I should start this off by saying that as a person who works in a store during the holidays, I am almost contractually obliged to hate christmas music. As a result, an episode of Glee in which they sing nothing but christmas music is a pretty bitter pill to swallow. With that out of the way however, here are a few of the things that I noticed while watching.

-The New Directions is constantly having to fight for funding to do anything, and yet they can afford to pay for fake snow to fall in the background of a one-time performance by a single student for her friends? I’m calling pre-emptive bullshit on the  inevitable fund-raising episode later this season.

-Apparently that’s actually Peter Mayhew in the chewbacca suit. It seems strange to me that someone went to the trouble of having him flown in for a 10 second cameo. Cool though!

-And while we’re on the subject of Star Wars, having Finn and Puck show up dressed as Luke and Han, and then not actually doing anything with it was just flat-out stupid.

-Music aside, I really liked the Glee Holiday Spectacular. It had the perfect level of ham. Blaine and Kurt in particular stood out as being on top form. The laptop seemed really anachronistic though. I’d be interested to know if it was shot with a three-camera style, and how different that was for the cast and crew.

—There are a number of references to Kurt and Blaine’s sexuality during the Spectacular that come off as kind of weird. The show goes out of its way to avoid coming straight out and saying “HEY, THESE GUYS ARE GAY”, but then it pokes fun at that fact a couple of times in the form of Kurt’s fixation on the necklace and the present Blaine receives. I was almost wondering if this was going to be a point of contention later on, in the form of Kurt and Blaine getting offended, or something like that. But again, nothing happens with it.

-Kurt’s look of cheerful surprise at Blaine’s Harmonica playing was nice.

-I like the subtle reference to A Charlie Brown Christmas that the writers slipped in by way of Rory’s story.

-Maybe this particular character trait has cropped up in episodes before, but it kind of seems like Rachel becomes super materialistic just for the sake of giving her a christmas-y arc. This kind of thing happens constantly in Glee: Characters grow extra personality traits in order to fit the story being told that week. It’s pretty lame.

-Sue also switches in to relatively-friendly mode for this episode. Again, the show loves to do this every four or five episodes, in what I can only assume is a ploy for the audience’s empathy. As soon as Sue gets that, she’s back to being a horrible monster for several weeks.

-The New Direction’s explanation for their suddenly showing up at the homeless shelter seemed really hurried and forced. It seems really strange that they got kicked off of TV without finishing the show they’d been practicing, and had naught but a sentence of exposition in response.

-Even Finn’s hat has a mohawk.

-wait, Sam and Rory just happened to have brought 2 extra bells for the off-chance that someone would want to join them in their salvation army volunteering? Now THAT seems like something out of a cheesy 1960s Christmas special.

Upon re-watching season 3’s christmas episode, these are a few of my favourite things.

-Mr. Rad seems to be the only person on the same wavelength as the Dean in the entire series, and watching them interact is priceless.

-Abed’s confused, (but still perfectly in rhythm,) query about the piano continuing to play without Mr. Rad’s input. (Also entertaining: Abed’s shirt simply says “Hamburger!!!”)

-When the scene ends, there is a burst of a-cappela music, straight out of the scene changes from Glee.

-Before Troy and Abed start rapping in earnest, the music starts playing softly in the background. They both starts speaking in a stealthy sort of rhythm. This becomes more and more obvious over the next 3 seconds or so, and then… Yoip: Rap! Basically, I love the buildup.

-The curtain behind them is made up of sheets from their blanket fort. I love that even while they pretend to be rapping on a huge stage with a bunch of backup dancers, Troy and Abed have a little thing like this grounding them to real life.

-Look how happy Troy and Abed are about the concept of glee!

-This is my very favourite joke in the episode: The redecorating of the study room to look like Glee’s music room. Including bearded, silent, mysterious piano player. The piano player is my favourite character in Glee. Community copied him perfectly, from the beard right down to the fact that Pierce isn’t really sure he’s there.

-The best part of Annie’s song is Jeff’s incredulity with the whole thing: Even after he’s been “won over”, he makes his point about dimishing returns.

-With which Annie replies more baby talk. The first time I watched the episode, I thought this was overdoing a it a little bit. I really like it now- it drives home just how far down the rabbit hole she is.

-Pierce’s smug body language as he watches the children’s choir work its magic on Shirley is priceless. 

-The choir really touches on everything Shirley loves in order to win her over. The obvious stuff is there, (Jesus, separation of church and state,) but there is also a line about it being the right season to bake. There was more of this song recorded, and apparently it will be on the DVDs. I can’t wait to hear the rest.

-Pierce’s continued confusion over what “regionals” comprises, (As well as the Dean’s,) is made funnier by his and his friend’s absolute devotion to making it to them.

-I’d really like to know who chose “Kings of Leon” as the distraction that Mr. Rad employs to escape. 

-Troy and Abed’s apartment is full of amazing things. They have fridge that looks like a vending machine. I would very much like a fridge that looks like a vending machine. I also love all the different hats hanging on the door to the imaginarium.

-Not so much a “thing I love” as a “thing i noticed”: The fireplace that Troy and Abed hang stockings over during their rap is actually where the TV is in the last scene. You can tell by the Inspector Spacetime poster hung above it with care.

Regional Holiday Music captured the best of Community: The jokes, the group spirit, and the ability to interweave all of those, along with a bit of meaning and seriousness into a compelling half-hour of television. 
Here’s to three and a half more seasons and a movie.

Goddammit.

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This is why we can’t have nice things.

Apparently the president of Lucasarts, Darrel Rodriguez is not the president of Lucasarts anymore.  No word on why, but this is potentially very sad.

Why?

because Darrel Rodriguez is the man responsible for making possible all of the recent, (and awesome) Monkey Island games.  The special edition of the Secret of Monkey Island, Tales of Monkey Island, and soon the special edition of Monkey Island 2: Lechuck’s Revenge.  none of these would have happened, and that’s a very sad thought. 

The previous president, Jim Ward, was the dunderhead responsible for axing Sam and Max: Freelance Police, among other things. Now, obviously, Rodriguez’s departure is no guarantee that Lucasarts will cease to do the things that in the past year or so have gained their respect in my eyes, but  I can’t help but be super nervous that the focus is going to return to Star Wars, and nothing but Star Wars.

My reader mail was spoken about at some length on the most recent Idle Thumbs Podcast!

Kotaku just put up an article entitled What Has  Treyarch Done for Call of Duty?.

It’s an made for the sole purpose of pissing over all of Treyarch’s Call of Duty games.  I can’t understand why this was necessary.  I could see perhaps bringing up the quality of their work when a new game is announced, and certainly in a review, but an editorial hinged entirely on how they make lackluster games just seems mean. 

They close off the article with ‘but maybe Black Ops will be better!’ but it still just comes off as an excuse to be mean for a couple of hundred words.

I should start off by pointing out that the I don’t currently have a solid definition for ‘art’ and everytime I come up with one that I like  It tends to be fairly different than the previous one, with the exception being that they all containt the following caveat: art encompasses pretty much everything.  I think that’s probably for the better.  The general consensus is that we don’t want our art to stay constant;  We want it to evolve, to change.  Why, then, should the definition stay as such? 

On my bulletin board right now, there is a quote that someone printed out from a show I  once performed in, a birthday card, a large finger painting of my name, a coupon for 75 cents off of some Hot Pockets, and a picture of Simba from the Lion King that a friend colored in for me.  All of these are art.  Someone took the time to arrange all of these things in some way, from the size and layout of the text  in that quote and in that card, to the colors chosen for the picture and the painting.  Even the graphic design on the coupon was chosen for various reasons. 

I may not really care about the value of that coupon as a piece of art, and there is a lot of art that I’d much rather take in than that coupon, but the thing is still art.

My computer contains a folder called ‘Thrawn Shared’, which is where I keep all of the soundclips that I  find or rip from games, movies, TV shows, Podcasts, and whatever else happens to amuse me.  Certainly, there is more engaging sound to be heard, but they still fall under the broad category of ‘art’. 

From that, I guess that my definition of art is perhaps ‘a thing a person made’.  Fair enough.  It’s a broad definition, but that’s the entire idea. 

Some people are so adamant that games are not, and never will be art (until maybe a really long time has passed, then perhaps they can be the simplest, most basic, chicken-scratch level of art forms, maybe.)

I don’t get it.  does admitting that games are art somehow invalidate the potency of Citizen Kane, or the Mona Lisa?  Of course it doesn’t.  All art is not equal.  No one is claiming that it is.  Why, then, is the title ‘art’ like some exclusive club that games have to wait outside of? 

It pisses me off that Roger Ebert felt the need to ask why gamers needed so badly to have their chosen medium named as an art form, when he brought it up in the first place.  (Yes, he’s responding to Kellee Santiago, but she wasn’t requesting to be accepted in to the art club, she was declaring that she already had admission.) 

In fact, He really comes off as a bit of a troll during the course of his lengthy attack.  He’s clearly never played any of the games Kellee talks about, and, in fact, makes judgments about them based entirely on the trailers he found on Youtube.   Ron Gilbert pointed out that doing so was akin to judging the quality of a movie based on reading the script, and I can’t think of a better analogy.

I can’t understand why Ebert doesn’t learn something about the medium he’s shitting all over before he pulls down his pants. He’s obviously a smart enough guy that he knows what he’s saying is going to piss a lot of people off, and certainly ‘number of people pissed off’ shouldn’t be a factor in whether or not he writes about something.  I can’t for the life of me however, imagine a situation in which telling a group of people “The stuff you spend years slaving over isn’t good enough, and it never will be.’ is a good idea. 

I haven’t been following the Infinity Ward and Activision’s giant knife-fight-on-the-internet break up as closely recently as I had been when it first started, but this is a pretty good indicator of the state of things, I think:  PC Gamer took the credits from Modern Warfare two, and removed everyone who is no longer working for Activision.