Tonight I went out to Pagliacci for a few slices of pizza for dinner. As I was eating, I realized that the music was at once familiar and alien – it was Prince's original version of “Kiss”. Which is not the version embedded in my skull; that honor goes to the Art of Noise's cover.

That song ended, and more stuff from the eighties came on.

I suddenly realized, deep in my bones, that this music was as old and crusty to the college kids who make up most of the staff and clientele of the place as sixties stuff was to me when I was in college. They were playing uncomplicated, uncontroversial oldies.

I began to feel old.

But then I thought about the fact that my music collection has stuff in it recorded in the past few years, and felt better. Especially after thinking that, you know, I have stuff from as far back as the 1920s; I casually listen to a sampling of almost a hundred years of popular music. And my taste shows no signs of ossifying – I can't say I like everything that comes along, but there's something that makes my ears happy in a new way on a regular basis.

Hopefully, when I get close to being a hundred, I'll be listening to a casual sampling of almost two hundred years of popular music. That'll be pretty damn cool! If I'm lucky I'll still be in good enough shape to shake my booty to it, too.

Day 3 of Operation Get Rid Of All The Post-Its On My Monitor went well. Nothing is finished but there's some definite progress on the various things that have piled up – three pages roughed on comic thing, one commission roughed and halfway done. And the previous two days saw another commission roughed, and some finishing on another page of the comic thing.

Rita's getting pushed aside for a couple of weeks for this, because having these things hanging there meant I spent a lot of time dithering about not working on Rita because I felt guilty about these hanging things, and not working on them because guilt fucks me up. Now that I've finished chapter 9 I feel like I can hit pause on Rita and deal with this other stuff, then hopefully resume Rita with a lot more energy.

Maybe tomorrow I'll get to take one of those post-its down. That would be nice. Ultimately I want to clear out all of these dangling obligations and think long and hard about whether I want any more of them.

Stuff I didn't do today: leave the house. My left leg was weirdly achy yesterday and today, so I figured walking around a lot might be a bad idea. I kinda regret blowing off aikido tonight but I was just in a weird space.

Tomorrow: folding the laundry I did today, more work on one or more of those post-its, and a visit from Nick.

(I'm also in a weirdly shitty mood right now. Probably due to finishing Osamu Tezuka's “Ayako“, which is a pretty damn dark book about a girl who's kept locked up in a storeroom for twenty years because of Complicated Horrible Matters Of Honor.)

I've had it sitting on my 360 since about a week after I bought the thing. But I haven't played it until now. I've always come to the 360 in a kind of brainless state, and I didn't feel like that was the right attitude to take towards one of the most legendary shmups of all time.

I speak, of course, of Treasure's infamous Radiant Silvergun.

The 360 revision looks lovely. Purists can play it in a low-res mode, and I might try that sometime for laughs – I'm an artist, give me sleek eye candy please for now. But that's not what I'm playing the game for. I'm playing it for its unique systems. I'm playing it for having seven different types of shots available to me at the press of a button, instead of picking up powerups. I'm playing it for levels designed around that.

And after a few plays, my fingers are starting to learn how to summon whichever shot type I want. My brain's beginning to figure out what's good for what purpose. I still don't know what the appropriate tactical use of the seeking electrical beam is but I'll figure it out. I haven't even cleared the first level yet but I had fun; I've made enough sense of it that I can see how Ikaruga's core system derives from ones in this game.

Interestingly enough, I found that it thoroughly sated my urge to do some video gaming tonight in only a half hour or so. Maybe that's because my brain was working hard to try and understand the weapon system.

I figure that once I can clear the first level in one credit, I'll be ready to start playing it. Maybe even consider continuing. I dunno, it always takes me a good while to decide to continue my way through a shmup if it's actually interesting – I want to savor its systems and understand them. It's pointless mastery, but it makes a part of my brain happy.

Stuff I got done today: one figure in a non-Rita comics project that's been lingering for too long. With the end of chapter 9, I've decided to take a bit of a break to clear out some commissions and other stuff. And make a 3d model of a hero prop for chapter 10. Hopefully making myself do these things will also get me to rebuild the loops in my brain that like to be in front of Illustrator for several hours, drawing. I miss those.

Huh. I just sat here poking through random tags in my old Livejournal. I used to be so much angrier at the world in general. I'm a lot better now.

I'm not sure if it's from finishing my transition, or from not having to worry about money any more, or both. Probably both.

Yesterday, Nick came over, and we went downtown to see “Oz, The Great and Powerful”. At the Cinerama. In 3D.

Which turned out to be pretty much the best way possible to see a movie whose virtues were almost entirely visual. The opening titles are in the form of a gorgeously-stylized little paper popup theatre kind of thing, and the movie delivers exactly what that promises – all of the performances are pretty flat, but the backgrounds are so gorgeous that I spent more than a few scenes completely ignoring the characters.

We both agreed that we probably would have enjoyed an Oz travelogue a lot more than the actual movie we saw. Which, well, this was from Disney, so I guess we shouldn’t have expected too much. Really, it felt like a mediocre TV movie… with astounding visuals.

It’s a prequel to the MGM movie. It really has nothing to do with any other history of Oz, including the actual books, beyond being based on the few bits of the Wizard’s backstory from the first book that made it into the MGM film. And it never really follows through on its ideas – there’s a moment, for instance, where it becomes very obvious that the man who will become the Wizard of Oz is being used as a pawn in the three-way game between Glinda and the future Wicked Witches of the East and West for ruling the country, but then it turns into WHITE MALE CONQUERS ALL.

It didn’t help that the motivation of both Wicked Witches was pretty much nonexistant. I mean, I wasn’t expecting the in-depth examination of what would create someone who everyone called a Wicked Witch of Macguire’s “Wicked”, but I was hoping for some motivation a little more nuanced than “AAHAHAHAHAHA I AM WICKED!!!”. There’s something about Oz being a philandering manwhore who tries to seduce every woman he meets, but I really couldn’t believe having the future Wicked Witches realize he’d been trying to get into both their panties with the same trick turn them against him so far that the more conniving one gives the naive one a magic apple that “rots her heart out and replaces it with WICKEDNESS”, after which her chin and nose get pointy and she turns green.

But. Basically I got exactly what I was expecting and didn’t feel ripped off. As a former Hardcore Oz Nerd, I had kinda thrown away any hope of it hewing to the books, and went in with zero expectations beyond (a) it sure did look pretty and (b) hey it’s directed by Sam Raimi, that could be cool. I got A, but sadly I think this movie was just suffocated under the weight of waaaayyyyy too large a budget for anyone to do the slightest thing that felt risky. It sparked some interesting conversation between Nick and I afterwards (and some amusing whispered snarking during the movie), and gave me a couple ideas for things to play with in my Oz fanfic that I’ve been fiddling with for a while.

I really can’t in good conscience recommend it. If you do see it, I think it’s pretty much imperative to see it on the biggest screen possible, and in 3D. Because the real star of the show is the backgrounds.

I really wish they’d done a travelogue instead.

“It's My Beak” by Libythth. So delightfully stupid!