11.30.2009

Heroes: Thanksgiving

Noah Bennett stalks his old coworker, Lauren, at a grocery store and asks her to to join Thanksgiving dinner with himself, Claire, and his ex-wife and new boyfriend "Doug".  While through the episode he keeps up the idea that it's not a date, but it pretty much is. 
Noah even gets to meet Mr. Muggles new puppy friend, Miss. Lovegood. 
Well, he kind of gets Claire back together with Gretchen and makes some good with the ex-wife & her man.  Claire is back to being miss stupid, "oh, my life is SOOOOO difficult, blah, blah, blah!"  What the hell Heroes writers? Claire needs to learn that she looks normal, and can heal from damn near anything.  She's got it easy.  I hope they fuck her up bigtime, some serious pain (maybe psychological) to teach her that she is very much a normal person. 
At the end of the episode, she steals one of the compasses from her father and convinces Gretchen to go on a road trip to the carnival of stupidity.

Peter and Angela have an awkward family dinner with Nathan/Sylar.  Nathan/Sylar is fighting with itself for control of the body.  To make matters even stranger, the Petrelli holiday is a forced dinner with the Sylar part, and as soon as he finishes his food, he decides to cut open Angela's head.  Nathan ends up fighting bcak and flying away.  And of course the writers need to be slapped in the face- Peter would have taken the Sylar base ability, he's had it before and knows how it works, why wouldn't he get it to start stock-piling tons of powers.  He has access to the closest power to his own original ability and didn't take it.  He's a fool.  The only other way he could get to Sylar now is by getting the Haitian's power and killing him while dampening the healing.
Oh, another side note, wouldn't Claire's blood bring Nathan's frozen body back to life???

Samuel learns about his power's potential from Mohinder's film reel.  Why didn't Hiro just bring Mohinder into the now?  That would solve the hiding him part. 
Anyway, Samuel still won't give Charlie back to Hiro, and flaunts it as the reason Hiro can't kill him.  But of course there is a way around this, as mentioned in my Heroes post like 2 weeks ago(maybe last week's episode).  Things get tense and Hiro and Lydia go back to the night Samuel's brother was killed by a "government man".  As it turns out, Samuel killed his own brother, and upon Hiro and Lydia's return to the now- Samuel blames it on Edgar.  Hiro saves Edgar to help at a later time.  By the looks of things Hiro is inadvertantly building an army to eliminate the growing Samuel problem. 
Hiro could even go back to right before Charlie was taken save her and kill Samuel, thus solving everyone's problems.

Whatever, I must be a lover of painful writing because I continue to watch this crap.  If I, of all people, can think of simple solutions to all these in show problems, I am sure MANY others have found alternative solutions, which means there needs to be better writers on the show. 
What happened to all the awesome of the first season? 
I quit for tonight.
More complaints after tonight's episode.

11.23.2009

Heroes: Brother's Keeper

A mobile last minute post before tonight's new episode.
Tracy is losing control of her abilities and goes to find Noah Bennett She instead finds Claire and they have a low grade lesbian moment. Claire gets frozen and her foot breaks off. She thaws and apparently grew a whole new foot. She needs to look into organ donation.
Hiro jumps back in time and gets ahold of a film telling of Samuel's full potential. Why doesn't someone jut kill him? With all the powers around him it shouldn't be that difficult. Even Hiro could just teleport Samuel's head a fraction of a moment through time and space- a hell of a spectacular decapitation. Maybe even teleport it into Samuel's own hands a few minutes prior to doing it. So Samuel would be all WTF?! My own head! Then kerplowey, his own dissappears.
Over in Petrelli land- Peter gets info from the Haitian pointing to Nathan being Sylar's body. Nathan and Peter go find Nathan's body which as not disposed of as it should have been, then go to find Parkman...
...and Parkman is conveniently healed by Peter. Parkman tells them that Nathan only needs to touch him to be reunited with Sylar's mind- so much for mental powers. Well, big suprise, Nathan touches him "accidentally" and now Sylar is somewhere in his own body while it still believe's itself to be Nathan. I would also lke to note that Peter specifially takes the flight power- so instead of getting a random one he knows which to take. That also leads me to wonder why he still hasn't taken Sylar's main power and subsequently all the sub-abilities??? Peter's an idiot. If he got them all he could use Sylar's own ability to cut out the healing power(the magic spot) from Sylar's body, and finally kill the guy.
Well, they take off and Parkman is full on powered up- using it to escape from the hospital/police custody.
I think that is a good enough on the spot episode recap.
Later peoples.

11.16.2009

Heroes: Shadowboxing

Trying for a super quick post.

Sylar's body wakes up at the carnival as Nathan, gets up and flies away.  Then at the end shows up at Peter's apartment saying he may be in trouble.  Sylar's body contains his original ability, so if he accesses it can he fix Peter's neutered ability?  Reverting Peter back to the Badass-ness he held in the first season would be awesome.

While Rebecca is telling Mr. Bennett about who her target really is(himself- a vengeance quest for killing her father, very cliche) Samuel is trying to build a divide between Claire and her father.  It doesn't work to well, and Samuel eventually tasers Rebecca to help his own case, and make Noah look worse.  Noah also figures out that the sinkhole killing many was done by Samuel and also finds out that the compass could be used for bad things in the wrong hands.
Also, Gretchen decides that her life is more important than Claire's friendship and leaves.  So no more lesbianic scenes.

Peter is learning that the new power is draining himself while he heals many patients from a train wreck.  He also sees Emma do some medical work and points it out to her, she tries to say she learned it from TV or something, but then admits it's from medical school.  She also tells him about the nephew of hers that died because she couldn't hear him while he was drowning.  Peter tells her she saved the little girl earlier, and passes her the girl's tiara.  They had a moment.  Oh wow, how unexpected.

Then Parkman and Sylar are pushing each other around, trying to gain the upper hand in the body's pilot seat.  Parkman has the advantage of the telepathy, but Sylar doesn't care about killing people, so it becomes a difficult inner battle.  Sylar tells Parkman that he can't win because Sylar will kill everyone involved with his body-theft.  In the end Parkman tells Sylar he will kill someone to stop Sylar, himself.  He left a note with the waitress at a diner saying he had a gun and will kill everyone, the police arrive and Parkman makes Sylar mimic pulling a gun out, and then gets shot.  Very cool.  I figured he would have suicided, but this works as well.
What I don't get is how Parkman can't just take Sylar's mind and stuff it in a comatose person's body.  Or just set up a mental vault and keep him in it for good.  He would then be stuck with absolutely no way to do anything.  He can control minds, which means Sylar should have ZERO influence over him.  This bothers me a lot.

Screw this, I'm done for now.

11.13.2009

Fat Princess


The Legend of the Fat Princess, for Playstation 3, is a wonderful multiplayer game along the lines of "Capture the Flag".  Only the flags are the opposing teams' princesses.  You have to build and defend your own castle, upgrade characters, and stuff the princess so full of cake she turns into a giant blob (which in turn makes it very difficult for the oppostion to steal her back, as they must carry her).

(The pic is of my Ranger character after stuffing her with lots of cake)
There are 6 distinct types of characters in the game: a villager, worker, ranger, mage, warrior, and a priest.  Everyone starts as a villager and is very weak but can slap others to make them drop things and have a chance to daze them.  As soon as you pick up a hat from either a dispencer in your castle or on the battlefield after someone drops one upon their death, you gain the abilities of that character type. 
Each of the other classes has 2 levels.
  • The worker is quick and can mine metals and chop down trees to help build and upgrade things.  They begin with more life than a villager and have an axe to defend themselves.  The 2nd level is a Bomb thrower.  These little guys are very dangerous, they can blast the hell out of everything in sight.
  • Rangers start as distance fighters with a bow and arrows.  Their upgrade gives them a slower but more powerful weapon, a blunderbuss.  Very fun medium ranged character, medium life bar, medium attack power, and fun for beginners. 
  • Mages start as fire users, sending out blasts of fiery death, and once upgraded they can use ice to slow, freeze, and damage enemies.  Unless you are with a group, these guys can be slaughtered quite quickly.  A side benefit with this upgrade is a magic potion dispencer starts giving out a bottle that if thrown on enemies(or dropped on yourself) will turn anyone in blast proximity into a chicken.  Chickens have the least amount of life, but are fun to run around jumping, pecking and squawking as. 
  • A warrior begins as a simple, strong fighter with sword and sheild.  Their upgrade provides a huge attack bonus with a large spear and a charging slash, as well as a life bar boost.  They have the most life and are fairly difficult to kill.
  • Finally, the priests.  They are originally healers, being able to heal, and eventually upgrade to dark priests, able to drain the life force of enemies in the nearby vicinity.  Very helpful for friends, but choose to be them only if you have lots of backup.  They don't stand much of a chance out on the battlegrounds on their own.
The game itself has both Single Player and Multiplayer options.  In Single, you can learn the Legend of the Fat Princess, by playing through a series of story based games, all based on parts of the whole Multiplayer game, such as killing the opposing teams entire group (Team Deathmatch).  The second Singleplayer mode is a gladiator arena where the player must defeat wave after wave of enemies in a stadium.
Multiplayer Mode: This is where the game is really amazing- teams of up to 16 versus 16 people in the capture the princess or team deathmatch modes.  Unbelieveable amounts of death, in your choice of either bloody gore, or my own choice the, inexplicably more disturbing, "Clean" fights.  With this setting every enemy defeated explodes into a mess of teddy bear parts, confetti, toys and various candies like lollipops.  This is hours of insanely fun entertainment.

I highly recommend this game.

2012: A Lesson in Stupidity

First- I would like to say this is not just about the movie.  Although I'll get those comments out first since the commercials are what prompted this post.

From what the trailer looks like, the movie appears to be hours of John Cusack escaping from a killer crack in the ground.  It follows their car.  Then waits for them at the airport and continues following their airplane.  I can't guarantee it, but the crack could might actually follow them through water at some point.  Then possibly in space as well.

Since time immemorial groups of people have been spouting off worldly doom.  Hellfire and brimstone in a global catastrophe causing the deaths of most the worldly populous.  Well, I would like to say the odds of it happening are roughly zero.  I have an obsessive nature when it comes to studying religions, mythologies, and the like, and all the old tales don't tell of apocalyptic destruction.  A perfect case would be the Revelation of John the Beloved.  The book itself is a key to the internal war that comes to each individual.  It is NOT mass human extinction, where believers of such and such are magically brought to an eternal party in the clouds with a giant bearded man.  No, not that at all.  It is the path of spiritual birth and growth every person must make.

The Mayan calendar points to the end of an age, the end of an era. (Besides the fact that the calender had to end some time, hell, ours end once a year and we celebrate the birth of a new year)  Cyclical change on a massive scale.  Mind you, it obviously is not an instantaneous change, but the long, slow birth of a new way of life.  A gradual tipping towards mankind's maturing nature.  A growth towards worldly illumination.   Hopefully mankind will stray from it's current focus on base wants, and more towards a love of the higher internal selves we can become.

People need to stop believing that the ancient civilizations were inferior.  They were NOT FOOLS.  It seems to be an unstoppable misconception that the cultures of antiquity couldn't have been smarter or wiser than us, but that is a foolish mistake in itself.  The reason all their creations, be it their myths or architectural marvels, have such endurance is because they MEAN so much.  The great power behind such symbols gives them strength, an everlasting meaning to those people with the capacity to see behind the veil of sterile material translation.  A recognition or resonance in ourselves.  Reflection of the eternal in the everyday self.

I don't understand how people in general can put so much credence in an ancient culture's calender, but have absolutely no faith in the same culture's other beliefs.  Sure some groups can't have ALL the answers, but if they could produce astronomical calculations that are as good as ours, why wouldn't  they be right about the other things?  It drives me crazy talking about things like this to people.  We should not be expecting Ragnarok, or Armageddon (which, by the way, is a LOCATION, not an occurance- look it up Rev. 16:16 "Then they gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon").  No, we should not expect Earth splitting upheavals, or fantastic events (apart from the typical large storms/earthquakes/etc. that happen anyway), no blazing infernos scorching the land from stars falling, none of that.  We need to understand all the old writings point to internal changes.

Any culture that could make pyramids had to have a knowledge beyond the common, not to mention they had the means to build them, which we would struggle with today.   That culture's wisdom should be heeded, their thoughts immortal in truth.  The Mayan's didn't proclaim the end of everything in 2012 is part of a natural cycle, a very long continuing progression of life, and should not be feared.  Nor used for monetary gain, as is the case for the movie coming out tomorrow.

11.12.2009

Quote of the day...

"If Jesus wanted him to have a PS3, Santa would've brought him one."
-Dan Feltenstein

11.10.2009

Illustration Friday: Blur

I only had a short time for a quick sketch.  I wanted to put in a drunken old man, with a bunch of different fuzzy, blurred thought bubbles, but because time is short, I am just saying screw it and leaving it at the crappy sketch stage.


And I think my computer hates me.

Hopefully, this Friday's will go much better.  Plus I have a ton of draft material I'm editing.  Soon there shall be FUN STUFF!   SOOOOOOOON...  If things go well with computer fixing.

11.07.2009

Heroes: Once Upon a Time in Texas

Here's the latest attempt to keep a Heroes post short.

I'll get the parts I felt were the least entertaining out of the way first.  Noah Bennett has a not-quite-love-interest, in the form of a seductress/coworker.  She isn't super powered, just a lonely lady looking for connection.  He repeatedly says no, and in the end she resorts to wiping her mind through the Haitian instead of living with the possible embarrassment of her situation, and Mr. Bennett maintains marital sanctity.  I believe this was just episode stuffing- just extra fluff.

This episode's main course is Hiro going back to save Charlie, the waitress girl with mega memory that Sylar killed in season 1.  Hiro has to try and fix things while keeping an untarnished timeline.  Making sure things stay as close to how it was as possible, without deviating from this momentous convergence of people.  Samuel shows up to get Hiro to rethink this, because it affects a large group of intersecting lives(Peter, Sylar, Claire, etc), not just a couple.  Mostly he is doing it to keep Hiro from messing Sylar up any more than future Sylar already is, or so we are led to think.
After many attempts at stopping/diverting Sylar, Hiro eventually gets him to agree to save Charlie in return for Hiro's knowledge of Sylar's future.  Sylar does it, I believe, for more than just the knowledge of future, perhaps also because Hiro is faster and could seriously mess with his plans of gaining great power.  Sylar also doesn't need to get Charlie's ability through killing her anyway, and if things were as I believe them to be or could have gone, he may have studied Hiro's brain enough to have taken the power.  A very small chance of that occuring, but it is there anyway.  It would majorly affect the timestream, and probably didn't happen as it would change FAR too many variables if Sylar got time travel.  I also like how Hiro knows he doesn't have much time to live and he helped save Charlie, but has no way help himself.
(On a side note- this may explain why Sylar never used Charlie's memory in season 1 after getting it, even though Hiro saw her dead)
Anyway, Sylar fixes Charlie.  Then Hiro tells Sylar he becomes the most powerful of the specials, killing many people,  and everyone else gathers together to stop him.  He will die alone, no one to mourn him, no tears shed.  Hiro also says he wishes he could change fate, but Sylar must go on his path.  That is a bold statement for someone changing history while saying he wishes he could change history.  He then leaves Sylar elsewhere.  Charlie feels that her life shouldn't cost others their lives and leaves Hiro. 

She changes her mind and comes back, but then Samuel has takes her.  He had the elderly time guy hide her somewhere in time as his dying act and is using that as leverage to get Hiro to fix one of his own "stepped on butterflies".  The mistake Samuel made was killing Mohinder 8 weeks earlier.  Which I think is a nice explanation to why no one has been able to get ahold of him.  Which also makes me wonder, is Molly still alive?  She barely ever reappears.  Mohinder and Parkman were her surrogate fathers, and they are awfully neglectful.

I believe that with Hiro reattaining his powers, he could easily go back to the point where Samuel is having Old Man Time send Charlie off, freeze time, inform the OMT what he is doing, and save Charlie in an easy manner.  It would appear to Samuel that OMT did what was asked, but in reality Charlie would be perfectly safe where/whenever Hiro would place her.  But NOOOOOOO...  that will probably not happen, even though that's what a reasonable person would do.  Or, at least, what I would do.  Simple and effective.

11.03.2009

Illustration Friday: Skinny



 For this one, all I could imagine is those absurd girls being obsessed with their weight.  In my mind they're always like, "Did I eat today?  Oh jeez, they can TELL!!!  AWWWWW!!!"
So I made a quick 5 minute sketch.  
Of course I had to add the even more absurd idea that they would eventually begin to worry that all the air molecules would start adding weight through accumulation in the lungs and blood, while very negligible (and very necessary for living), to them it would be extremely noticeable.

11.02.2009

Heroes: Strange Attractors

Another super late, crappy and quick Heroes post.

Noah and Tracy try to get the healer/death touch kid Jeremy released from jail.  Jeremy's townspeople believe he should be kept, and are purposely keeping him detained.  Upon release the twon mobs him and he uses the death touch, bu trefuses to heal him, thus resulting in more jail time. 
A couple of the police sneak him out and in a very sad scene chain him to a pickup truck.  Jeremy refuses to use the death touch on one of them and him is drug to death.  This was one of the best story parts of this show- A kid finally coming to terms with what he can do and choosing to not use it for wrong, then dying because of ignorant people.  Of course the cops never saw the healing, only the death.
Well, Noah and Tracy end up finding him and thinking they have let him down.  Somehow all the years of his "killing animals" (being hearsay- Jeremy has shown regret for killing, so maybe it wasn't true) and they think they failed.  Noah's job was to tag and observe- how could he know that the healing what also result in the death touch as well?  He mentioned another had the ability, but until it manifests, how can they be sure?
In any case Jeremy was definitely the most moving part the series has had in a while. 

Samuel shows up and talks to Tracy to get her to join the Carnival and she appears to be considering it.  This travelling fair is getting to be rather large, with all Sam's invites.  Well he goes on his way, and in the end levels the police station containing Jeremy's murderers.  At least we know he has a sense of justice- vengence for harming those he considers "Family".

Over in Sorority-ville, Claire and Gretchen are stuck with a couple other girls in a slaughterhouse type game of find the stuffed bear.  Whichever pair finds the bear get into the Sorority.  During the search Claire admits to needing Gretchen and they find out Rebecca has invisibility and may be trying to hurt them.  The second group saw both Claire heal and Rebecca go invisible.  Awkward explaining that to everyone else.

Now for Mr. Parkman.  He has the remarkable ability to do things with the brain, with the exception of using his own.  Somehow Sylar is hitchhiking around in Parkman's skull, and Parkman tries to drink him away.  Matt goes on a binge drinking session and Sylar fades away which is quickly followed by the triumphant Matt passing out.  When he wakes up Sylar has taken over his body.
How the hell did this happen?  What are these writer's thinking?  First off, from previous posts I've expressed my hate towards the idea of Sylar in Matt's head.  Making someone believe they are someone else doesn't make a second person, it is OVERWRITING the original.  One person.  Not a person and a second mind.  And certainly not one person and a second mind in the Overwriter's mind. 
On to the drinking Sylar away issue.  Taken from the story view- even if they are sharing a brain, Sylar would be fully exposed to the same amount of alchohol as Parkman and couldn't have taken over.  Besides, Sylar cannot use his own powers anymore to find out how Parkman's work because his are stuck in his own body.  Parkman has control over the brain/mind- he could easily contain and shelf Sylar off in some crappy memories forever.  Or better yet- stuff him in a coma patient's body or something.  Then Sylar would be confined to a useless body. 

This stuff is really starting to piss me off.