Right now I’m packing for a week-long writing retreat that I do with some students every year. No internet for four days! The horror! Before I shut off my last laptop—I have three laptops, which is a fact that warrants a post of its own—I thought I’d do a short post of really cool things and people I’ve discovered recently…

Scott Pilgrim, who has a precious little life that he must fight the world for or he’ll fall into infinite sadness. This is a comic book series about a twenty-something Canadian boy “between jobs” who has to play in a band and defeat his dream girl’s seven evil ex-boyfriends in mortal combat. It’s kind of the voice of my generation and it’s certainly the best comic book I’ve ever read. More on Scott Pilgrim later.

Gideon Freudmann opened for Tim Eriksen at the Iron Horse in Northamption last Thursday. I had no idea who he was except that one of the folks who went to the concert with me was his biggest fan ever. Turns out he plays the electric cello while controlling some crazy synthesizer drum machine thing with his foot—or maybe it’s some realtime thing that plays off his cello? His music is pretty damn amazing.

Henry Hatsworth is an outrageously British professor who goes on a puzzling adventure to save the world. It takes the Nintendo DS to its logical extreme: a platformer on the top screen and a block puzzle on the bottom. You switch between the two using the X button and each screen affects the other. Kill things on the top and you send them to the bottom screen. Let the bottom screen pile up and more enemies appear. Removing blocks from the puzzle charges your super attacks and makes your projectiles more powerful. The game is also pretty hard; in the second half of the game you really need to switch back and forth charging your special attacks and powering up blocks by killing things with said special attacks. The best thing about the game though is that it’s unfailingly British: by charging up your combo meter you unlock TEATIME and turn into an invincible British Battling Robot.

Wing :: May.10.2009 :: Posts :: No Comments »