Posted on

Professor Ghost

While I should have been packing last night I was writing up my character for Jon’s “Spirit of the Century” game. Mike’s character is Robotnik (Soviet robot hero of the people), David’s is Congorilla (US agent transformed into a gorilla by a mysterious flying alien space-ape temple (a la Zardoz)), Jason’s character: The Conductor (Viennese wielder of The Baton of Power) and me…

Rauf Zorlu, AKA Professor Ghost.

Imagine an 1890’s Turkish steampunkesque ghostbuster, who looks like he came out of an Edward Gorey book with Dr Seuss equipment. When I get a chance I’ll scan in the sketch.

Backstory: Raised in a very religious atmosphere in 19th century Ottoman Turkey, Professor Ghost turned away from his people and pursued a campaign of debunking spiritualism and the supernatural. That is, until he traveled to Russia, and the mad monk Rasputin proved him wrong! The professor turned to scientific methods of exploring these arcane realms, but disaster struck – he was trapped in the ectoplasm of the spirit world for almost 16 years! Upon his escape, he discovered a world at war, and a very different Turkey. He renewed his investigations, and found that his long sojourn in the shadowlands was not in vain – he was able to stop a nefarious cult from conquering Estonia with an army of the living dead, needing only the finances of Congorilla and the brawn of Robotnik to clean up the mess. He was able to return the favors when Robotnik faced down Destruct-Tsar, a ghost inside a robot body, and when Congorilla was targeted by Congolese zombie assassins.

Posted on

Rockonomics: The Fifth Album

Back when I thought that the Shadow Out of Tim narrative would just be a few songs on the latest album, and not the entire thing, my best idea for the album name was Supercthonic. Warren pooh-poohed it as sounding too ‘lispy’ but Mario thinks it’s great. I hold out hope that the fifth album will harbor that name, unless something better comes up.

The forthcoming album, which may be out in 2008 and may not be, will mostly be a miscellany, not like the last two concept albums. I thought I’d share some of the song ideas I have. If you’re going to steal them for your own nerd rock band, please stop reading.

I want to do a song about Vigo the Carpathian, the villain from Ghostbusters 2. Someone suggested on a website somewhere (Stewie?) about how Vigo’s monologue would be the perfect beginning to a metal album, and I agree. If we do that, we have to figure out the legal ramifications as Sony is not known for being generous with its properties.

An anthem to the “living fossil” coelacanth, called “Coelacanthem”

A tribute to Lovecraft’s tale “The Music of Erich Zann” – something I’ve wanted to do for a long time but never had access to a violinist. Anyone know any rockin’ ones?

A re-imagining of one of our old songs. Maybe “Shoggoths Away,” “House of Clocks,” or maybe even “Three Hour Log.”

The coelacanth.
toast.jpg

Posted on

Sequelbots – Transform!

So I just got back from seeing Transformers. Warning: Spoilertron!

Cons:

– Extremely Hollywood (this is only a con if you’re not expecting and wanting it to be Hollywood, which I think at least everyone is expecting it).
– When I saw the early previews I noted that the bots looked excessively pointy and “cool” – I got used to that throughout the movie but I still think they could have been at least distinguished more by colour or shape – they all looked very similar and it was hard to tell who was fighting whom, sometimes.
– Weak plot overall.
– They didn’t get Frank Welker to voice Megatron, and there’s no good reason.

Pros:
– Best robots fighting you’ve ever seen.
– Unexpectedly good jokes.
– Lots of good “wow” moments, if you’re in to that sort of thing.
– They did get Peter Cullen to voice Optimus Prime.

In short, definitely worth seeing on the big screen, and you can’t go wrong with The Rio.

ps – the original Jazz was voiced by Scatman “The Shining” Crothers, who as you may know died some time ago.

Posted on

Star Wars Clone Wars CG Series

toaststarwars.jpgThe annual Star Wars convention “Star Wars Celebration” is wrapping up today and I gather they have showed some trailers for the upcoming Clone Wars CGI TV series. There is a clip of George Lucas talking about it on starwars.com but I’m not going to make you listen to it just by dropping some [link] like a lazy blogger. No! You can come to expect more at Toren’s Absolute Blog. He says that the Cartoon Network 2D animation series was a ‘test’ for this new ‘big budget’ series which will be more like the movie (“Attack of the Clones” presumably). Because it’s episodic they don’t have to deal with the Skywalker story, It’s more a bunch of various adventures, and they can do some more “oddball” things with “smartass comedy with contemporary humour – not Saturday morning at all.” They’re bringing in new characters, and they have one episode with nothing but clone warriors, and one just about Kitt Fisto.

Oh, I just found the trailer. I can’t post it here so you’ll have to go away. [Link: http://starwars.com/video/view/000478.html] I’m glad to see they included one of the more interesting characters from the 2D cartoon – the bald, Tim-Burtonesque female Sith.

And the live action series is still a few years away.

Posted on

de4dmeta1 is My Guitar Hero

Watch “A Marine Biologist” on Guitar Hero II in this youtube clip from de4dmeta1. Pretty sweetass. I wonder if we’d get in trouble if we released an actual music video for one of our songs this way. Too bad none of the characters in Guitar Hero wear Lovecraftian monster costumes. Although Pandora’s feather outfit is in the neighbohood.

Yeah, Expert baby!

Posted on

A Marine Biologist Video Idea (please disseminate)

Marine biologist footage needed for rock video

Are you a marine biologist? Do you want to be in a rock video?
Hello all, this is Toren Atkinson, science lover and lead singer for the Lovecraftian rock band, The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. You may, at http://www.thickets.net/toren/darkestofthehillsidethickets.mp3 [link] or http://www.myspace.com/darkestofthehillsidethickets [link] listen to/download the mp3 for “A Marine Biologist,” a fun little number about bathyscaphes, benthic trawlers, giant squid, etc.

I would like to create a video for this track that essentially features marine biologists from across the globe. The idea would simply be a series of video clips of marine biologists doing what they (you?) do, with text at the bottom of the screen detailing who it is we’re looking at, their location and specialty. So, for example, if we got a clip of Dr O’Shea, it would something to the effect of:

DR. STEVE O’SHEA
AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND (and/or specific institution)
SPECIALTY: THE GIANT SQUID

The footage doesn’t need to be created from scratch just for the video – I’m perfectly happy with any video of any quality where it’s clear who the marine biologist is, and that he/she/you are in their element doing marine biology stuff – whether that be in the lab, on site recording courtship sounds…whatever.

So the entire video would be like a profile of worldwide marine biologists set to our song. Hopefully the video would appear on various music/TV shows–MTV, Muchmusic, and their equivalents, but at the very least it would go out throughout the internet, youtube, on our site, and into your hands as well to do with as you wish.

To make this happen – I need your cooperation!

If you are a marine biologist and want to help out would you:

a) contact me at thickets@uniserve.com and we can work out how to get video footage from you.
b) provide a statement that you give permission for The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets to use the footage and your likeness strictly for the purpose of this music video
c) see also (d) below!

If you are not a marine biologist, can you please

d) spread this around to any marine biologists you know, or anyone you think might know a marine biologist!

THANKS SO MUCH – if we can get this done I think it would be really fun!

Posted on

Gliese 581

On TV and film, the nomenclature for planets is always based on the star and how many planets the planet is away from that star, i.e. Rigel 7, or Omicron Persei 8. So Earth would be, to a Rigellian, Sol 3. And now you know.

Apart from that, I can’t say anything more than Phil Plait on the newly discovered potentially Earth-like planet, so I’ll just link to his blog entry [link]
toastgliese581c.jpg