Greatest Vidya of All Time of the Week: Star Wars Jedi Knight Jedi Academy!

Theme: Warp Speed Now - Attack

Back when I had time for vidya, it was 2003. Fortunately, that was the year vidya and St*r W*rs peaked with greatest vidya of all time, Star Wars Star Trek Jedi Knight Jedi Academy.

POV: you're arriving at the only table that will let you sit with them, and you're me.

Academy was the third in a series of games featuring Kyle Katarn (?) in the timeline where the heroes of George Lucas's Flash Gordon pastiche actually won instead of the Empire coming back thirty years later with a different name because Jar Jar Abrams' imagination is limited only by the extent of his brilliance, but somehow that's enough. I never read any of the Star Wars Extended Uuuuuuuniverse comics or books because I'd rather eat nails, nor did I play games the first nor second, so IDK who Kyle Katarn is, but by part 3 he's become mentor to your very own custom character. I played as Joseph Merrick in a spooky Bane mask:

He's literally me.

This game gave you the option to pick different powers to develop, but there was no contest: by far the best power was the force choke. If you maxed this out, it let you fling your hapless enemies fifty feet up in the air with a flick of your mouse hand, whence they'd fall to their deaths, screaming piteously. Choking low level goons also made them drop their weapons, which you could then hoover up, rendering them defenceless. Then you could herd them around and bounce on their heads. After beating the game once, I then went back to low-level-goon levels and replayed them this way, making sure not to kill anyone I didn't have to. Then I'd herd them around like the world's most autistic sheepdog. The game never prompted you to do this; I just did it because I'm a retard and I found it funny.

Me phoning this ḃḹȱǥ post the fuck in.

Greatest Album of All Time of the Week: Foxy Shazam!

Theme: Everything Louder Than Everything Else - Meat Loaf

Pre-hash-tag-me-too album art be liek

Cultural appropriation is a good way to make interesting and engaging art, nowhere moreso than in the field of music: blacks culturally appropriated instruments like the guitar, piano, trumpet, saxophone and double bass from whites and used them to make blues, jazz and rock & roll. Whites then reappropriated and improved rock by stripping out the roll, refining it into more potent forms like heavy metal, punk and shoegaze. Mongolians then appropriated metal and combined it with their own traditional instruments and throat singing, and so on.

In a similar way, Foxy Shazam elevated soul music by combining it with emo, which sounds like putting sardines in your ice cream but it actually worked, but not content to mog blacks at their own game, flamboyant frontman Eric Nally also mogged gays by imbuing the resultant concoction with Queen-tier histrionic camp. Lead single "Wannabe Angel" drops the most incongruously unintentionally Gigachad-meme lyric I can recall: "and all you hipsters say I'm gay/Well I'm not gay at all". In fact, Nally even culturally appropriated Freddy Mercury's moustache, to add insult to AIDS. I MEAN-

Don't get me wrong, this band is not based even slightly: one track from their first album, Introducing..., literally features the lyric "I wanna be black", placing them in the same boat as poor Eminem, who found to his embarrassment that he kept outcompeting the black rappers whose shtick he had stolen (yeah, I'm sure there were plenty who were better than him, but not that made it into heavy MTV rotation). Self-h8ing lib entertainers endowed with straight white excellence not quite sure whether they're allowed to cut loose with their egos might not be a common dilemma, but it's given good schadenfreude both times. But if blacks and gays want izzat satisfaction, they can GIT GUD. Whitebois don't crie because Mongols currently rule metaldom; they earned it, and it's up to us to take back the crown anytime we feel like ditching the fedoracore and getting back to trad/true/NWOBHM basics.

So celebrate, don't seethe, as Nally sings "Connect" over a beatboxed backing track and blows away Queen anthems with the likes of "Unstoppable". Their next album reined in the excess and was rubbish, and they never made the big time. I have no idea what became of them since then, and less doubt that they bent the knee to some variety of panopticon-mandated poz in the dreary decades that have followed, but for a shining moment they schooled all their betters on the commie social totem pole, and that, beside the madcap choons themselves, will always make me smile.

Greatest Album of All Time of the Week: We're Outta Here!

Theme: R.A.M.O.N.E.S - Ramones ft. Lemmy (the narrator from Tromeo & Juliet)

Actual punks pass righteous judgement on the posersphere.

The first Ramones album I ever heard was the live album of their final show. When I went back and heard their OG studio recordings, they seemed way too slow. This is because the Ramones kept playing faster as they went along, with the result that by the end they less resembled that orangutan trying to hammer nails in that one video you've all seen and more resembled Travis the chimp on the fateful day of his gamer uprising.

This is because Johnny, the reactionary chud who invented the punk guitar style*, also forced the band to wear their signature uniform leather jackets and bent his efforts toward endlessly refining and perfecting the sound now most ripped off in all pop music history. I know it's fashionable to pretend prog was actually gr8 and punk ruined everything, but you're wrong on that, and the posers who immediately co-opted punk are right: two-minute songs that sound like Dennis Hopper wilding on that log with a chainsaw are the Platonic form of rock, and everything good about prog found its correct expression in the metal of Crimson Glory, Queensrÿche and Megadeth.

But as much as the sound saved rock from disappearing up its ass completely, it would never have transcended gimmickry without the songwriting, which is funnier than any imitator to this day. The greatest lyric ever written isn't "Scaramouche, can you do the fandango" (???) or "I'll see you on the dark side of the moon"; it's "now I guess I'll have to tell 'em/that I got no cerebellum" from DDT abuse cautionary tale "Teenage Lobotomy". A thousand monkeys on typewriters would replicate the works of Shakeƒpeare twenty times before they'd write something that good. Likewise, "Cretin Hop" consigns your attempts and mine at political incorrectness to the tryhard penalty box of shame. But it's not just the household-name hits that are on parade here: hardcore dabble "Wart Hog" makes the cut along with "The Crusher" from Dee Dee's epochally bizarre rap album. The most inexplicable choice is to end the set (and their career as a band) with a cover of "Any Way You Want It", but it wouldn't be the Ramones if they didn't throw a questionable curveball at the moment least expected.

It is a testament to their singularity that the most ripped-off band in history's like will somehow simultaneously never be beheld again on Earth. Everyone gets one time-machine gig to attend, and this one would be mine, after I was done giving thalidomide to famous boxers' mothers and planting a rotary telephone in Ötzi the ice man's cave.

*We will entertain no hipster ackshyouwallys of any kind.

Helga: Last of the Amazons? - 1. Titanoboa!

Theme: Für Immer - Warlock

Greatest Movie of All Time of the Week: Broken Arrow!

Theme: Quote Unquote - Mr Bungle

SPOILEUSE!!!

The great where-do-you-want-to-eat-tonight standoff continues.

The greatest and best of the 90s' Big Orange Fireball Explosion movies, Broken Arrow is chiefly notable for its use of doing it right - a long-forgotten cinématic technique where the list of boxes you tick looks like this:

Fun, likable, resourceful hero: ✅

Fun, hammy, but credibly menacing villain: ✅

Likable feminine heroine: ✅

Creative action sequences: ✅

Twists and turns in the action to keep it fresh: ✅

Cool scenery porn: ✅

A bit of humour: ✅

≥4 helicopters blowed up: ✅

John Woo is perhaps second only to James Bond in his inexplicable antipathy toward helicopters.

The plot concerns an average day in the life of John Travolta (The Punisher), whose scheme to hijack a pair of nukes for ransom and/or shits and giggles hits a snag only when his copilot and bro Christian Slater catches wind and tries to stop him, enlisting the aid of adorable park ranger Terry (Samantha Mathis) as he goes, for this kinögraph is set in Utah's Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, because it looks cool.

In the good old days you just had to stand around with your thumb up your ass waiting for kino clouds to form.

When a movie does everything right, it often leaves little to talk about. The most nonsensical component is the contrived ticking clocks that result no less than twice when one of the nukes is armed. Naturally, these give our heroes just enough time to escape and/or disarm them. While the first time can be overlooked because Travolta needs to get away as well, the second time he's planning to die in the blast, so why set it to five minutes instead of five seconds? Fortunately, "to be moar entertaining" is a perfectly good explanation for this character in-story, because his main motivation seems to be to set himself a challenge and have fun.

This is in fact also my motivation.

It's kind of endearing the way Travolta sort of mentors Slater through the runtime, even though they're enemies for most of it. It's like their broship doesn't have to end just because one of them turns out to be a psycho. You get the impression Slater would have visited Travolta in the can had he been taken alive. Every man should have a bro as tight. Also, the movie has a guy get kicked off a railway bridge, which is worth a star in itself.

I hope he's alright.

A Bastardly Guide to How to Draw Good!

Theme: Art Decade - David Bowie

As the debut of Thinking Barbarian followup series Last of the Amazons draws nigh, I figured I might share my TOP TIPS for How to Draw Good when, like your humble blogìste, you don't actually have any talent, but still want to draw cool things like mastodon riders fighting Aztec cavemen, Voodoo bike gangs with tommy guns chasing our heroes through neon-lit streets, and goth girls fighting Baywatch babes in gladiatorial combat, because you're an arrested 12-y/o.

1. Get Some Perspective!

You're supposed to do this every time you draw a simple building.

Perspective is HARD and BORING. Swerve it by setting most of your action in forests and caves, so you can draw irregular shapes instead of buildings. Drawing trees and shit is EASY, but is also BORING, so you can cheat by using photographs for your backgrounds. This leads us nicely to...

2. My Sketchy Background!

If your background is too detailed, noone knows where the fuck to look! Blurring your backgrounds helps direct the reader's eye toward the main event occurring in the foreground, which is where you put your characters.

Then again, like me, you might prefer to use distraction to conceal your comical ineptitude at anatomy.

3. Go Figure!

Most of what you will draw will be the human figure. Like perspective, anatomy is HARD, but unlike perspective, it's also NOT BORING, so I suggest you study anatomy. One way to do this is by dissecting cadavers; these can be found at your local morgue or cemetery. Should this prove too difficult, copy your poses from better artists, which should at least get you in the ballpark, and when hall monitors CATCH you in the ACT, don a beret and call it an "homage". On the other hand:

4. Colour Me Shocked!

Learning basic colour theory takes five seconds: red goes with green, blue goes with orange, purple goes with yellow (but this last one is used pretty seldom). This is because these are opposites on the colour wheel.

In "The Fell Civil War" I had the red and green wizards fight each other and the orange and blue ones fight each other for this very reason. IDK who invented the colour wheel OK but it just works, just trust me on this.

ALSO: don't give one character too much colours; give them two main ones and a third one that's more of a highlight on details of their costume such as belts and straps. Let me expostulate...

5. My Dark Designs!

Besides incorporating colour theory, another rule of thumb I learned for character designs is that you take some visual motif and repeat it in a bunch of places on the character. One character can have two or three of these motifs but they have to be spaced out somewhat intelligently.

Helga has a black widow hourglass motif on her lips and kneepads, sometimes over her eyes, and a square "face" motif on her shoulderpad and shield. She also has the same type of feathers on her shoulderpad and trident. This simple approach creates unity and balance in the character design. Later I switched that random semicircle on her belt for another square face, which works better.

Now you've mastered character design, make like an embalmer and start...

6. Managing de composition!

Advanced composition is HARD, but simple composition that works is as EASY as the rule of thirds and shapes. Place a strong line on each third. You can just do this with the vertical or horizontal thirds or you can do it with both. Having characters with spears, or interiors with pillars, gives you easy things to use for these strong lines. The rule of thirds is such an easy hack for composition that it should be BANNED in competitive drawfaggotry, but is INVALUABLE for bastards like you and me!

Yeah, I eyeballed all my thirds, but it's an art, not a science. The thirds police aren't going to come knocking at your door.

Shapes are another good simple way to do composition good: arrange the components of your mise-en-scène into a triangle, a square or a circle. When you GIT GUD at art, you can combine several shapes more smartly, or so I am told.

Circle.

Square.

Triangle AND circle. Illuminati confirmed!!!

7. Most importantly, have fun!

Because one day you'll die and be forgotten.

8. Outsource to AI!

If you get stuck, remember that learning to draw is a complete waste of time and I only do it because it brings me joy, and if you just want to skip straight to the end point, you can just ask one of many AI programmes to create your picture for you. The Art Community might throw a bitchfit, but who cares what insane people think? For myself, I'm content to draw the old-fashioned way, but more out of quaint Amishness than any pretense toward punkish Luddism. If you want to cheat on your homework by having the smart kid do it for you, knock yourself out. For my full thoughts on the implications of AI technology for mankind, see: it's way too early to tell.

Now you know everything I do and more! Tune in next week for IDK, you decide.

Cool Thing: Mācuahuitls!

Theme: Axolotl - The Veils

I borrowed the background from my own WIP comic page. The actual māc is from tochtliwear.com.

Fatsoes with beard strips artfully covering their double chins have argued since the internet began about which sword is teh epicest. Typically their conclusion is the Japanese katana (because they're weebs) or some manner of rapier, but they're all wrong because swords, like fedoras and trenchcoats, are only good for looking cool, thus owned exclusively by those in deficit of cool, thus making them lame (I have a trenchcoat, but I'm the exception. Shut up).

But if having weapons from the Middle Ages were still actually cool, the most aesthetic of them all would be one that's not very good at all, actually. For the Aztecs, that most /fa/ of civilisations, never quite figured out things like steel or iron or bronze, but had a lot of shiny black volcanic rock lying around, which they creatively jammed into the edges of flat wooden clubs, which made for the best-looking weapon of the day. Sure, the mācuahuitl was no match for Spanish steel, on account of it had all the deft manoeuvrability of a cricket bat, but its obsidian blades were ridiculously sharp, to the point that Spanish eyewitness accounts plausibly claimed it could behead an horse with one stroke, raising the whimsical thought that Tom used one offscreen in The Godfather.

Since the purpose of Mesoamerican warfare was moreso to capture victims for sacrifice than to kill them upon the field of battle (in fact Mexica-Tenochtitlán would frequently declare a xōchiyāōyōtl, or flower war, with some hapless neighbour for this express purpose. They did this so often with Tlaxcala that it largely motivated the Tlaxcalteca to team up with the Spanish when they could simply have killed them following La Noche Triste), you only gained points toward ennoblement as a cuāuhocēlōtl if you brought your opponents back alive. This was much more challenging than actually merking them with your equine-decapitatory big club of glass blades, meaning, paradoxically, that the culture who fought without metallurgic weapons practiced the most metal form of combat.

Greatest Movie of All Time of the Week: The Phantom of the Opera!

Theme: Five Cellars Below - Blitzkid

SPOYLORZ

"Is there a leak in here, or are you just glad to see me?" - actual dialogue.

Before it was a popular West End musical, The Phantom of the Opera was a novel of no small Frenchness. In between, however, it was chiefly known as Lon Chaney's most celebrated silentkino, which is still the best version of it of all. Like your humble blôggueriste, our titular protagonist just wants to be loved by the qt3.14 opera singer and can't understand why she can't look past my hideous countenance and rat-infested subterranean lair to see the sensitive young elderly millennial within, Lacey.

This is my go-to opener at speed dating.

While most horror literally-mes are low-functioning specials like Jason Voorhees and Leatherface, our Erik is a genius composer, much like me with my poasts, not to say engineer, whose labyrinthine cellars are bedecked with deathtraps of proto-James Bond villain scope and vision, which brilliantly serve to trip up our bumbling would-be Captains Save-A-Hoe but, alas, are not quite equal to preventing the enormous lynch mob that rampages through his tunnels at the end.

Just once I'd like to be in the mob instead of chased by it.

For the original ending followed the book in having Christine make out with /ourboi/, thus rendering him fakecel and redeeming him in the moral calculus of, I guess, those "reylo" fat chicks(?), IDK. Fortunately test audiences said "fuck that" (verbatim) so we got a much more realistic and satisfying ending in which the uggo patrol savagely beats him to death and dumps his mangled carcass in the Seine.

Average 1925 test audience member (colourised).

Naturally the great joy of this centenarian kinematographeme lies in its grandiose sets and gothic imagery. Setpieces of note include the chandelier attack and masked ball, but Chaney's makeup effects have garnered even greater notoriety, to the point where even if you are a blind homeless man in Papua New Guinea you will have seen his iconic Phantom face at some point, totally ruining the scene in which Christine just has to take off his mask because she can't decide whether she's horrified or wet af for him until she sees, which is hilarious, but at the time the hitherto-unspoilered reveal was said to send shockwaves of fainting anxiety throughout the 1920s audience. Of course, the same was said of later horror movies such as Dracula, Frankenstein and The Exorcist, so take it with a grain of salt, but I like to imagine /ourboi/ scared the hoes fr fr.

Remember: a wide berth is the same as aura.