2006 Pages of Fun Archive

You're the Best of the Class this Year...

For the past year or so I have been keeping a log of all the movies, books and media I have consumed throughout the year and giving personal ratings for everything. I can now present you with my top ranked items for the year of our Lord, 2006!

My only rule for adding things to the list are that I have to have not seen/read/played that item previously. This means my lists are filled with items that weren't released in 2006, so don't consider this a Best of 2006 list like you would see on other, so-called "web sites." So without further ado, here is Robert Gomez's favorite media of 2006:

Movies

• Deep Red (a.k.a. Profundo Rosso) (9/10)
  • Beautiful horror mystery with one of the best, and fair reveals at the end of the movie. It's like a live action romantic painting.
• Wallace and Grommit and the Curse of the Were Rabbit (9/10)
  • Very amusing animation that doesn't rely on American animation formulas of anthropomorphism. Lot's of humor for adults too.
• Frenzy (9/10)
  • Hitchcock does giallo!
• Rear Window (9/10)
  • What can I say, it's a classic.

Books

• And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (10/10)
  • A great puzzle that keeps up its pace all the way to the last page
• The Fortune of War by Patrick O'Brian (9/10)
• Desolation Island by Patrick O'Brian (9/10)
  • Both of the above books are part of the Aubry/Maturin naval warfare books. These are (so far) my favorites in the series with strong, over-arching plot lines or espionage and survival and a slightly reduced emphasis on naval tactics and such.

Games

• Day of Defeat: Source (10/10)
  • My first real foray into online FPS gaming. Fast paced and forgiving for n00bs.
• Half-Life 2 (9/10)
  • A great game with some nice game play twists. I get a bit boring about 2/3 into it, but picks up again by the end.

Music

• Hello Young Lovers by Sparks (10/10)
  • A masterpiece of epic, symphonic goofiness and left-of-center pop structuring. Sparks best since Kimono my House.
• Fear Box Set by Ennio Morricone (10/10)
  • See my review in the archives.

Posted on December 31, 2006 | Permalink

For Your Height Only

After waiting for weeks, the planets aligned (I got access to my parents huge screen TV), I was able to watch For Your Height Only. This movie is the "A-side" of a DVD double feature including the previously reviewed Challenge of the Tiger that was released by Mondo Macabro ealier this year .

For Your Height Only (or as it appears in the title screen, For Y'ur Height Only) is another Dick Randall (Pieces) exploitation production. This film was made in the Philippines on a near-zero budget and features Philippino little-person Weng Weng as its secret agent protagonist.

The movie is essentially a Bond parody in which Weng Weng's height is the basis for all the intended humor. The movie is, however, filled with loads of unintential laughs as well. The main source being the awful, over-the-top voice dubbing--all the baddies have James Cagney gangster voices. There are even self-aware moments in which the dialog serves as Mystery Science Theater-like comments on the action taking place. For example, during the ultra boring gadget sequence, Double-O's boss says, "You got a bug in your hair?" only because Weng Weng happens to scratch his head during the scene.

The plot is horrible and loses track of itself about ten minutes into the film. It's not until the climax that we remember that Double-O is trying to save a scientist or something. Most of the plot is simply an excuse to get Weng Weng to kill hordes of baddies (often the same guys multiple times). The kung-fu is a bit lacking but some of Weng Weng's acrobatics are pretty amazing. Especially, since, I swear, Weng Weng has to be wearing leg braces under his stylish disco suits. On top of all the fighting there is also a bit of disco dancing and the obligatory, cringe-worthy Bond "love scene."

At first I was also pretty amazed at the quality of the score, an almost note-for-note variation on For Your Eyes Only and other Bond motiffs. It's at about the 14th time that they play the same song that I realize that the music is a bit repetitive.

This movie just oozes cheesy bad taste. It has all the markings of your typical so-bad-it's-good movie. Take heed though, this also means there are plenty of boring moments between the insanity, but, all-in-all, a great movie to watch with your drunk friends. Taken in tandem with Challenge of the Tiger it's a very worthwhile DVD purchase... yes, I bought this piece of crap cinema history.

Posted on December 16, 2006 | Permalink

Nonagon Live at The Note !

Nonagon will be playing wil The Nein, Snowbeast and The Cellar Steps on December 12th, 2006 at the Note in Chicago's Wicker Park. More details here.

Posted on December 4, 2006 | Permalink

Ennio Morricone Box Set Mania!

Lately, I have been stocking up on Ennio Morricone movie soundtracks from the late sixties and early seventies. This been a pretty easy task since Dagored records has released a trio of great 3-disc Morricone boxed sets. Each filled with wonderful packaging and liner notes, and is well worth the $25 price tag.

Like most people, my introduction to Morricone was in his scores for the Sergio Leone Dollars movies. Those soundtracks are known for their sinister baritone guitar sounds, howls, operatic vocalization, percussive bursts, and other genre defying/redefining motifs. Morricone, it turns out, has an extremely wide stylistic range. From his pop roots to his experimental soundscapes, these box sets showcase much of the diversity of his style.

Maestro leans towards his pop side. The soundtracks included here are La Donna Invisible (The Invisible Woman), Le Foto Proibite di una Signora per Bene (Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion ), and Slalom. La Donna is pure pop bliss, with a melody that is repeated throughout most of the disc. There are a few tracks that come close to sounding like the Theme from the Love Boat, but the vast majority of the disc is more e-z than cheesy. Le Foto is a bit more experimental, and Slalom is a solid space-age bachelor pad disc very reminiscent of another disc I have by The Peter Thomas Sound Orchestra.

Crime contains the soundtracks for Revolver (AKA: Blood in the Streets), Gli Intoccabili (AKA: Machine Gun McCain), and Giornata Nera per L'Arete (AKA: The Fifth Cord). These soundtracks have a lot more variety within each disc and are therefore not as consistently good as the other discs in this series, but they are very fine nonetheless. Gli Intoccabili has nearly the same feel as Morricone's western soundtracks with several great vocal numbers about a man called "McCain." I think it's the same fellow who sings "Lonesome Billy" if you are familiar with that song by Morricone.

Fear is my favorite of the three sets. It contains Una Lucertola con la Pelle di Donna (AKA: Lizard In A Woman's Skin), Il Gatto a Nove Code (AKA: The Cat O' Nine Tails), and Gli Occhi Freddi Della Paura (AKA: Cold Eyes of Fear). These discs are filled with erie soundscapes and experimental improvisations. Many of the tracks would not be out-of-place on an early Cabaret Voltaire, Can or Kraftwerk album, except that these sounds are being created with traditional acoustic instruments. Great stuff.

These are the first CDs I have bought in a long time, and are worth every penny. Viva Morricone!

Posted on November 8, 2006 | Permalink

Challenge of the Tiger

I watched a great piece of eighties cheese this week, Bruce Le's (that's not a typo) Challenge of the Tiger. This movie is part of a Mondo Macabro double feature DVD along with vertically challenged spy thriller, For Your Height Only. Both films were produced by Dick Randall, the writer and producer of the legendarily so-bad-it's-good giallo, Pieces. Challenge features lots of bad dubbing, plenty of gratuitous nudity (worth watching just for the completely unnecessary topless tennis scene), some fast-kicking kung-fu, and some slow-punching speedo-fu (pictured). The plot is so dumb it forgets it's even there. Most of the plot is simply a means of getting Bruce to his next batch of thrift store clothed baddies or Richard Harrison to his next greasy bedroom conquest. Highly recommended.

Posted on September 21, 2006 | Permalink

More on the Philips DVP3040 DVD Player

A reader of this site was kind enough to point out that you can restart a DVD from where you left off by holding the play button the during power-up sequence. I guess I should'a read the manual a bit more closely. Thanks.

Posted on September 6, 2006 | Permalink

Philips DVP3040 Tweaks

Having in previous postings expounded about the greatness of my Philips DVP3040 DVD player, I thought it a good idea to reveal some of the problems I have had with the player after a month or so of use. The main problem has been jittery or jerky video playback on various DivX or XviD files. Some files worked, others were unwatchable. Turns out the player does not like the encoding on specific files. The issue is video that uses a "packed bitstream." There is, thankfully, an fairly easy solution. There is a small, free piece of software called MPEG4 Modifier that can analyze a video file, and re-save it with an "unpacked bitstream." The re-saved files are actually a tad smaller than the packed ones and work perfectly in the DVD player. The application is tiny, does not require an install, and very easy to use.

Posted on July 28, 2006 | Permalink

Nonagon: Live, August 5th 2006

My band, Nonagon, will be playing a live show on Saturday, August 5th at The Note in Chicago's trendy Wicker Park neighborhood (1565 N. Milwaukee). The show starts around 9 o'clock PM and the line-up is as follows:

• From Monument To Masses (from San Francisco, CA)
• Nonagon (from Chicago, IL)
• Driftless Pony Club (from Madison, WI)
• 1908 (from Waukegan, IL)

Please, please come to the show if you are in town on that weekend. It will be much better than the lame-o-rama Lollapalooza crapfest that will be going on at the same time. And our crapfest is much less expensive.

Posted on July 24, 2006 | Permalink

Easter Fun

One of the first Flash animations I ever created was for a site that Ajenda produced called Easter Fun. Well, six years later, we still get about a thousand or so hits a month. In an attempt to squeeze some money out of this Internet relic, we are redesigning it to fit in some Google AdSense ads. In the process, I have completely revamped the look of the menu animation. Check out those gradients! And, as an added bonus, the chick doesn't squawk at you every 3 seconds. Go to Easter Fun... and click on the ads for Christ's sake (or, more accurately, Ajenda's sake)!

Posted on June 27, 2006 | Permalink

I Love My New DVD Player: A Philips DVP3040

This past weekend I made an impulse purchase in the form of a new DVD player. My previous player (a Samsung DVD-P421 from 2001) seemed okay, but recently it was hiccuping on the many-a-DVD layer switch. This always seemed to happen at a key moment in whatever movie I was watching. A minor glitch, but annoying nonetheless.

While off in the 'burbs running errands, I decided to pop in to Best Buy to see if there was a cheapo DVD player for sale to replace my ailing Samsung. I'm not too hip to what makes a good DVD player these days. My only requirements where that it be progressive scan (even though I have a crappy 19" NTSC television), be priced under fifty dollars or thereablouts and that it be able to play computer video media like AVIs or Quicktime. Lo and behold I fould what I was looking for in a Philips DVP3040.

Compared to the Samsung, this player is tiny, quiet (you can hear the high pitched buzz LASER on the Samsung) and it managed to stay near room temperature when watching a long DVD! It jumps from chapter to chapter very quickly. The remote is compact and easy to use. Again, this is comparing it to my Samsung which had an awful joystick-type of menu controller. It plays DivX movies effortlessly, subtitles and all, and they look great on my small TV screen. Now I can watch all my crappy video podcasts in the comfort of my living room. The photo and .mp3 playback capabilites are an added bonus.

On top of it all, it is region-free hackable! Just press setup and then navigate to preference. Press in the code 138931 and set the region you want. Awesome. It also claims to be able to play both PAL and NTSC media. I will have to find a PAL disc and test this out someday.

My only gripe so far is that, if you stop a DVD and power-down, it won't pick up the movie where you left off. I thought that was a standard DVD functionality. I guess not. But, all-in-all a great bargin at about fifty dollars.

Posted on June 2, 2006 | Permalink

DOSbox Gaming: King's Quest III - To Heir is Human

Onward on my journey through the King's Quest saga I go. Part III was the first in the series to really try to present a narrative. There are many more non-player characters to contend with, most notably Manannan the wizard, who has enslaved you to a life of household chores. These characters don't just run on to the screen and steal your possessions (although there still is that in this game). There's a genuine attempt to give them personality.

With all the new found attention to story telling, the designers seemed to not be paying much attention to game play. There are stretches of the game where you have to wait forever for a timed trigger event to occur. In the meantime you are stuck doing virtual dusting for fifteen minutes. Very boring.

Also, like most of these Sierra 3-D adventures, this game is really cruel when it comes to killing you off without a hint of advanced warning. These frustrating game play elements had me seeking out hints very early in the game. I found a website that was invaluable in getting me through the game. Universal Hint System guides you very gently through a invisiclues style hint system that does its best to avoid revealing to many spoilers.

Oh, and one more thing. The game requires you to have the manual to get anything important done. There is a section of the game when your mixing recipes for spells, following the manual, and, if you have one small typo during the tedious, drawn-out process, you die. As some consolation, they do take the time to show you a goofy animation of the spells going horribly wrong.

This was the last of the classic, mouse-free King's Quest games. I think I am going to take a break from the series before attempting to tackle King's Quest IV (which I got 75% through on my Apple ][gs back in the day).

Posted on May 28, 2006 | Permalink

The Incredible Shrinking Art Studio

I've added a new image of my post-Nova art studio.

Posted on May 26, 2006 | Permalink

DOSbox Gaming: King's Quest II - Romancing the Throne

I'm continuing to play the King's Quest games in DosBox these days. Tonight I just completed King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne with 175 points out of 185.

To me, the art of these games is, in many ways, vastly more impressive than your modern 3D modeled game. The fact that every pixel on the screen was hand drawn and not rendered with some world generating algorithm just astounds me. Furthermore, even more so than King's Quest I, the artists get tons of animation mileage out of so few pixels. They are not going for realism, rather they were trying to communicate a narrative, ideas and emotions. Yeah, that's right. Video game romanticism.

In these first two installments, storytelling hasn't been as much of the focus. They seem to be more geared towards exploration and object hunting. Although I had to look for hints twice (one of those times I had the right idea, I just forgot to re trigger an event during my many restores and saves), the adventuring is not so much about complex puzzle solving. That's not such a bad thing since these days I don't have the time to scratch my head for hours (I couldn't get more than 2 or 3 rooms into Graham Nelson's Curses, although in theory I liked that game). Perhaps as I play through these games I will get better at thinking through puzzles and then I can go back and attempt to take on an Infocom classic.

Posted on May 20, 2006 | Permalink

The Newegg Saga Is Over

Okay, NewEgg has redeemed itself, UPS still sucks though. I checked my credit card statement and we finally, 7 days later, got the ten dollar credit we were offered. The CF card is still working, faster and better than ever.

Posted on May 19, 2006 | Permalink

DOSbox Gaming: King's Quest I

Recently I have discovered the joys of DOS emulation on my Windows XP machine. DOSbox is an open-source project which provide MS-DOS emulation that is tailored to gaming. There are builds for Win XP, Mac and Linux.

The great thing about the emulator—as opposed to just running MS-DOS on my old Win 98 box—is that it can handle all the goofy memory configurations and set-up weirdness that I never quite understood when I used MS-DOS for real. It can't really handle the more complicated Doom-era games, but those aren't the games in which I am most interested.

I am currently reveling in Sierra 3-D adventure games like the King's Quest series and Leisure Suit Larry. As a kid, these were the only PC games that could draw me away from our family's Apple ][. The economy of pixel usage in the art and animation is truly brilliant and the game play still holds up pretty well. I just finished King's Quest I this evening for the first time. I finished with 136 points of a total 158. Made in 1984, this was the first of the Sierra 3-D adventures. It doesn't quite hold up to some of the later entries in the series in terms of story and puzzle complexity. Without warning, the game can also be rendered un-winnable if you eat/use certain items at the wrong time. This is a big adventure game no-no in my opinion. But aside from these gripes, it was still fun twenty years after its release.

Posted on May 14, 2006 | Permalink

The New Camera Card Arrives

Success! The new 512MB camera card arrived today and, so far, is working out well. Check out Wika's latest set of photos from Nova's daycare birthday party.

However, the saga of NewEgg/UPS will not be over until I see the refunded card and ten dollar credit appear on my credit statement. It looks like NewEgg make have absolved itself--for now.

Posted on May 12, 2006 | Permalink

NewEgg Update

Okay, my initial frustration over my NewEgg order has been diminished a little. I was offered ten dollars off of a comparable product and went ahead and ordered a larger flash card. I hope my ancient Canon Powershot can handle a 512MB card. It has already destroyed a 256MB PQI card and I was concerned that it was size limited. Anyhow, I will following the tracking info to the minute if I have to this time.

Posted on May 9, 2006 | Permalink

CD Universe Has a New Contender for Crappiest On-Line Shopping Experience

I still have not done much in the way of updating this site but I needed to get some info out another horrible on-line shopping experience I have had.

The culprit this time is NewEgg.com. This was the second time I ordered anything from this store--they are widely regarded as a top-of-the-line on-line shop. However, my experience has been pretty lousy. To be fair, I guess my complaints should be directed at UPS. They are the idiots who make a daytime delivery at a residence, and then never leave a note that they attempted delivery. On top of that, the delivery guy lies to cover his lazy ass by saying, firstly, that they delivered the package and then, two days later, that I refused delivery! They then proceeded to send the package back to NewEgg. UPS's customer service phone system is one of the most annoying voice mail apps on earth. I finally figured out that you can scream, "Talk to person!" to circumvent answering a slew of "yes" or "no" questions.

NewEgg's third-world sweatshop tech support has been nothing but stock answers. They want me to wait until the item is back in their hands, at which time they will refund my Credit Card and make me order it again. I'd hold my nose and do this, except that the item I ordered is not out-of-stock. NewEgg, you and your retarded partner UPS suck. Feel the wrath of my deadly "blog" post!

Posted on May 8, 2006 | Permalink