Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog

So this is what guys like Joss Whedon do during the Writer's Strike...

Joss Whedon, of Buffy and Firefly fame, along with the lesser Whedon brothers, Zack and Jed, got bored during the recent Writer's Strike. So they wrote a campy B-Movie Musical, staring Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, and Felicia Day.

NPH plays as Dr. Horrible, an amateur mad scientist, attempting to gain entrance into the Evil League of Evil. He videoblogs his evil schemes, and answers reader mail, you know, the whole blog crawl. Dr. Horrible has no super powers, beyond what he can build himself.

Felicia Day plays Penny, Dr. Horrible's crush, whom he can't get up the nerve to talk to. She volunteers her time to try and convince people to sign a petition to open a new homeless shelter.

Nathan Fillion plays Captain Hammer, Dr. Horrible's arch nemesis. Captain Hammer dislocated Dr. Horrible's shoulder in their last showdown. He was born with a full head of hair and the ability to bench press 500 lbs.

The show is being released in three acts on the website I linked to above. The first act was released on Tuesday, act II will be released today, and act III on Saturday. It has a surprisingly high production value for a web released side project. It looks just like any other live action TV show. The writing is campy and somewhat uninspired, but the music is well done. NPH does a good job both acting and singing. Day has a surprisingly good voice too. Fillion seemed a little out of sorts and I'm not sure how much of that was him and how much was the character.

It's pretty funny, and worth the 14 minutes it takes to watch the act. There's also a webcomic about Captain Hammer available here. Joss really went all out on this thing.

Planetfall

John Burnett is an extremely talented man. He runs his own website at www.thewingless.com. He's a talented musician, a great programmer, a good writer and artist, and certainly on of the best website designers I've ever seen.

Thewingless.com is a beautiful website. It quietly conceals most of his work under the guise of a sci-fi themed metaplot which is really quite interesting. For those of you who want to cut straight to the content, just click on the green buttons, but keep in mind that you're missing out. The music is haunting, with a kind of sunrise at Mecca feel to it.

His latest project is a Sci-Fi epistolary novella called Planetfall. Planetfall is the story of the crew of the NSEA Demosthenes, an interplanetary vessel with a crew of 64 people. As the ship and crew are pushed to the limit to attempt to meet a deadline, catastrophe strikes. In the light of the new developments, very hard decisions have to be made. The story really deals with how the various members of the crew deal with this event, and how the ties that bind them together as a crew begin to break down when they are forced to place the crew ahead of themselves.

In a way, the Sci-Fi setting is an almost irrelevant MacGuffin. The story isn't about the ship, it isn't about the technology, and it certainly isn't about space. It's about the people. It's about what people are willing to do to ensure their fortunes at the expense of others, and how that can backfire. You could take the same people, and put the on a boat, or an island, or a city, and the social lessons don't change. The work it most reminds me of is William Golding's Lord of the Flies. Just as in Golding's work, this is about civilization.

The story is presented in a very minimalistic and clean flash setup. Burnett also applied an ambient soundtrack comprised of a piano and violin duet that combines the aspects of the page, and makes the story extremely immersive. The story is very well written. The only chink I could find is that some of the characters' mannerisms come off as a little too, I don't want to say snobbish... literarilly experienced? There are times when it seems like it's not a security guard and a technician arguing, but two english professors. But that's a pretty minor flaw.

Planetfall is certainly worth a read. Spread the word.

The End of an Era.

With Metal Gear Solid 4 looming on the horizon, one of the funniest webcomics out there has closed it's story arc. The Last Days of Foxhound is a Metal Gear Solid inspired webcomic, drawn by Chris Doucette, which focuses on the Foxhound unit of the first Metal Gear Solid game. The art is a little pedestrian, but the humor is top notch. Doucette has a sharp sense for sarcasm, and manages to draw together the most convoluted plotline this side of Chrono Cross in a very hilarious manner.


TLDoF ran for 500 comics, and managed to incorporate each of the bizarre super squads from the MGS series. Foxhound, Dead Cell, and the Cobras all make an appearance, as does the most Magnificent Bastard, Big Boss. Solid Snake is never seen directly, but his presence is felt throughout the story arc.

The premise of the story is the background of the Foxhound unit, a super powered black ops team which works in secret for the government. The storyline covers from when Liquid Snake joins Foxhound, up until the events of MGS1.

While Spider Man would say "With great power comes great responsibility", in this case it's more like "With great power comes great insanity." Each member of Foxhound, while supremely talented, also has a psychotic personality flaw. Liquid Snake is an super soldier, but he suffers from an inferiority complex that would take up several floors of a building to catalog. Vulcan Raven is a shamanistic Inuit giant, who is smug beyond belief. Sniper Wolf is the world's greatest sniper, but she actually develops a crush on each target she's assigned. Decoy Octopus is a world class spy and master of disguise, he's also a trickster worthy of Loki, and a complete coward. Psycho Mantis is the world's strongest telepath, but he's also omnicidal. Revolver Ocelot is a master of subterfuge, and world class marksman, but he's also a pathological liar, and suffers from Chronic Backstabbing Disorder.



The interactions of these outlandish personalities tie into the extensive metaplot of Hideo Kojima's grand design, and provide nonstop hilarity. Please, check it out.

For a site with no apparent affiliation with anyone, they did a good job.

Apparently someone really likes OSU Running Back Yvenson Bernard. We're talking a professional level web site. Good luck with the Rams, Yev...

What do you listen to?

Well, I'm still retagging my iTunes library. Only 1,405 more songs to go. Yay. :(

Anyhow, listening to all this music reminded me of a pretty sweet website I frequent. It's called Last.fm.

Last.fm is a music database that uses a program called audioscrobbler to track what it's members listen to. It also has a social network aspect to it as well. What website doesn't these days?

To get plugged into Last.fm, just visit their site, and download the audioscrobbler program. Then, download whatever plugin matches your preferred music player, in my case iTunes. Set it up so that Audioscrobbler starts when you start that player, and listen to your music. The Audioscrobbler program also comes with an Internet radio player that lets you surf songs via genre or similar artists. It's a pretty sweet deal.

One of the cool things about this site is the way you can share your charts of who you listen to. You can break it down by your most recently played tracks.


Your most played tracks.


Your most played artists.


They also have flash based charts.





They even have image based charts for your top albums.

For those of you who are on Last.fm, feel free to add me as a friend. Here's my profile.

PostSecret

Sometimes, I surf the web looking for something that catches my eye. Today I found a blog called PostSecret.

PostSecret bills itself as "an ongoing community art project, in which people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard." It's exactly what it sounds like. It appeals to the inner voyeur in everyone. I actually think it's a very interesting, and the idea of anonymously sharing your emotional burdens with the world seems very cathartic.

The blog has released four books since its inception in 2004. Each filled with the things that people would never say to the rest of us.

The secrets range from the funny...

To the embarrassing...

To the subtly profound...

If you're curious, you can find PostSecret at PostSecret.Blogspot.com. Every once in a while you might find something like this...

This secret just ripped my heart out. For those of you who are separated from your loved ones in the service, don't ever do this. As much as it hurts to confront this situation, we rely on our loved ones back home. Communication with you keeps us grounded, keeps us sane. It reminds us that no matter how bad things are, we still have something to fight for. You are our strength, our reason for service. Please, don't abandon us when we need you.