, she don’t look away.
I tell her that I play for Treat Her Right …
She asks me if I’m gonna play tonight.
Back in ‘86, Mark Sandman just didn’t fit in. New Wave was dying slow, drum machines were everywhere, but all Sandman wanted to do was spread his own personal gospel of low rock. So (low) guitar in hand, he joined forces with fellow Bostonian Billy Conway and two other gentlemen to form Treat Her Right. Four years later, Sandman and Conway would form an entirely new band with Dana Colley, but you can hear the early evolutionary roots of Morphine in the heavy bassline and smirking lyrics of “I Think She Likes Me.”
(Warning: The absolute geekery of this post might be too much for many to bear. Proceed warily.)
City of Heroes. I’ve written about this game a few times (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), but if you weren’t paying attention, the idea is remarkably simple. There’s this city and it is full of heroes. You’re one of them. You determine your hero’s origin, powers and appearance. Since the game is online, you’re sharing this virtual comic book world with tens of thousands of people from around the globe. If you want, you can join up to eight of those other players to fight evil together. And if they’re really cool, you can form your own supergroup — the X-Men or Justice League kind, not the Boston or Grand Funk Railroad kind.
As you play, you gain levels of experience. With each level comes greater challenges and better powers. The highest level of experience is 50.
So last night, The Suspicion — a hero I started playing fourteen months ago — hit level 50. Finally.
(more…)
(”And as he drove on, the rainclouds dragged down the sky after him, for, though he did not know it, Rob McKeena was a Rain God. All he knew was that his working days were miserable and he had a succession of lousy holidays. All the clouds knew was that they loved him and wanted to be near him, to cherish him, and to water him.”
- Douglas Adams, So Long And Thanks For All The Fish
Here’s to the Rain Gods.)
Today’s Track: “Kingdom of Rain” - The The. Matt Johnson saw the future. The opening track of 1989’s Mind Bomb predicted an inevitable war, a global conflict between rising Islam and a mobilizing Christianity that has “forgotten the message and worships the creeds.” Few ears were willing to hear. We were all too busy “Hangin’ Tough” with the New Kids and finding ourselves “Lost” in Debbie Gibson’s eyes.
“Kingdom of Rain” is just as scathing, though on a far more personal level. While most duets accentuate the positives of human relationship, this collaboration with the then-barely-known Sinead O’Connor is confessional, brutal and just this side of brilliant. The presence of former Smith’s guitarist Johnny Marr doesn’t hurt either.
“Kingdom of Rain” appears on the 1989 RCA album, Mind Bomb
.
(And with any luck, the site will stay up long enough for at least one or two people to actually hear this. Didn’t we just switch hosts a month or two ago to get away from these damnable downtimes?)
(Spittin’ Rain. That’s what my grandmother would call this morning’s brand of noncommital precipitation.)
Today’s Track: “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today” - Nina Simone. There is no woman in modern music more demanding of your attention than the formidable Nina Simone. Simone was born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in 1933. As early as ten years old, she showed tremendous promise as a pianist and a vocalist. At seventeen, she moved north to Philadelphia. Briefly, she attended the Juliard School of Music, but lack of funds prohibited further study. Her gaze shifted to the the nightclubs of Atlantic City. Her classical training informed her entry into jazz and blues.
This 1970 recording of Randy Newman’s “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today” is (much like Monday’s entry) spare and contemplative. Simone accompanies herself on piano, taking her time with the verses. You have to wonder … what is weighing on her mind? Something personal? Something universal?
(I promise that tomorrow’s offering won’t be nearly as heavy.)
“I Think It’s Going To Rain Today” originally appeared on the 1970 RCA album, Nina Simone and Piano!. I have it on a 1998 compilation (also on RCA) called The Very Best Of Nina Simone, 1967-1972 : Sugar In My Bowl.
