Author: Gareth

Transmedia developer — writer, consultant, game designer, graphic artist, and publisher. A sharp tongue, a sharp blade, and on a good day, a sharp mind.
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General Updatery

After spending most of last week feeling generally weak and run-down, as though I was fighting something off, I finally, officially, Came Down With Something TM late in the day Saturday. Felt like crap all day yesterday, and still don’t feel 100% today. Bleah.

⊕ Summat for the Geeks: A photocopy of a page from a 1988 issue of “The Grammarian”, the school paper of Paisley Grammar School, the alma mater of David Tennant (born David MacDonald). Alongside a picture of the young Mr. MacDonald, the profile speaks of his dream role — playing the Doctor. Check it out.

⊕ I read the first book in a new YA science-fantasy series last week. Philip Reeve (author of the non-YA Hungry City Chronicles, which I now must track down) has written a steampunk tale called Larklight: A Rousing Tale of Dauntless Pluck in the Farthest Reaches of Space, and it’s brilliant. Aetherships travelling the solar system, visits to Mars and the Jovian systems, Space Pirates, Giant Spiders, Automatons, and more. Reeve knows he’s writing for adults as well as kids — there are in-jokes aplenty (for example, the recounting of the colonization of Mars is a word-for-word rip of the opening of “War of the Worlds”, but with us invading them….and there’s a Martian serving girl named….wait for it…..ULLAH.) The second book in the series (Starcross: A Stirring Adventure of Spies, Time Travel and Curious Hats) has just been released in hardcover — I’ll be waiting for the paperback, but I’ll definitely pick it up.

⊕ Anybody thinking of doing NaNoWriMo this November? With the disintegration of my writing group (and the resultant lack of deadlines), I’ve been considering using it as an artificial deadline generator to get me off my ass and back on track. I read Chris Baty’s No Plot? No Problem! over the weekend, and it had some interesting things to suggest about the NaNoWriMo experiment, notably that the “go-go-go” rush to complete 50K in 30 days has the benefit of turning off one’s Internal Editor — which is absolutely one of my worst problems. So, I’m thinking of giving it a shot. Not that I’ll be doing a 50K word “novel” — but that I’ll plan on producing 50K towards a longer work. I’ll most likely post word count progress during the month of November, but no details — maybe at the end of the month, I’ll share what I’ve got down with anybody else who participated as well. Any takers?

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Friday Music

Another mixtape of Teh Interwebs:

First, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the launching of Sputnik: Lou Reed – “Satellite of Love.”

Katerine Gierak is a French rock singer who records under the name Mademoiselle K. Her first album, Ça Me Vexe was released last year, and in addition to having a very sexy album cover, has the merit of featuring good music as well. Here is the title track, whose title, for the non-Francophones among you, means “That Upsets Me”: Mademoiselle K – “Ça Me Vexe.”

Kate Nash is a singer/songwriter from London whom I discovered earlier today, thanks to a post by . I’m fascinated, and I want to hear more. Kate Nash – “Foundations.”

I’ve posted this before (waaaay back in the early days of Friday Music), but it came up in coversation last night, and it has a tendency to get stuck in my head, so here it is — a cover of a song from 1968. The original vocal version of the song (by Barbara Acklin) never became a hit, but the instrumental version, called “Soulful Strut” hit the top 10, and can still be heard on oldies radio today. This version is a cover of the vocal version, recorded in 1992, which was a minor success: Swing Out Sister – “Am I The Same Girl.”

Some goofiness in honor of Friday: Todd Rundgren – “Bang on the Drum All Day.”

A major gear-shift — away from goofy pop songs and into musical scores from film. This is my favorite piece from the score of Last of the Mohicans, which is the track that plays during the final chase up the mountain: Trevor Jones and Randy Edelman – “Promentory.”

Moving into the more modern, yet still instrumental — a really excellent bit of dub techno. The only nitpicking drawback: It is based around a sample of “Ja Ren Qu (The Beauty Song)” from House of Flying Daggers–which is a Chinese song–and yet the group decided to title their track with a Japanese name. Learn the difference, guys. Still, an excellent bit of music: The Others – “Bushido.”

One of my favorite tracks from Donald Fagen’s first solo album, 1982’s The Nightfly. The song is a synth-heavy version of Latin Jazz, with Fagen wryly providing sarcastic lyrics that mix the traditional caribbean-paradise expectations of the format with the realities of Juntas and Bannana Republics: Donald Fagen – “The Goodbye Look.”

Lastly, one of my favorite tracks of the early 70s soul movement — not very well known, outside of its occasional use in soundtracks (I first discovered it via the 1995 Hughes Brothers film, Dead Presidents).The Undisputed Truth – “Smiling Faces Sometimes.” (The file is mislabeled as “the Dramatics” — trust me, there were only two versions of this song, The Undisputed Truth, and a 12-minute version by the Temptations. This is the Undisputed Truth.)

There you go. Hope you liked this week’s selections.

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