Author: Joe Mahoney

Angry folk follow legendary comic artist into container, yell at him.

Recently Stereogum posted a short article about members of System of A Down and Avenged Sevenfold covering Radiohead’s Street Spirit (Fade Out). I’m always up for a Radiohead cover so I bookmarked the page and finally watched it this evening and commented on the post:

This version is not for me but I was stoked to see that the artist painting a excellent portrait of Radiohead is Bill Sienkiewicz, one of my favourite comics artists ever. I don’t know why they were yelling at him in a container, though. That’s impolite.

The cover of Street Spirit is pretty grim. You’re better off watching pretty much anything on the new Radiohead Public Library archive.

December Tracks, 2019

I use an IFTTT applet that adds tracks that I’ve saved on Spotify to a monthly playlist. In December I tapped the heart icon 14 times.

I haven’t gone back and listened to this playlist yet. Much of December’s listening was Spotify radio tunes and nostalgic tunes to keep the mood up as the year wound down.

I have to hand it to Jarvis Cocker for making a great singalong chorus that I’ll pretty much never be able to sing in the car with my kids. I’ll count Running The world as my favourite. What’s He Building? by Tom Waits confused my kids. FFunny FFriends by Unknown Mortal Orchestra was their favourite.

Top Songs of 2019

In early December Spotify compiled my Top Songs of 2019. Leaving aside there is a whole bloody month to go, the results were a little surprising. Venus by Bananarama took the top spot, followed by Battlefords by Hawksley Workman. Tay-Tay’s Me! rounded out the top 3. I know my daughter and I listened to Me! a lot. I would have picked Battlefords for most played. But Bananarama? I suspect the list may not entirely be in order.

There’s some really great songs in the 100 best. Befor We Were Together by Margaret Glaspy is an airworm I was happy to entertain. The various pieces from Blizzard Entertainment games got me through some tough spreadsheets. The National’s I Am Easy To Find contributed a lot of songs.

Fucking Bananarama, though. I remember putting it on for the kids maybe once?

Righto, Spotify. You do you.

Buried Treasure

There’s anywhere from 20 to 40 video games released on Steam every day. That’s too many video games. John Walker, veteran games critic and founder of Rock Paper Shotgun is trying to find the really good indie games out that pile of what has to be a lot of average stuff.

Buried Treasure is a Patreon backed site highlighting the really good games that don’t get coverage from mainstream press. It’s a worthy endeavour. Hopefully some of these titles will get the boost they probably deserve.

Classic game postmortems

The GDC YouTube channel is chock full of talks about game development. Everything from math, to animation, to writing, to production tips.

My favourite playlist covers postmortems – a look back on the development ups and downs for making games. The postmortems for classic games are the best. are the really the best. Here are a few for your weekend viewing pleasure.

Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley talk about Civilization
John Romero and Tom Hall talk about Doom
David Brevick on Diablo
Peter Molyneux talks about Populous

November Tracks, 2019

I use an IFTTT applet that adds tracks that I’ve saved on Spotify to a monthly playlist. In November I tapped the heart icon 16 times.

This month is mix of all-time favourites and new-to-me songs. No Doubt’s Don’t Speak, Bon Jovi’s Wanted Dead Or Alive, and Biz Markie’s Just A Friend are singalong bangers. Get Me is probably my most played Dinosaur Jr song, thanks to it’s inclusion on the first The Trip compilation.

But the best track this month has to be 16 Words, a kindof protest song by Margo Guryan, who recorded the song at age 70. The lyrics are a repetition of a quote from George W. Bush asserting some bullshit about Saddam Hussein’s attempts to create weapons of mass destruction.

I relate to Jorj

I don’t have anything to say about the fun mechanics and gorgeous art if Grindstone that you won’t learn from Polygon or Destructoid’s reviews. What I will say is that after 85 out of 150 levels I think that me and Jorj share something similar to our approach to work: We like good tools. We love that feeling of really getting a lot of stuff done. And, at the end of the day, we like a break, and maybe a drink to recharge.