One Poem for a different Friend

OK John, this is for you. If you don't recognize the guy in the picture chalk it up to Narrator not being the Author or whatever, just please don't hit me, I'm delicate :)

Paper
I've always eaten it
You seem to be strangling in it
My friend, you're smoking ultra-lights like they're going out of style,
Pulling air like you'll draw their lives into your lungs
Angry like a madman and your speech is 'clipped'
Clipped but it sounds fine to me
This is how deep you've pushed it
Deep down you're so damn
Angry.

Two Poems for a Friend

These are both dedicated to Nicki. Actually they both started with the same line, and I fought the good fight in not making them about myself, and succeeded a bit better with the second than I did with the first.

---------------
Dreams I
I had a friend who would tell me her dreams.
Such a little thing for me; I knew their meaning
I was that arrogant.
Years pass and she's still cool and I
Am cold;
Looking in the North Pole for someone
With my ego to tell me
What my dreams meant, where did they go?

-----------------
Dreams II
I had a friend who told me dreams, late at night,
Years ago; and in my mind
She's calling, my hand warm on the phone,
Face flushed, lying down, saying
What it meant and means.
We were both dreaming carelessly
and talking silly nonsense about stupid stuff
I can't remember it now. She said,
"Can I kill you?" I said, "Yes, I'll write a note."
That's our friendship, who we were,
Careless, ceaseless. Reading the poetry I wrote
It was too long, singsongy, and crappy. She told me so.
Who the hell else could have told me so!
I told her one time I was going home
And then followed her to the next spot, she didn't notice
I was so proud of myself for my cleverness
She actually seemed surprised. There weren't many times
I got the better of her!
My whole life, I guess.
Well we all have these friends we wish we were,
Stronger, faster, smarter, lives like a muscle car,
All we can do is stop and stare
We all have these friends, and sometimes in a long time
You find one that cares -
One that is a real friend back for you
And she is that, has that, and so my friend I dedicate this crap
To you.

today's random thought

I am

I am nursing a cinder on my front porch
It's raining down the steps and on the street.
I'm cold up here but it's dry at least.

Indoors Wesley Snipes makes love to Claudia Schiffer and I have work to do.

a 'Persona 3' poem

Every night at midnight

Every night at midnight we blow our brains out.
I'm breezing through high school feeding your
Egos, but I only need so much from you.
Three girls at a time, what a life this is!
The year passes quickly, the blue wings fall silently.

wrote these jan 4th 2009

One

One is enough numbers.
Count it quickly
and go home.

---

"Sometimes I'm a"

Spider crawling southward on the wall
to a warm crack on the wall
Where the heater blows.

---

Western Sheets

"You brought these sheets into the relationship, you take them out."

"Ok."

Some poetry I wrote more than ten years ago

I found an old notebook in a jacket and went through it, here are two poems that probably shouldn't see the light of day but hey, this is the next best thing.

----------------------

Actors are untrustworthy.
I have to thank the hands
that catch me, every
night, in the darkness,
and pass me to the exit.
When the lights come up I'm in my place.
Who guided me?
Someone I cannot tell,
One of many.

-----------------------

A little bit of potatoes,
a single broccoli
on a plate.
Unasked for
but as much as
anyone
could ask.

When You're Backed into a Corner

Take a look at this first (skim it if you're impatient).

While you're at it, try to skim through the comments as best you can. I can wait.

Basically, what Leigh Alexander of Sexy Videogame Land is trying to say is that games have been 'discovered' by mainstream movies just as comics were 'discovered' by mainstream movies in the late 70's, early 80's. See the first Superman movie, the first Batman movie for examples. Of course the Reeves Superman was a child of the Star Wars science fiction movie boom, but the Keaton Batman was an attempt to take the commercial success of the Frank Miller "grim and gritty" Batman character and punch it up for film release.

So now that game movies have found a few AAA releases (see: Halo movie, WoW movie, and now the Bioshock movie) are they headed for a Star Wars style boom, followed by a decline, followed by a set of serious movies ten years later that actually explore the possibilities involved? Most likely.

Is there any way to stop this train? Not a chance.

That's the reason for the title of this post, it's from the entertaining picture Leigh Alexander used for the header of her thread. An image from Paranoia Agent. The idea is that, when you're backed into a corner, you can call on this boy with a baseball bat ("Little Slugger") to come and knock you on the head and solve all your problems.

In a sense, games feel 'backed into a corner' right now - everyone talks about the '7 billion dollars a year' industry, everyone wants a piece of that pie. Kids want some of that money making games. Stores want some of that money selling games. Movie studios and baseball players, and so on, want to buy in now so they'll be all set for the waters to keep rising. And they hear the best way to buy in is with a big chunk - so they go right for the AAA games and the MMOs, and most of them are DOA.
But enough new chumps are lined up at the door, so there's not much worry that AAA games will stop being made.

Until, of course, the bubble pops - and Viacom unloads Activision for a song, or whatever. Then a lot of money men will be unhappy, but more importantly, a lot of game developers and publishers will be out of jobs for a while.

So why are games backed into a corner? Because small developers can't afford to live on one small title at a time, and larger developers tend to depend on larger titles. And larger titles need more money, which puts them more in thrall to the people with the money. Which makes them dependent on the boom and bust cycle of the market. So they're in a tough place with no way to get out.

Why off on the tangent - what's this got to do with movies? Well, movies are one of the directions suits like to go in when they have no idea what to do. Say you're on the board of Viacom and you don't like the projections for Activision's next quarter. Maybe a AAA game got canceled or postponed or poorly reviewed, and you know if the money projection isn't where it needs to be, shareholders will lower the price of your stock, and you'll be sad. What to do? Increase 'shareholder value' by trading on existing properties in a new medium.

So we get toys, we get card games, and finally we get movies. But movies are very, very hard to do right, and so far the rate of successful big budget game movies getting made (much less showing a profit) is 0%. Everyone in the business ought to recognize by now that the hill is steep and there's a gunner's nest on the top. But the generals keep ordering one more push...

Ultimately there will be successful game movies made, without a doubt. I just wish they'd go to the indie market first. There are a lot of smaller filmmakers that could do something very interesting with a Silent Hill-type property (of course not Silent Hill; that bird has flown). But that wouldn't help the suits make their next quarter projections, so it won't happen.