Art You Might Hate: Charlie Crane Visits Pyongyang, North Korea

Charilie Crane’s photo-documentary of North Korea’s capital is currently blowing up the internet [figuratively, grammar czars]. It’s listed in this segments Art You Might Hate because I don’t think there isn’t an artist on planet Earth [and segments of Mars] that isn’t envious of the ‘guided experience’ Crane captured.

Below are more photos and a link to more info about how Crane was able to pull this off.

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E3 2011: Prepping For Uncomfortable Silence & Unintentional Comedy

It still echoes in my head, "one million trooooops," then almost an audible insert of prairie crickets. Tak Fujii is well known and respected in the Japanese gaming community. As some of you know, E3 Conferences are usually an opportunity for games, from all walks of the culture, to make their big impressions. It's always cringe-worthy when that impression is negative.

In two weeks E3 2011 will commence and you can bet I'll be uploading and posting as much as I can during that weekend. One can only hope that this year's press conferences [pressers] surpass those of last year's. If not for quality, let's hope the oddball antics this year are fully-stocked with comedy. It was clear that Konami chose a different approach. Some would say, a more hilarious approach. I would be one of those people.

Below is a compilation of all things I love about corporate business-speak and PR spin in the gaming industry. Here's hoping 2011 doesn't disappoint.

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Graphic Update: My Year With Preacher

No one ever says, "I want to read a graphic novel series AND have one of the worst years of their lives." But here we are.

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Thor Is The New Crocodile Dundee Minus The Knife

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Commercial Break: Cathy's House Is Japanese For Nightmares

As you can tell, I've been debating about what next to put up on the brog. For some reason I started caring about what you guys read on this site, well, only a little.

Which is why you're watching Cathy's House and wondering where four minutes of your life went. I'll tell you, it went towards terrifying ideas for the future. Maybe you'll make a moving art piece based on how the color scheme of Cathy's House breaking into your most secret of dreams? I'm banking on you just going to work the next day and e-mailing your co-worker a link titled "We Should Totally Do This This Weekend!" with this link supplied.

Either way, if it makes you happy, it makes me happy.

More to come...

Commercial Break: Japanese Woman = One Woman Trio

The weeks are long, hard and rewarding. This week was filled with heavy lifting and crazy news. I mean, who saw the UGO/IGN merger happening? I know I didn't.  Oh yeah, Osama's dead.

Perhaps all of these meldings and mergers are a sign of things to come? Maybe we are all meant to be closer together. Eventhough, we actively participate in a social media that kinda pushes us further apart.

How many of us are more comfortable responding to a text than returning a phone call? I'll plead guilty on that one.  The video above is, well, weird. It is also a small reminder of why I got into this whole thing. To make a connection. To vent. To have fun.

[Sidenote: I think the most impressive aspect of this video is that she stops the camera, unwavering, with her bow.]

Sony's Press Conference Live-Tweeted & "Interpreted"

 

For full coverage go here

Proof-positive that Isaiah and a bottle of wine, plus a 1-to-3 A.M. press conference is a recipe for *disaster. Be on the look out for future live tweet of events [I've got E3 in my cross hairs]. I seem to like doing them and people seem to love expressing a certain level of disgust at my un-professionalism. 

So I must be on to something, right?

*or awesome, depending on your sense of humor.

Personal Note: It's Been That Kind Of Week

video via rickymachinima

I try and keep the Brog PG-13, but sometimes a healthy f**k is good to squeeze out of the body every now and again. Don't worry, it won't become commonplace, but boy has the gaming world shown it's ugly side this week [again]. I probably haven't contributed to the healing process [pay no attention to my twitter feed]. I'd like to think at least writing this stuff down is a good piece of therapy. It's just unfortunate that when I do bitch about the pitfalls of this culture I'm met with "you know this is par for the course, right?"

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Commercial Break: Bluegrass I Like

It takes a lot for me to endorse music that a room full of middle-aged white people are giddy about, but here we are. After a full day of work, answering e-mails and contorting my body -- sometimes I just need to hear a musically adept band cover a Black Eyed Peas song. And who doesn't hate the Black Eyed Peas? Seriously, they're really awful.

The Cleverlys do it right. Their sound is genuine.

I can't take full credit for the this find, this comes compliments of Chrissy [here's hoping for that Usher "OMG" cover].

The Void: Dead Rising 2, FIFA '10 and Soldner-X2

Amazing what a Google image search will get you. I promise to never use this again.

I’ve gotten a couple tweets about doing more game reviews and its appreciated. I’m doing the best I can over here, but thanks to the small success of the site, work has actually picked up. This is only partly the reason why you don’t see as many video game reviews. A contributing factor would be that a lot of games have been sucked into what I’d like to call, The Void.

The Void is the nebulous area in a small portion of my brain that never quite gets into whatever media I’m imbibing. This could mean me playing a game for 10 minutes or 10 hours and still not making any significant progress to determine a feeling.  This also applies to a plethora of media that I often quit midway through [sorry Boardwalk Empire, I’ll wait for the DVD box set].

Recent entries are as follows:

 

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