This time out it was our pleasure to have Jessica Brown as a guest  who took time to talk to us out of her busy schedule defending our country and policing the troops as the commanding officer of a military police unit.  As you will hear, Jessica writes for Anjelsyndicate.org, Ironmanmode.com and hosts a podcast of her own over at allaweh.wordpress.com. You can peruse some of the articles we discussed in the list below.

American Royalty –  The United Kingdom may have a Queen, Sweden may have a king, but the United States has royalty as well:  Duke Ellington, Earl Hines and of course…

The Man Himself - Count Basie

Count Basie

I first discovered The Count when I heard what is one of the most amazing pieces of jazz in recording history.  That song is called Battle Royal and our regular listeners have already heard an excerpt of it in our last show.  The CD of the same name is two bands lead by some of the most influential names in the history of Jazz…The Duke and The Count.  Every time I hear that “album” I wish I could have been there to see the two greats and their bands playing in the same studio.  One of the few times I have ever seen the two men play together is a small snippet on Youtube at the end of a show hosted by Doc Severson; unfortunately I do not know the name of the show, and the poster didn’t give it.

In 1924 William “Count” Basie went to Harlem – the home of the hottest Jazz, and the famous Cotton Club, that played hosts to names like Cab Calloway, Fats Waller, Ella Fitzgerald,  Louis Armstrong, Dizzie Gillespie,  Nat King Cole and Billie Holiday.  On the show you will hear Count Basie talk about his Kansas City years in the early 1930s.  By 1937 Count Basie had his own orchestra and moved to New York City and into the era of Big Band Jazz and Swing.  Even after the end of WW 2 and the big band  years, Basie continued performing right up until the end in 1984.

Like so many other people, Duke Ellington and Count Basie introduced me to jazz and I have loved it ever since.  Both men are even part of my vision of heaven – the top of my bucket list is to play trumpet with the Duke Ellington and Count Basie Bands.  One day, on this or the other side of Eternity, I hope to achieve the dream

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

Cites Cited:

http://Anjelsyndicate.org

http://Allaweh.wordpress.com

http://www.ironmanmode.com/

Articles Discussed:

Free “Extended Cut” DLC to expand, clarify Mass Effect 3
ending this summer

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/04/free-extended-cut-dlc-to-expand-clarify-mass-effect-3-ending-this-summer/

Did Bioware actually lie about the ending of Mass Effect 3

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/04/did-bioware-actually-lie-about-the-ending-to-mass-effect-3/

Is the Old Republic become an old ghost town?

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/04/is-the-old-republic-becoming-an-old-ghost-town-openforum-gamers-debate/

Bioware: Old Republic subscribers not dropping despite
lighter server loads

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/04/bioware-old-republic-subscribers-not-dropping-despite-lighter-server-loads/

EA: The Old Republic has lost nearly 25% of its subscribers
since March

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/05/ea-the-old-republic-has-lost-nearly-one-quarter-of-its-subscribers-since-march/

Lawsuit forces Gamestop to post used game DLC warnings in
California, online

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/04/lawsuit-forces-gamestop-to-post-used-game-dlc-warnings-in-california-online/

I got mad, I peed the floor, just to piss them off! (it worked!)

Our little Molly is doing time…

I peed the floor

Fortunately for Edna, she had  a bad case of alt-itis…

“Music is better listened to than analyzed” – Duke Ellington

Recently an article from Kotaku.com came across our news feed entitled “The most popular games are dumb, can we stop apologizing for them now?” I will admit that I have yet to read the article, especially since we get over a hundred news feeds at this point.  However it did remind me of something one of my professors said back in undergraduate school when I was studying fine art.  The  “prof”  maintained that the arts were not made for the reviewer. Instead, he exclaimed, they were made for the common man – for the person who pays the admission ticket.

As for critics of the arts, those self appointed pundits who feel theyhave their finger on the pulse of the masses, they rarely seem to agree with the box office, book sales, or copies of games flying off the shelves.  Woody Allen’s famous movie Annie Hall was panned by New York Critic John Simon:

“With Annie Hall, Woody Allen has truly underreached himself… his new film is painful in three separate ways: as unfunny comedy, poor moviemaking, and embarrassing self-revelation… It is a film so shapeless, sprawling, repetitious, and aimless as to seem to beg for oblivion. At this, it is successful.” –John Simon, New York

In one of my favorite moments from Annie Hall one of the movie patrons in line is pontificating about movies. When he begins to talk about Marshall McLuhan Woody can stand it no longer…

Movie Patron: I happen to teach a class at Columbia called T.V. Media and culture. So my insights into Marshal McLuhan have a great deal of validity.

…It is at this point that Woody walks off screen and actually gets Marshal Mchluhan.

Worse still is when we, the paying public, begin to believe the reviewer whether it be of movies, theater or a videogame. Like the Rich man of whom Tevye sings in Fiddler on the Roof, we think the critic must somehow “really know” because he or she considers themselves a “professional”. In the end the end the only person who really knows whether you will like a movie, book or video game is you.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

J

“Jazz? The word to me means freedom of expression – if it is accepted as an art it is the same as any other
art.  The popularity of it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t mean anything; because when you get into popularity you’re talking about money and not music.” – Duke Ellington

Not long ago Roger Ebert, movie reviewer, caused quite a hate storm (2,000 pages of hate mail according to Ebert) when he decided that videogames were not art.  Even if they aren’t art, does anything have to be popular to be good?  Certainly Duke Ellington didn’t think so. The quote above comes from an interview on Swedish television from the 1960s when Ellington appeared there.  The interviewer asked Duke Ellington about the rise of popularity of other forms of music other than Jazz.  As you can see from the quote, Duke was a firm believer in ars gratia artis (art for the sake of art).  When you get into popularity, the famed Duke said, you are talking about money and not art…ars gratia pecuniae (art for the sake of money).

But let’s assume for the moment that Ebert was wrong and, heaven forefend, not the sole determinant of what constitutes art.

There is a woman I used to speak to in the subway who was (and presumably still is)  a street musician.  But not just any street musician, no.  She could play the guitar, the harmonica, and the violin. The remarkable thing was she could play them all at the same time.  What is more, she is good at it. If you  take the same train long enough, you will eventually hear just about any  form of music imaginable – including young musicians who earn their shekels by beating on empty plastic paint cans turned upside down.  Few, if any, of these musicians I have heard, have ever rivaled the great Gene Krupa. Still, they are certainly earnest. Mind
you at the end of a long day the paint pail music is more of the sort that I would pay the young artists to stop rather than reward.

But just because I don’t enjoy a particular form of art does that mean it isn’t art? Doesn’t it have an intrinsic value in and of itself as Duke Ellington maintained of Jazz?

Consider the two pictures that accompany this article.  The first of the two, obviously, are simply pictures of a rotting trash heap and an overflowing garbage can I “Photoshopped” into an art gallery.  But what of the second picture? Is it a pile of garbage as well? The answer is that the owner of the objet d’art paid some $250,000 for the square metal object that stands some fifty feet tall.  What of this particular work of art?  It was protested by 800 people. Ultimately some individuals destroyed it.  Did it have intrinsic value?  The National Endowment for the arts thought so – they paid the artist $15,000 dollars to produce it. Did the 800 protesters have the right to force the closure of the exhibition?

And what of video games as art?

Take a look at the  work of  Lord of the Rings Online/Shadows of Angmar – certainly the work of  artist Rick Schmitz is unquestionably art and as good as you will ever see grace a videogame. What about more objectionable video games?  Supreme Court Justice Alito once cited “Raplay” as an example in Brown vs. Entertainment Merchant Association, writing “It…appears that there is no antisocial theme too base for some in the video-game industry to exploit.” What about  the Super Columbine Massacre Rpg  The subject matter alone is what kept in the public eye a game that otherwise would have faded into obscurity after only 10,000 downloads.  Even though I consider both games beyond objectionable do they have intrinsic value?

Does anything have intrinsic value when social mores and not legality are the only issues called into question?

Closer to home…

Star Wars the Old Republic Online has been the subject of protests by a group calling itself the Family Research Council protesting gay and lesbian romance in a game that doesn’t actually contain them. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 caused a stir in 2009 when it allowed players to  take the side of terrorists (amongst other controversies).   CCP’s game Eve Online created a bit of controversy recently when a player calling himself “The Mittani” caused a stir at the fanfest with his now infamous remarks  for which he received a 30 day ban.  On what is possibly the lowest end of gaming controversy, Mittani’s Eve Online player group called the Goonswarm Alliance recently launched 14,000 ships ready for ganking on the Eve Online trade hub Jita in an action they called “Burn Jita” – and while some players are worried that Goonswarm would ruin Eve Online, CCP Senior Producer Jon Lander said of the event “I’ll tell you what, it’s going to be fucking brilliant.”

The other side of that particular coin is represented by the words of Bree, Senior editor for Massively.com, writing on the Skycandy blog in an article entitled Bully for You .

“The thing about EVE that distinguishes it from those other games is that the most public part of its community proudly revels in griefing and bullying.  Normally, a lazy, laissez-faire sandbox like EVE is a
blank slate on which the community can chalk anything it wants. But in EVE’s case, CCP set a testosterone-laden, misogynist tone for the playerbase. It’s right there in the official “harden the fuck up” marketing materials. The company itself is to blame for reinforcing the idea that being an asshole is welcome,
acceptable, and even commendable.” – Bree, Bully for You

Do I personally agree with Bree’s opinion?  In my case that would be a resounding yes.  Did that sort of behavior ruin the game for me?  Most certainly it did.  Burning Jita was indeed a prime example of
emergent gameplay.  What is more, the people who created Eve Online and keep it going not only support the event but consider it “fucking brilliant.”  For me personally it drops the value Eve Online gameplay to somewhere around that of used toilet paper.  But does this mean Eve Online has no intrinsic value? Does the popularity of Eve Online even matter?  The answer to that seems determinant upon one’s point of view.

See you online,
Julie Whitefeather

Welcome to Show 107!

 Show 107 is live. You can hear it on Itunes and here.

This week, we start with a bit of news and breakfast with the No Prisoners, No Mercy team. Then we welcome Nathan “EmCeeKhan” Baumbach from Ironman mode.com joins us to talk about videogames, and more (and we are still convinced he is either a fugitive superhero).

1. The Last Star fighter real life application…sort of
2. Mass Effect 3 and the BBB
3. Sony paddles upstream
4. Glenn Miller
5. Geeks are cool/Will Wheaton
6. Star Trek Online – what has changed? What has not?
7. Star Wars the Old Republic vs Star Wars Galaxies

Sites Cited:

The Sound of EmCeeKhan: http://mcclaud.wordpress.com/

This Pizza Changes Everything: http://kotaku.com/5901817/the-dominos-ipad-game-could-transform-the-way-we-order-pizza-and-get-jobs

Sony Reorganizes: http://www.gamepolitics.com/2012/04/12/sony-confirms-jobs-cuts-restructuring-plans

Mass Effect 3 and the BBB: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2012/04/did-bioware-actually-lie-about-the-ending-to-mass-effect-3.ars

Who is Glenn Miller?

Glenn Miller, for those of you who may not have seen the 1959 version of “The Glenn Miller Story” starring was one of the dominant forces during the big band era.  He is sometimes described as “An American Jazz Musician” but his sound was so much more – but contrary to what The Glenn Miller Story would have us believe, his definitive sound came from a much different place:

“While with the Noble band, he composed “Miller’s Tune” which later became “Moonlight Serenade”. And while there, he also discovered the Miller sound, a trumpet playing along with the sax section but an octave higher. This was fine as long as Pee Wee Irwin played the trumpet but when he left the Noble band, Glenn could not find another trumpet player to do the same. So he assigned the job in desperation to Johnny Mince to play it on his b-flat clarinet instead. But it wasn’t until Glenn had his second band and hired Willie Schwartz to play clarinet that the “Miller sound” came to full function. By the way, the Miller sound didn’t develop because the trumpet player spilt his lip as was stated in the “Glenn Miller Story” movie. This movie, by the way, was full of many inaccuracies but it did portray one accurate fact: Glenn and wife Helen were completely in love with each other.” -  Glenn Miller, The Man Behind His Music, Broser, Ray Krysl (http://www.dixieswing.com/vol8.pdf)

Glenn Miller did have his detractors while he was alive.  They believed that the band’s endless rehearsals and according to critic Amy Lee in Metronome magazine, “letter-perfect playing”, diminished any feeling from performances.” (source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Miller)

Here is what he had to say:

“A band ought to have a sound all of its own. It ought to have a personality.”

“I haven’t got a great jazz band and I don’t want one. Some of the critics, Down Beat’s among them, point their fingers at us and charge us with forsaking real jazz . . . It’s all in what you define as ‘real jazz.’ It happens that to our ears harmony comes first. A dozen colored bands have a better beat than mine. Our band stresses harmony.” – Glenn Miller

(source: http://www.glennmiller.com/about/quotes.htm)

In 1942, at the height of his popularity, Glenn Miller joined the Army and was later transferred to the Army Air Force.

On December 15, 1944, Miller was to fly from the United Kingdom to Paris, France, to play for the soldiers there. His plane departed for Paris and disappeared while flying over the English Channel.  There have been many claims at discovering his true ending – some plausible, some totally unbelievable.  His official status remains missing in action.

I have more common sense in my finger here, than you have in that whole, fat head of yours, punk. Now, go frag yourself.

By:  R.W. Harper

Having been level 50 for a while in Star Wars:  The Old Republic, I still find myself having plenty of story quests to do on the last couple of planets that I visited during the leveling process.  I still find myself enjoying running around, grabbing quest, completing them and rushing back to turn them in and experiencing the fantastic voice acting, in-game cinematic, quest dialog presentations.

As I finish the quest, I add a few hundred credits to my bank and pull up the map, to see where my next destination is as I wrap up the story line on this planet.  Five more quests and this planet is …

“Excuse me, Doogan,” my companion Mako says.

“What is it Mako?  I am trying to figure out our next move here,”  I reply.

“That guy is back,” she replies as she points over at a Body Type 1, Cyborg Sith Marauder.

“Yep, so it seems,”  I reply.

Indeed, she is correct, as I move in closer to a nearby fallen support structure, hoping to hide from view but the image is somewhat burned into my mind as the nearly naked avatar dances behind my companion.

The last time, this occurred, with this particular individual, it just so happened that my Jawa companion found himself on the receiving end of gyrations that are not fit to further describe.  Even then, when I asked the lewd individual to move on and respect my poor Jawa’s personal space, an unintelligible form of spewage was his reply.

“Wut?  U mad bro?”  was what Captain Underpants had to say in response.

I moved on, with my poor Jawa in-tow and Captain Underpants in pursuit.

Seems that every time I stopped, the challenged Cyborg resumed his table-dance without the aid of table.  I became annoyed.  Lucky for me, a nice group of Rebel Troopers were nearby – looking smug and in need of a fight.  I gave them one.

I issued the command to attack and with a shout of glee, Blizz went in for the fight with Captain Underpants in-tow.  Of course, the observational skills of my nearly naked stalker were about as good as those of a cave cricket, and he soon had more attention than he wanted.

He died rather quickly and then I finished off the irate, if not somewhat confused troopers.

I could have sworn I saw Blizz doing a dirty dance over the fallen griefer but it had been a long gaming session and I was tired.

“So, what we gonna do about it?”  Mako asked.

I moved in closer and waved, while the griefer just danced away.  Then I sent a rocket down-range into a group of elite commandos, which loved using AOE.  I brought them over, had a little fight and when it was done, Captain Underpants laid on the ground dead again.

“U mad bro?”  I said as I headed off to resume my questing.

Of course, after filing several complaints with a GM, I don’t think I have seen the little guys in a while.

The moral of the story:  Griefers are gonna grief.  Just report them and use your common sense (and the game environment when your can to aid your misery).  There’s no sense wasting words (which might get you into trouble anyway) on asshats and fools in-game.

Grandmother (mine and likely yours as well) had an expression…The Devil is in the details.

…details like the fine print.  You do read the fine print don’t you?  You know the type we mean.  Details like the ones in those lengthy end user license agreements -  like the ones for some digital download services that give the software publisher the right to abscond with information gathered off your computer and  distribute them to third party vendors? 

What? Don’t tell us that you don’t actually read the entire end user license agreement?

Surely you aren’t the type of person who simply pages down to the bottom of the agreement and clicks on the “accept” button!  And don’t tell us you have ever clicked through the entire text of a quest just to get to the objective!

Alright. We admit it. We do the same thing.

But as the only member of the No Prisoners, No Mercy  team who actively plays Star Wars the Old Republic (SWTOR)  I always listen to everything the npc giving the quest/mission has to say; even if it is my second time through the same mission.  And thereby hangs a tale of woe.

As anyone member of the older gamers (www.theoldergamers.com) there comes a time when you are an 18 font gamer in a 9 font gaming world.   In my case, I get so immersed in the voice acting I often forget to compare what the NPC had to say with the small font on the right hand side of the screen that gives the quest objective.  So it was, late last night, that I ventured to the planet of Alderan (In this case some 3,000 years before the Death Star blew it up).   There I interrogated a prisoner from House Thul who withheld vital information until someone brought his wife and daughter to safety – safety in this case being the detention center of House Organna. 

So I set off to save the prisoner’s family from retribution, should he reveal the secrets of House Thul.   The initial aggravation at this point is the distance of the quest objective: the other side of the continent.  Between the quest objective and myself are fighting mercenaries and angry beasts. This is complicated by the fact that, as I am wont to do, I press on doing quests that beyond  my level (two levels higher in this case).  Still, through a combination of fighting, sneaking and fleeing I made it to the objective.

I barged into the residence of the family to be rescued and politely informed them I would keep them safe if they would accompany me to House Organna.  The don their “disguises” (hooded cloaks in this case) and off we go.

Now as every SWTOR player knows, you are able to fast travel with a shuttle every 20 minutes.  At this point I figure the return trip will be a breeze. Out front of the residence, with mother and daughter in tow, I summon my shuttle.  It whisks me away to the detention center of House Organna.   Looking to my right I see my trusty killer droid companion. What I do not see are the mother and daughter I was meant to save.

“O.K.” I tell myself, “so it seems I must bring the mother and daughter back the hard way.”

With that I traipse across the length of the entire continent to once again retrieve the mother and daughter.  Once gain they don their hooded cloaks, and with a heavy sigh I set about leading the pair on an excruciatingly long escort quest, walking them back across the span of the continent from one end to another without getting the NPCs or myself killed.

After a half an hour of real time we make it.

I walk them into the detention center that the npcs picked up unless they are in the pick up zone.  “BUT THEY ARE ALREADY HERE” I yell at the computer.  Still, the system insists I deliver the mother and daughter to the pickup zone to be delivered to the House Organna detention center – the same detention center where they are already at. 

So, screaming obscenities at the computer, I make my way out to the taxi just outside house organna (Yes, the future has taxi, but these taxis fly). Fortunately, on my last trek across the entire continent I remembered to stop at all the outpost taxi stands.  This means we can all fly back to where we started…

“…but only if the mother and daughter will take the taxi” I tell the computer, remembering that they would not take the shuttle.

As it turns out they will ride a taxi, even if they won’t ride a shuttle.  This puts us near the pickup zone for the mother and daughter, so they proper shuttle can take them back to where we just started.  We are nearly to the pickup zone when I notice a small clock in 8 point font, at the extreme upper right hand corner of the screen – a clock that is counting down, and now reads 59 seconds. 

And of course, I do not manage to make it to the drop zone with mother and daughter in the requisite 59 seconds.

“That’s O.K.” I tell myself, at least I am at the North end of the continent.  So an hour of real time having already passed, I make my way back to the mother and daughter once again.  Once again the don their disguises.  Once again we make our way through the back roads to the pickup point on the map.  I try to use the signal flare to summon the “official” shuttle…

…only to find it won’t work.

“YOU BASTARDS” I scream at the computer screen.

Try as I might, no matter where I go; no matter that I am standing directly on the  dot designating the pickup point, the flare gun intended to summon the official shuttle will not work.

Eventually the clock times out.

An hour and a half of real time has now passed.

Yet AGAIN I trudge back to the front door of the mother and daughter who I am suppose to rescue.  This time I do not select the nice option, reassuring the pair I will keep them safe.  THIS TIME I select the option that tells pair that I will kill them myself if they don’t cooperate.   This time we don’t sneak anywhere. THIS TIME my killer robot and I walk right down the middle of the street killing everything in sight.

Then the inevitable happens.

Remember, that at this point my character is level 26 in a level 29 world. But we can still hold our own.  The we encounter a character  labeled “commander” who is a good five levels above us all.  And of course we get our butts kicked and good.

I summon a medical droid.

Make my way from the local outpost to the door of the mother and daughter meant to be rescued.

I click  through all the dialogue options, pausing only to make sure I select the “follow  me if you want to live” option.

We sneak back to the same pickup point on the map as before.  And just as I am wondering what to do, several other players walk by me, charging up a mountain path I have passed many times before, but which has always gone un-noticed.  God bless them, the players are on quest to kill the same level 31 commanders that are at the top of the hidden path.  I stroll up the  hidden path, mother, daughter and killer robot in tow, to find only one commander left and more than enough fire power already there to finish the job.

Two hours of real time later,  I am ready to kill the npcs I am meant to escort myself.

So is the moral of the story always read the fine print?

No, the moral is, never trust a thing an NPC says.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

When I was young, my parents belonged to a church, whose founder had predicted the end of the world by the end of the world long before I, or they, were born.  Obviously, her predictions were somewhat amiss.

Back when my biggest decision was whether to eat my popsicle or read my comic book the world came close to higher place on the endangered species list during the Cuban missile crisis.

The turn of the millennium brought the “Y2K scare” – all it did was create extra work, updating databases.

The year 2000 also brought predictions of doom based on the planetary alignment of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn on one side of Earth’s Sun.

Last year, one man had it down to the precise day .

Now, of course, the internet is rife with news that 2012 is the year that it all goes south – otherwise, apparently,  known as “The 2012 Phenomenon”

A large part of the problem, of course, is that those predicting the end of the world right down to the day, never seem to read their source material.  Two important sources would be Mark 13:32, and an article on the “Long Count Calendar”

For those who think the Mayans predicted the end of the world, a quick read of an article about the Mayan Calendar should assuage any fears of the world ending on December 21, 2012.  What will happen on December 21, 2012?  The Mayan in the comic above probably would have told you “a new age” – and if you gave him a perplexed look (presuming he knew anything about baseball) he might have said “end of an inning”

Does this mean that the end isn’t near?

Not a bit of it – all  you have to do is read the newspaper.  Mankind  as a whole has a nasty habit of believing the path to a peaceful coexistence  is by killing the people with which you must co-exist; and that’s only if we don’t make the world uninhabitable ourselves.  When Thor Heyerdahl made his Kon-tiki expedition in 1970 he reported “seeing tar balls and plastic debris all the way from Africa to the Americas”  (Massive Pollution in the Atlantic, Associated Press, February 13, 1973).  The  Cuyahoga River was once so polluted that it caught fire  .

The list goes on.

As for me, I think of it this way.  Go watch the film “Oh God” with John  Denver and George Burns as God.  In the film, God is explaining his concept of time to John Denver when he explains “ When I woke up this morning Sigmund Freud was in medical school.” Time, as Einstein would have said, is relative.  An eternal being, by whatever name, saying “time is short” probably carries an entirely different meaning for you or I when it nears quitting time at work.  And the practical side of me remembers a line from the movie Crocodile Dundee:

“Ain’t no crocodiles out there, but a fast-moving Chevy would sure make a mess of you.”

In the end, you never know if a fast moving Chevy is just around the next corner – so if nothing else, make sure your character hits the level cap now.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather