This course scares me just watching it. At 1:35, he tags a nasty boulder and lets out a yelp that is almost pure terror.

I was having a kinda bummed out night, but strangely, this made me a little happier.

Alexander McQueen was an inspiration to me.

There was something daring about his clothes. Something naughty and slightly off-kilter. They were about taking the places inside that we keep private, and transforming them into these intricately cut garments that forced them to the surface. Walking into his boutique in Osaka was one of my favorite things to do, just to feel the clothes, look at how they were tailored, dream of having the money, and the audacity, to wear something more than one of his skull scarves or a t-shirt.

This is the L.A. store. I visited it back in October, and I loved being there. The man hanging from the rafters is now prophetic and sad. He isn’t actually hanging though.

I loved his Puma collaboration. My white trainers came with a sharp metal fang that I loved too much to remove from the shoes, until they began to scar the outside of the white leather. I eventually took the fang off, not because I disliked what it was doing to the shoes, but because I never wanted to look down and see it missing.

Then there was the women’s wear. Whether he was misogynistic or not, as a man, a woman dressed in McQueen was scary and desiring. His last collection (where Lady GaGa premiered Bad Romance) was about these computer generated scale prints, vaguely reptilian or fish like, but when I saw them paraded down the runway, I thought that he had created a feminine praying mantis. They were scary, and deadly, and incredibly alluring.

However, my favorite collection was probably Autumn 2007. Themed after the witch hunts, he played with long sleek shapes, tall hairdos, and darkness. Models walked a red pentagram drawn on a dark floor, lit only by spotlights following them. A few weeks after I saw this show on TV, I walked into PlatinumGames for the first time and saw Bayonetta. She is, and always will be, the Alexander McQueen model of video games to me. I saw her and instantly I identified his influence in her.

Watch that, and tell me if you still think Bayonetta’s proportions are “off”. Alexander McQueen used scissors and fabric to make these women look larger than life. And yet they still seem dangerous, and intensely sexy. If Bayonetta were real, I bet she would have adored Alexander McQueen.

But now he is gone. Life is a little bit more mundane. Women are a little less sexy. The world is a little less dangerous.

Thank you.

A little speculation from GameTrailers on what’s next…
My lips are sealed, as always.

Silver Week is upon us, and the best way to celebrate your last free night, Tuesday 9/22, is by coming to Joule in Osaka.

Come check me spinning house up on the Terrace at Joule (open to non-VIP patrons for the first time since the big move) while Ken Ishii, Q’Hey, and Dai tear apart the main room with the best Japanese techno has to offer.

Guest list is, of course, a given – so hit me up in the comments if you need to be added to the list.

It has been ages since I’ve posted on this blog.

Part of it has to do with the complete and total implosion of my personal life (Mai and I broke up after six years a little less than four months ago). The other part has to do with a faulty AirPort Extreme that didn’t let me blog from home.

But putting all that aside, I suppose I should blog about this awesome art exhibition I went to today.

Art Osaka was held at the Dojima Hotel, an upscale design hotel in Umeda. They took over four floors of the hotel and had a gallery turn each room into a mini-exhibition for their shop. There were tons of slightly deformed, dark takes on the human form, which seemed to be a trend at the show. But my own personal interests trending more towards the pop side of things, I thought I would introduce some works that caught my eye.

BTW – I don’t often go to art galleries/shows, but I really enjoy them. I went alone this time, but if anyone is interested in going to a show, or going to Geisai with me next year, drop me a line.

This is a work by Chih-Wei Chiu, an artist from Taiwan. I really like the focus on the eyes, and the vaguely sexual imagery going on. Use of color is incredibly as well. Very cool.

These are supposed to be steampunk robots that protect infant babies. The one in the center has a pacifier on its chain, and the hawk is actually a bottle. I don’t think you could call these simple figures, nor could you call them sculptures. They are a nice high-low juxtaposition that really attracts me. Very cool resin models.

This is by Masako Higashi, a 25 year old girl from Osaka who is currently working at a game company. Her work was my favorite at the show, and I wanted to buy a particular painting that matched the color scheme of my apartment. I like the mix of anger and innocence, and it is easy to imagine the emotions inside a Japanese girl that would encourage these kinds of works. It is a mix of the pop art cultural influences that youth in Japan are raised in, along with early 20s angst and a kawaii design aesthetic. I spoke with her for a while (she is very cute… I wish I could have gotten her number) and her work is awesome.

So there was my Sunday. Off to bed now. I ate too many homemade tacos and am damn near in a food coma.

Dante’s Inferno is a book and a game concept very close to my heart. Inserting Dante references subtly into game scripts is one of my calling cards, most obviously in the stage names and achievements for Devil May Cry 4.

My initial reaction to EA’s Inferno trailer was shock at how much I liked it… Until I saw the guy fighting and jamming crosses in heads.

I’ve been thinking about it more and more, and I think it is more like he is going through a conception of Dante’s Hell, loosely based of Dantean Cosmography. Evidence of this is coming from the trailer, which they briefly flash a map seemingly inspired by the existing carvings of Dante’s hell.

Also, the main site, seems focused on the Gates of Hell – with the Thinker from Rodin’s gate, and the eternal pain line on the sign-up screen being taken from the translation on the gate in Inferno itself.

I still have issues with the main character. It seems like a man fighting his way into hell, where it would be a more interesting plot for a man to fight his way out, especially with how boring the lower circles, devoted to betrayers, are. If you figure that Judas is essentially being eternally gnawed upon, and the rest of the circle is just men frozen solid in various contortions, it would be the most anti-climatic final stage of all time. The character design is also not the direction I would have taken, but oh well.

Anyways, I wish that team the best of luck, and a huge part of me wishes that I was on this one with them. I think there is still a wonderful Dante game to be made, incorporating many elements of the man and the book, as opposed to playing an original story set in his world.

The strong yen and insane Christmas sales has been devastating my wallet, but some of these deals are too good to pass up.

For instance -

+

+

= 13,500 yen including express shipping to Japan.

So. Awesome.

Well, I can now access my website after exchanging my AirPort Extreme base station for a new one.

If it didn’t work, I was going to sell it on ebay and take Gregg’s recommendation, but thankfully I am back for the attack. I may hate Apple service, but I love AirDisk, which is why the AirPort Extreme is perfect for me. Screw the TimeCapsule.

So, yeah, back on the attack… And speaking of on the attack, SEGA opened up the official MadWorld page today.

http://www.madworldgame.com/

Check it out when you get the chance.

So my net connection problems are all the AirPort Extreme’s doing. Apparently, it randomly decided to disallow m from connecting to this very site. If you google “airport extreme blocking one site,” other people seem to be having this exceedingly rare issue.

So I take my ass down to the apple store hoping for an exchange on a six week old router, show them the discussion thread on the support forums, explain every single step I attempted in solving the issue, and explain how my time and email are too valuable to try and fix some rare Apple bug.

The staff girl talked with the genius upstairs, who had never heard of the issue and wanted to check it out.

Fine, I say. Oh, but they are booked for the rest of the day. Can you come back tomorrow.

What. The. Fuck.

I’ve already made on trip to your store for this rare issue. Now you want me to make another trip because your support queue is filled with people who can’t get the fucking iPods to work?

This is the biggest issue with Apple support. Giving everyone personal support is great, but if a customer says your product is broken, then don’t make them have to come back to prove it. Provide an exchange or facilitate sending it off to support. It literally doesn’t take a fucking genius to tell me what I already know. The thing is broken, fix it, give me a new one, or let me be. Lacking the ability to trust or handle customers other with anyone other than the three trained assholes dealing with iPods and people who don’t know how to use mail.app is not an acceptable excuse.

Lunch with a pretty girl. Check.

Tasty Indian food. Check.

Looking forward to the last bite on the fork. Check.

The disappointment of losing that last bite off the fork. Palpable.

Being shown a picture of that precious moment. Priceless.