| Gwar-B-Que

Sorry to hear that O.  Get well dude.

Maybe you need some of this shit for your health.

Holy smokes!  That is some harrowing news.  Here's to a speedy recovery.

| I'm not dead yet!

So, yeah. Nearly checked out last week. That's a bit of a weird thing to happen to a guy outta nowhere. Thought I was having some low back/hip pain or something.. started stretching it out and doing some light exercising. Next morning I woke up and my quad/hammy felt sore so I thought maybe I had over done it on the stretching. Gave it another day. Next day, whole leg was swollen up from my toes to my hip, could barely move, walk, whatever without being in stupid bad pain.

Anyway, from there went to the hospital, got transferred to another hospital with advanced equipment and surgeon types. What was scheduled to be a 1.5 hour procedure wound up being slightly over four hours to remove a solid blood clot from my calf up into my abdomen. Best part of that was the necessity that I be awake through the whole surgery. SURPRISE! WIN!

Long story short, I'm not 100% out of the woods but I'm still sucking oxygen and glad to be here to bitch about all of it.

Exciting news J-Man! :) Congratulations on everything being OK! Can't wait to meet the new boy. Our kids will be like a month apart in age so that'll be fun. We'll fly him/her up there for play-dates.

Thanks! I'll throw that name into the mix.

I liked Torment SO much, but I'm a little dubious about this unrelated-quel. I liked it specifically because of it being set in Sigil and if you don't have that, what do you have? (Cue 25 paragraphs of philosophical exposition in the bottom 1/4 of the screen with nothing moving in the rest of it.)

| Huzzah!

Felicitations!  Great news!  I hear Denis Elfington is a great boy's name.

That kinda trumps my news.  New Kickstarter for a spiritual sequel to Planescape Torment.  It's set in the new Monte Cook setting.  Funded in six hours.  Wow.

Torment

Congratulations dude!  

I sent an email to Rude thinking for some reason that he was the one announcing on having a boy.  It was the sequence of emails there, one minute talking about the punk documentary and then the circumcision tips.  Or actually, i'm somehow recollecting reading about Rude having a simultaneous kid as well.

Whatever the case, glad that shits cleared up!   Good for both of ya.  And if they happen to be born on the same day, they can get circumsized together.

Perhaps I will watch that documentary today! I'm home looking after the kid (fever, barfed on me) and hopefully she'll go to sleep soon. I have a Minuteman best of album and there are only a couple of songs that I really like but I'd like to learn more about their rock and roll shows. Cool story bro.

Edit: OK, watched the first couple minutes, and does D. Boon with the shaved head look kinda like enr0n's bro or am I crazy?

In other news, we got the test results back this week, and we've got a boy on the way! Thanks for all the circumcision tips guys, I'll take it all into consideration. Due date is early September! (Don't post anything on FB by the way, not that you guys would, but there are still a few relatives we need to surprise...)

| Jammy Jam' Econo

I've watched that one like 8 times!

Something about old punk rock footage, history, George Hurley's hair, drumming, and muscles, combined with Mike Watt talking (I could listen to him talk forever for some reason) just makes it a great top to bottom flick for me.

Don't particularly care for most of the tunes, but understanding where and when they were coming from, really makes me appreciate the jams (and the band) all that much more.

DO EET

| flixnet

Actually, a "found footage" horror story revolving around online role playing sessions could be kind of hilarious. Quotes on the poster could be like "this generation's Mazes and Monsters!".

Another good Netflix documentary I watched tonight was the one about the Minutemen: We Jam Econo. I never listened to them, but they've got a super interesting history and story and they interview EVERYONE from the old punker rocking scene, even Milo.

Too bad we didn't record that session where you were on the iPad. We could've just used on-screen text to explain that your character was in a different dimension and we were pretending not to notice in case we were each just going crazy? Voila: terror!

In that V/H/S anthology, there's a great segment that takes place all within a series of video chats between a couple. It's like if our online game sessions went wrong!

Elrick, I imagine the area you live in is perfect for some scary found footage action. I'm in!

AV Club turned me on to this pretty funny web series called The Common Cult. "The Common Cult, is like Friends if all of the friends were bonded by their involvement in a Lovecraftian dark religion in addition to relationships that reach back to adolescence."Only watched the first one this morning but it was pretty good.

PS: Chronicle is another good found footage movie. It deals with teens getting super powers. It's pretty interesting. Don't think it's on Netflix but it's been out for rent for awhile as well as on the cable channels.

Damn, you're a found footage scholar! Well, let's make one. Write it!

Continuing on the movie tip, I picked up a few Blu-rays recently that were cheap on Amazon. One was Tree of Life, which is sort of the opposite of a found footage movie, but I'm still looking forward to watching it. Supposedly it's all amazing and so forth? I suppose we'll see.

| Found Feetage

Following r00d's advice, I just watched The Last Exorcism - not bad!  Enough twists to keep it interesting, for sure, and it's mostly not what you'd expect.  I give it a thumbs up!

I'd recommend V/H/S for additional found footage laffs.  It's good stuff, got some bro-ish-ness in parts, but you eventually see how that fits the movie well.  It's clever enough and there are enough twists to keep it interesting.  YellowBrickRoad is also interesting in parts.

I like the idea of found footage because it sort of gets to the root of what makes a movie 'good'- story, IMHMFO.  The production value cost of entry is sort of a non-factor because if the story is there, and there is some thought as to how the piece is put together, AND the acting is believable enough, you have a recipe for entertainment.

I look at found footage as a genre in and of itself. Like any other genre, it has it's standard defining elements (documentary crews that underestimate what they are in for, still shots from a stationary camera that while they show no on-camera action, it captures important audio which then increases the tension, etc.), but it's what you do with those standard storytelling elements that makes the story entertaining.

It's sort of the ultimate in guerrilla 'film'making - anyone, anywhere can do it, and do it well with an extremely limited budget.  Okay, Cloverfield is an exception.

I like to think of them as short stories, no matter the length of the movie.  Typically, there is not enough time for character or plot development, its mostly a short expose and then the strange story unfolds with a likely twist at, or near, the end.  Sci-fi and horror lend themselves to the short story format best, and movies like Event Horizon and games like Doom III use found footage as a great story driver.

Anyway, enough of my rambling.

I haven't seen many found footage movies (I think just Blair Witch and Cloverfield), but they sound so fun to make! I've thought it would be fun to make a short one where it's just footage shot from someone's work PC and over the course of it the office in the background crumbles into a howling void.

We've been watching Breaking Bad season 1 and have been really enjoying it. I caught up to the episode I saw initially that put me off -- there's a really cheesy "fraught with symbolic meaning" Texas Hold 'em game between Walt and his brother-in-law, then later Walt goes and talks to the drug kingpin guy and has his "that's not meth" moment where he throws down the magic crystal in slow-mo and it makes a huge explosion (which doesn't hurt anyone in the room). When did Walt turn into Darkman? Anyway, dumb episode, BUT in the context of the show it's not a deal breker. Kind of hope they get away from the "CHEMISTRY will help me out of this jam!" thing.

I've been getting sore throats constantly over the last month or so and have been tired all the time. I finally went to the doctor and she thinks I've got some kind of chronic, mild sinus infection. So I've been knocking back antibiotics aplenty the last few days -- not feeling noticeably better yet but hopefully things will pick up soon.

A very special Action Team get well soon for fArt! Geez, Enr0n told me about the surgery, that doesn't sound super fun in the least.

| Netflix

A couple of movies I've enjoyed on Netflix this past week were Safety Not Guaranteed and The Last Exorcism! Safety Not Guaranteed is a "quirky" romantic comedy/drama that has a brilliant premise - a team from a magazine go in search of a guy who placed a classified add looking for someone to time travel him. We've all seen the real ad: Wanted: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. You'll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before. It was great!

The other flick, The Last Exorcism, I watched only because the sequel just came out. It's a "found footage/documentary" joint but it's got a great setup that I wasn't expecting and it is SO FUCKING SCARY for big chunks of the time. A sequel to the LAST exorcism seems kinda silly, but you really should see this first one.