TPA 52

There's a lot to talk about. First let's get the God stuff out of the way. I'm trying to write more positive so that I don't have to go back and read how miserable I am. For a few weeks I've been asking God to work on me, and He has, but the idea is co-labor, to work with God on something. This week, I asked God, "Hey God, let's work on me together." One of the thoughts that came to my head was Joseph in slavery. After being sold by his brothers, he worked to death and was imprisoned after being falsely accused. I was listening to Bill Johnson and he was talking about how Joseph could have worked for decades and never been the right hand man of the pharoh. And even thought I'm worried about almost turning forty and worry that I've never made connections and done enough training, God knows my desires and he has plans for me to grant them. I know God can make up for the lost time. So even though I don't have a lot going for me as far as I can see, I know that God is working on me, I know that WE are working on me. 

My friend came over two days ago and we watched the latest movie by Osgood Perkins called "Keeper." It was a mediocre collection of scary scenes sewn together. That's how one reviewer put it. I had my fingers in my ears and my eyes closed throughout most of the film. I'm a scardy cat, I know, but I still love horror. Osgood Perkins is the son of Anthony Perkins who played Norman Bates in Psycho. Osgood's mother also died in the 9-11 attacks. She was on one of the planes. Osgood has stated that his last project, "Longlegs," is based around his family. How that works is anyone's guess. Keeper, on the other hand, was written by Nick Lepard who's last film is about a guy who kidnapps women to feed them to sharks. Keeper is the same idea but instead the guy gets a few more years added to his life. A whole lot of nothing happens in the film. You see these spooky images and they don't seem to connect. They did connect in Longlegs even though I needed someone on Youtube to explain to me how the movie worked. Longlegs has you asking the right kind of "w" questions at the end. "Why did that happen?" "What happens to the last girl?" "What was the connection from this to this?" Keeper makes you ask "Why did I see that?" "What was that all about?" I think the problem is that the movie is filmes to make you think that it's smart and when it plays it's hand, it's got a pair of twos instead of aces. It wants you to think that there's meaning behind all the scenes you're seeing but when the answer is so simple and all the scary images feel like red herrings rather than clues. For example, the protagonist looks out of the window and sees a pale white severed head of a woman. She jumps and when she looks back, the head is gone. There's also this facinating scene where the protagonist is visited by a woman she met earlier, then we see the woman sitting in a chair next to a mini version of herself. Not a shrunken version, but a character that has obviously been digitally shrunken by two or three feet so that she looks like one of those large dolls. The movie does not explain any of these occurences which adds to the sour aftertaste after watching it. When the protagonist is saved at the end of the film, you wonder why she was spared when the other victims were killed. You question if the movie is taking you serious or if it's throwing random scares at you to fill the time. Because as I said earlier, nothing happens. A woman waits in a rental cabin while a monster stalks her in the background. And then there's how the movie chooses to explain what is happening. Instead of showing the movie-goer, it gives you an info dump which explains the antagonists' actions but leaves you with more questions. In an earlier scene, the antagonist gives chocolate cake to the protagonist. Later he explains it was supposed to put her to sleep to let the monster attack her, but in a delusioned state at night, she ends up eating the whole cake. As if that would somehow ruin his plan. Wouldn't eating more of the drugged cake make her sleep longer? Instead, she acts like she's fine. She's wide awake the next day with no adverse effects. The movie never explains how the cake affected her besides showing severed fingers inside the cake as she devours it in a dream-driven delusion. Not Perkins' best work. I blame the writer, not the director. 

After watching that abyssmal movie, my friend and I had to cleanse our pallete. We watched "Welcome to Derry," a show following a bunch of kids in the 1960s in Derry. It's a prequel series to the movies and even stars Bill Skarsgard. My friend told me that it had "false protagonists." I didn't know what he meant by that but at the end, I understood. The first episode follows a kid trying to leave Derry. When he's picked up by a family, they traumatize him until he realizes that whatever is in Derry has driven him back to town. The kid is killed and we pick up four months later with the prequel "loser club." Like the book and the movies, a group of misfits gather to fight the evil lurking in the sewers. I'm wondering if the series will follow the book more closely because there's a whole history behind Stephen King's "It." When IT awakens, bad events take place. Usually, children die or a great tragedy strikes the town. Many of the kids are attacked by famous movie monsters that King likely grew up watching. The first episode introduces a Jewish kid who's into comics and a nerdy kid who's into aliens and conspiracy theories. They meet with another girl who's a bullied by students in her class and another girl who's worried about how big her glassed make her eyes appear. The team is rounded up by a black girl with no trauma, yet, but her father runs the local cinema and the nerdy kid's little sister. On the adult side, we have a air pilot who's come to Derry to test a plane for the goverment during the Cold War Era fear. The pilot meets Dick Hallorann who is a Shiner and eventually works at the Outlook in King's "The Shining." So we've got the basics of Stephen King's tropes for kids: bullies, racism, politcal intrigue, and a monster causing havok in a small town. Despite how the higher ups treat the pilot, who's black, the lower end of the military base seem to have a disdain for him. I know that the 60s were full of racism but I doubt that the military would be the first to embrace radical anti-racism so early at the time. Going back to what my friend said, about false protagonists, three of the new "loser gang" die in the first episode. While watching "The Music Man," a two-headed baby monster flies out and kills three of them. I would have liked it better if it had been a movie monster like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Instead it's some kind of abortion that someone dreamed up. It has nothing to do with the 60s but maybe that's the point. My friend didn't care for the first two episodes and I've only watched the first one but I enjoyed it. It wasn't scary but it felt like the team behind the series was trying to make a movie. The problem is that movies hit so hard because you're in a theatre. You can't get away in a theatre and have to face the monster head on. There's also the dark atmosphere and the powerful music that shakes you with each note. Those kind of things are missing in a TV. Bravo for the team trying to make this series but TV hits better when the writing is really good. Like Chernobyl. Chernobyl knew it was a TV series but the scenes, the acting, and the great writing drew you in. Welcome to Derry feels more like a spin off than it's own thing. I'm looking forward to more and seeing more Stephen King easter eggs. 

Two days ago, Valve announced their new Steam Machine. A gaming console that is half the size of Xbox's latest console but aims to take their place. Everyone is calling it the "Gabecube" after Valve's owner, Gabe Newell. He's done a lot of good for the gaming community. While the other companies have bashed their heads against the wall, he hasn't chased fads or tried to get other people's attention with anything other than a good product. Recently, a bunch of developers at AAA studios were interviewed and asked about their opinions on Valve and Steam. Over seventy percent said that they see Steam as a monopoly. The videos covering this survey have pointed out the fallacy which I won't go into since I didn't understand it, nor did I pay attention. My attention was elsewhere. I'm concerned about the amount of attention Valve is getting. While Xbox is breathing it's last, while denying Microsoft is not out of the console competition, and Playstation is still recovering from their 400 million dollar investment in a dud of a game, Valve is trotting along putting out hit after hit. The hype has overlapsed Nintendo's Switch 2 console which has been villianized by gamers for their over-priced games and their lawsuit against smaller companies. But this is the same praise we heaped on Nintendo a year ago when the original Switch was out. Nintendo had our praise, until it betrayed us. Jacked-up prices, frivilous lawsuits that have the US government investigating them, and this overall disdain for used and third party console items. If you put a used game in the Switch 2, you risk bricking the console. The Steam Machine, on the other hand, promises to be open source which means it will allow emulation. This means I could get Nintendo games without paying an overpriced dime to Nintendo. Emulation isn't perfect but if companies insist on charching upwards of $70 for a game, gamers will go back to their catalogue of older games or buy several indie games for half the price. I recenlty spent $60 plus on a handful of games instead of whatever Nintedo or Sony is offering. The Steam Box looks like it will be the new rival to console games without offering a single exclusive. Valve hasn't put out a game in any of their series for years unless you count Half Life Alyx which is more of a spinoff than the desired Half Life 3. Speaking of which, hype behind the Steam Box has made people speculate that Half Life 3 is one it's way out. I doubt it but let others dream. But Steam could change in an instant so I'm cautious about giving them hype. People are already wondering how much the console will cost based on the specs. Right now it's sitting between six hundred and a thousand dollars which seems fair. Even though I have a computer I'm thinking of saving up for one just for the controller. While I love Steam, I'm worried that all this hype and power will go to their head and they'll show their true colors. It's happened with Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft and although Steam isn't publically traded, it still makes me wonder about their future. 

Finally, some bad thoughts. I wondered if I was working to this writing thing just because of the drugs in my system. Is this really me or a drug-induced motivation to do something.