Just another blog

I’m lightly frustrated by the lack of tangible vidHero-specific progress lately. Although there has been a lot of thinking, the doing has been distracted. I’d like to blame the lack of any important progress on the quitting of nicotine. but this feels like a cop out (because i’m nervous that as soon as I have any real stress, i’ll just head right back to the comforting arms of addiction land) (and because it seems like the chemical addiction must be dying down, so my continued practice of doing-nothing must be more psychological).

blah blah.

i recently read through the first 3 gunslinger (dark tower) books. i think i enjoyed them more for their promise than their delivery. well, the first book delivered. but the second books seemed to drift around in weird non-loveable directions. Although i loathe the common trick of tying fantastic realms into our own reality, i kind of respect how King handled it. Mostly i like how the books are still posing questions, while suggesting other genres. by the end of the first book, i thought the story was set in a spiritual limbo realm, where certain people are sent when they die. and it was just coincidence that our hero was living out a western adventure there, having grown up in a midevil time of knights. the second book derailed this, with so much time being spent in 60s, 70s, and 90s era New York, along with brief bleak times in a lovecraftian beach front which neutered the western fun of the fantasy land.
by the end of the third book, the fantasy world seems to be some sort of post-apocalypse of our own reality. And while there is a return to the cliche’s of loveable old westerns, there is also a heavier focus on magic, and futuristic technologies being mistaken for magic.

I’m still reading it, because i’m just dying to for a 70s era clint eastwood cowboy to fight a 80s era david bowie wizard. bullets verses lightening. I’m really not sure this will happen. but the possibility has me hooked.

secretly, i’m just guessing it will turn out that fantasy land is a “hard-to-describe” spin off of our reality, like literature itself. Not-so-subtely documenting stephen king’s own changes of mind regarding ideal fantasy lands. perhaps the reason  this mid-world fantasy land is expanding is the influx of imagination. some crap like that. i like crap like that. but it would be a notable conceit after drawing readers into the simple fun of down and dirty cowboy-in-fantasy-land story telling. i don’t want it to be some big commentary on story telling. i want it to be pure kick ass cowboy genre exploitation.

anywho. this all comes to mind because i looked at a single black and white drawing of a lonely wheelchair in the third book, and it struck me that i really should be taking a different approach to the vidHero comic book. it’s currently more of a cartoonish story telling cop out. it would be far more satisfying if the individual images of the story were less forced, and more like emotion-stirring-photographs. I’m not sure i can actually pull that off (without resorting to stealing from photographs that move me. which is probably how many others do it), but it seems more important now that i try to. hmm.

In other news, i’ve been learning a lot about flash and actionscript 3 while brushing up for a recent interview. strong chance of simplistic vidhero flash games and/or a vidHero movie trailer in the not-so-distant future. fantasy. land.