Revenge of the Sith.

Today, Nikki and I went to see this, the last (I hope), of the Star Wars movies. This makes all nine of them that I've seen in the theater, even if I was too young to really remember the first movie (three originals, the "Special Edition" versions of the originals, and now Episodes 1-3); and I can now authoritatively say that this last of them was absolutely the worst, and a horrible disappointment.

Words can't really sum up what was wrong with the movie, although Nikki takes a decent stab in her LJ here.

Suffice to say that since I was a little kid, I wanted to be a Jedi. Lightsabers are possibly the coolest weapon ever conceived, especially for someone like myself who admires the time when men settled wars with swords and not population-obliterating bombs. Now, Jedi are a little less cooler in my eyes and after seeing this movie, I no longer lament so much the fact that lightsabers don't actually exist.

Also, I feel much better about myself as a person and even as an actor after watching George Lucas and Hayden Christiansen mangle the epic and mythic character of Darth Vader. I think this movie actually retroactively removes some of the respect I had for Vader from the first movies.

To sum it up: this movie is painful to watch, possibly unless you're a big fan of the first two. It's on its way out the door in most theaters right now, and you should just let it keep up on its merry.

On the upside, I saw my first promo for the Fantastic Four movie and it looks pretty nifty, even if Dr. Doom does appear a bit cheesy...

My So-Called Secret Life

Based upon enjoyable experiences in City of Heroes, I've launched Diary of a Superhero, which will track the adventures and progress of my online alter-ego, complete with pictures and my stunning wit. Well, at least one of those two. And for the time being, it's almost certainly guaranteed to be updated more often than this. Be sure to check it out.

Serenity: The Movie

As a fan of Joss Whedon's works, I like to keep up and watch what I can. My wife does an even better job of it, tracking new projects and the like. We've known for a while now about the Serenity movie based on the Firefly television series that was canceled, but only recently found out about the super-duper-sneak preview screening that will be done in select theaters. Nikki found out about it just in time to grab two tickets to the Portland May 5th showing.

Just how crazy are the fans about the event? Well, here is an example of how much tickets are going for. And yet, strangely, the temptation to sell our tickets and make back a few hundred dollars isn't there. Maybe because I've never been to an event of this kind before, who can say. But it's going to be a great show.

Flood of Music.

Thanks to the helpful workings of my beautiful wife yesterday, I've finally been able to share some of my game music on torrents, which can be viewed at torrentbox.com and at the video game music section of mininova.org.

Not surprisingly, some people latched onto these and started downloading. What was surprising was the fervor with which Nights Full Selection has been gobbled up. There are already 3 other completed seeds of it out there and at one point I had 10 people leeching it off me. It's good to know that classic games can still have the draw even almost 10 years later...

Clang, Clang, Clang, Ka-Clang, Clang.

That's a sound you never want to hear your hard drive making. But I was treated to it this weekend. Yup--Priss, the two-and-a-half year old hard drive that came with my beloved VoodooPC computer, bit the dust on Saturday, taking with it a whole slew of things--.wav files from soundtracks I was in the process of recording (goodbye, Sonic Jam and BTVS: Chaos Bleeds), bits and pieces of projects I had worked on, and worst of all, about two dozen unpublished Buffy CCG The Chosen-Themed Dream Cards (including my beloved rendition of Dark Tara.) The only thing that escaped unscathed is my emulation software and peripherals, which I had burned off onto DVD a month or two back, but it was small consolation.

All in all, fairly depressing turn of events. Thankfully, Nikki suggested we go out to pick up a pair of replacement drives and she installed them and had my computer back and running better than ever within a matter of hours, for which I'm very thankful...

Now to see if I can whip up a batch of cards from scratch in time for tomorrow's Chosen goodies update...