[Visit Who Is Joseph Teller?]
Synthesis & Synchronicity 031
[Visit Who Is Joseph Teller?]
Synthesis & Synchronicity 031
|
It may take a while for me to complete this entry, that is, it is being written over several days. This is because I am still having vision problems, and have added some muscle strain to my right hand along the way, so everything has to be done in short spurts rather than prolonged writing sessions.
I am also in the middle of my Yogurt Days.... my eye infection means I'm taking a twice daily 500mg dosage of Amoxicillin, a rather potent anti-biotic, plus eyedrops of Tobradex (a combination of Tobramycin and Dexamethasone) 4+ times a day. The Anti-biotics, as usual, are raising havoc with my intestinal system and killing off E-Coli, making digestion problematic at best, incomplete most of the time. Yogurt on a daily basis helps counteract some of this, since its dumping live cultures into my system to help with the process. And of course my Irritable Bowel Condition is up in arms over the whole thing, meaning a lot of bathroom time.
This, of course, plays havoc with my life, just like the rest. And that means stress, which of course also irritates the IBC.... and well a pattern develops that is rather difficult to ignore or accept easily. And it all interferes with my 'quality of life' on many levels, at a time when I have responsibilities, an impatient muse and waderlust to contend with. Sigh
Comics From The Square:
My eye is getting better, with just a little puffiness and redness, and I'm able to do some reading and tv viewing (though still in limited portions). I actually got to go in to Harvard Square on Monday for an Hour with Kiralee (forgetting of course that it was the Oktoberfest celebration), and went to one of the comic shops that I enjoy because they carry small press and non-mainstream comics.
I like comics, but collecting them is really Cindy's expensive hobby, not mine. My tastes are often quite different from the kind of things she reads, and that means I don't get to read a whole lot on my far more limited budget for personal entertainment. She's big, and always has been, into the superhero comic genre. I on the other hand am more into things like DC's Vertigo Line (Sandman, Books of Magic, occasionally Hellblazer, etc.), some of the Cross-Gen Titles (Like Ruse and Mystic) and more obscure things.
One thing I managed to get this trip (and which I'd not seen available from Cindy's usual Waltham based comic store's availability lists) was a slew of Moonstone titles (About 10 comics in all). Moonstone does primarily B&W titles, Detective and Noir Pulp related, with many titles based on Old Time Radio Shows (like Johnny Dollar, Boston Blackie, Bulldog Drummond, Mysterious Traveler, etc) and a few Horror titles, like one based on Kolchak The Night Stalker (a favorite classic TV show, sort of "Newspaper Columnist Solving The X-Files without the Alien Abduction Stuff"). Since they are lighter (and faster) reading then novels or my usual diet of non-fiction, I'll be reading them thru as my eyesight gets better.
Who knows, maybe Cindy will be curious afetrwards and learn to read and enjoy a wider range of materials then her Superhero stuff and TV-based Novel Fiction.
Good News For The Future : According to the latest Wired Magazine, the BBC has plans to place their entire catalog into Digital Format and make it freely available on the Internet. This will, once available, be the biggest data archive of historic photos, radio broadcasts, news stories and entertainment shows to be available to the public. Up to now, both government and private companies have been horribly blocking all attempts to use the internet to make information and content available for FREE, which was the entire intent of the internet's World Wide Web in the first place. This sounds like a win-win situation for everyone, in the long term, and help advance the internet towards its original concept of a freely available means of communication and information sharing. Now if we could just get our own government to at least share all those publications, reports, and public records on the net they are supposed to. Right now it's about 5% of the content our government produces that's available (and most of that is from Nasa).
Music To Stalk The Fantastic By: As part of my preparations for my upcoming Bureau-13 campaign I made a stop today at Looney Tunes, one of the used music shops in the Cambridge area. We're lucky to have half a dozen or so of these places in our area where one can pick up (or sell off) used CDs, DVDs and even Vinyl. Since we are on a dial-up internet connection the online options for gathering music are not viable for us most of the time (its just too slow on a 56k modem considering the size of MP3s). Anyway, I picked up four new (used) movie soundtrack albums to use as mood music for upcoming games:
Using movie soundtracks and putting together collections of character music for my games is a common thing with me. I like to develop a set of 'theme music' for characters, campaigns and even specific storylines to put myself and my players in the mood. A combination of instrumental pieces and low-volume vocal pieces often work well for this, and it does enhance game play for most folks as well. The only thing is it can be a bit of a time and money sink to do it right, but I do have a fairly large collection of CDs I've accumilated over the years to draw from.
Having eclectic tastes helps. I like Soundtracks from movies, Show Tunes from Broadway Musicals, Jazz, Blues, Pop, Gothic, Easy Listening, Classical, Electronica, Trance Music, Some Folk, New Age, Swing, Big Band, New Age Jazz, Rock (60s, 80s, and some 90s and occasionally a recent release or two), Parody Stuff (like Weird Al), a smattering of Western, a Taste of what is often called "World Music" or "Cultural Music", occasional Older Disco, and some of the odder bands that are classified by some as Rock and by others into their own categories (Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead, Allan Parsons Project). Even some occasional Heavy Metal makes its way onto my shelf. About the only thing I don't care for is a lot of the Hip Hop, 90s Rap, Bluegrass, Grunge and Industrial bands. I'm also not big on Opera, but there are exceptions, even to this.
The important thing when working on a game sountrack is that the music should NOT overload the players ears. It has to work in the background and be subtle, or it will take their attention away from things (or drown out the conversations). It must really set the tone you're aiming at - it's no good to be playing something slow paced when you're dealing with an action scene, and its no good to be playing dark melodic pieces when things are supposed to be upbeat or during a chase scene. If you're playing a historical game, the music should fit the period - Jazz for the 1920s, Swing for the 30s and 40s, Big Band for the 50s, etc. You can use varients (Gothic can work, for example, in a Victorian era game where it fails miserably in a 1930s pulp game). It's also important to fixate on things that really fit the characters involved - and that the lyrics (if any) fit what things are about as well.
Thanks for taking the time to read my ramblings.....
The Frightners
The last, of course, is for a film that only recently came out, and is a promotional soundtrack album copy (I'm not even sure if the public version has been released yet, I haven't seen it at Newbury Comics or other places that sell new albums) that someone at a radio station decided to not to hold onto. This is a bit of a lucky find, but not unusual in the area, as the stations and music stores often get them weeks before a release to promo.The movie itself is on my 'must see' list for the future. I can't justify to myself paying the high price of theatre tickets these days, if a movie is worth it I'll wait for the DVD in 90% of cases as I can BUY the DVD and watch it as many times as I want for the price of 3 movie tickets or 2 tockets plus refreshments in most cases. Even less if I wait and get a used copy.
Orlando
The Mummy Returns
Kill Bill
Legal Notice:
Synthesis & Synchronicity is the meanderings of the mind of Joseph Teller and may not reflect the reality of your own personal universe. Contents are Copyright 2003 by Joseph Teller and anyone who wants to reproduce it in any way or fashion must request permission (although linkage to these is granted to any and all websites, mailing lists and newsgroups, their operators, posters and users if so desired). Unless, of course, otherwise noted within the text of the articles involved. Synthesis & Sychronicity is distributed by Naughty Faerie Productions.
