The Meme-Mandated, Semi-Regularly-Updated, Occasionally Coherent Thoughts of G.M. Skarka
WMD
Political content + ‘Net-geek inside joke = teh funnay.
Not much to update. Busy week, now over. Three day weekend looms. Allie spending the weekend with a friend, and Laura and I are going to go to Atlantic City for a Valentine’s-weekend decompression.
So, I’ll live you with an MP3 from The Prodigals, one of my favorite local NYC bands– they do what they call “jig-punk”: rocked-up versions of traditional songs. Here’s Black-eyed Gypsy.
Have a good weekend, and wish me luck.
Something that occurs to me, as I watch The Fifth Element again this weekend– I think maybe the film was just too damned French to be successful in the US.
That’s about the only thing I can think of as a possible drawback. The film is just cool as hell–epic plot, great characters, and a universe which just screams “gaming setting”….but I guess the thing was just a bit too Metal Hurlant for American audiences. For example, the costumes by Jean-Paul Gaultier (and the accompanying bevy of models sprinkled throughout the cast) were just not US-Space-Opera-standard, I suppose.
Still…a lot of fun. It really deserved more success.
And the Snow Snow Snow Came Down Down Down….
Taking a day from work today, due to a good old-fashioned “Nor’Easter” currently dumping an estimated 10 inches of snow on our heads. Allie’s school was closed, Laura’s library is closed. I actually tried to brave it out and take the 45-mile commute, but I got a grand total of one block before I started sliding down the UNPLOWED street (and what the hell is up with that, anyway? They knew the storm was coming…), sideways, downhill. That’s pretty much all it took. I spent the next 5 minutes trying to get back up the hill the other way. FUN.
I probably spoke too soon about the “project hint” in the last update. As I was saying to some industry friends yesterday, I’ve currently got like a half-dozen game projects on various degrees of backburnerdom, and honestly, I’m not sure which of them jazzes me enough to finish first. So, you’ll just have to wait and see.
For any of you electronic-music composition-types out there, I’ve got a couple of links for you:
A bunch of acapella bootleg mp3s— the vocal tracks of various songs, so that you can create your own remixes.
Basic Hip Digital Oddio–a site devoted to rare audio oddities, all of which makes for great sample-fodder.
Speaking of sample-fodder, a site that I have linked here before, Blaxploitation.com has a great selection of minute-long samples from rare blaxploitation film soundtracks, perfect for mining for funky-ass breaks.
Another good site for wierd stuff to mix into music is BadMovies.org, which has wav sounds from many of the reviewed films. Come on, you know how great it would be to follow a trance synth arpeggio with THIS.
Happy mixing….