2010: The Year in Music

Years are such an arbitrary way to bracket our discussion of pop culture. Sure, lots of stuff happens in 12 months, and that's certainly a substantial enough time period to allow you to discuss trends, movements, and other stuff that takes more than a few weeks to unfold. But lots of stuff happens in 11 months or 13 months or maybe even in a month. And unlike the movie industry, which has the Oscars to shape its release schedule, popular music lacks any real kind of ceremony to dictate when artists or labels should release their albums (the Grammys simply do not count).

But, unfortunately for the chronologically contrarian, years are pretty much all we've got. After all, it's much easier for everyone to have a conversation about a given period of time in culture if they agree on what that time period is. And isn't the conversation really what these year-end retrospectives are all about?

So, let's talk about what happened this year: the good, the bad, and, um, the Ke$ha*.

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2010: The Year in Tech

It's going to be impossible for me to cover every nuance of everything that happened this year in technology, not just because of the sheer quantity of things involved, not just because so much of it is so damn complicated, but because this is a truly tumultuous time for technology.

Traditional desktop and laptop computers are still here, but their supremacy is being challenged by smartphones and tablets. Almost anything with a screen can (and does) connect to the Internet, and as we become more connected our privacy is increasingly at risk. Social networking has pervaded every nook and cranny of everything, ever. And, to top it all off, the debate on Network Neutrality reached a fever pitch this year, and some would argue that the future of the Internet hangs in the balance.

It has been a big year. Let's talk about it.

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2010: The Year in Gaming

To be a gamer is to be both blessed and cursed.

The blessing is that we live in a time when all current gaming platforms have something unique to offer. There are tons of games worth experiencing that come to every single one of these platforms every year. The curse, of course, is that to play every single one of these efforts would require a huge investment, not just in money but in time. There's no way to do it all by yourself.

That's why I brought in air support! Between the two of us, Craig and I think we have most of the year covered. Read on for our thoughts on the biggest gaming stories of the year.

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A Look Back at 2010's Celebrity Departures

In an age where every star worth his salt is expected to have a Facebook page, a Twitter feed and a personal blog, it's easy to be inundated in the culture of celebrity gossip. Through the magic of the digital age, these celebrities are now omnipresent, no longer confined to the screen or the stage but instead coming into our personal computers on a daily basis. It seems as though they will never leave us alone.

Alas, this is not the case. 2010 brought a lot of great celebrity gossip, from the late-career renaissance (Betty White) to the falling-off-the-deep-end conspiracy theories (Randy Quaid) to the batshit-crazy-meltdowns (Mel Gibson). But the saddest stories are the figures that we lost this year, the figures who manage to garner one last tabloid headline before retreating into darkness. 

Below, we pay our respects to those figures who passed on in 2010. It's been said that all celebrity deaths come in threes, so the deceased have been divided into trios.  There's no figure as big as Michael Jackson to bite the dust this year, but that doesn't make their loss any less heartbreaking. Please take a moment to reflect on their varied contributions to pop culture, and also to mourn their passing.

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2010: The Year In Movies

Cinema, unlike almost any other art form known to man, is immediate in its story telling. We see and hear (and in John Waters' case, smell) movies in a communal way completely dissimilar from any other epoch in humanity's short time on this island Earth. Sitting in a theater and watching a film is an experience that can never be replicated by home video, and as long as there are stories to be told, there will be asses in seats. The perfect marriage of brows high and low, cinema is the medium of our age.

In addition to all of these reasons, I love cinema because of how it reflects the human condition. Every year  we are regaled with more and more stories about homo sapiens' capacity for altruistic good while at the same time we also bear witness to how man does violence to his fellow man.

In a similar vein, every year we are given some really spectacular films: modern classics. Buuuuuutttt...we are also presented with a bunch of crap. The Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Ten was no different. What shall follow here is a brief roundup, nay, a summarization of the year that we had in film. This is all of course based almost entirely on what I in my limited economic and scheduling means was able to see and also somewhat on hearsay, because, hey, why not?

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Saturday Morning TV: Little Drummer Boy

Remember when Will Ferrell was funny?  This was a nice reminder.

Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy with Will Ferrell & John C. Reilly from Will Ferrell

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Steph’s Science Corner: My Favorite Scientific Advancements of 2010

When I don’t get suggestions, I do wrap-ups. Change that by emailing science@chargeshot.com.

The other day, a friend of mine said casually to me, “2010 has been a big year for science in the news. You must be excited.”

It was such an odd thing to observe. I suppose that, yes, I have had an increased number of excuses to avoid a dreary work-day now that I’m subscribed to a fair number of science-magazine RSS feeds, but I thought that just meant I was paying closer attention. Inspired, I started doing some reflective research. While I have a slightly snooty, elitist opinion on cheap, cliché lists recounting the best-whatevers-of-some-amount-of-time, I found that I sort of needed a cheap, cliché excuse for this week’s post, due to the proximity of the holidays. Besides, when you talk about the best science stories of the year, you get to look at some of the most stunning science pictures of the year, like the one above.

Having made peace with my concession, I present you with some of the more interesting stories (and images) of the last twelve months’ worth of discovery. I make no claims about their relative significance, nor do I suggest there weren’t other valuable innovations. These were just the few that I remembered, and felt might be important to revisit.

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Playing Catch-Up: Dealing With My Game Backlog

Bayonetta. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Dead Space. Fable II. Batman: Arkham Asylum. Gears of War. Fallout 3. Halo: Reach. Mass Effect (the first one, not the more recent Mass Effect 2). I could go on.

What is it that all these games have in common? They're all relatively high-profile releases from the last few years. They were all pretty well-reviewed by most of the major gaming news outlets. Oh, and, as of a week ago, I hadn't actually finished any of them. And this is just a single console's worth of releases.

I've been out of the office this week, and I've taken the opportunity to try to work through some of this massive backlog of games - the holiday season really puts me in the frame of mind to do this, since yet more games normally arrive on Christmas Day, and even more are crammed into January, February and March.

Today I thought I'd give you, the game-playing audience, some tips on backlog-busting, along with some advice on being a part-time gamer that I've picked up over the last few years.

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News Brief: Internet Not Totally Shafting Musicians

SoundExchange, the company responsible for collecting royalties from songs streamed on the Internet, satellite radio, and cable television (?), is reporting that it handed out $155 million in royalties to artists in 2009 and has collected $260 million that they hope to distribute to artists in 2010. That's up from $100 million in 2008. The LA Times' Pop & Hiss blog has the story:

Each time a song is played on Pandora, KCRW's website or XM Satellite Radio, the virtual sound of fractions of pennies are heard dropping into SoundExchange's pocket. Multiply that by billions of songs heard over the Internet each year and, voila, a new income stream for musicians is born.

The only problem is that the company, a non-profit based in Washington, DC, can't always find the musicians who make the music that gets so much e-love. By the end of 2009, SoundExchange had accumulated a whopping $111 million in undistributed royalties. They do seem to be getting better at finding the squirrelly hipsters who're getting all this fat online cash, though. The company distributed 84% of what they collected in 2009, which is a big increase over the 71% they distributed in 2008, and practically dwarfs the 28% they got to musicians  in 2007. They're hoping to get to 97% this year. It's worth pointing out that the $155 million SoundExchange handed out in 2009 accounts for around 1.5% of the total revenue made by the music industry in the same year. So online radio isn't going to totally save the industry's soul.

Cash is cash, though. And if I were a (real) musician, I'd be checking this unpaid artists list right quick. Continue...

Ghosts From the Past: Archer and H. Jon Benjamin

Charge Shot!!! has been around for two years now - amazing, we know! - and in that time we've amassed a lot of posts. Much of our writing is in an editorial vein, simply because we don't have the time or resources to report on every news item that flies across the Interwebs. Therefore, we feel that our output has a better shelf-life than you might expect from some run-of-the-mill news blog.

This feature, Ghosts From Charge Shot!!!'s Past, aims to bring some of this stuff - both good and embarrassing - to the eyeballs of our newer readers, while taking long-time constituents on a trip down memory lane. Enjoy!

Archer comes back next month! If you don’t know what that is, let this post that Craig wrote in January inform you.

The show, though stocked with a largely entertaining supporting cast, hinges on your enjoyment of Benjamin as Archer.  He deftly alternates between the two modes that made Coach McGuirk so enjoyable: relaxed, derisive conversation and surprised, disingenuous shouting.  He has no problem underselling a barbed insult, particularly when it’s a recurring joke.  But he’s also fully capable of neanderthal-like bellowing.  This excellent Home Movies clip is a perfect example of Benjamin alternating between the two.

Enjoy!

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Early Holiday Cheer and Product Review: PS3!

So I'll be honest: I didn't have much time to prepare a well-thought-out, insightful post for today: two days ago my girlfriend got me an early holiday gift of a SONY PLAYSTATION 3! The next day I ran out and picked up a couple of games (since it's the 160gb version, which is not at all backwards compatible with all my old PS2 games, or so I hear), and played all through the night. So now I'm sitting here bleary-eyed in front of my computer with visions of Niko Bellic's pixelated face and ambiguous Eastern Bloc-esque accent running through my head.

For those of you not up on the latest game lore, Niko Bellic is the lead character in Rockstar Games's latest entry in the Grand Theft Auto series, GTA IV. I played the game once through before, but only very briefly, on a roommate's PS3, so I didn't get to sample the fruits of the game in the same way as some of my old favorites. The graphics are professional grade - this is the first time I've played the game in glorious HD... so crisp... - and the representation of New York as Liberty City leaves very little to be desired - although I'd take a low-res Los Angeles over a 1080p New York any day of the week. But again, I find myself wishing that there were games with similar sandbox mechanics, only featuring characters I won't get bored with after 25 hours (such as Frodo Baggins or Batman).

One such wish is about to come true, as my copy of Batman: Arkham Asylum is currently on its way back to me due to a Christmas Miracle! It'll be my third time through the game, but already I find myself daydreaming about Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, and the classic struggle of Bat vs. Everybody. The other game I bought yesterday was partly for the benefit of my girlfriend and a way to begin to try to say Thank You: Little Big Planet (plus another controller so we can enjoy the game together). She had played the game before - on the same PS3 on which I played GTA, in fact - but like me she is now excited about exploring the ever-expanding portfolio of online content and possibly even entering the user-created realm herself (although she denies wanting to, I have a feeling she'll come around to it eventually...).

I deliberately refrained from purchasing a PS3 for myself because I was well aware of how much time it would occupy and how my other, more wholesome activities would suffer at its hands. But fate, it seems, has made the decision for me, and you're already seeing the consequences with today's shorter post. Just you wait until the newest baseball games come out (after I decide between MLB 11: The Show and Major League Baseball 2K11) and I have access to basically a simulation machine with all the latest stats and players... let's just say I'm secretly hoping for the economy to take a turn for the worse so I'll have plenty of time to play...

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This Week on Audiosurf Radio – Guitar Comparisons Edition

Instrumental guitar rock.  You don’t hear it every day.  Sometimes, you might even go weeks without it – unless it’s Christmastime. 

Dick Dale, Eric Johnson, Buckethead, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani: they’re all practitioners of the genre.  Amateur and professional guitar players alike love these guys for their virtuosity and their glorification of the instrument, and since eight out of every ten rock fans are amateur guitarists, they have a pretty large audience.

With such an audience will come plenty of imitators and emulators.  Russian guitarist Oleg Serkov is one such musician, though I’d say his talent and skill raise him above the level of mere mimic.  His eye shadow, however, is a cause for concern.

How much can one man sound like Joe Satriani and still sound original?  Find out after the jump.

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A Decade of Dreck #39: Surviving Christmas

Charge Shot!!! is celebrating the end of the decade in the most masochistic way we know how - by watching and writing about the 100 worst movies of the last ten years as defined by film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Click here to see RT's complete list, click here for more information about the Decade of Dreck project, and click here to see all of the movies we've done so far.

Something quite sad happens as we grow older: Christmas goes from being the Most Wonderful Time of the Year to being a chore, an annual exercise in fulfilling obligations to family members and little more than an annoyance. Whereas we once bounded out of our beds to rouse our parents at the earliest possible hour and look upon the bounty Santa bestowed under our tree the night before, for many newly-formed adults Christmas becomes a hectic mess of spending all one's money on presents and having to book tickets to one's childhood home.

The latter situation is ripe for satire. The sad situation of Christmas gradually evolving from something genuinely magical to the death rattle of capitalism and the nuclear family could make for a great dark comedy. One can tell that 2004's Surviving Christmas wants to be this, but through a combined lack of competence, intelligence, and ice water in its veins comes up as little more than yet another notch in the headboard of the bed of some guy who only has sex with bad Christmas movies.

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Thoughts of an Aspiring Music Snob: Week 87 - Mannheim Steamroller

Chris is trying to compensate for his lack of musical knowledge by immersing himself in one new artist each week. At the end of the week, he will write up a brief summary of his opinions. You can read about the origin and parameters of this project here.

I don't hate Christmas carols. It's easy to pick on them this time of year, especially the truly inescapable ones that play on loop at shopping malls. I will admit that "modern" carols - like Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" or Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime" - belong to  a special circle of Christmas hell. But most of the old-fashioned carols have a good melody that's flexible enough to handle the loads of reinterpretations that they're subject to this time of year. 

In recent years, however, mere Christmas carols haven't been enough, and the American public has demanded more from these songs. The Trans-Siberian Orchestra makes a career combining carols with the excesses of stadium rock and pyrotechnics (and, despite what anyone says, I still think they're pretty cool). And I read in the newspaper today about a concert called "Messiah Rocks" that "breathes new life into Handel's oratorio with stunning visual effects...and a rock band." It's as if these carols have such a major presence in our cultural consciousness that we take them from granted - only when they're turned inside out and given the rock'n'roll treatment do we start to appreciate them anew. 

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Sunday Reading: The Viral Me

The world is changing rapidly.  New methods of social interaction appear and disappear faster than your iPhone can drop a call.  One minute you’re the Mayor of Your Local Starbucks on Foursquare; the next minute your friends are scoffing at the mere mention of Mayorships and location-based badges.  Where is all of this ephemeral innovation coming from?  Where else?  Silicon Valley.

In “The Viral Me”, which appeared in this month’s issue of GQ, Devin Friedman recounts his journey to the tech Mecca of the U.S., where he interviewed some of the men behind the bleeding edge changes made daily to our digital lives. 

Friedman’s trip centers around Y Combinator (or “YC”), a peculiar little petri dish for online startup development.  Pairs of geniuses apply to the program; those few selected spend three months honing their ideas; and then Silicon Valley investors clamber over one another in support of your idea.  It sounds like a crazy place.  As Friedman puts it, “This—Silicon Valley in general and YC more specifically—might be the last place in America where people are this optimistic.”

The trip isn’t all honky-dory, smiley-faced reports on the future.  Friedman admits he’s not totally on board with how these social networking sites claim to help us when in fact they are simultaneously harvesting us for marketing information:

“A more pessimistic way to look at it is that we're slave labor, getting lured by our desire to show off what we buy (Swipely) or our witty repartee (Twitter), by our need for affirmation (all of the above), or by our habit of looking at pictures of girls from high school all day instead of doing work (FB), and we end up not only driving traffic to these sites but filtering information so that FB and Twitter and Swipely can capitalize on it. They would say they're just trying to make it easier for us to find movies we like. That's probably true, too.”

Faster than you can compose a witty, 140-character reaction to this week’s Glee, whiz kids in Silicon Valley are programming newer, less-private ways to share your life online.  “The Viral Me” exposes a little bit of what they’re up to and why they’re so damn positive about it.

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After the Jump: Harry Balzer and Tim Calkins

Subscribe to the podcast via the feed, or find us in the iTunes store!

This week we invited Steph (of Steph’s Science Corner fame) to help us podcast. And what a podcast it is!

This week, we talk about ridiculous pizza, the great Gawker password hack, people with funny names, Time Magazine’s person of the year, some weird stuff about McDonald’s, and more!

Thanks for listening! See you next week!

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Saturday Morning TV: Word Lens

Allow this to blow your mind.

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Album Review: Jamey Johnson - The Guitar Song

Country music hasn't had a lot to be thankful for in the past decade or so. The once great American genre has been transformed into bland pop and faux populism, marketed toward middle-aged housewives and the mythical Joe Sixpack. The true country legends are still spoken of in hushed tones, but they've been shoved aside, and most of the music you'll hear today on country radio sounds not even  remotely like the country music of the past. 

So the story goes. But at least one man is fighting back against the decline of country music - Jamey Johnson. He's an unlikely hero, especially since his first claim to fame was writing Trace Adkins' insufferable 2005 song "Honky-Tonk Badonkadonk." But it turns out that Johnson has a lot more in him than ear-splitting novelty songs - his latest album, The Guitar Song, is some of the best country music that I've heard in a long time, and gives me hope that the genre isn't dead. 

The Guitar Song is Johnson's fourth album, and certainly his most ambitious. At Folsom Prison aside, country music is not necessarily a genre known for full-length albums, but Johnson has gone full-speed ahead and given us two discs and over one hundred minutes worth of music, based around the loose concept of a "Black Album" filled with heartache and regret, and a more upbeat, cheerful "White Album" to conclude the work. It's a lot to swallow, but The Guitar Song is so much fun that it's easy to forgive Johnson's hubris. Sure, twenty-five songs is a lot, but each and every one of these songs is stronger than anything else you'll hear on country radio this year. 

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YouTube, Is It Going To Be My Tube Forever?

YouTube, that crown jewel of the Web 2.0 fleet that includes everything from Blogspot to Flickr, is getting hungry.

The popular video sharing site wormed its way into our hearts in 2005 with clips of babies laughing and dudes playing guitar in their bedrooms.  Sure, ripped episodes of stuff like The Daily Show helped the hits climb, but the America’s Funniest Home Videos culture helped YouTube spawn viral hit after viral hit long after the copyright lawyers took down the TV.

Google’s acquisition of the site only exacerbated its growth.  Powerful search algorithms joined forces with a vast database of user-generated videos, assuring that anyone interested in learning about cats would be greeted with adorable feline footage on the first page of search results. 

It appears as if Google is no longer content to have YouTube serve as the Internet’s home movie repository.  Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that the site was negotiating a deal to purchase Next New Networks, an online video production company.

Why on Google Earth would they do such a thing?

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Steph’s Science Corner: Wireless Charging Devices and The Scheme of “Cool”

Send me your suggestions for future topics at science@chargeshot.com. You know you want to.

I would like to pose a question to my readers, and please direct your answers to the comments section. How many of you own, or know someone who owns, one of these hot-new wireless charging stations? The most prominent brands on the market are the Powermat and the Duracell myGrid, though there are other manufacturers that have devices designed specifically for their product (i.e. for a cell phone, a hand-held video game system, or game controllers).

When I first saw commercials for these toys shortly after they became commercially available in 2008, I raised my hand and studiously chimed, “Electromagnetic induction!” Having confused the TV momentarily for a physics professor, I was disappointed to find that it did not reward me by heaping praise over my identification of a relatively simple and well-understood physical phenomenon like I was hoping. Naturally, I responded vengefully by vowing that I would never own one, though I might have been motivated by the simple fact that they seemed unnecessary, inefficient, and over-indulgent. Why should I spend money on these things when I was already guaranteed a free wired charger with every device I purchased? Was the dreaded “tangle” so overwhelming? I usually found that a rubber band or a twist-tie did the trick for neatness, and those only cost a couple of cents. Was it simply for sex-appeal and sleekness, or just a general appreciation of how cool it was?

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Chair Exec Says “No” to Ender’s Game Game

When I first read Ender’s Game, I thought, “Man, being in the Battle Room would be so cool.”  I knew in my deep down, however, that I’d never get to experience that sensation myself.  In high school, I filled that zero-G hole in my heart with laser tag and multiplayer videogames, but it was all a step removed from the excitement of Battle School’s game.

My mixed feelings about the book’s creator aside, I still think aspects of Ender’s Game would translate well to gaming.  A few months ago, Rob reviewed Flotilla, an indie title that channeled the Command School combat simulator.  But developers have yet to tackle the Battle Room.

It was looking like Chair Entertainment – the developer behind the excellent Shadow Complex, which shared lore with Orson Scott Card’s novel Empire – would be the ones to finally bring the Battle Room to life, but Chair’s Donald Mustard recently admitted that the project was cancelled.

"We have and had an amazing design for the Ender's Game game," Mustard told Joystiq. "…one of Epic's primary objectives is to create original and unique franchises. I don't know that Ender's Game fits into that strategic objective anymore." 

It looks like parent company Epic Games would rather have Chair banging out beautiful iPad games than working on licensed properties.  I guess that’s okay, but who’s going to build my Battle Room?

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What's the Deal With Google's Chrome OS?

Hey friends! Welcome to another installment of Andrew Tells You About Technology You Probably Might Should Know About. Today's installment: Google's forthcoming Chrome OS!

When you boot up your computer, what is almost always the first program you launch after you get to the desktop? If you said "my Web browser," you just gave me the answer I wanted you to give to demonstrate my point!

As the Internet has grown, it has become more and more capable - what once enabled people to communicate via email, chat and Web pages now allows them to create, save and store all kinds of files, get all of your news, and live a sometimes-distressing amount of your social life.

The Internet has become so powerful and pervasive that, theoretically, your computer doesn't even need to be able to do anything else anymore - a Web browser can get you everywhere you need to go. This is the thinking that spawned Chrome OS.

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News Roundup...Untold Tales from the Tech World

As far as news roundups go, this one may leave something to be desired (I know, insulting my own post is probably not a great idea in the very first line...or any line for that matter). Most of the time, news roundups focus on current stories (hence the term news) that describe pertinent items. The following stories are not normal news feed fodder, nonetheless they are amongst the most interesting and captivating stories I've read in a long time, particularly when considering their general silliness and unfortunate insignificance.

A Series of Tubes
Basically, researchers in Britain are looking for funding for a project to mimic food distribution systems after the internet. 

Although this is an interesting idea indeed, it wasn't the good intentioned and fascinating topic of the story that originally caught my eye.  It was actually the wording of the headline, "The Food Infastructure Is A Series of Tubes."  Long before I started writing for Charge Shot!!!, our venerable authors and editors of  were referring to the internet, somewhat jokingly, as "a series of tubes."

After delving beyond the quirky and coincidental headline, I found the actual article interesting (it's definetely worth a read).  I started to ask myself, what else can we take from the internet and apply to our phisical lives? Any thoughts, readers?

Clock-ed on the Head
It turns out that, according to some very smart physicists, super accurate clocks have proven that our heads age faster than our feet (to be clear, the difference in aging is very minute).   Although I could never claim to understand the science behind this story, it made me chuckle - and then it kind of made my head spin. 

LEGO My Computer
There is little to say about this other than, "watch this video, it's awesome!"  It's awesome if you're a tech/computer nerd, and it's awesome if you just like lego toys. It's awesome if you don't care about technology or legos at all. 


The Antikythera Mechanism in Lego from Small Mammal on Vimeo.

Seeing that I don't really understand the science behind the Greek computer in the above video, I couldn't even begin to offer any kind of guidance or commentary on how the technician re-created it, or how it will be applied to new products. Even after watching the video several times and trying to read some articles about it, the only thing I really know for sure is that it's one of the most captivating and coolest things I've ever seen.

It turns out that the guy who made the computer in the video works for apple.  Gee, I wonder if they can rebuild my old Macintosh IIsi out of legos... Continue...

Ho Ho Homicide: Christmastime in TV Land

So this is Christmas. And for TV writers around the world (or, I guess, around Los Angeles), that means that they need to don their Santa hats, get in the Christmas spirit, and write the obligatory Christmas episode. Oh joy.

For most shows, the obligatory Christmas episode is just that: a perfunctory acknowledgment that there's snow on the ground and people are buying a bunch of crap for each other. Wikipedia lists hundreds of Christmas-themed episodes of popular TV shows. Naturally, just about every sitcom has at least one Christmas episode, and so do a number of kids' shows.

But the list of straight-up dramas that have produced one or maybe even multiple Christmas episodes is a bit more head-turning: not only did Dragnet and CSI: NY (but not any of the other CSIs) produce a number of Christmas episodes, but seminal cop show Homicide: Life on the Streets put out two Christmas-centric hours of television. At first blush, the marriage of the typically saccharine Christmas special and the gritty, nihilistic world of Homicide would seem to be awkward at best and downright disquieting at worst. Indeed, when Richard Belzer's John Munch picks up the phone at one point during the episode, he answers, "Ho ho homicide." Weird.

But while the idea of your favorite homicide detectives hunching over a dismembered corpse while Bing Crosby plays in the background is certainly enough to make you cringe, I like to think of the Christmas episode as throwing down a gauntlet for TV writers. Specifically, the holiday season challenges scribes to craft an episode acknowledges just about all of the varied reactions to the season, from "CHRISTXMAS IZ TEH GR8EST TIHNG IN TEH WORLD LOVEZZZ JEZUSSSS" to "Christmas makes me want to quit AA," without coming across as snarky, arch, clichéd, or out of sync with the tone of the series as a whole. So the question shouldn't be, "did [Christmas Episode A] work?" Rather, we should be asking, "can Christmas episodes work?"

Surprisingly enough, they can, and though Christmas episodes don't succeed often, it's magic when they do.

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Ghosts From the Past: “Indie” is a Useless Term

Charge Shot!!! has been around for two years now - amazing, we know! - and in that time we've amassed a lot of posts. Much of our writing is in an editorial vein, simply because we don't have the time or resources to report on every news item that flies across the Interwebs. Therefore, we feel that our output has a better shelf-life than you might expect from some run-of-the-mill news blog.

This feature, Ghosts From Charge Shot!!!'s Past, aims to bring some of this stuff - both good and embarrassing - to the eyeballs of our newer readers, while taking long-time constituents on a trip down memory lane. Enjoy!

This week, we take a look back at one of Jordan’s pieces from the beginning of the year. It talks about the word “indie,” specifically its degeneration into a completely useless descriptor.

Even "indie rock," the most well-known subset of indie music, isn't particularly exclusive. Indie rock, like many genres, has referred to different things at different times. In the '80s, the term "indie rock" referred to punk-influenced distorted pop of Husker Du, the Pixies, and the Dinosaur Jr. The sound of those bands led neatly into the alternative rock of the 1990's, which could be considered the more popular spinoff of alternative rock (at least for a time).

But at some point, indie rock came to refer to lo-fi (Neutral Milk Hotel, Elliot Smith) and jangle pop (the Smiths, early R.E.M.), as well.

Already, then, there's a split in what constitutes the "sound" of indie rock. Is it the abrasive proto-Nirvana of Husker Du and the Pixies? Or the under-produced pop music of Elliot Smith, most clearly influenced by the Byrds, the Beatles, and the Beach Boys? Or maybe just music that doesn'tsound like mainstream pop music (whatever that may be)?

Enjoy!

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My Favorite Single-Player Games

In the wake of Craig's post about the apparently impending death of single-player games, I thought now might be a good time to take a stroll down memory lane and reflect on some of my old favorites from this soon-to-be-defunct format. I hardly ever buy new games, but when I do, it's mostly so I can spend some time by myself getting lost in the world of the game. I hardly ever play online and could care less about my games' capacity for social networktivity. Quite frankly, I think there are already too many various social networks all over the inter-tubes without video games adding to the fray.

This solipsistic aspect of my gaming habits is the reason I've always resisted the label of "gamer." When I think of true "gamers," I conjure up the image of people who play video games not just to exercise their fingers or stimulate their imaginations or strain their eyes, but to become part of a community where their every accomplishment is measured against those of their peers.

That's the audience EA and Frank Gibeau are after, for whom they'll be designing and marketing games. And I feel sad to be left out of that key demographic.

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This Week on Audiosurf Radio – Spanish Chipmunk Edition

Another week, another musical subgenre I didn’t know exist.

According to Wikipedia popular Internet sources, Mákina is a Spanish version of Britain’s UK Hardcore, a specific category of rave music.  It also gets play at Spanish clubs with names like Chocolate and Chasis – at least that’s what Wikipedia popular Internet sources tell me.

This week’s practitioner of Mákina is Prana Yama.  I don’t know anything about him/her/them, except that the name is fun to say.  Pra-na Ya-ma.  Oh, and he/she/they have some music over on Jamendo.

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A Decade of Dreck #38: Supercross

Charge Shot!!! is celebrating the end of the decade in the most masochistic way we know how - by watching and writing about the 100 worst movies of the last ten years as defined by film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Click here to see RT's complete list, click here for more information about the Decade of Dreck project, and click here to see all of the movies we've done so far.

My fellow MSTies (fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000, duh) will remember show #202 "The Sidehackers", wherein Joel and the 'Bots riffed on a dumb late-60's movie about motorcycle racers, clearly produced to try and cash-in/possibly jump start a "sidehacking" craze that I imagine never really took off. Upon watching today's movie, I had Sidehackers flashbacks: another stupid melodrama about motorcycle-riding idiots. Future MST3K bait?

As was mentioned before, Supercross (or "Supercross: the Movie" as it's sometimes referred to) pretty much exists only to try and get those crazy kids to get into motorcycle racing and buy Nami bikes and Mountain Dew. We the unfortunate viewers are introduced to brothers KC and Trip Carlyle (before we go any further, those are both stupid names), two supercrossers who "ride old school" and "live on the edge", respectively. The movie follows their trials and tribulations as they try and work their ways up the racing circuit and fall in love...with girls, not with each other! Why would you think that, ugh?

On its own, the bare bones plot of Supercross is fine; pedestrian, but fine. It's like any other sports melodrama that's ever existed before: characters have love of sport, conflict arises over competition, conflict resolved through working together to win said sport. The brothers end up coming to blows over KC's signing up with a major corporate sponsor while Trip stays a "privateer". The problem is that KC is being asked to play second banana to the team owner's son (Channing Tatum) and can't live up to his full potential. Agghh! Supercross (and therefore life) is hard!

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PSA: Minecraft About To Enter Beta, Buy Now

Did you listen when I said you should get Minecraft?  If you were, this isn’t for you.  If you weren’t, read on.

The gaming blogosphere simply won’t shut up about Minecraft – and with good reason.  It’s got a lot of things going for it.  It’s a smash indie success.  It’s a veritable sandbox of emergent game design.  Its multiplayer mode might as well be titled “Schadenfreude.”  Oh yeah, and it’s sold nearly a million copies.

One of Minecraft’s biggest allures is the current Alpha state.  Developer Markus Persson promised anyone who bought the game in Alpha (at a reduced price) would receive all future updates to the game for free.  That’s around thirteen or fourteen bucks (after conversion) for a lifetime subscription to a game that currently knows no bounds. 

Here’s the catch: Minecraft enters Beta on December 20th.  What does this mean?  The price rises to 14.95 Euro (closer to twenty bucks), and Persson (or notch) will be adding better mod support, some loose narrative pieces to encourage early- and late-game play, and a larger focus on testing and stability. 

The biggest change has nothing to do with gameplay: the “All future versions free” promise does not apply to purchase made after launch of the Beta version.  According to his Twitter, “it scares both the lawyers and the board” (he has a board!).  Beta customers will still get the “final” release for free, but additional expansions will cost money.

If you still want in on the (hella crowded) ground floor of Minecraft, you have a week.  Go.

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Thoughts of an Aspiring Music Snob: Week 86 - Eminem

Chris is trying to compensate for his lack of musical knowledge by immersing himself in one new artist each week. At the end of the week, he will write up a brief summary of his opinions. You can read about the origin and parameters of this project here.

A lot of ink has been spilled talking about the controversies present in Eminem's music - enough that I really shouldn't waste time adding to the discourse on the subject. But, when talking about Eminem's music, discussion about the controversy is inescapable. The fact that Eminem himself delightfully revels in the critical uproar only serves to draw even more attention to this. 

Eminem's critics blame him for all sorts of crimes - misogyny, homophobia, glamorization of violence, and profanity, among others. But I wonder if Eminem hasn't been misinterpreted as the cause of all these things. His music might be better seen as an effect, the inevitable conclusion that stems from these things, not the catalyst of them. When Eminem is at his best, he's holding up a mirror to America, showing our country's reflection in all its shocking ugliness. It's brutal and offensive, but Eminem is right to claim that he's neither the first nor the last artist to do this sort of thing. Nor is the portrayal of this necessarily an endorsement. Rather than asking why Eminem makes this sort of music, perhaps we should be asking ourselves why, as a culture, so many people are drawn to it. 

On the other hand, I feel that Eminem's defenders often give him a free pass. The most notable Eminem apologists, such as Robert Christgau, seem to think that Eminem is some sort of postmodern genius juggling the identities of Slim Shady, Marshall Mathers and Eminem in some clever metanarrative. Eminem is certainly clever, but I don't necessarily thing he's smart in this literary sense - there are dangerous and disturbing elements in this music, and I don't think one can easily write it off as irony or tongue-in-cheek posturing. Behind this very angry music is a very angry man. 

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Sunday Reading: Making Mario 64

With a month left in 2010, gamers (and publishers) continue to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Mario, the super plumber whose two-and-a-half decade battle against an evil dinosaur-turtle-thing has spanned multiple generations of gamers and gaming hardware.

Mario’s ubiquity rivals that of other beloved cartoon mascots like Mickey Mouse and Roger Rabbit (and all out trumps also-rans like France’s Asterix and Obelix), and it’s always fun to revisit his history given his immense impact on gaming culture.

Anyone who's ever played Super Mario 64 knows what it meant for the industry.  It ushered in the three-dimensional, character-driven platformer – a genre that’s still having trouble living up to the plumber’s initial success. 

This 2001 interview  with Giles Goddard (republished on Mark Green’s blog Pixelatron) provides an excellent snapshot of an industry on the verge of a breakthrough.  Goddard was one of fifteen people (only fifteen!) who made Mario 64, and his comments shine a light on the gaming behemoth’s process.  The primary focus?  How Mario moves:

“99% of the game is concerned with [Mario’s movement]. Most of Miyamoto’s time is spent on that, and the movement of the camera. The majority of the other characters and animation are done with Yamada-san and [inaudible], these design the movement of the bosses and the levels and so on, whereas Miyamoto just stands in the background, obviously making suggestions. But his main job is to sit down with the programmers and play with controls and camera and shape the way that the way the game *feels*. That is fundamental to the entire game.”

One thing you always hear about Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto is his devotion to how a game plays.  The controls, the animation.  Turns out it’s the truth, and that’s why we’re still playing Mario games twenty five years later.

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After the Jump: Invert a Number of Verbs

Subscribe to the podcast via the feed, or find us in theiTunes store!


Do you know the difference between the word "infer" and the word "imply," because Craig totally doesn't! All this and more on this week's After the Jump!


In addition to Craig's word-troubles, we talk a little more about WikiLeaks,  e-book versions of romance novels, foodtubes, and how much we miss Rob.


Hope you enjoy! See you next week!
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Saturday Morning TV: “I Might Actually Turn Into Kevin Bacon.”

“His best movie is probably a tie…between all of ‘em.”

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Google vs. Amazon: The Impending Battle of the Books

The big news in the world of books this week is the rumors leaking out of a possible merger between Barnes & Noble and Borders. Barnes & Noble is burdened with a lot of debt, and Borders is not doing much better; a partnership between the two major booksellers in America would theoretically allow them to start turning a profit and perhaps revitalize their dwindling stock values. 

There's a lot of reasons why this probably isn't going to happen, as many writers are happy to point out. Still, the fact that the two major booksellers are even considering this option speaks to the severity of their situation. Fortune writes that a combined merger between the two companies would be worth about $2 billion dollars. Amazon, in contrast, is currently valued at $79 billion. 

It's not hard to see why Amazon is so popular. They have a wide, reasonably-priced selection with amazing discounts on their most popular items. Their MP3 store is becoming a rival to iTunes. Despite the lack of a phone number on their webpage, their customer service is amazing, and their return policy is very liberal. Any student is eligible for a free Amazon Prime account, which offers free two-day shipping on any item you order. 

But, as Charge Shot!!! has discussed in the past, Amazon's aggressive pricing schemes and shrewd competitive business tactics might be ultimately unsustainable. Already Amazon owns a large portion of the market share for books. What happens if Barnes & Noble or Borders goes under, and Amazon is the sole surviving bookseller? Currently, Amazon is the cheaper option, but prices might not always be so cheap if Amazon becomes the only option. 

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Solo No More – EA’s Frank Gibeau and the End of Single-Player Games

Throw all of your single-player games in the trash.

Take any game that you’ve played on your own – on your console, on your handheld, on your computer – and just get rid of it.  Sell it to your unsuspecting neighbor at a garage sale.  Foist it upon your younger sibling and lie to them: “Yeah, it used to be my favorite, but I just don’t have the time for it anymore.”

Go through your back catalog.  Your PSX discs.  Your SNES cartridges.  Your Nintendo tapes.  Set ‘em on fire.  You don’t need them any more.

Why?  Because single-player games are “finished,” claims EA’s Frank Gibeau.

Let’s unpack this, shall we?

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Steph’s Science Corner: The Rise and Fall of Scientific Discovery in Arsenic-Based Life

Send me your suggestions for future topics at science@chargeshot.com. I like emails, guys.

It’s been all the rage lately.

On December 2nd, researchers at NASA held a press conference to unveil the latest news in the effort to discover extra-terrestrial life. The anticipation was thick after the classic stunt of pre-announcing their intentions to make an announcement. When finally it was bestowed upon us, a new phrase suddenly ignited our dormant, innate scientific curiosity:

“Arsenic-based life-forms”

At first, we reeled with the thrill of discovery, amplified by an untraceable, bloated rhetoric. We called down images of arsenic-eating aliens sipping tea with us as we speculated on how such a groundbreaking addition to biology text books could “change life as we know it.” But then, slowly at first, the skeptics began to leak in doubt like industrial waste seeping into a river. Over the last few days, the media has completely reversed its focus, invoking the wrath of scrutinizing experts in the field of microbiology and biochemistry who rejected the claim as “almost certainly wrong,” or at the very least, misleading.

Finding myself always the contrarian, I started on board with the first wave of NASA-denouncement, and had every intention of using this week’s segment to cast down the innocently hopeful eyes of my space-camp readers. Then I realized that I was too late. Everyone else was already doing it. That meant I had to change sides.

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Shallow But Fun: iPhone Game Round-up

For the last month or so, I've played more video games on my iPhone than any of my dedicated gaming machines (though 'Splosion Man threatens to make that statement untrue).

Realizing this was surprising, to say the least. Despite some successful forays into iPhone gaming, my general opinion of the platform has been that it's a great place to play video games if you're really into touchscreen versions of decades-old Game Boy games.

That assumption is, perhaps, out of date. Like Rob before me, I'm finding plenty of games that come pretty close to scratching my Gamer's Itch. Nothing here can replace my DS or my Xbox in the long run, but not everything needs to be a groundbreaking cinematic experience that perfectly summarizes the case for Games As Art.

Also, you can buy everything I talk about today for $5. Total.

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Location BS - A Safer Internet is Up To You

As I've said many times (on this blog, and other places too...often to bored faces at parties - oh how I drone on...), I think it's strange (strange in the least, possibly just plain crazy) that people feel the need to systematically document their entire lives on the internet. I don't want to venture into the minutia of the sociological causes/impact of this, not to mention the fact that people are posting things that, in hindsight, they might not want open to the entire world. Nevertheless, my calls for sanity and reason are being treated with the same disregard as all of my other rantings and ravings. That being said, I don't want to scare you, but at least one aspect of our compulsive documentation may be putting us at real danger.

I am discussing, of course, location based services (LBS). LBS's like Foursquare or even features on Facebook and Twitter and Yelp are awesome. They help us find out what our friends are doing, and in turn let us know of some cool ideas for stuff to do.

A site like Foursquare, for example, allows people to "check in" at their favorite restaurants, bars and clubs, parks, museums etc...you get the idea. Foursquare, in an innovative move, added two important aspects to their LBS. Firstly, users get ranked based on how often they use the service, in particular, striving to "check in" from specific locations more than anybody else to become "mayor" of that place. They add to this inclusion of a game like nature to the site by also offering users "badges" for consistent and extraordinary use. By the way,  Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley recently discussed the infancy of the "mayor" idea and how it almost didn't make it into the site - it is, in fact, one of their most popular and innovative features. 

The second incredibly smart thing they do is allow businesses to offer freebies and other coupons to repeat users or "mayors." Already with the support of the core group of social internet users who want to say where they are, along with the wholhearted support businesses, Foursquare is the leader in the field.

In response to the popularity of Foursquare, Facebook, Twitter and Yelp (and probably every other social network out there) have developed their own location services.

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The Saga of the "Walking Dead" 'Fired' Writers

Last week, Deadline's Nellie Andreeva reported that Frank Darabont, showrunner for AMC's zombie drama The Walking Dead, had fired his entire writing staff. Considering how terrifically successful the show's been so far, news of a personnel change this dramatic came as a shock to most. The blogosphere was especially aghast at the departure of executive producer Charles Eglee, co-creator of Dark Angel and producer/writer for Dexter and The Shield.

Producer Gale Ann Hurd, James Cameron's ex-wife and producer of some of his best films, quickly scheduled an interview with Entertainment Weekly to respond to the Deadline story. Calling the report "completely inaccurate," she characterized the move as a reshuffling of priorities: "[In] the writers’ room, there are people that have set up other projects that will be their first priority if their own series is picked up as a pilot or if it’s a series. I think [Eglee] just decided that he wants to run his own show."

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Ghosts From the Past: The Resurgence of Classic Science Fiction

Charge Shot!!! has been around for two years now - amazing, we know! - and in that time we've amassed a lot of posts. Much of our writing is in an editorial vein, simply because we don't have the time or resources to report on every news item that flies across the Interwebs. Therefore, we feel that our output has a better shelf-life than you might expect from some run-of-the-mill news blog.

This feature, Ghosts From Charge Shot!!!'s Past, aims to bring some of this stuff - both good and embarrassing - to the eyeballs of our newer readers, while taking long-time constituents on a trip down memory lane. Enjoy!

Today’s piece, written by Chris shortly after our rebirth as a New Millennium Culture Blog, examines books and films from the past and present that strive to put the “science” in science fiction, stuff that entertains with big ideas and concepts rather than spaceships blowing each other up.

Science fiction as we know it today grew out of the literature of the 1950s. In response to the post-war technology boom and suburbanization of American, classic sci-fi writers such as Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Ray Bradbury wrote loads of short stories and paperback novels that addressed the modern condition through a futuristic lens. Most of these works will never be mistaken for great literature. Characters were interchangeable, plot was nearly non-existent, and the prose was adequate at best. But, despite these handicaps, these works excelled in the concepts they introduced. Rather than reading these stories for an exciting narrative or an interesting character, these works are worth reading for their ideas.

So, read it! Even if you’ve seen it before, it deserves another look.

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Movie Review (and Pre-Release Hype): The Fighter

Based on a true story - Check.
Plot centering on a nearly hopeless underdog who overcomes adversity - Check.
Subplot involving drug addiction and dysfunctional family drama - Check.
Lead actress who plays against type and shows off her bod in some sexy lingerie - Check.
Boxing - Check.

Look out, Oscar, here comes The Fighter.

For those of you planning on seeing The Fighter - and I hope it's most of you - I'll leave out any serious spoilers in the pre-jump material. Although seeing as the film is based on the true story of boxer Micky Ward, the entire plot (and then some) is laid bare in the history books. But for those of you who wish to remain ignorant of real-life events in order to better enjoy the filmic representation of those events, I'll begin with some of the basics.

Lead actor Mark Wahlberg joined the film in 2005, and has been training non-stop to achieve his flawless boxer's physique. Since then, the script passed through the hands of Martin Scorsese and Darren Aronofsky before David O. Russell ended up in the director's chair. Christian Bale replaced Brad Pitt and returned to his acclaimed weight loss diet from The Machinist, Amy Adams put on her best "bad girl" face, and we're ready to tell the obscure yet inspiring story of the REAL pride of Lowell, Massachusetts.

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This Week on Audiosurf – J-Pop and Fresh Edition

I have a soft spot in my heart for J-Pop.  Perhaps its my childhood background with Japanese RPGs, or my childhood dabbling in watching anime (everyone did that…right?), or that one time Andrew and I spent an hour rearranging our dorm room while listening to Ayumi Hamasaki.

So it’s with pleasure that I introduce Phrenia, a J-Pop group if I’ve ever heard one (and I clearly have).  Check out their website, though I imagine you’ll get more (or anything, for that matter) out of it if you actually speak Japanese.

Though not Japanese or pop, Ofri Eliaz certainly is something else.  This Israeli vocalist performs Ladino music, a mix of Spanish and Jewish musical traditions that ventures into a few other regional styles along the way.  More info on that can be found at her site.

How does Phrenia stack up against my rose-colored glasses view of J-Pop?  What the hell is Ladino music?  Find out after the jump.

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A Decade of Dreck #37: Doogal

Charge Shot!!! is celebrating the end of the decade in the most masochistic way we know how - by watching and writing about the 100 worst movies of the last ten years as defined by film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Click here to see RT's complete list, click here for more about the Decade of Dreck project, and click here to see all of the movies we've done so far.

A few short months ago, I waded through the francophone terror that was Kaena: the Prophecy and discovered that as a rule of thumb, the French and their various international offshoots should be kept away from the field of animation. Apparently, the cheese-eating surrender monkeys didn't learn their lesson and neither did I as I sat through Doogal.

A Franco-British co-production and based on the supposedly beloved 1970's British children's show The Magic Roundabout, Doogal tells the story of "a land where everybody is the best of friends". In this magical land, the titular terrier loves his friend Florence more than anyone else (but I thought everybody was the best of friends, stop ranking!). For some reason, an evil jack-in-the-box looking wizard escapes from his icy prison and vows to encase the entire world in ice, starting with Florence. Thusly, Doogal and his band of anthropomorphic animal friends (because, hey, why not?) go on a magical quest to get some diamonds or something.

On paper, Doogal seems like a run-of-the-mill, perfectly serviceable if unforgivably European exercise in children's programming. While it apparently received good reviews in its co-native United Kingdom, the American version ended up as a post on a middlebrow pop culture blog.

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Thoughts of an Aspiring Music Snob: Week 85 - Captain Beefheart

Chris is trying to compensate for his lack of musical knowledge by immersing himself in one new artist each week. At the end of the week, he will write up a brief summary of his opinions. You can read about the origin and parameters of this project here.

Captain Beefheart is revered by his fans as some sort of tortured genius, desperately attempting to translate his creative vision into musical form. He's responsible for some of the most strikingly original albums of the past fifty years, and since retiring from the music scene he's become a fairly well-respected painter. 

Apparently he's also a raging asshole. Frank Zappa (who admittedly had a bit of a rivalry with Beefheart) describes him as an only child spoiled by his parents, raised to believe that he was a genius set apart from other people. The recording process behind Trout Mask Replica is infamous; it apparently involved a cult-like environment in which Beefheart refused to let the band members leave the house. He would berate them, and sometimes beat them bloody, until they were cowed into submitting completely to his creative vision. 

Beefheart also seems to have fallen in love with his own mythology, spreading rumors and stories that are far from the truth. The legend that none of the Magic Band had picked up an instrument before starting work on Trout Mask Replica? False. The rumor that no drugs had been consumed during the recording process? False. The claim that Captain Beefheart dropped out of school after kindergarten because he was such a free spirit? That he once went a year and a half without sleeping? False and false. 

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After the Jump: Egg of Possibility

Subscribe to the podcast via the feed, or find us in the iTunes store!

This, sadly, will be Rob’s last podcast with us for awhile, because he’s leaving. Maybe you read about it.

Good show this week! Craig and I talk about the WikiLeaks cables (Rob, for job-related reasons, recused himself from this discussion), Net Neutrality, Comcast, Xbox modding, and “Single Ladies.”

Enjoy! See you next week!

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