BenPaddon.co.uk

Last night I handed in my resignation over at GamePartisan. It’s a decision that has been, being honest, a long time coming. The past year hasn’t been great, and I’d had enough. I’ve since spoken with everyone there, this evening, and explained why I’m going. I’ve wished them good luck and I’ve told them I’ll stay in touch, but I don’t think I’ll be returning. For one thing, I have Jump Leads to focus on right now. For another, DeViney doesn’t seem keen to engineer another Comeback.

One less site to write for.

My writing for RealVG has been somewhat sporadic this past month as well, and I do hope to get back into a regular routine at some point this coming month. At the same time, I have yet to begin writing my new column for Snackbar Games, concerning my experiences as a gamer immigrating from one country to another.  I’ll still be very busy, but at least that’s one thing off of my mind.

I really do hope Game Partisan picks things up, and I wish those chaps all the best.

You might’ve noticed the Guitar Hero II logo over on my XBox Live Gamercard to the left, there. When I bought my 360 I made sure to pick this game up as well, as I’d had it for the PlayStation 2 back in England and I loved it. The 360 version is even better, with more songs and a nicer guitar (it also has better graphics, but that’s not particularly important considering the gameplay style).

I recently finished the game on Medium, achieving the not-particularly-difficult feat of getting Five Stars on Freebird (although I imagine doing so on Hard is going to be much, much more difficult). I imagine I’ll crack on with Hard at some point (and probably Easy, if I want to unlock some of the other Guitars).

This post did have an actual point, although I’ve forgotten what it was. Oh well.

Last night was spent at a free Country Music concert, with a performance by Some Guy Who’s Name I Forget. His music wasn’t bad, lacking the twang of most inbred Country music, but it also wasn’t particularly good. It wasn’t to my tastes, at least. Still, the night wasn’t about the music. Not to me, at least. No, the night was about spending time with my extended family - my Stepsister Jenny, her husband Eric, and their son, Ryan. So I had a fantastic time.

I found myself troubled on the way home from seeing The Simpsons Movie last night. For one thing, I really, really enjoyed it. But on the other hand it left a slightly sour taste in my mouth.

I should probably elaborate, so I’ll start from the beginning.

The film is funny. It goes without saying that the film is by far the funniest thing that the Simpsons production team have put out in the past few years. The jokes seldom miss their mark; the animation, while a little patchy in places, is generally much better quality than the televised episodes (which is to be expected really); and the voice-acting is top-notch. The actors have really improved their game for the movie, with the most noticeable improvement perhaps being Julie Kavner, who voices Marge. Marge has become somewhat of a stale character over the years, and her voice has become rather predictable. But the story in the film, contrived as it was, allowed Kavner to pour some actual emotion and heart into her performance. It was fantastic.

The story, however, is a bit contrived. Of course it’s contrived. The Simpsons has had great difficulty coming up with original, fun-to-watch stories since the turn of the century, and the movie is an example of this. However The Simpsons is not the only series-turned-movie to suffer from this problem. On the way home my mind turned to thoughts of The Rugrats Movie, which suffered a similar problem. The story, big in scale as it is, didn’t quite work for me as a whole.

But the story is, in my view, a vehicle. It’s a vehicle for some of the funniest jokes that the Simpsons has made in a long time, and some of the biggest laughs I’ve had in a theatre for a while. The last time I laughed this hard at a film with this many people was probably Hot Fuzz, and although the laughs here weren’t quite as loud, they were perhaps more regular. Not to say that The Simpsons Movie is better than Hot Fuzz, which has an actual story to accompany its jokes. But the experience in the theater was much the same - a lot of people laughing hard at something funny. I guess that makes The Simpsons Movie an amalgamation of the shows’ past and present - the fantastic humour of the Golden Age of the show mixed with the poor storylines of the current seasons.

Is The Simpsons Movie a cinematic classic? No. Is it going to be successful? Yes. Is that success justified? Honestly, yes it is. The film very nearly makes up for the lack of quality in the television series over the past few years. Perhaps the quality dipped because they were working on the film. Who can say? But the film is worth seeing, preferably in a theater full of people, and it’s probably worth getting on DVD too, if not for the film then for the special features (the film had an “interesting” development history which I am eager to see).

If I had to score it out of ten, I’d probably give it a 7.5. Maybe an 8.

Apparently the Jump Leads web server has imploded. The host, Omnis, reports that the server has been taken down temporarily. It could be for maintenance, or possibly because they haven’t given me any grief since my website was first put up and they felt the time had come.

Fun.

Edit at 11:46am: And now it’s up again. Hooray!

Dad, Linda and I will be going to see The Simpsons Movie tonight. I will admit that I was skeptical as to whether or not the film would be any good. The show itself has been in a such a decline over the past few years, becoming less of an animated sitcom and more of a bad cartoon. But the trailers I’ve seen for the film so far make the film look, dare I say it, good. Couple this with the fact that the script has been put together by a team of writers mostly comprising of people involved with the “Golden Age” of the show, and they might be on to a winner.

There’s no denying that The Simpsons Movie is going to be a worldwide success, but whether or not it will deserve that success is another thing entirely. I guess I’ll find out tonight.

Earlier this afternoon, I printed out the hi-res version of the Jump Leads Issue #1 cover, and it looks bloody marvelous. Particularly when printed on glossy photo paper. If/when we get to a point where we’re producing print-run copies of Jump Leads (and there are already plans afoot to make a print copy of #1 available not long after the issue is finished), it’s going to be rather spectacular.

I’ve printed out a couple of copies, and I’ve half a mind to frame one. Yep, I’m just that sad.

I had my interview at Disney today, as you probably determined from the blog entry below, and it was a crushing defeat followed by a joyous victory. The first interview was with a chap named Stephen, a VP of HR at the WDC (acronyms… yeuch). We had a lovely chat about what I was capable of, what the Walt Disney company does and so forth, which ended with Stephen saying that he thought the job I was going for was perhaps not quite suited to me. Ouch. This was then followed by an interview with a chap named Andy who explained a bit more about the role, asked me some of the usual interview questions, and wrapped things up by saying he thought I was more than capable of doing the job. Score!

I can apparently expect to hear “very soon” about the result, as they’re looking to fill the vacancy soon. It’s a good job, and it’ll get me started and earning some money of my own which I can then use to do things with. Which is nice.  I’m confident that, following my interview with Andy, I’m going to get the job. The people in the department pretty much know me now, and they’re comfortable around me. Which is cool.

In other news, I came to the conclusion that Twelve Stops and Home, which you may recall I purchased at the start of last month, is My Album. If you had asked me a year ago what my favourite album was, I would likely have said Demon Days by Gorillaz. I love the way that album sounds, but it never really resonated with me on the emotional level. Twelve Stops does. I feel like I can relate to every song on that album. For example, Fill My Little World and Never Be Lonely are both, to me, about my relationship with Amy - on one hand, Amy wasn’t the adventurous person I wanted her to be, the person who tried new things and supported me as I tried new things too. That’s Fill My Little World. On the other hand, I didn’t want to leave her because I was scared, utterly terrified, of being alone and not finding anybody else. That’s Never Be Lonely.

Every word of every song just reverberates through my heart, moreso than Scissor Sisters’ The Other Side and Might Tell You Tonight do (as you may recall). The Black Sheep of the album is perhaps Rosé, a song I recently found out is about “love and alcohol,” but even so I can find meaning in the lyrics that relates to myself. This now officially makes me a Hypocrite (well, more of a Hypocrite) as I absolutely hate people who know that Birdhouse In Your Soul is about a Nite Lite but decide instead to believe it is a song about God.

I love this album. I’ve heard that the Feeling are working on a second album and the moment it comes out I will jump on it like a lion on a zebra, clawing away at the flesh and chewing the delicious audio within. Or something. Demon Days was my favourite album. Perhaps it still is. But Twelve Stops and Home is My Album.

What’s yours?

I have my job interview at Disney in two hours. Exciting stuff, I know.

I was sat on the couch this morning when my Dad walked into the house, having gone out to get the mail, and threw a letter at me.

“Someone’s sent me a letter?” I ask. “Who’d write to me?”

I open the letter and realise it’s a letter with a card attached. Oh, okay, I thought. Vista have sent me my bank card. That was quick, I only opened my account two days ago. But it wasn’t from the bank. It was from the US Immigration Department. The card was, in fact, my Green Card. My Permanent Resident Card.

Less than a month after I have entered the country and I have a bloody Green Card. That is so shocking.

Both Microsoft and GameStop have made it their solemn duty to royally shaft the Limey Immigrant (that’s me, if you hadn’t noticed) and as much as I would love to write about it here in blistering detail, I will instead be writing about it on a fairly high-profile gaming website as an introduction to a regular column about the joys and pitfalls of being a UK gamer moving to the US. Hopefully the first edition will be up sooner rather than later, but I imagine I’ll have finished writing it by the end of the weekend. Suffice to say, Microsoft are complete and utter idiots, GameStop moreso.

Which reminds me, I should really write something for RealVG. I haven’t had much in the way of inspiration in that area, and as most of my gaming thoughts these days have been concerning my immigration, and as that area of thought is pretty much reserved for my as yet unstarted column on That Other Website, I haven’t been particularly inspired to write anything for RealVG. Which is disappointing.

We went to the Midnight Launch of the final Harry Potter book last night. That is, we went at around 6pm but left at just after 9pm because we were all very, very tired. Dad and Linda have ordered their book elsewhere anyway so we were largely there for the atmosphere and the experience. It has to be said that Muggles are an interesting folk. Y’know. Mentally. But they’re fun, at the least.

I love my sister, you know. Of course I love her. She’s my sister, and for all her faults I still love her to bits, just as I know she loves me despite mine. Despite the occasional spats we had when I moved back in with my Mum and sister (some of which are archived on the blog) we were rather amicable with each other and we promised we’d stay in touch once I left. We also promised each other we would stick to the Sunday call schedule, although we’d also make efforts to speak to each other outside of this usual time. Which makes sense.

The problem is whenever I speak to Teri on Google Talk, I can hear her typing. Often, by her own admission, she’s having a conversation on MSN with someone else (sometimes two or three other people), or she’s in the Pagan Chatroom on MySpace, or she’s playing Solitaire. Consequently I don’t feel like I have her full attention and, as such, I don’t really feel there’s much point actually trying to talk to her, because I have no guarantee that she’ll even be listening to what I say. Perhaps I’m just being too sensitive about the whole thing. I don’t know. But I want to be able to talk to my sister, and I can’t do this if I don’t feel she’s actually participating in the conversation.

She used to do this when I was in the country, too - not with me, obviously, but with my Dad - and I chalked that up to the fact that Teri doesn’t really have the same sort of bond with Dad that I have. Which raises the question, for me at least, of just how strong a bond I actually have with my sister.

Someone’s going to say “talk to her about it,” and I tried to, but she was also having a conversation with someone else on MSN at the time.