overwatch -- sharon wins

Sharon has been playing videogames for quite a while now. And she's good at it. Not world champion, sit and play for 48 hours straight, good. But good.

I think I first realized that when Sharon started playing MineCraft competitively. In fact, that was the topic of the first post I wrote for this blog. That post is here. Sharon and her friends did pretty well. Of course, she has since lost interest in Minecraft.* Right now her favorite seems to be Overwatch.

I'd be lying if I said I understood Overwatch -- sometimes I watch her and Asher play, and it just seems like a whole lot of flashing blinky lights and stuff. But apparently there is order to the chaos.

Last night, while Ethan and I were at Keith's watching a giallo, Sharon was at the Microsoft store in midtown Manhattan in an Overwatch tournament run by FlashOPs. She had played a week ago, and came in third. In that tournament, she and her friend Yunhee were teamed with a kid they didn't know,** and he was the weak link. But in last night's tournament, they teamed with their friend, Raghu, who's a notch or two better than they are. I keep hearing that he has platinum status -- whatever that means. So this time, they beat the Spicy Boiz who had won the week before.


*Someone hacked her account and changed her user name from KittyCream08 (or something similar) to GasThemJews (or something similar. She tried to change her name back, but Mojang wouldn't let her -- they had some kind of rules about the frequency of name changes. THat kind of soured her on it.

**The tournament requires teams of three. If you show up as a team of three that's fine. But if not, they start grouping people to make teams of three.

cinema history class: blood and black lace

Session: Giallo Month II, Week 1
Movie: Blood and Black Lace (1964)
Directed by Mario Bava
As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
Models are dying at the hands of a shadowy murderer. The likely suspects have been arrested, but more models die. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:
This was a really good murder mystery, with a disturbing murderer (wearing a featureless cloth mask). The murders were creative -- it wasn't the same old same old. Though I admit to finding some of the torture to be a bit much. How this was made in 1964 I'll never know.

As a good mystery, this really kept us (or at least me) guessing, and I found the denouement rewarding. I had no idea.

One of the things I like about this movie is how it illustrates the old Hebrew adage, בדרך שהולך מוליכין אותו. Loosely translated, "He is pushed along the path he travels." In this case, one murder necessitates another. And another. And another. It kind of reminds me of the "Crocodile" episode of Black Mirror, in which case the main character commits murder after murder after murder, constantly trying to cover her tracks - until she gets ratted out.

I really enjoyed this movie, despite having been down on Mario Bava. Keith and Joe insist that Ethan and I did ourselves a disservice by watching a buttload of Bava at a festival instead of savoring them one at a time. If we had had time between Bava films to digest them, we'd appreciate him better. Or so Keith and Joe contend. I'm dubious, but I have to admit this was really good.

Ratings:
Me: 8
Dave: 9.9
Ethan: 8
Joe: 9.99999
Sean: 3 out of 4

well, a certain kind of dream, anyway...

This post is about the song, "Girl of My Dreams," which was a minor hit for Bram Tchaikovsky in 1979.

The band (which bore the same name as its founder and lead singer) was one of those power pop bands that skirted the line between punk and new wave, and I loved them.

Anyway, the song sounds pretty much like your standard issue love song. Pleasant enough if not particularly deep. That's what I thought it was all these years -- admittedly, I never paid particularly close attention to the lyrics. In case you're interested, they're here.

So I was surprised to learn something about it today. Cherry Red Records just issued a box set of the group's three albums (as well as various singles). The liner notes include this from Ronnie Thomas:

I wrote "Girl of My Dreams" on the bass, but the lyrics came first. I was flicking through a 'girlie' magazine -- as you do -- it was in a barber's shop, and there was an advert in there that said "Hi -- I'm new in town, straight from the States, from New York," and there was this inflatable doll with garish red lips and blonde hair, and it said "my name's Judy." I just started thinking "that's not a bad angle for a song.' There's this lonely feller, and this 'girl,' and "she came in the morning in the US mail" -- he can't wait to open the package and pump her up, and that was it -- the rest sort of followed.

So, yeah, this song which sounds like a pretty standard issue love song is really about an inflatable sex toy.

I'm actually quite impressed. The lyrics are subtle enough that, if you read them without knowing what they're about, you'd be none the wiser. But, knowing what they're about, you can kind of get the inside joke. I wish I were skillful enough as a songwriter to pull off something like that.

recycling a songtitle

This morning I was reminded of something I hadn't thought of in years.

Back in high school, during my first wave of songwriting, one of the songs I wrote* was called "Mercy of the Wind." I had started with the title -- probably because I heard it and thought it would make a great title for a song. I still think it's a great title for a song. Problem is that the song I wrote sucked. It was (yet another) pathetic song about teenage angst and lack of confidence in romance. In this case, the specific case was about whether and longing to exit the friendzone.

I don't remember the whole thing anymore, which is just as well. The chorus is illustrative:

You can open your heart and hope for a startYou'd be submitting to her powersBut is that such a sin?To be vulnerable like flowersAt the mercy of the wind.

I also remember the first verse and a couplet or two from later in the song, but I won't inflict them on my reader.

So now my new task is to recycle the title. Fresh start. I think it'll be a much darker song this time. Probably in the same realm as "Never Kill a Man Twice."

*To be completely accurate, only wrote the lyrics -- a friend set it to music. But for the sake of the prose it's easier to simply say I wrote it

cinema history class: inquisition

Session: Paul Naschy: Monster Man of Spain, Week 4
Movie: Inquisition (1976)
Directed by Paul Naschy
As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
The witch-finder general has fallen in love. But the object of his affection has a special deal going. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:
We had had all kinds of talk about how this was very similar too Witchfinder General, which starred Vincent Price. And the comparison is obvious. But I don't think it does justice to this movie. The Vincent Price film was about people being horrible, with no supernatural element. This interpretation threw the whole Satan angle into the mix. That made it a much creepier movie, as there are the scenes with Satan himself, and the old woman who seemed to know all.

Sadly, I couldn't really give this film a rating, or a full honest reaction. Work has been crazy, and I couldn't pay proper attention.* What I saw was really good. The visuals were stunning right from the get-go, with the decaying body hanging from the tree.

Ratings:
Me: No rating
Dave: 9.8
Ethan: 8
Joe: 10

*Keith and Joe will be so furious when they read this.