* Recently on Robot 6:
* …and Barack Obama looks at awesome things.
* AMC has picked up six episodes of The Walking Dead, to air around Halloween. I wonder if this covers the first story arc?
* Lost links: Here’s Todd VanDerWerff’s weekend odds’n’sods post and Whitney Matheson’s weekly best-of comment roundup. For my part, I watched the last two episodes back to back with The Missus this weekend and enjoyed both more than I had initially.
* I liked this bit from a Daily Kos post by Devilstower on MMORPGs:
As I was passing through a town, a figure came running up to me. It was another player, a low level player dressed only in rags.
“Can you help me?” he asked. “I’ve just started playing this game, and this player — one not as far along as you — killed me and took all my stuff. He ambushed me right outside of town.”
Being exceeding noble, I followed this poor man back to the scene of the crime. Want to guess what happened next? If you think I managed to kill off the criminal and return the victim’s gear, please come back when Barney is over. If you think that I fought the good fight and the victim and I became online pals, that’s endearing, but no. If you think that as soon as I took ten steps out of town, the “victim’s” half-dozen bruiser pals jumped out of hiding, beat me senseless, and took every scrap of my gear and money now you’re talking. They killed me, jumped up and down on my corpse, and laughed at me.
And the first thing I did was get angry, and the second thing I did was think “wow, this is going to be huge.”
* Chloe Sevigny shit-talks the most recent season of Big Love on the record, claims to have been taken out of context, gets called on it. As a writer, this sort of thing makes me happy, because it’s so easy to blame journalists and reporters and critics and so on for problems of your own making. On the other hand, Sevigny seems not to stand foursquare behind “out of context”–her ultimate explanation is basically “I wish I hadn’t said that.” I can sympathize with that.
* Matthew Perpetua is a one-man army of Goldfrapp. I myself disagree strongly with the lukewarm reviews her last two records have garnered. It’s weird how everyone lined up behind “folk” and dismissed it as such when Seventh Tree was hardly folk, and how Head First is getting dismissed as unmemorable when it’s such a perfect package of a microgenre with an emotional project. (’80s, ’80s, yes, I know, but I don’t recall a lot of people doing stuff with things like the Pointer Sisters and Jefferson Starship and Olivia Newton-John and ELO.) Also, what a live show!
* Finally, I’ve been reciting this sketch for years with no hope of ever actually seeing it again, so imagine my surprise and delight when David Paggi directed my attention to it today. It’s from the Jon Stewart-hosted, The State-starring MTV show You Wrote It, You Watch It, and I love it so. It’s a PAR-ty line, and the party’s goin’ FINE!
Two things:
1) That Lost thing is great, up until the “written by JJ Abrams” bit, which is so aggravating for me. I hate when people don’t give Damon Lindelof (and Carlton Cuse) appropriate credit for building this huge story. When people attribute Lost to Abrams, it’s like giving a kindergarten teacher credit for some crazy story dreamed up by one of their students.
2) Chloe Sevigny is totally right about the fourth season of Big Love and I totally support her in mouthing off about it, even if it’s not very professional. You keep being totally awesome, Chloe!
Agreed about the Abrams thing. That’s just stone ignant. But I gave the guy a pass because I think he’s a furriner of some kind.
As for Sevigny, the story jumped out at me in the first place because of your complaints, Matthew!
Sean, when I actually watched that State video, I could have sworn they’d spliced audio of you saying that line into the motherfucker…THAT’S how accurate your portrayal has been these many years.
My good lord. I’ve been thinking about that Fred Schneider-stalking sketch for about 15 years now. Thank you, Sean T. Collins. Thank you, internet.
BTW: Did you know that you can replace the chanted title of “Rock Lobster” with the words “Hans Landa!” I discovered this soon after watching Inglourious Basterds.