I’ve been a huge fan of Miyazaki’s films for a long time, and I’m really looking forward to seeing Ponyo.

Pop Music Will Never Be Low Brow

When it comes to pop music, Chantal knows what she’s talking about. The post about the state of the music industry is especially insightful; we’ve talked about a lot of these ideas in our conversations, and I think her assessment of the current situation is better than any professional “industry expert” analysis I’ve seen. Check it out.

I had no idea what it was, but I’d always enjoyed golf games and it was cheap, so I bought it. I promptly became addicted, and after doing a little research I found that it’s actually a spin-off of a popular online golf game on the PC, and that the Super Swing Golf games on the Wii were also part of the same series. I’ve never played any of those, but now I’m tempted to go back and see what I missed, because Pangya is the most insanely entertaining golf game I’ve ever played.

The game has a convoluted back story about a hero who defeated the Dark Lord of Pangya Island with an “Air Lance” (golf club) and “Holy Aztec” (golf ball), but the story is completely irrelevant (even in Story Mode, where it consists mostly of characters expressing crushes on one another and trying to win their beloved’s heart by beating the crap out of them at golf). Mostly, this is Hot Shots Golf with an even wackier cast of characters– my favorite by far is Uncle Bob, a portly former cop who insists on eating bucketloads of fried chicken before every match– and zany power-ups that skirt the edges of bad taste. Apparently there are no drug tests in the Pangya universe, because you can buy “nerve stabilizers” that are represented by a drawing of three grey and white pills, and power potions that look like those red health potions from Diablo. But you really don’t need these items most of the time, because you can pull enough tricks with ordinary shots to significantly increase the distance of your approach shots. Topspin and backspin are easy to apply, and as you make more shots you fill up a power-up meter that allows you to either boost your shot’s distance by 10 yards or pull off moves like the “Tomahawk” and “Cobra” (avoid the latter– I’ve found that, more often than not, if you use it when faced with an obstacle it causes your shot to fly backwards). Besides, the less money you spend on items, the more you’ve got to buy fancy new clothes for each character; and every time you equip a new article of clothing, you get a 10 percent cash bonus for that round.

Matches against the AI are wildly inconsistent, to say the least, though there is something of a progression in the computer’s skills as you make your way through the two episodes of Story Mode. For the most part, the AI proves to be a tough opponent on the fairway, but fails on the green. Not always: occasionally, an opponent will pull off a 20-foot curving putt and leave you gaping in horror as you attempt to read the green despite the lack of a traditional grid and mess up the angle on a putt of half the distance. More often, though, the AI manages to underpower 2-foot putts, so it’s possible to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat without even trying. The game is also extremely generous, allowing you to play each Story Mode match as many times as needed until you finally win. The only danger is that you’ll run out of money buying special balls, as there are a variety of different ball types (or “Aztecs”– where the hell did they come up with this goofy terminology?) that each provide their own unique stat boosts. My favorite: the Baseball Aztec, which adds to shot power but for some peculiar reason reduces the Curve stat by 1. I have no idea why a baseball-styled golf ball wouldn’t curve well, but then again, it’s easier to go with the flow and not even try to make sense of most of what goes on in this game.

And by the time you reach the end of Story Mode, all sense and rationality have truly melted away: after competing with bears in medieval armor who use giant axes as clubs, facing courses that require you to curve the ball around volcanos, giant windmills, and icebergs, and listening to poor old Uncle Bob hit on the resolutely cold-hearted Navy pirate hunter Cecilia for the five millionth time, you’ll wonder if it’s possible for a golf game to be any more deranged than this. But that’s a huge part of Pangya‘s charm. It may play like most any other three-click-meter golf game in existence, but in all other respects it’s like nothing else I’ve ever played. And I haven’t even delved into the other game modes yet. This is my favorite game of the year by such a wide margin that nothing else can even hope to compete.

Listen to the musical except on this page and ask yourself: what the hell was this guy thinking? I like Britney Spears, and in theory there’s nothing wrong with the idea of an opera about her; but this is such a load of pompous absurdity that it makes me want to pop my eardrums. Who in the world would think that really shitty Diamanda Galás imitations were the right approach for this subject?

I’d really love to see this guy be able to prove his case in court, but I know it’s not going to happen.

And is the money they make from the ads worth the potential alienation of their customers? People go to great lengths to avoid advertising as it is– why else would AdBlock Plus and NoScript be among the most downloaded Firefox extensions? Excessive advertising on TV, at the movie theater, and on DVD’s has already produced widespread irritation; having to wade through pages of fashion ads to get to a lyric sheet in a CD booklet just adds to this frustration, and it doesn’t give listeners a positive impression of how the industry regards them. No one wants to feel that they’re valuable only for the dollars they can put in advertisers’ pockets. Then again, none of the intrusive ads I mentioned before have resulted in widespread protests, so perhaps the public in general is too complacent to care. Or too addicted to illegal downloading to even notice.

So when I got home, I Googled “Michael Jackson’s dermatologist” and got a partial answer. For some reason, the first news story that came up in the search results was from The Australian, but that’s just par for the course when it comes to anything related to Jackson’s life and death: nothing turns out quite as you might have expected. Anyway, it appears there were rumors that the dermatologist, Arnold Klein, is actually the children’s biological father, though he’s previously denied paternity. The denial makes his request all the stranger, though it’s not entirely clear exactly what he was asking for in the first place. In any event, the judge paid no attention whatsoever to the request, so I suppose the exact nature of Klein’s involvement will remain a mystery. But it’s definitely an odd little side note to the story.