8 February 2010 | game | 3 comments
listen-up nerdy kittlings, the game kat is back to tell you what owns in the world of console gaming - the first of regular reportage re what tb is frivolously wasting his time on this year
darksiders:
this got the sofa-bound controller-clutching decade off to a very fine start - this game is love - equal parts huge tomb-raider-ish puzzles and rpg psychedelic hacking’n’slashing - everyone says zelda but to me it’s more like onimusha (sorely missed) - nice chunky design - fun bosses (i hate boss battles generally) - some great voice acting and wry dialog (bar the atrocious main character) - an enjoyable lengthy, sometimes demanding 25+ hours gameplay (therefore all the kiddies say it’s a peasy 5 hrs max on “apoc” difficulty)
god of war collection (gow i and ii):
i want the inventor of the cheap lame “quick time events” game mechanic dead! - and a stupid mashing the trigger(!) button thing fairly soon impeded my progress on gow i - didn’t think much of it anyway so retired - gow ii also vastly over-rated by my reckoning but i persevered and by the end quite enjoying (the “puzzles” at least) - so i guess i’ll look forward to gow iii next month
mass effect ii:
i’m a graphics junkie - and this is basically more like an interactive high quality cg film than a game (some of the mini-games in this are inane/mindnumbing!) - it’s unfortunate that anything which does fall short of such hi-def polish (such as problem hair, grass…) stands out jarringly - level design is also bland, precious few outdoor scenes, endless recycled graphics (doors are exactly the same no matter where in the universe you are, no matter which alien civilization constructed them, even on your spaceship - see pic above) - it’s entertaining anyway - i’m halfway thru it…
army of two 40th day:
…and this lined up next - altho the (co-op only) demo sucked (just my bad luck getting lumped with idiots?) and it’s so gay, i picked this up because i like the detailed (uncharted ii style) graphics and can enjoy playing by myself - nothing beats playing with yourself, kittlings
6 February 2010 | alice, tb | 4 comments
6 February 2010 | crime, tb | 4 comments
as far as i can make out this is a new mexican designer brand making t-shirts of infamous t-shirts - this one is at least correctly and clearly attributed as a trevor brown t-shirt design - all mention of a certain immature pop band of yesteryear removed from the shirt, so i doubt they got permission from them? - and i like how the brand name seems to refer to the wearer of their design (”fail!”) - ha ha ha! - website (well, a blogspot)
related post
5 February 2010 | alice, tb | 3 comments
err, very little has happened since my last update two weeks ago - i’ve yet to see a redesign of the cover - will the book get done in time? - all that exists at the moment is a page order for the paintings - and my series of five “arisu k word” paintings have had to be renamed to “alice k word” - apparently, i’m told, because japanese cannot understand their own katakana spellings when written romanised! - ???
long gone john pitched a feature about the book to hi-fructose magazine - but, as i kinda expected, they turned it down - they say they already have a review of camille rose garcia’s illustrated alice book in the coming issue so it “may not be right to have another alice piece” for the magazine - sounds a bit of a crappy excuse - i’d have thought it would have been an ideal editorial opportunity to juxtapoz (!) us together, especially as our approaches are so radically polarised - but whatever - it would have been nice if it happened but i’m not really overly bothered tbh
31 January 2010 | music | 2 comments
banda ionica - passione / matri mia
sicilian brass dirges - beautiful
massive attack - heligoland
their best work for a decade
scarring party - come away from the light
vocals take a little getting used to perhaps - but fab ditties
silver summit - silver summit
a brightly coloured flower in the muddy fields of “new weird” psychedelic folk
- - -
the ambassadors - coptic dub
dubby jazz - works well but falling short of potential for my ears
jaga jazzist - one-armed bandit
can’t make up my mind on it
the knife - tomorrow, in a year
countless thousands of disappointed hipster kids - hahaha, hilarious!
major organ and the adding machine - self-titled
one of the weirder elephant 6 collective releases - overly haphazard?
pianochocolate - [everything]
loungey trance - i like (but know i shouldn’t?)
the resonance association - clarity in darkness
exhilarating else excruciating (i just love the first track really)
small leaks sink ships - until the world is happy
all a bit samey but occasional signs of something(?!)
these new puritans - hidden
refreshingly adventurous
univers zero - clivages
fairly accessible by usual univers zero difficult dark complex abrasive standards
24 January 2010 | other, tb | 31 comments
against my better judgement, and because i’m feeling kinda bored with time to waste, i thought i’d sign up to myspace (again) - an account dedicated to my alice book - unashamed self-promotion / free advertising (which is all anyone uses the site for) - signing up with my real email addresses i got messages telling me they were already in use - what?! - any accounts i’ve had previously on myspace were deleted either by me or unceremoniously by them! - someone else is using my address or it’s an erroneous error message? (i guess the latter typical myspace technical deficiency as a search gives no result for my emails) - no matter, i used a temporary email service (mailinator) instead
yay, tb is back, hahaha! - let’s start editing this profile page - i changed a few things on my basic info (time zone and whatnot), hit the “save changes” button and…
…what?! - i find myself signed out! - and after attempting to log back in…
…find i’ve been deleted from the site already!! - what what what?! - i still had the mailinator tab open with the account/email confirmation letter, so used that to close my inaccessible account (”if you did not create this account, you may cancel it by clicking here in the next 14 days”) - and tried again - but exactly the same thing happened - signed out and apparently deleted the moment i try to edit my profile - screw it! - myspace is useless!
related posts:
flickr hates me
yahoo hates me
livejournal hates me
kinkyspace hates me
myspace hates me
youtube hates me
22 January 2010 | alice, tb | 17 comments
we had a book meeting last night - mainly to decide the cover - their (my publisher’s) design proposal was something very victorian with fussy gothloli (or granny) borders, which i didn’t like - my design proposal a bit more punk with collaged images, which they didn’t like - i think we’ve reached a happy compromise tho - or at least it seems they’ll forget about all the horrid clip art victorian frames and borders
ideas for the (obligatory?) limited edition version also under discussion - endless deliberation regarding a padded eyeball caterpillar(!) - but they have another more simple, workable and cool idea (i’ll reveal later if it goes ahead)
they were previously suggesting tim burton to write an introduction for the book - which i just laughed at - there’s absolutely no way he (or disney) would want any association with my work even if by chance he liked it - i suggested marilyn manson instead as another laughable long-shot - i was lined up to exhibit “rubber doll” at his art gallery back in 2007 - but that project was an abortion of course - so after being messed about with that i figured he owed me one - but predictably i got the standard “he’s too busy” fob-off from his manager - i’d have preferred something less patronizing and more honest like “he’s just not interested in doing it”, but whatever - (kinda funny all the talk back in 2007 was that he was so busy with his alice film to finish the gallery - and now three years later still nothing has been done on that either - another idle abortion / discarded toy) - anyway the blurb honours now offered to someone else more capable
18 January 2010 | bedtime stories, music | 3 comments
a predictable purchase for those knowing my penchant for seventies nostalgia - [a spate of backwards looking blog entries lately…!] - the blurb proclaims: “…will surely become the final word…” - or, more exactly, the final 200,000 words in this two inch thick brick of a book
related post
17 January 2010 | other, tb | 7 comments
15th anniversary of the kobe earthquake
also the trevor/konomi marriage anniversary - a ridiculous three month bureaucratic paper-chase ordeal that was! - january 17 being the day we finally got a bit of paper with agreement from all parties we were officially married
14 January 2010 | other, tb | 20 comments
…and why do you believe it is or isn’t?
it’s the tenth anniversary of when i ran that question on a “baby art survey” - at the time it seemed to be a crucial quandary - not particularly for me or fans of my work but certainly for interviewers - the tiresome hearing of that question was actually what prompted me to make the survey and fire the question back (perhaps to build up an arsenal of retaliation for myself?!)
since that time the question hasn’t arisen so much - if at all? - until today a letter from a self-confessed feminist reopened the rusty can of dead worms - she wants to write about my art for her woman’s studies class, thinking it would be a worthwhile challenge to articulate her pro-tb thoughts within an academically feminist context (altho i think doubtful it’d get her good marks?!) - she imagined i receive a lot of hate mail from feminists but in fact i can’t recall ever being directly attacked by a feminist - is that strange? (guess i’m not trying hard enough to offend them? - haha!)
no point to this post - mere twittering
