Current mood:	whooo!
Current music:	Jonathan Coulton - Creepy Doll

Asked forever ago, too
Stolen from Jess Burke, hottie and awesome chick that she is.

1. Leave me a casual comment of no particular significance, like a lyric to your current favorite song, or your favorite kind of sandwich, maybe your favorite game. Any remark, meaningless or not.
2. I will respond by asking you five personal questions so I can get to know you better.
3. Update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. Include this explanation and offer to ask someone else in your own post.
5. When others respond with a desultory comment, you will ask them five questions.


1) What's the best game (video or otherwise) you played all summer? A tie, i think. Urban Dead (www.urbandead.com)(wiki.urbandead.com) is a low tech browser based zombie apocolypse RPG in which you can play as a survivor, trying not to die, or as a zombie, trying to eat survivors and not really minding dying too much. There are no NPCs, all zombies and humans are real people playing. You can't actually die in this game, zombies can just get back up, and humans become zombies when they die. Zombies can also be tagged by a revival syringe to once again become human. So life in the city is very very fluid. Also, the real joy of urban dead is the playerbase and the wiki. hundreds of groups and organizations have started, with specific goals like healing the sick, reviving the dead, and holding territory. Zombie groups allow them to act as sort of a hive mind, all hitting the same place at one time. Probably the most fun part of this game is the Death Rattle skill, as it allows zombies to speak (they can only growl otherwise) but only to use the letters a, b, g, h, m, n, r, and z. After some early steps (bang, grab, banana, gangbang), Zombie lingusts have created an entire language for the not-quite-so-dead. For example, a zombie might feast on a human, then, before killing him, laugh and say "Grab mah manbagz, harman!" loosely translated to "Grab my testicles, human!"

Also in this category (though I started playing before summer) is the PS2 game Shadow of the Colossus. In it, you play a young wanderer hunting and killing avatars of the idols that imprison the god Dormin, so that you can free the god and they will bring a dead girl back to life. It's a very, very expansive world, and it's populated by exactly you, your horse, some birds, some lizards, and 16 giant stone monsters. Which you must climb up and kill. It's similar to a legend of zelda game, only with nothing but boss fights. You have to discover the weakness of each colossus, then find a way to climb up it and stab it. Some of them are straightforward and man-shaped, but there are several that are serpentlike, or turtle-like, or bull-like. There's even a giant bird that you have to hang onto as it flies through the air. Most of the time you have to use the terrain to help you get on top of them, sometimes you have to run them down with your horse, or fire your bow at them to get their attention. It's really one of my favorite games ever, now. It's haunting and beautiful and very isolating, when you're riding all alone, trying to find a colossus. Go play it and love it.


2) What are you doing these days? Jobwise? Schoolwise? No more school, unless you count swordfighting training in the city. Which I guess qualifies. I’m working with a fight director in Philly, playing with lots and lots of swords, and it’s totally awesome, I love it a lot. Jobwise I’m working as an engineer for a television production company while auditioning tons. Also plans to start a theatre company of my own. Slowgoing though.

3) Do you have a favorite film, what is it, and why? I have many favorite films, so this is a hard question. I love Citizen Kane most of all, not only for the popularization of so many of the modern techniques, but because it’s a great story, told in flashbacks, and I totally heart Orson Welles. I think my favorite comedy is either Brain Donors (think Marx Brothers, but with John Tuturro), or Death to Smootchy, because Robin Williams and Edward Norton are hilarious together. Plus Harvey Firestein, the ultimate “I need a name that says that I’m Jewish AND that I’m gay” name.

4) What is your favorite Penny-Arcade strip? Oh god. Oh, oh god. Uuuum…there’s a lot. I love the Cardboard Tube Samurai, I love every one about the Pacman watch. Plus all the series. And I really, really love this recent one: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/09/26 and also this one: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/06/25 and of course http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/04/09

No seriously, to pick one? I can’t pick one. Well, maybe I could, but it would take me a while.

5) If I teach a (short) unit in my class this semester about comics as a medium, what strip/author/series should I absolutely not fail to mention? There are so many. So so many. I could talk on and on about writers like Alan Moore (Watchmen, From Hell, The Killing Joke, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), Frank Miller (The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, Ronin, 300), Jeph Loeb (Spider-man: Blue, Daredevil: Yellow, Batman/Superman, Batman: The Long Halloween), classic strips like Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes, and artists like Tim Sale (A Superman for all Seasons, Batman: The Long Halloween) and Jim Lee (Hush, All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder), and the newish world of webcomics (PA especially, but also dozens of others you should ask my pal Alvaro about), I think the best thing you can do is to tell them about Scott McCloud and his book Understanding Comics. It’s an entire book on comics as an art and communication form, what we think about comics and how writers and artists use standard conceptions to screw with us and make something totally sweet.


So apparently what these questions say about me is that I can’t ever have a favorite anything because I love so many things for so many different reasons. Scary, no? Me loving many things? I thought so, anyway.