The Quiltablanca

So what is nostalgia? When I think of nostalgia, I get instantly transported to an era where I was younger. Things were lighter. The air wasn’t so heavy and laden with memories. Many businesses now knocked down were flourishing with people and color. So what happens? Why does this change as time goes on?

One thing is usually growth, new kids, new places being built for those kids, and the old beginning to decay. But without the reflection of this decay, the coming generations seem to be inherently robbed of nostalgia, making that future seem hollow. What people forget to realize is the past is the dust that soots. We all begin to hate to dust, but like it or not, if we don’t do something significant here, that’s what we are likely to become.

When you ask these questions it is usually in hindsight, too late. When you don’t think of it, it just happens, like it should. But what happens when you get old enough to consider the coincidence and not just be a part of it?

This is the part of the story that isn’t so easy. The people who you didn’t know were there when they weren’t, and the people you wished were there when you needed them. And all the worst; those you missed the time to spend with them, because you didn’t know it would be cut short.

Why is it also those who along the way told us to slow down, and take the moment in rather than be it, never seem to last as well. And those who really cared, seemed to be ghosts, consumed by the unfinished business tethering them to this reality. And then when you realize how and when those things happen, and why they happen to good people, not bad, it becomes easier to move on from nostalgia rather than blaming yourself for the inevitable departure of it.

So comes the part of responsibility. How much are we responsible for the nostalgia, when we were hardly aware at the moment we were making just that. And it’s constantly happening whether we try to stop it or not, like a river flowing or a wave rolling. Do we blame ourselves for earth itself? No because that’s insanity. We are not gods. If we were nostalgia would be a commodity, and not a lingering pain.

It can be a decade of blaming yourself for something you were never there for. Just because that’s what kept that thing going. Was more of your time, more of your patience, and when it becomes your care, it itself stops caring for you. And when you stop, it becomes the monster it always threatened to be.

This is where ego becomes the Hyde, and at a point, you find it necessary to shed an old skin that no longer has a relevant purpose. You as a person are fundamentally reminded by nostalgia, what it’s like to be a kid, why it’s important in old age, and why it’s essential to having fun.

So what happens to that part of yourself you discarded? Does it become another person altogether? Or do you vanish or ‘split’ it yourself considering its purpose is entirely, at this point, useless. I’ve reached a point where I realized, if it’s no longer really you, who cares? If I don’t, why should you, more or less.

There is many choices to what nostalgia can do for you. It can overall be a nightmare, or also a dream of the past that leads into a whole new lifetime. It depends on how you look at it, it depends on also where you start and end,

Good luck

To start, I watched the beginning installment of Stranger Things 5 and was disappointed. It reminded me of choosing a McDonald’s made cheeseburger over a fancy restaurants, and trying to vainly convince yourself that the sub par cheeseburger is of quality.

‘Crap is crap’

Ive been watching Stranger Things since the beginning. I was immersed in the start; watching the kids explore around on bikes, trying to guess the mystery that’s unfolding around their carapace. These were all fun, innocent things, well before you have a forced Robin Romance (aka The Big Chill). Like we get it Robin you like Molly Ringwald. Why is this important at all?

Jeff Goldblum has yet to have a cameo, yet in this current direction it would seem inevitable. Just everything about it is becoming as cliche as possible, and actually makes the real 80’s look kind of cool in contrast (which Fanny packs, discontinued products and unnecessary censorship is not all that cool either). I find it romanticizes things it doesn’t quite understand, then pens the audience for not being interested in something that well is…. Boring.

What Stranger Things reminds me of is one of those really long games of Monopoly where by the time it reaches a dwindling down, you are all so tired of rolling that half of the party is sleeping and doesn’t even care how and/or if it ends. This is really the feels in Season 5. I think another issue is realistically some of the older kids would be moving on to college, not all moving into the Wheeler house to reenact the video for ‘Our House’ in the middle of the street… blah blah blah.

This season did not suffer from Winona Rider’s earlier overacting, actually her and hop did some of the best performances, and legitimately tried to hold a sinking ship together. So bravo.

The show’s pacing has been off since Eleven came after the old Hawkins scientist. It keeps devolving the plotline more and more to make it seem like everyone is Hawkins is on the same side. I personally don’t believe that Hop cares for Eleven strictly out of what he claimed. This is going out there, but there was reference to Hop being complacent with Hawkins in the beginning, meaning his whole trust thing with eleven is likely surveillance for them. It also means he played friend, but was working for whoever is weaponizing the upside down. It also means that the upside down is just to a degree, another Hawkin’s construct to greater control the kid’s supposed abilities.

It’s a pretty ending it’s heading towards, likely not the ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’ type wrap up. I think they did this not for consistency but marketing, when you are writing about supposedly something linked with MK Ultra, and you claim to be sympathizing, your last concern should be marketing. But again, who’s listening here?

The most glaring issue of the season, is that these kids aren’t kids anymore. Will is somehow evolving into Eleven, that Black haired kid got super tall out of nowhere, and they seem to want to send Caleb to the upside down core, which is just another, why would you do that given everything that happened before?

The whole Holly arc is awful as well. It’s as if the show has failed the audience who grew with it, so now they are going to insert some random kid in the middle of hell, and somehow that’s going to make you empathize with it. The red haired chick getting a brutality, was supposed to save the plot line from her bullshit. Also nowhere in the world has any single person caused such substantial damage to Kate Bush’s career. I mean the first couple of references were an interesting element, but at a point it becomes beyond redundant. Poor Kate Bush.

The show in Lamen’s got stupid, it to a degree jumped like its fifteenth Demogorgon shark. The pain looks like it’s envisioned by Ai. Everything is so peak, it’s fucking fake. Now I’m not saying I believed it, but I enjoyed being sold on the fantasy of it. The whole MK Ultra linking seems a little pretentious if you ask me, and it still seems murky as in real life, are the creators of this show trying to help those victims of government led psychic experiences, or lead them right back to it?

Personally I was trying to envision a ‘perfect’ ending giving the disjointed state of the show. And I think a ‘perfect’ ending would be them turning on the pilot episode for ‘Freaks & Geeks’ and the cast being like, what is this? Then shutting it off. And the show ends there.

That would be gold.

What would be crap?

With some time taken to digest the last parts of the season, I still have retained my ambivalently confused view of Stranger Things 5. Having just watched part 1 of the finale, I can safely say that most of what I said before, still holds true. This last season is waxing nostalgia like no other, and there is so much over acting it makes me want to puke. The only character I still pull for is Henderson and they are basically beating him to death this season for no apparent reason.

Now I get that it’s inspired by true events and that it is all emotional and all that, but I think it’s time someone clarified that this nearly unsensical show does great, when it accepts that. Massive time frame confusion has also occurred, as with part 1’s finale Will unveils for really no apparent reason that he is attracted to men and it does nothing to help the plotline, and in terms of the time place it’s occurring, a meta-like gender reveal serves like nothing at all to the primary situation occurring in the show. These are actors, selling you with their bullshit. So point is I feel that was just a furthering of the point that seasons 3-5 were catered towards an audience who did not participate in seasons 1-2.

I get it demogorgons look like walking buttholes. Ok. Now can we get over that. Everyone mature, just a little please (unless you have never seen what’s inbetween your legs). I also swear to god that if Vecna gets killed by Derek that this show’s last season is officially being written by a two year old. Occurring again is the drama of Holly, who I might note is voice overdubbed by a way older actress. And I find very little weight in it. The actress herself is fine. I just feel the final conflict of the group could have been something better and/or more substantial than the plight of Holly Wheeler. Also the conclusion is turning out almost the same as Stephen King’s ‘It’ with many notable rip offs, or nods, I’m not sure to other 80’s and 90’s series. But whereas the beginning was a flowing story with dynamic characters, this is more like an Ai curated greatest hits with very little you haven’t seen before. Aside from that you have visible melodrama from some of the runners, probably because they have to consider what comes next. I don’t feel stranger Things could continue into the characters even perceived adulthood. If it is already cliche, that would be beyond painful for the viewers (ala evil Dick, 3rd rock from the sun season 2).

Whether this could work for the show or not depends on the amount of masochism the willing audience infers to. I plan on watching it through more akin to how I watched the walking dead; not because I am invested in the story anymore really, but I just wanted to say I saw how it ended.

Overall even if the end sucks, and in my opinion, all ends suck, but that doesn’t mean they SHOULD. So I partway expected it but, so much buildup to a cop-out type conclusion, just makes the series seem childish at best, they should of never referenced the real life inspirations, if all they were going to do was project Blue Book them. So my feelings on Stranger Things 5;

Acting is way overdone. Even the older crew seems fed up with it

The storyline is hitting major hang-ups and is taking major references from Hideo Kojima and Stephen King

The unnecessary love arcs are stupid

The show should have retained focus on the conflict in the final season. Would have been better if it solely followed Eleven’s story likely.

I kind of just wanted it to end. For the sake of my memories when it was good. Thus I don’t really care how it ends, but I will as you are reading, critique it for my own sense of fun and enjoyment.

If you haven’t go watch ‘Firestarter’ which was basically Stranger Things in the 80’s. Otherwise I can’t say much good for the end of Stranger Things. I really think the series started to lose itself at the whole ‘Starcourt’ arc. It could have bridged somewhere way cooler, but instead we gotta watch The Big Chill 3. Ahem

Now I held off on the last part, until I well umm actually watched the last part. Though the previous theme has been the harshest critique I could have possible, I would like to say that the work put into the overall show, regardless of the ending, is a bit sobering. Realistically it’s not just a series but ten years of real people’s lives, and watching them grow. I think my harshness is in hope there’s reason for critique, but this is the harshest critique, because it’s really the end. Yet I still want to do my job, but even if I see something different, this is the end the creator’s chose for their work. So all in all this last explanation, is that regardless of my personal preference, I can still respect their creative direction. Maybe my harshness is actually that I don’t want to see the show end, being one who finds difficulty in obsession and care, I have tended to hate the things I care about the most in a way to try to keep them alive. It’s as if the care itself is some baneful act, so I avert from comfort in fear it will only be monetary. I also tend to feel if I avoid it, it’ll somehow avoid its conclusion, which in regards to inevitably, avoidance might actually make the end quicker rather than prolong it.

So in all, I appreciated the time I spent watching the show. Yes some things wrapped up wrong, yes it was more built for kids. But in the end you get a major Freaks & Geeks feeling. Just the awfulness of the suburbs with no conflict or nostalgia, a place devoid of all you just saw. It feels like getting older and seeing the phantoms of your memories, rather than the people you actually shared them with. It’s accepting that every great moment in your life is a loop. The Great David Lynch put it this way. One day he woke up and he was Gordon Cole 30 years younger. Stuck in that same day shooting the scene with David Bowie. Just a constant loop. And he can feel it when he thinks of it, meditates, dreams of it. That scene, the experience he had shooting it was everlasting. I hope the best to the Stranger Things crew, overall there isn’t really a good ending to a good thing

I want to start this blog by saying, I contemplated writing this whatsoever. Usually this would be a formidable review with pictures and a general effort inserted into the overall blog accommodating such a thing. Whether that will be such a thing is something only time and/or effort will tell.

I have fond memories of my years with the Ninja Gaiden series, playing since my first Ninja Gaiden (Xbox 1st gen and/or Ninja Gaiden 1). The original Ninja Gaiden played akin to a mix of Strider and hack n’ slash games/DMC. There was even elements of Zelda with exploration and puzzles. Much of 4 omits this in a brutal way. The new main character, Yakumo, plays more like an anti-Ryu. His katanas are short, he relies less on power moves, and is definitely more Robin than Batman. For me, I dreaded playing as him. He was clunky, and old the old combos and mannerisms I learned in previous Ninja Gaiden games worked against me, making me feel like the game was essentially punishing me for playing Ninja Gaiden like Ninja Gaiden. Gone are the intricately detailed environments, and linear almost SNES direct conversion segments are inserted. The on rail’s moments feel like thrown out segments of Sonic frontiers thrown into Ninja Gaiden. The Surf board thing is even more pointless, and those segments again feel more tedium than anything else. I found myself seriously contemplating if they procedurally generated a Ninja Gaiden and just called a day. I also played through the horror that was Razor’s Edge and few other Ninja Gaiden spin-offs. That being said if you played MG:R than you’ll catch my drift. All of Ninja Gaiden 4 feels and plays, like a MG:R mod. MG:R also being another Platinum made game is no coincidence. The Ryu segment is much shorter than Yakumo’s, and it mainly made me realize why the swan song of Ninja Gaiden 1 will likely never happen again. I say this because the new generation of gaming with all its integrated bells and whistles, is facilitating an actually weaker form of development, more safe and specialized than what preceded it. As seen in music and movies and more, as the visceral industry breaks down, and it becomes more about the Ai than the audience or story, a certain cohesion is innately lost. And in the case of Ninja Gaiden, even the story could become its own anti-hero. This ambiguous approach looks good on paper, but plays like shit.

Subsequently I found myself heavily regretting my purchase of Ninja Gaiden. The more I tried to dig for the experience I got from the first game, the further it got, until it almost really didn’t make any cognitive sense anymore. It wasn’t difficult as much as it was unfair, and where it wasn’t unfair it was lacking. The treasure chests aren’t even hidden and generally are put to the right or left of where you commonly sprint off at the beginning of the level. It isn’t just poor level design, it’s uninspired and hollow. The people doing the voiceovers even sound like they were tired of the game itself.

The enemies themselves were not varied, and in comparison to other Ninja Gaiden’s had actually much less variation in the types of enemies you fight. Gone are the elemental necessities and instead you have to spastically guess which of 4-5 weapons could be the weakness. I will admit since Ninja Gaiden 1, each title has gotten further and further from its source content. Indicating either the original team forgot how they made it, or is just essentially tired of it, and a victim of avoiding replicating elements of their own success, forcing them into a spin-off of themselves (ironic right?)

Being in game testing and research for now 20 years, I’ve seen a lot. I didn’t expect this project to be anything. If it was I would have tested it through. If it was shit, I would beat it, and do a write-up like you are reading now. You might tell by my tone that I am at somewhat of an endpoint, and if you can then you are right (at this point I’m only working on ongoing video game projects).

Doing the Series X conversion was something I was warned about, particularly getting into the field of 4K and I must say to the person who warned me, you were 100% right about your fears of future fidelities becoming a future reality. Ai has reached a point where it’s trying to replace everyone, and games are a perfect example of where it is killing itself. In almost every game team that was cut down to nearly 1 person in the past 30 years you have a degradation of the team element. Like splitting up band’s and forcing solo projects. You tend to then lose the happiness and communion within the group that existed before. And you find that the Ai generated titles don’t sell as well, even with the ‘better’ technology, some thing keeps a person coming back to the source. When it comes down to people too, we are all to a degree nasty, or weird. Only some kind of robot, is so eerily clean that it never stinks, or deals with someone’s stink. We like filth sometimes just as we like to be clean, and that’s alright.

We’re human here

Overall Ninja Gaiden 4 is a very poor entry to the Ninja Gaiden Series. It looks pretty, and plays alright. But that’s about it. I was not heavily impressed or invested into any element or character of it, even Ryu just feels like a placeholder in it. Yakumo’s costume looks super stupid as well. Besides that, there’s some chick with huge boobs and some Crow/Raven dude who stalks you constantly but is never explained. So many elements just don’t add up, and feel forced together. The grading system is also oddly brutal and lenient at times, and mostly kills the player’s immersion in the game (as far as I know the rewards for S ranks is the same as any other; so it just basically insults your gameplay).

You know early in the morning, you want to be sleeping, right? (That is if you’re like any normal breathing human being with a decent conscience) well there’s this thing, when you’ve been woken up rudely, and/or abruptly and it’s this annoying word called ‘woke’. I’ve come here today after a like 6 month writing hiatus to write to you about my absolute hatred of the word ‘woke’. To travel to the birth of ‘woke’ culture let’s travel to a different time, where Paris Hilton and Nicole Richy would host a show about two young (scantily clad) LA-type women who try to make a life in the country. By the end of it, I still don’t think they could effectively farm a crop besides fertilizer. Now multiply this times like a thousand, make it a made-up text book in schools, and all of a sudden you have thousands of woke students. Saying things like ‘that’s hot’ and wearing mini skirts, this is the nightmare that is 2025, and now that generation is at ‘marry’ing age. Of this year I have had fewer social events attended than in any point in my life. I have had financial access, and transportation, yet I don’t want to take part in relevant culture. It seems to me this relevant culture like these Paris Hilton clones have completely lost sight of what put them there in the first place. They become so hell bent on proving their clone-led existence that they force normal people to like their sub-standard movies and TV, and do not understand how in the slightest it might be nauseating to an outside crowd besides themselves. Subsequently viable markets get flooded with clone-led and funded productions, and if you as a consumer don’t boycott it, you are in a sense endorsing it. Do you want to see someone else’s take on your sense of entertainment? Why? How is that entertaining in the slightest…. Let’s make a story here. So you’ve got two of these new millennials and they are broke than broke can be (can you sense the woke rhyme coming?) this woke culture says well why doesn’t Paris just marry Nicole, then make her family pay for it. Well that just won’t fly with this made-up ‘relevant’ family. So Paris finds a nice guy who needs citizenship. And all of a sudden you have a family paying into some random guy’s citizenship, and Nicole Richy wins too.

Who loses?

Well traditional family values. The family that invests in a marriage rooted on cheating, they say has already cheated itself. Am I writing against an illegal immigrant marrying an American woman, No! What I am writing against is falsifying a marriage to steal assets. And does this happen in our ‘relevant’ perfect culture. You betcha.

Look at divorce rates at any times as in the statistics, and you begin to see two seperate Americas in the same frickin’ spot. Wars famines racism, etc. are all tools I believe to turn us against eachother, so we more or less rely on this invisible third party, when we should be relying on eachother. And why did this generation not learn by their parent’s divorces to not rush in a hasty marriage that will have an even hastier break-up? Being the child of two people who are ‘divorced’, I saw what it can do person firsthand; the confusion it creates for a child to be caught in between two bitter and warring parents. It was the last thing I ever personally, wanted to become.

The older I’ve gotten too, I’ve realized love is a confusing thing, and your own confusion about love can cause horrible rifts with those care about. So as a person I have just abstained from love, took a major blow from a small relationship, and I find it very hard to meet people of the opposite sex today. Thus that confusion. You don’t entirely want to be alone, but you don’t want to be loveless. As a person growing up with traditional values imposed upon me, things outside of conventual heterosexual love were referred to as and are, as taboo. It seems sometimes it’s misinterpreted as a type of autism almost, to be gay. But there is and should be a firm determiner between being autistic, and being gay, or bi curious, just saying it makes me angry at the typed sentence.

So why oh why in a culture driven by cameras and technology and supposedly people, do we have such intolerant disgusting views penetrating sources like CNN and Fox and even liberal media as well? I’m convinced somewhere along the lines, that this ‘that’s hot’ generation took over. Ten years ago it was a joke, but they are really doing it now, starting with making Cracker Barrel’s institution White using the guise of racism as a reasoning for the brand’s envisioning. Ever wonder who’s that guy who they hire who does that rebranding? And how much you want to bet he doesn’t like Hair Metal. So I’m going to conclude about talking about Dokken. 80’s hair metal at its finest. Do yourself a favor and close my blog, go look them up and rock the fuck out.

This post is mandatory. What that means is there is nothing about it that is unnecessary, besides having to hear these goddamn songs again

Okay. This one. It takes you to 90’s hell right away and does it with absolutely no stops when you are about to shit your pants. It’s awful. The beginning is beyond pretentious, and the guy looks about to be any random bro you could meet at a knockoff LA party in Portland with only O’douls on tap. The chorus is awful, and I doubt he had any ability to do that atrocious vocal melody live. And the way he says Rock-a-by is more like the sound of a creepy old drunken man saying weird things to you when you want to walk alone in the city.

I only remember this song at horrible pits of my life I would likely otherwise not remember. Like traffic clogs on 290, or when your sewer backloads shit into your living space (for one entertaining reason or another) this one stinks. It gets in the carpet, it spills shit, and most people with a decently sane mind won’t play it, because it maybe contains the devil. Said to have inspired the hit biopic ‘The Ring’

So this one speaks for itself, and some asshole named Jason Waterfalls. If I ever met him, I’d likely kick him in the face for inspiring this song

Despite this song being about slicing grilled cheeses, there isn’t much to it. I confuse Papa Roach with Uncle Cracker often. I think they’re related, we all have bi-eclipse based grilled cheese parties where we pretend Gwen Stefani is our lost daughter, then I drown in invisible water………

Ahhhhh this one…… I think you might know what’s coming next by this theme. But yea. ‘If it makes you happy’ is an earworm of a dune-sized proportion. Shooting out invisible rainbow crows, you’d think you were stuck in a Don Juan flick. But no, baby, you’re just listening to Sheryl Crow

Nooooo. I’m convinced I’m cursing myself. I wanted to stop this post two songs ago. But I knew there was just more shitty songs out there, and after that last one, I could help but highlight this particular Sheryl Crow hit, which you’ve likely heard in some strange purgatory where they likely took your favorite pizza recipes (and all of your lost loves)

Despite this being the primary inspiration behind Oppenheimer building the atomic bomb (he heard this in a future vision after being too close to an aftershock, and it compelled him to finish the bomb, so he could destroy this song before it ever existed). Needless to say he failed, and instead they made a movie about his love-life. Subsequently he builds Highway oasises to this day, and is a master at hiding S’barros.

Okay so who the fuck is this guy. Why does he say he’s my Uncle, and I would never let this creep tuck me in at night. I definitely want to leave and I can guarantee that I’ll leave a mannequin and name it Steve

This is another one. What is this song about…. Roosters? Some asshole who wakes up early excessively, to sing indecipherably about some fucking rooster. I don’t know if I feel worse for the bands or the truckers who likely brought this hit to stardom. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen someone proudly adorn the license plate ‘But Man’ and this was likely blasting out of their car’s orifaces. You should be ashamed of yourself

So it’s Halloween time again, and I’ve found another creeper feature. This time it’s Nine-Inch Nail’s ‘Ghosts’. I originally heard about this album around 2009 but did not want to check it out at that time, it took me about thirteen years to coincidentally see it again, and I decided to find out what it was all about.

I will start with saying that my knowledge of Nine-Inch Nails is fairly limited. This is the only full Trent album I have in my library (otherwise is various singles from David Lynch productions.)

Well this album is put simply, creepy. It is at its core a soundtrack for fall, and the setting in of leaves. It highlights the omniscience of a coming death, which renews spring through usually, a frozen winter. Many different times seem to single a sense of alarm (sirens, deep bass tones, strangers flutes/horns) it truly sounds like a soundtrack taken from a dreamscape, rather than a major 90’s electro metal band. You would not think this album came from Nine-Inch Nails simply put.

Driving to Wisconsin was the way I was introduced to this album, and it fit the drive perfectly. At many moments the music sounds more like something from the score of a Lynch flick than anything else, the album is instrumental and it can go from something you’d sleep to, to something that would clearly wake you up in a heartbeat. Some might call this pacing schizophrenic, but when you look it as a whole, it’s quickly realized it is fundamental to understanding the album as an experience, not a single song in any way.

This makes this album highly atypical of its time, and in some lights it’s like modern Beethoven. I say this because it holds back in no way, and charges forward blindly. It is an angry bull, and it’s set on goring someone before it’s over. In this way Ghosts shows its true colors, and how behind every ghost is a horrible horrible death (after all they wouldn’t be ghosts without that, would they?)

I wouldn’t go as far as to call it Avant-Garde though I would assume it’s falsely labeled as so. In a way it’s like classical horror music. It leaves you hanging, provides resolve where it’s not needed, and drops it off where you would not usually expect it.

Driving and listening to it was an ethereal experience. I imagined the composer was not Trent, but some shadow in my studio. And now that I was leaving, it was having at this beautiful sounding album all in an empty space; an album wrote by and for nothing. If that didn’t define this album, I don’t know what will, honestly.

If Lost Highway 2 ever has a reason to exist (it doesn’t don’t worry) it will likely be scored with this music. Something about the music, is highly alike to driving at night on a country highway. It feels almost extra-terrestrial, as if the music itself is gliding above, looking down on you. This is something that seems to be hard to find in modern media, and in all honesty, I think it’s a damn shame.

David Bowie wrote highly of Nine-Inch Nails, and I couldn’t quite understood why, until I truly gave this album a chance. The versatility in this album, shows harmonic capacities which go far out of the accepted pop spectrum. It sounds more like a dissected ‘Prisoners’ score than an album at points, and that in my opinion works much in its favor.

For ten bucks, you’ll get around 34 2 minute tracks, if you decide to take the dive. I’d suggest doing so, but plan a nice drive for the experience

So funny how getting older,

My fears are the same as when I was younger.

That one day you wake up in a hotel you’ve always known,

But somehow you feel you’ve left the room

And everyone else has left without you there.

Some voice keeps telling you not to care,

It’s just a service and they’re over there.

But am I getting older or are they getting bolder?

And sitting in a haunted room,

I can’t help but wonder if I too,

Was never there at all.

Like the voices and footsteps passing out in the hall

Just something forgotten, or never known at all.

Face down on a bathroom floor, my family needed me nevermore.

So I fear that room,

So I fear that time.

I worry if I sleep there

I’ll wake up and even you, the only one who came with me,

I might not find.

All alone in a strange place,

With a mystical lake not too far away.

It sounds simple,

But we are all strangers in someone else’s dream,

It’s just that few stay long enough,

To find they were never there at all

So is it a surprise I saw you still there,

Passing in the hall again with a vacant stare.

Lost, like me, they had a part of you there.

But when I got the nerve to leave,

You still stayed

And now apart of you is always stuck in some broken memory.

To be a vacation home,

Yep you guessed it. Chiliad Alien UFO hunting’ time and I have a doozy of data for you hunters out there. This data in my opinion puts this myth to a viable close. Disappointed as I am, I can provide the evidence that there is definitely no interior to Chiliad in GTAV story mode, nor cable car elevator, nor anything in cable car station, also there is nothing beneath Zancudo, and the observatory is also an interiorless hollow shell. Maze bank has apparently an interior, but that as most story mode content has firm unglitchable walls, which doesn’t mean there is anything in there (sorry). To start there is only so many wall breaking points in game, my search so far has found around 4.

One at LS Hospital, one near Maze in an Aztec building, one near the observatory at Eclipse towers and one at the Templar hotel. My advice is to look for an overhang, like an invisible garage roof inside, when super jumping, or buzzard breaking through the roof, aim for that ledge, and if you land, then switch to a bird (eclipse is the only exception here, its entrance can be breached pretty easily by a pre-flying bird. You then dive straight down. And attempt to get as low as possible, the best and safest direction is towards the observatory. You have to be mindful of coded ground as it will insta-kill a bird.

About the weirdest thing I saw was the odd power lines, they weren’t linked to a specific source and webbed out all under Los Santos. They appeared to be invisible and could be passed through. Below is a picture

Other anomalies noted were glowing rail tunnels. I noticed the three main Chiliad tunnels in their retrospective (coded) spots.

(Below Grapeseed, around the desert)

To get to Chiliad I took both Zancudo’s route and Grapeseed. Grapeseed is much less nervy as there is no river/waterwall to pass through so long as you edge around Paleto Bay.

Here is some pics from my Zancudo pass-under

So that says it, right under the elevator. And nothing. 3 am thunderstorm etc. no shaft no indicator of any sort of underground room, in fact you can fly quite safely all over. And nothing in hangars but hollow space

So long story short. There is nothing hidden under GTAV, unless it’s activated by pre-script that’s that so to speak. The only two things that will never be able to be proven are what the abduction beam above is (obviously the elevator is just a place to hide). The next is sandy shores, yet nothing was under the hippy camp either.

Here is a picture of the Chiliad tunnels

Here is the cable car from below

So there you have it

Here’s the observatory as well

These were done again through natural glitching via director’s mode. No mods, no cheats sampled from a series X which had 100% completion with extra gigs and even Wild Animal unlocked

I think that this can finally close the Chiliad hunt. Obviously the dev who started this likely left or was requited from the company, however they did still make a few contributions to online. Maybe the ultimate tie together will occur when GTA 6 is announced, because the GTA 5 servers will likely close then unless fan managed. And whatever these incomplete portions are will likely bring Player’s online accomplishments (or at least vehicles and extra guns) into single player. My guess is that’s the final Micheal DLC. This concludes my hunt

My whole life I’ve had to wonder, what is my favorite kind of music? Not being much of an Autumn guy, nor Winter, nor necessarily Summer, Spring or Fall, I find myself not preferring a season to my breed of music, rather a weather. Fleetwood Mac is a perfect example of ‘rainy day music’ or take early Interpol, or even Led Zeppelin (i.e. The Rain Song) and you catch my drift.

In my opinion ‘rainy day music’ is the echelon of music, the creme de la creme of what you want as a recording artist. Why? Because it sells. It’s not loud nor quiet, it’s not in your face, and you still want it. You might even turn it up. It’s the loose descendants of old Rhodes and Wurlitzer tones, meshing with a feeling of uncertainty. Usually these songs are more about break-ups than get togethers, but something about the emptiness leaves you whole inside, even on a grey, cold rainy day.

Elliot Smith is rainy day music, many different Dylan tracks, the kind of music that seems to fall with the rain around you. Radiohead in general is great storm music. Add in a vinyl hiss meshing with the static outside and you get a strange sonic symphony, that sometimes digital can’t capture.

Women. You know, you want to go somewhere, and they have like two thousand things they discovered about their hair that is keeping you from hitting the road.

They are never quite ready, and especially when you need them to be. Being in a relationship, especially long-term with a woman requires steadfast tolerance of this usually daily impedance.

For myself, telling if I’m ready, is rarely a bathroom orientated situation. Just last night I twiddled around for 5-6 hours on a bass track, that when I finally picked up the bass to track, I put it down. Why? Because I was tired, and you could feel it in the track I was doing. Within seconds of monitoring, it was more than apparent. I did not want that. Bass back in holster, back in bed until I could stop being a poo-na-nee.

What baffles me, is some days under the same circumstances and attitude, that same session can last 10-20 hours. It’s as if some part of the environment tells you ‘hey, you’re ready now’ and it just happens. Like magic. The same thing happens in adverse, like last night with me. My personal and physical issues were bleeding into the track, and something about the room told me to take a break and start it up tommorow.

Was I ready last night? No

Sometimes you can go weeks without being ‘ready’ and for a musician to experience this, is like a woman never getting her bathroom time before leaving the house. You feel like you forgot your make-up, your hair is all over, you likely stink, and it feels like everyone is going to notice. Until you get that melody or message out, it eats and eats at you why you can afford to do anything else. It becomes an obsession. And when it’s unattainable, it becomes a nightmare.

Judging whether a mix is ‘ready’ or not, I usually compare it with others in an alike genre or tonal composition. Judging on these merits, and usually my cheapest pair of headphones, I can decipher the quality by contrasting it. Much of my editing career, in movies and music, was mostly self-taught. I found in later years, I was adopting my photography methods into other pursuits. Using methods that are more akin to producing photos than music. This is because my goal was not entirely music, but a soundscape.

What is a soundscape? Well take a panoramic photo, it gets a wide shot of an overall area condensed in a way that visually encapsulates the 180-360 degree movement used to take the photo. A soundscape, conceptually is like taking the whole thing, maximizing it, then condensing the outside frills to make what is a panoramic mix.

I think this approach is also important, considering revision and remastering nowadays, the original should be as pure and maximized as possible.

So before I judge if something or someone is ‘ready’. I first try to feel if what they are doing makes sense, and to that effect in the world around them. I think many people jump right into deep water, not even thinking about the concept of preparation or organization. These people drive me nuts in the studio. I’m not exact in everything I do, but I don’t just believe in being a complete ass to every sense of order, so I do have processes (at the same time when I lift weights, I never decide what machine I’m using before, I just walk in there).

So this post is dedicated to.... doors. I want to highlight their particular function in video gaming, and how judging a door’s particular coding can determine the function of a whole game.

So let’s go back to Goldeneye. Most of the doors that aren’t password locked open really quick, like space-ship doors. Subsequently there isn’t much play-time behind locked doors (except in a few levels). You are rushing from room to room looking for the next conflict. There is mines and traps in terms of maybe gating someone, but with no peek or cover feature, there isn’t much more than rush n’ clear.

Halo is another game guilty of this, and you notice the games heavier in quicker default doors, tend to have less decision making in their combat. Less sniping, less space, more rushing and spraying over and over again (usually enticing campers).

Titanfall is another one with very little in the way of locked doors. I find it ironic that in the future they can have robots as tall as buildings, but not doors that lock.

Battlefield (modern) is an interesting in-between. Featuring destructible environments, it allows players to attempt to hold up places, but since most emphasis is on objective orientated gameplay, it can be easy to form down and not find anyone interested enough to spring your traps.... which is boring.

Rainbow Six first pioneered this type of gameplay in Black Arrow. Now painfully outdated, it’s hard to see how it was the turning point of duck and cover/room siege gameplay, but it was. It was the first of its kind.

Then you have the PUBG types which I’m sorry to say it, but your game is nothing more than Counter-Strike on steroids without a money system. (If payday didn’t exist we’d still have new Counter-Strikes) PUBG like Counter Strike featured a team elimination system of one-life, sometimes objective based gameplay before development split IP into separate game. The door system in PUBG works like Battlefield, doors can be shut or opened, and parts of doors can be destroyed allowing attackers to breach without fully opening doors.

Bad Company 2 was the first Battlefield to feature fully destructible, functioning environments. Still a hallmark for that reason, it set a gold standard for what was expected of a fully destructible environment; the whole thing can be leveled.

Before this you had the Red Faction games, going back to Nintendo 64. This game series, though ugly now, pioneered destructible environments as well as doors.

Much of the duck n’ cover system likely started when you had House of The Dead games and Time Crisis in arcades. Though they were on-rails, it’s easy to see how open-world integration of these systems were likely inspired by on-rails shooters. (Some other notables, Alien, and Jurassic Park)

Doors seem to be a definitive factor in determining the gameplay that occurs. It can be a more immersive feature for some games and for others it can detract from the overall gameplay.

So to close, before you make a buying decision on a game, check it like you would a house. If the doors are no good, chances are you won’t enjoy your time there (Sorry, Jim)

I left home today;

That old rent finally priced me and sent me away

I wonder about those years that went away,

Countless dinners and words shared,

All going away.

The warmth of summer dying with my youth today,

As I sit on the corner,

Clouds and storms gather.

A futile god dances above,

Kicking the clouds into puffs of fog

Bursting through buildings.

Each movement has its own wind,

Scattering leaves on a vacant street below.

A vagabond I might be,

Depending on some force I can’t see.

Sent with little to eat,

Little to drink,

And hardly a person to see.

The giants above pay no attention to people like me below,

Dotting streets to and fro.

Continuing to push fog,

Dancing in ecstasy.

As the night grows old,

It’s movements push an air so cold.

Blowing my way, until I can take it no more.

I freeze from the inside out and all that’s left

Is a funny flame

Flickering, and strong.

Something that was there all along,

It couldn’t of been born,

Only lit as the night goes on

I tend to follow it,

Forgetting the person once brought by it

And becoming a flame,

This is not much an expository piece as much of it is an opinion. A relatively popular show in recent history is known as The Walking Dead. It is finally coming to a grinding halt at its 13th season, likely to open up room for spin-offs, and rival production teams to branch off. It should also be noted The Walking Dead is now a title on Disney + (UK)

The original seasons of The Walking Dead traversed parts of Atlanta, showing Rick’s character in a sort of singular conflict. This as with the later Darryl focused episodes, tredded better ground than ones which seem to focus on the group, jumping from the conflicts of a deaf person to all sorts of stuff (even a 3D tiger). In my opinion the earlier show is what drove the popularity, the later institutionalization of it, led to a jumping over the shark effect. If Fonzie jumped the shark some 18 more times in individual episodes after. Like Gilligan and the island, TWD relied on tropes usually limiting or altogether hampering a lead character’s ability to seemingly escape the show. Rick and The Junkyard lady are the only early escapees, and after he leaves the show, the show really lost its grips. For a while it tried to course back on track, but would fall victim of crowd-funded script decisions, that were usually more in lieu of driving individual actor’s careers than the whole show.

TWD has an interesting presence still, even given its room for ridiculous redundancy, and occasionally good acting performances, as well as bad. The current show is definitely a strange joke of what it once was, but maybe beating the dead horse is the proper ending to such a mess of a mid-show conflict. I recall the show getting particularly stupid after the Rick/Negan stained glass attack. But I still sat it through, and I plan to watch it to the end, no matter how stupid it gets. And believe me from the child narrated flashbacks every episode, it gets real stupid.

I think most true fans of the show want to see it ended. It can’t do much more, and arguably the show was mostly over when they discovered the disease center in that arena place. I would say that about surmised the show. The current show is so lost, that even a conclusion won’t setup for an easy transfer, that’s why hopefully a lot of these supporting characters die off somehow. The story has way too many driving elements, and every character has been given way too much room for survival. Obviously by the spin-offs announced it can be assumed Negan, Rick, Michonne, Darryl, Carol, and a few others will be making it out. I forecast Eugene is gonna go the way of Abraham, he has had a really long go, and all he keeps doing is things in reflection of self-interest (love in the apocalypse is sweet, but shit man isn’t there better things you can be focusing on). He also puts the safety of the group at risk multiple times for what turns into some, “be sorry for me, I just love her”, or whatever. I’ve kind of had it with his arc, and I hope him and the commonwealth go their own way. Also those Stephanie reaction shots look like they were taken out of a smooth jazz adult film.

I’ve noticed that most of the episodes done by Bear Mc and Greg Nicotero on set, tend to be the best. These had a sort of gritty realness, that seems intentionally sapped in later episodes. Be this for a sensitization of hopes of a child-centric series, I’m truly not sure what they going for here. My favorite arc of the show was the Darryl arc with his brother. To me that was the most powerful, and the earlier conflicts without leading tyrants, tended to have more impact. Almost all of the leading bad guys have their bad acting moments in the show. From Lance’s over-done eye movements, to the Governor’s stale presence not many of the bad guys were as well-acted as the main characters (besides Negan of course, phenomenal performance all through-out, even when show is doo doo butter).

It is coming to that time of season where things get cold, some things start to go bump at night and scary movies adorn both on demand and broadcast television. It is almost, if you haven’t guessed it, the eve of October, and/or the time for watching scary movies. So to go right in, I feel that Carnival Of Souls (1962) is my personal scariest movie. 

The whole vibe of the movie is ominous, from the drab color scheme, to the strange lingering organ throughout. I found myself most troubled by the organist’s situation initially, being a musician, I felt relation from sometimes wanting to make something more beautiful than what a band or group set out to make, and getting persecuted for deviating and trying to do what was me. Her subsequent alienation, and puzzling situation, with a fixation to an aging monolith, forms the rest of the mystique of the movie. I don’t want to spoil too much, but it’s a fascinating piece of both writing, directing, acting, and historical documentation (The Saltair has since burned down). 

Something about the emptiness of it is both troubling and fascinating, and even though there is something also obviously dark and forbidding, it has a draw. You can see why people years and years ago were drawn to the original resort, and why it was a great choice for a filming location. The 4K restoration is even more haunting, showing details as if the place was still around. I hate to be a bummer, but all that’s left is the memories, maybe the foundation of a few piers, and likely a really gross eggy smell. So 4K is much safer than a physical visit, also the old grounds are owned by the Mormon Church so I’m not sure if it’s trespassing to go there. Either way the closest one can likely get to that old place is likely the new restoration of this piece. The physical history of The Saltair is fascinating in itself, and could be a movie alone.

Scariest Movie: Carnival Of Souls (1962)