The Geek Life Notblog

For those of you who aren’t in the know, Chuck is an NBC action comedy in its second season.  The show stars Zachary Levi as the title character, Chuck – a super-geek who accidentally downloads the only known copy of the NSA’s supercomputer the “Intersect” into his brain.  Hijinx, necessarily, ensue.

Since the show is coming up on the end of its second season, NBC has to make the always-hard decision on whether or not to renew this action-comedy “popcorn-TV” show.  In my effort to keep Yvonne Stahovski on the small screen for as much airtime as possible, I’ve compiled a list of 5 reasons that you should really be watching Chuck – either online or on cable.

5: The Music

Chuck is known for its excellent taste in music. With fans petitioning online to have an episode-by-episode soundtrack for Chuck, it’s pretty clear there’s some quality here.  Blitzen Trapper, Bon Iver,  Ra Ra Riot, and Cassettes Won’t Listen rank among the newer talent featured on the show, and of course there’s classics: Toto (featured karaoke style), Janes Addiction, Air Supply,  Huey Louis, and a lot more rank among the classics (some more tongue in cheek than others.

Usually 5 or 6 new songs are aired each episode, not to mention the catchy “Short Skirt Long Jacket” instrumental Theme Song by Cake.  You can get a list each episodes music here, so you can get a glimpse of what I’m talking about:  http://nbcchuck.wordpress.com/music-from-chuck/

 

4: it’s produced by McG

And honestly… what has McG ever touched that wasn’t gold…

… no but seriously.  With Shows like “Sorority Forever” and “Supernatural” under his belt, this man deserves all of our love and devotion.  If you were at all a fan of the tongue-in-cheek style of Charlie’s Angels (we’ll forgive him for the sequel), then you’ll know what kind of thing you’re in for with Chuck.  This show is not going to win an Emmy, but it’s got that same irreverent charm that comes with the McG brand.  While my argument here makes us all fear for the fate of Terminator: Salvation, we can still enjoy the man’s sensibilities.  After all he hired…

 

 

3: Yvonne Strahovski

So, yeah.  This is not exactly a reason for everyone.  I can’t honestly talk about her killer acting chops or her stellar resume (so far she’s popped up as side characters in two tv shows, and can be found in the background of a hand full of movies), but I can say she holds her own on this show. You believe her enough to keep watching and, honestly, who can argue with this face:

 

 

 

 

2: People Need To Stop Cancelling Good Shows

Ok, ok.  So I know this is a little touch of circular logic.  But seriously.  Networks haven’t exactly clued in to the new paradigm of television.  They’re still so concerned with ad sales and week-by-week viewership that they’re all but ignoring things like viewing trends, audience conversion, online revenue, cross-show traffic, potential DVD/DLC sales and the whole host of things that contribute to the bottom line.  This may be more the fault of the advertisers than the network, my point stands.  If we can all tune in, maybe we can keep one more charming show with development potential from dropping off the air. 

 

 

1: Chuck Bartowski

Guys want to be him, girls want to love him.  How many of us don’t dream of having all the collected secrets of the western world stuck in his head.  That and he can fix a computer…  and unlock high security doors… and hack into top secret NSA computers.  I mean lets face it. He’s Heroes’ Micah without the superpowers. 

Chuck gets to go to high society balls, get shot at by madmen, and comes home to the loving arms of…Adam Baldwyn.  Well perhaps his life isn’t perfect. But he’s fun to watch, fun to root for, and a great reason to tune in week after week.

 

 

In the end, Chuck is 42 minutes of your time well spent (on NBC.com – you’ll have to commit to the hour for live TV). In any case, you can come by our forums and tell us what you think of the show at the very least.

Tim here!

The new episode should be up today. It’s all about Zack Snyder’s Watchmen and Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell, with a little Osamu Tezuka thrown in. A big, big thanks to Vainya from Gaming Angels for showing up to help out with the discussion.

We’ve had so much fun talking about technophilia, cyberbrains and infinite nets we’ve decided to dedicate a future episode to the world of cyberpunk/postcyberpunk. Joy! Possibly my favorite subgenre of science fiction.

Unfortunately, missing from today’s podcast is an actual summary of what Ghost in the Shell’s about. So, from handy-dandy Wikipedia:

Ghost in the Shell (攻殻機動隊 ,Kōkaku Kidōtai, translated as “Mobile Armored Riot Police”) is a Japanese cyberpunk manga created by Masamune Shirow, and first published in 1989 in Young Magazine. A collected edition was released in 1991; a sequel, Ghost in the Shell 2: Man/Machine Interface, was released in 2002; and a serialized manga, Ghost in the Shell 1.5: Human-Error Processor, was released in 2003, which contained material left out of the sequel.

The manga series has been adapted into three anime films, Ghost in the Shell, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex Solid State Society; two anime television series, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd GIG; and three video games: one PlayStation game, one PlayStation 2 game, and one PlayStation Portable game. The films and anime were produced by Production I.G..

Ghost in the Shell is a futuristic police thriller dealing with the exploits of Motoko Kusanagi, a member of a covert operations division of the Japanese National Public Safety Commission known as Section 9. The unit specializes in fighting technology-related crimes. … Although supposedly equal to all other members, Kusanagi fills the leadership role in the team, and is usually referred to as “the Major” due to her past rank in the Japanese Self-Defense Forces. She is capable of superhuman feats, and bionically specialized for her job — her body is almost completely mechanized; only her brain and a segment of her spinal cord remain organic.

The setting of Ghost in the Shell is cyberpunk or postcyberpunk, similar to that of William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy. Kusanagi and her colleagues face external threats and also suffer internal conflict over their own natures.

Here are my viewing notes for Mamoru Oshii’s 1995 anime classic Ghost in the Shell:

**********GHOST IN THE SHELL MOVIE****

computerization has not yet wiped out nations and ethnic groups. Espionage is still important.

Not a Ghost in the Shell movie without helicopters at the beginning
Major spying on a building.

“I hear you.”
“There’s a lot of static in your brain. What’s going on?”
“It’s that time of the month.” – subsequently disrobes. Her skin is made of thermo optic camouflage.
ENGLISH: “Must be a loose wire.”

JAPAN: Escape. Diplomatic immunity. Political asylum. Defection.

The MAKING OF A CYBORG. Creating the perfect female body. So well-drawn. Beautiful. BORN an adult.
She wakes up. A dream? The city. Gets dressed.

PUPPET MASTER
Ghost-hacking. Violating Cyberbrain privacy.

TOGUSA – Overspecialization leads to death. He’s mostly organic.

ACTION ACTION ACTION – pace is brisk. Garbagemen, looks up their routes, is found out. Chase! BULLETS. EXPLOSION.
Meditative. Batou is just soaking in the Scenery Porn – the Hong Kong market.
Major on the rooftops – the perp thinks hse’s scot-free. WATER.

Water and CANALS everywhere. The Major’s thermoptic camo works differently, water doesn’t affect it.

Batou cares about WEAPONS, dogs and THE MAJOR. Puts coat around her.

DATA in a lifetime is a tiny bit compared to the whole. Dreams/reality… fake memories. The MAJOR begins to have doubts.

BACK in water again. Meditation mode again. The Major is diving in one of the city’s canals.
One of the few times we see her eyes closed. Kenji Kawai’s music is shimmering as much as the ocean.
As she surfaces she sees her reflection in the liminal space between water and air. Boundaries. Transition.

Batou = alone. Major = alone, doesn’t mind. In her own head constantly. Batou trying to reach out. Asks about her
diving. Fear. Anxiety. Loneliness. Darkness. Hope. The Major goes into what makes an individual an individual. Quickly.
Checking off everything – voice, hand, brain, information to access via cyberbrain – she’s drunk, btw. Bitter
that she’s practically enslaved to Section 9.

Then a mysterious voice, quoting “through a glass, darkly.”

Meditative transition scene – on a CANAL. The Major is on a boat. She looks up and sees HERSELF sitting in a high-rise cafe.
She looks perturbed. Images of the city. Garbage in the water. People going about their lives. A basset hound. Dolls
in a store window. The music is a reprise of the MAKING OF A CYBORG theme from the beginning.
Gorgeous bus – windows reflecting everything. RAIN. Lights. The type of stuff that would make Michael Mann jealous. Ends with a
dismembered mannequin – next scene begins with the dismemberment of another kind of mannequin.

NUDE body. Blonde woman. a SHELL. Weird, pulsating, quivering. A science experiment. Missing a hand. Creepy.

ESCAPES from Megatech. GHOST = soul. A person’s inside that thing. DIVING into it to see what’s up seems to be a solution.

ELEVATOR SCENE – Major is unsually open in this one. Wonders if she’s a replicant and everything about her is false.
Batou soothes her like some ignored guy friend who wants to take it to the next level but she’s too IN HER OWN HEAD to notice.
Major’s like my envrionment tells me who I am, what if a computer brain has a ghost and soul, then how do I know I am?
Batou: BULLSHIT. I’ll see what thing is for myself with my own ghost.

TOGUSA – suspicious, investigating…

THE PUPPET MASTER – born in the sea of information.
DNA = self-preserving information. Memories make each person an individual. But they may as well be fantasy. Regardless,
it’s how we exist. BAM! Section 6 busts in and takes it. ESPIONAGE.

“Maybe the Puppet Master has a thing for someone over there?” DERP. The Major.

TRANSITION – everyone driving at night. Roadblocks, helicopters, city lights.

BLOOD. Bullets. MUSEUM – made entirely of glass. Architecture. BEAUTIFUL firefight. Rainfall. Music. Bullets blowing everything
apart.

Batou to the rescue – BIGASS gun. Batou covers her with his coat again.
Now the TALKY TALK finale – Puppet Master lacks basic life processes: death and offspring.
Wants to merge with Major. MALE voice coming out of Major. MAJOR can’t leave genes or offspring.
Leave our bonds and shift to the higher structure – evolution. LIGHT. ARCHITECTURE – bending light, transformation.
FEATHERS, Tree of Sephiroth (?) = divine.

BATOU protects her. She’s decapitated but brain is still active. Batou transfers her into a little girl. A CHILD.
Wakes up seeing herself in a mirror, looking at her hand. Batou says it’s not his type.
NEITHER THE MAJOR NOR THE PUPPET MASTER. 2501 is their code. Batou seems disappointed. Loves her? “You can stay as long as you
like.”

MAJOR’s like fuck no. “And where shall I go from here? The net is vast and limitless.”
ENGLISH: Where does the newborn go from here? The net is vast and infite. Zoom up to the city, sounds of transmission/etc

CHORAL SONG – Wedding song. It’s about the Major and 2501.

VERSION 2.0 – the voice is the only indicator of PUPPET MASTER’S sex. Changed to female in 2.0.

VOYUERISM – of female bodies. boobies!
male-oriented space. WORLD OF alienation and uncertain boundaries.

interiority vs. exteriority – true me vs. public me

HEIRARCHY OF RELATIONS OF DESIRE
- men should liek to look at women, vice versa
HOLLYWOOD – women should look good.

MONTAGE-oriented. Pastiche of events.

CYBERWOMEN – Mothers! SEX!
Limit of yourself is your body. INTERNET – problem of identity.

ANXIETY – women’s body is beautiful. OBJECT OF DESIRE. What’s the limit? Real breasts? Real voice?
Desire to control/punish woman

REPRODUCTION – you’re not producing yourself.
punished and blown up.
IS SHE A WOMAN? – Maternal to Togusa. Possible lover to Batou.

- merging of worlds – Puppet Master + THE MAJOR

Ghost in the Shell – the virtual IS part of the real.
The Matrix – virtual is NOT part of the real.

P.S. I make a faulty Terminator 2 :: Grand Theft Auto 4 analogy in today’s episode. Replace Terminator 2 with Michael Haneke’s Funny Games and it makes a lot more sense.

I knew I was thinking of Terminator 2 for a reason, and that’s because it has more in common with Metal Gear Solid and its sequels. Way more chatter about nuclear deterrence, world peace, artificial intelligence, fate and free will in those games.

Oh, I was also saying how someone was “especially good” in Milk, and that someone is Emile Hirsch.

Who also plays the title character in Speed Racer. Which everyone should see and love.

P.P.S. Don’t forget! We’ll be at New York Comic Con this week, Friday and Saturday. I’ll be there Saturday!

So it seems Matt, Rob, Jess and I are going to New York Comic Con this year! We’ll be there Friday and Saturday (well I’ll probably just be there Friday – I’m po’, okay?!) – that’s Feb. 6th and 7th at the Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan. We’ll be strutting around, showing off our snazzy T-shirts and hats to everyone, spreading the word of Mastergeek Theater. Keep a look out for us!

Meanwhile, the Resident Evil 5 demo is now up on Xbox Live. I’ve been playing it since December and found it rather enjoyable. It’s like Resident Evil 4 but with a lot more enemies! Unfortunately, the Internets seem to disagree, and I see where they’re coming from at a certain angle, especially after playing Gears of War 2. The common complaints for RE5 include clunky tank-like controls, tight level design that inhibits movement further, and crappy partner AI.

I agree the controls are stuck in the past. They haven’t changed much at all from Resident Evil 4, a game released four years ago. Since then we’ve had Gears of War, Dead Space and a host of other games inspired by Resident Evil 4 that featured easy and intuitive control. In RE5 you can’t strafe, shoot from the hip, dodge or do anything to defend yourself. I suppose that’s where some of the challenge comes in, and I suppose that could be a very poor design decision. The challenge should not come from crappy controls. Nevertheless, I don’t find the old RE4-style controls that much of a problem. I’m used to them.

The level design, at least what we’ve seen so far in the Assembly and Shanty Town portions of the demo, does seem too cramped. The village in RE4 gave you plenty of space to move around. The Assembly looks haphazard in the way it’s organized, like there’s just random shit everywhere. Playing the demo I find myself just running up onto the roofs to jump around to make things easier.

The crappy partner AI… I saw no evidence of this while playing. I was impressed, actually. Sheva healed me, stayed out of the way and did all the little automatic things a good computer-controlled partner is supposed to do. Of course, the optimum way to play is with another human being. So, uh, find friends, complainers.

With only a little more than a month to go until Resident Evil 5’s release it looks like there’s very little chance for extra tweaking. The demo indicated, to me at least, that they’re on the right track with this game. However, I wouldn’t mind being wrong, I don’t want to pay full price for an extra-flawed game. Hopefully the video game review world doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to its appraisal. Given that it’s following up one of the best games ever made I guess it is inevitable it will fail in some ways.

So the 4th episode of the podcast is up. Please pardon the fact that it was recorded about a month ago. I have been trapped in a holiday induced time bubble.

Episode 6 is being recorded this Friday, so I’m going to try to get Episode 5 up before then. So just maybe there will be two episodes up this week.

And now that the holidays are over, I’m going to make sure that each episode comes to you guys fresh from the oven only a few days after it’s been recorded. So look for the podcast to become the weekly affair it deserves to be, and please enjoy episode 4: The Best Topic EVER!

So there have been a few updates to the site.
I’ve finally updated the wordpress installation, so those of you reading this via RSS feeds will no longer see those pesky Viagra ads all over the place. I’ve also added quick links to the top of the blog portion so that you can navigate the site a little better.

Honestly. What is the point of these Viagra and Russian Porn ads that litter every unsecured blog and forum on the net. It’s not like 15,000 links to “Russianbrides.com” will increase traffic much, and it’s been about 15,000 years (give or take the standard deviation) since link spamming has worked on any but the most retarded of search engines. All it does is stand to ruin any sort of real work we’re doing on these pages. It’s like the graffiti of the internet… minus the cool lettering and creative use of spray paint.

I will be working diligently over the next month to create some drastic and much needed incremental improvements on this site. So stay tuned, loyal followers, and thanks for stopping by.

Tim here. The second episode, The Vidya, is up and running and it’s December already. Crikey. We recorded that l’il number way, way back. Right after Halloween. So listening to it is interesting for a number of reasons:

1.) I sound like I’m underwater. Matt and Jess sound lovely. I thought a universal Bluetooth earpiece would be good enough for recording but evidently not. I pledge to emerge from the murky depths to get something better. Any suggestions?

B.) Although we sound aimless we do cover a breadth of games and issues (The best Final Fantasy, Fallout 3, DRM, Mega Man 9’s difficulty) that would interest the video gaming set out there. We don’t dissect anything in detail but we hope to cover a wide set of topics (totems, I call them: TV, film, video games) before we get down and dirty and talk explicitly about, I dunno, say, the strengths and weaknesses of Sega Saturn for 45 minutes. Well, maybe just weaknesses in that case.

&.) The podcast is a little time capsule. The only game we talk about that isn’t out yet is Prince of Persia (out this week). Everything else – Gears of War 2, Mirror’s Edge, CoD5 – has been out for a while and will hopefully be covered in detail in future recordings. Matt and I have been playing Gears 2 online but the man won’t play the campaign on his own. He better catch up fast, I’m not so sure I’ll be wary of spoilers for long!

3.) I didn’t crap out of the podcast at the end. I purposely left to make myself a tomato cheese melt. It was delicious.

More vidya.

Matt and I have been playing Smash Bros. Brawl online pretty regularly. We played offline before but I was under the mercy of his controllers of choice – the Wii Remote and Nunchuk. With a little patience and practice I could just barely eke out some sort of satisfactory performance, even a few wins, but without a Gamecube controller I felt like Thor without his hammer. I needed to play with power. So, online I’ve been doing that, whooping Matt left and right and it’s been a great old time. But when he plays as Ike…

Things begin to happen.

He wins. I can’t let that happen. Not anymore.

Meanwhile, I finally hacked my PSP. Sony built a nice piece of hardware but they forgot to support the thing with decent software (I can’t keep playing Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops forever). They also forgot a way to protect the scratch-happy screen, the analog nub is a joke and their selection of PSOne games available to download on their store network is also laughable. Oh wow, Tekken 2 and … Crash Bandicoot. Joy. Where’s Resident Evil 2? Where’s Chrono Cross? Y’know, great games that tons of people would pay money for? Meanwhile, Nintendo updates their Virtual Console on the Wii with three new games every week and these past few weeks have seen some stellar additions. Secret of Mana, Mega Man 3, Earthworm Jim, Gradius 2 … Not that all the Virtual Console releases are great (oh gee, another version of Street Fighter 2?) or that Nintendo isn’t guilty of their own moronic tendencies (Wii Music) but honestly. What is Sony thinking? What are they doing over there? Working on Home? Yeah. Great.

So, since Sony won’t give us anything it falls upon us, uh, liberators of the internets, to free the PSP of its binding firmware and actually give the poor thing something to do besides play Yoko Kanno songs and movie podcasts. Turns out the thing’s a wizard at emulation – Game Boy, NES, Sega Genesis, Game Boy Advance and some SNES games. My dreams of playing Contra 3 and Kirby Super Star – motherlovin’ Kirby Super Star, the holy grail of sweet, sweet, wonderful Kirby games – are dashed like so many Waddle Doos and Dees thanks to godawful frame-skipping and horrendous, well, emulation problems I guess. I don’t get it. But Chrono Trigger, Super Mario World and Earthbound all seem to work fine which is terrific since they’re, well, legendary! At least, that’s what I hear about Earthbound. After 13 years of trying and trying (I just couldn’t sit down and do it) I’m finally going to play that sucker and see what the big deal is about. And after that I’ll move onto Mother 3 and see what the big deal about that is.

Of course, this opens up the door to piracy… Luckily, the PSP hardly has anything worth stealing. The good games, I already own. And that’s pretty much all there is to that. Apparently, now it is possible to play PSOne games by ripping the ISOs from the CDs I already own onto my PSP memory stick. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Now I just gotta find out how! Hopefully I’ll be shooting zombies with Claire Redfield and hunting Frozen Flames with Kidd while on the caaaaan in time for the weekend.

Woo!

Y’know how you’re put on the spot and you can’t think of a reply fast enough? George from Seinfeld had that problem a lot and I did today when talking about Pokemon and Mirror’s Edge in today’s podcast. Matt asked what the big deal about Pokemon is. Well. It’s FUN, for one. It’s a deep, challenging RPG with over 300 characters you can mold and build to suit your style, there are tons of items and moves and secrets, a welcoming community to trade characters and items with, online play. Certainly there’s a nostalgia factory – the property’s been around a good, long while and is never going away. And it’s portable. It’s like asking what’s the big deal about Tetris? Whats’ the big deal about beer? C’mon. What more do you want? We’re obviously not changing each other’s minds here.

And Matt’s response to my query if he played the Mirror’s Edge demo out now: “It’s a jumping game. [or some similar snarky thing]”

So is Super Mario Bros.! RRRRRGGGHH. Try the demo, man. You too, Jess, you can download it on the PS3 through the Playstation Network Store. It’s the most unique thing out there. Every game out there looks like some brown, realistic shooter. Mirror’s Edge has primary colors. Do you remember the last time you saw those in a game? That wasn’t from Nintendo? It’s thrilling. The art design’s terrific, the music, the controls are different and weird and fun… the thrill of running away from armed pursuers. It’s completely different, emphasizing running and climbing and leaping over regular ‘ol SHOOTAN. It’s like the rooftop chase in Bourne Ultimatum or Casino Royale. And yes, you can see your legs if you look down. Try it out for PETE’S sake.

So yeah, in the feeble, limp words of George Costanza, “the jerk store ran out of you!”

Hey, I’m Tim. When Matt asked me to join Mastergeek Theater he made it clear he didn’t want it to just be video game talk.

I’m about to disappoint him.

It’s almost November and all the big game companies have to push their huge AAA titles down our throats like awful lozenges. I’m not really looking forward to any games this holiday season because A.) I got too many games to play already and 2.) the vidya’s expensive and all too often, disappointing. I haven’t touched the 360 since… I don’t even remember, but Ninja Gaiden 2 wasn’t worth it, and the PS3 is a $700 Metal Gear Solid 4-playing machine. Which I haven’t touched since I beat MGS4. Boy, I sure am glad I made that investment.

The Wii is getting some play. Not any actual disc-based games though. WiiWare titles Bomberman Blast and Mega Man 9 have been at my fingertips since mid-September and they’re lovely. Metroid Prime 3 does sit inside the console, unloved and forgotten since last August.

Nevertheless, video games are screaming at me for their attention. Walking in Manhattan I found this on the corner of 36th and 10th Ave.

Now, I dunno about you but that’s pretty big. There are Fallout 3 ads on buses, too and “TV specials” (30-minute commercials) featuring “industry experts” (Kelly Hu?! Who knew!) talking about how great Fable 2 is. I figure it’s just because this holiday season is more crowded than ever and marketers figure getting hacks to shill their warez on Sci-Fi Channel and Comedy Central (which is pretty much The Shaun White Snowboarding/Spider-Man: Web of Shadows/Max Payne the Movie Network now) is the way to get attention. …It works I guess. I certainly took notice.

The truth is video games have been in the public conscious as long as they’ve been around. Or at least as long as I’ve been around. No longer do we have to suffer the slings and arrows of the Super Mario Mario Show or Captain N (awesome as they were). Now things have gotten a little more sophisticated. Now we have Michael Ian Black and David Wain to tell us which game has the best HD graphix and totally killar gaemplay this yeer. Or the ever-drowsy Liv Tyler poking away at a DS Lite white as her molars.

On the other hand it’s nice the terrible mainstreaming of my beloved medium gets at least a little reputable exposure. Here’s an article about CliffyB, the mind behind the Xbox 360 shooter Gears of War (okay, I guess I do look forward to Gears of War 2). The writer goes a little overboard with the namedropping (Cormac McCarthy? I suppoooose he has something to do with GoW…) and hifalutin jibber-jabber but it’s cool that a video game is sharing print space with, er, the higher arts. Y’know.

Political cartoons and such.