Wait, It Gets Better...

Check THIS out:


Somebody's really paying attention. They even got my receding hairline right:

I'm flattered...and slightly afraid.

I Am Made of Ones and Zeroes

Quintessential nerd that I am, I was casually browsing IGN for video game news. It's what we nerds do. And out popped a screenshot for the upcoming Hannah Montana: The Movie: The Game. Of course, it's still a work-in-progress (the title alone is proof of that), but have a little look-see:

What is interesting about this? They've duplicated our tour stage. Good for them! With selective attention to detail. They nailed the layout, but notice: no Jaco, no Vashon, no Jamie. Stacy may be hidden behind Hannah. All we see are three (oddly spaced) dancers...and, look at Schmid Island.

Look closer...

I appear to be wearing my actual tour wardrobe (tourdrobe?) and playing some sort of plexiglass plate instead of keyboards (it's the FUTURE!). I'm in a videogame! And they accurately depicted my blindingly white skin. Kudos, game developers, for knowing what matters.

Microchips Make Joy Machines

I got a Nintendo DS for Christmas. And I love it. It teaches me how to cook, I can compose music on it, bring Mario with me, shorten a long plane ride with a deep Japanese RPG... it's a glorious thing. A glorious thing that fits in my pocket. Dee-lightful.

Also, I have a soft spot for touch screens... and stylus pens for that matter, though I realize they are "so five years ago." Come on. You can write on the screen!

What was your favorite Christmas gift in '08? Hit me up in the comments.

One Of Those Prawn Salad Waiting Room Days

Today was a glitch day. First, my brand new MacPro erased my iPod and has been locking up every time it tries to sync it. So my 7,000+ songs on the iPod are gone.

Then, said brand new MacPro locked up in every conceivable way in every conceivable program. This is after I've already reinstalled my OS and reinstalled all the programs. This takes hours. And I've had this computer less than a week. You know what they say about how "Macs Just Work?" Not so much.

I have an appointment tomorrow with an Apple Genius. (Could they be any more full of themselves!?)

Then, I had Ben over again (he's leaving town soon and I'm trying to see him as much as possible) to watch a movie. After five minutes, the disc started skipping. It was a rental, and sometimes they're a little dirty or scratched. I pulled it out to clean it. It was literally THE dirtiest disc I've ever seen. Something was smeared all over it. I couldn't get it off.

So we abandoned the movie and started playing Bioshock. I wanted to show the game to Ben. After about a half hour we ran into a gamebreaking glitch. I have never found a bug in this game. Ever. Until today. Prawn Salad Waiting Room Day.

Ben showed me this video, which completely describes how I'm feeling.



Now I need to just go to bed and not touch anything. I'm a little afraid my bed might fall through the floor or something...

A Wonderful No-Frills Christmas

This was a different kind of Christmas. A wonderful no-frills Christmas.

My Mom had just recently gotten out of the hospital after a difficult surgery (she's recovering quite well), so my parents hadn't any time to prepare for the holidays. And being on tour, I hadn't any time to shop either. So on the night of the 23rd, we hit one shop-filled strip and did all our shopping in a couple hours.

We decided to celebrate Christmas on the 24th, since I had such a short time at home, we thought why not spend less time on the anticipation and more time on the celebration? We also decided that wrapping presents was a waste of our precious time, so we put the gifts in previously-used Christmas bags and boxes, and put them under our cute little purple tree (my Mom's name and favorite color are both Violet).

Then our neighbor Susie delivered a boysenberry pie that she baked. My Dad thought we should make that my birthday pie, so he cut up a straw and put the pieces in for candles:

Of course we didn't light them on fire cause who likes to eat melted plastic?

On the 24th, we opened our presents by the purple tree.

We followed that up by doing a little more Christmas shopping, but not very much. Then we returned home and played with our new gifts, which meant much playing of Portal on The Orange Box (the cake is a lie!).

Also, the house was fairly dirty, as I've been gone for awhile, and my sweet parents swooped in (as they do) and made everything nice:

On the 25th, we celebrated my parents' birthdays, which were back in October, by eating yummy Italian food and seeing "Enchanted," which is much better than you might think (quite fantastic, actually).

Also, there was much more playing of Portal on The Orange Box. Delicious.

I flew back to New York after my short three-day break feeling quite rejuvenated. We're staying at a very old hotel with some very strange quirks. Today I turned on the shower and was greeted by brown water. Ahh, New York.

Knock Knock Knoxville

Last night in Knoxville was a weird and awesome one. The film crew came back to grab a few shots for the movie (in Disney 3D theaters in February - don't forget!). They wanted us to play Guitar Hero III with Miley in her dressing room. We had an great time. I've only played it once at Jonathan Geer's house for a few minutes about a year ago, so I had low expectations of my performance. I beat Miley though - completely disgraced her actually, and proceeded to trounce Stacy at a song he knew but I had never heard. Jaime was pretty good (he beat Miley too), and he owes me a match-up at some point. Miley probably never wants to play with us again.

I was all amped up from whooping at GHIII, so I felt great during the show. However, I started noticing that every time the dancers moved, the entire stage shifted...like in a wobbly sort of way. This was very alarming. I glanced at the other band members. They noticed it too. In between songs, I went behind the stage and mentioned it to a crew member and he said it probably wasn't a big deal.

We later discovered it was because in most arenas, the stage is built on ice, which it eventually sinks into and becomes quite stable. In this arena, we were built on concrete. Fortunately, the disaster scenario in my head where the stage collapsed and we all fell into a big hole in the ground never occured.

However, at the end, we were about to come back out for the encore, when Omar (the guy that runs the show) noticed a fire burning up in the rigging. Not a good thing. It was a tiny fire, but a fire nonetheless. So we ended the show right there.

Basically, one of the pyros (which are encased in a fireproof material) somehow caught fire. It happens rarely, and Omar said it probably would've just burned out without incident, but to be safe, we sent Cowboy (an awesome crew member) up there to put it out.

Disaster averted.

Today's The Day

Bioshock Day. Finally.

Or rather it was supposed to be. I ran out to the store first thing and grabbed my reserved copy.

I thought I would continue capturing footage for The Samantha Murphy Show while I played me some sweet sweet Bioshocking goodness.

Unfortunately, today was the day capturing died. My computer wouldn't recognize the camera anymore. No sweat. I tried five different cameras. None of them were recognized. No sweat. I tried a different firewire cable. Nope. I thought, "maybe it's my video capture card." So I even tried all five cameras and two cables on a different computer (the Mac). That didn't work either! SWEAT! I spent literally all day trying to get footage to capture like it was last night and no dice.

I did spend about 45 minutes playing Bioshock though. And it is definitely amazing. The city of Rapture is an amazing place. Teeming with detail. It's all so beautiful. The game is full of ideas about Objectivism and human frailty. It's a gorgeous work of art and I can't wait to return. But not until I can get this footage going.

I'm also working on some music for a VH1 pilot, and yesterday they contacted me and said they need the song by Tuesday. Normally that wouldn't be a problem, but as I have to have the SM show done by the weekend, that will be very tight. I was going to try and have my album done this week, but that will have to happen later.

Rapture. One day I will visit you.

More Buddy, More Bioshock

Today we filmed Buddy's interview and performance for SMtv. I've already mentioned how amazing and soul-stirring his music is, but the wonderful news is he and his manager are both extremely kind and genuine people. I love when that happens. Please check out his music right now. You can thank me later.

Also, an update on the Bioshock and Toys R' Us situation: TRU is being fined $5,000 per copy sold, and they sold many many copies. This is very bad news for them.

Nothing but good news for 2K games right now, as the reviews are coming in all over, and it hasn't received under a 9.4 out of 10 from anyone yet, which is pretty much unprecedented. These are not good reviews, they're absolutely glowing. Check these out:

"This game is a beacon. It's one of those monumental experiences you'll never forget, and the benchmark against which games for years to come will, and indeed must, be measured. There is art here." - IGN

"Bioshock doesn't just meet your expectations, but completely redefines them forever in ways you never even expected. A story that exists and unfolds inside the most convincing, elaborate and artistic game world ever conceived." - Eurogamer

"By the time it ends, you'll likely feel quite different about how you interact with games, and more importantly, how they interact with you. An experience that's richly and utterly complete, and one that engages the player in a constant dialogue." - 1up

"Overwhelmingly original and so mind-blowingly brilliant. Every single aspect of [this] game has been creatively conceived, meticulously crafted and lovingly produced. A one-of-a-kind masterpiece." - GamesRadar

"An unparalleled achievement. No other game comes even remotely close to it in terms of raw emotional connection." - Gamespy

"Bioshock Bioshock Bioshock!!!!" - me

Oh Calamity!

News broke all over the internet last night that a Toys R' Us in Houston sold a copy of Bioshock. The street date is next Tuesday. Video games frequently come out after their street date, but never before. All eyes were on the gaming forums as many people compared stories of finding a copy at their local Toys R' Us.

First thing this morning I called the Los Angeles store and sure enough, they had two copies in stock. But I couldn't go right away, as I had an 11:00 violin session with Daphne Chen.

So after the session, at 1:30pm, I called the Los Angeles store. They greeted me with "Are you calling about Bioshock?" and I knew the jig was up. Apparently a memo was sent to all the TRU stores nationally that a mistake was made, and the stores that broke street date were being fined heavily. I proceeded to call other local TRU's but they had all caught on at that point.

The thing that sucks the most is that all these stores have stacks of glorious copies of Bioshock trapped in a box in back of the store, just sitting for a week.

Boo to you. Booooo.

There are enterprising jerks who bought multiple copies from TRU and are selling them on eBay for $120, and people are buying them. No one could be more excited about this game than me, and even I can't imagine paying double the price to get it a few days early.

Of course, I don't really have time to play it this week anyway. So perhaps it's all moot.

Bioshock Day Is Coming

What is Bioshock, you might ask? It's an Xbox360 game. But that's not all, it's an amazingly creative and original work of art that I've been tracking for over a year. Also, it's the "spiritual successor" to System Shock, one of the most incredible and acclaimed games of the 90's.

It takes place in Rapture, a utopian underwater city, built in the 1950's by a genius named Andrew Ryan. He created it as a home to a select group of artists, scientists and industrialists, who could work in peace in a totally idealistic society. He calls it "a city where the artist would not fear the censor; where the great would not be constrained by the small; where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality."


As with any utopian society, it couldn't last. The city was destroyed by the very people chosen to populate it. And the game begins in 1960, with our protagonist on a routine plane flight that crashes into the middle of the ocean. Swimming from the wreckage, he finds himself at the entrance of the now ruined City of Rapture, knowing that going in is the only way out.

The game forces the player to make many moral choices. For instance, there are Little Sisters (not quite real little girls, more like little zombies) who harvest Atom, the city's energy force, from corpses they find. They are protected by Big Daddies, who are huge and have drills for hands (you don't wanna mess with those)! Do you try to take the Atom that the Little Sisters have harvested, and fend for yourself when the Big Daddy comes after you? Do you protect the Little Sister when somebody else tries to steal her Atom? Or do you just leave it all alone to the natural balance of Rapture?

In the words of Andrew Ryan, "If your life were the prize, would you kill the innocent? Would you sacrifice your humanity? We all make our choices, but in the end, our choices make us."

The game finally comes out a week from today! And yes, I'm going to have to take the day off to explore.

2K Games stated that there would be no demo for this game, much to everyone's chagrin. Well, two days ago they surprised everyone by unceremoniously dropping a demo on Xbox Live. And once the news media found out, people all over the country nearly crashed the servers by downloading in droves.

And the demo. Oh, the demo. It is so good. It begins where the game will begin, in the plane crash. The first thing to notice is that it's absolutely gorgeous. The water textures nearly popped my eyes out. I just stared at the ocean for awhile. Second, I noticed that it controls like butter.

Exploring Rapture for myself, for the first time, brought me a sense of wonderment I haven't felt since I was a kid. Water pours in all the cracks, as if the city could wash away at any moment. Old jazz music still plays in the lobby, tattered "Happy New Year 1959" posters are barely hanging from the ceiling. And then it all gets creepy.

I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll just say that I'm going to play through the (woefully short - 45 minutes-ish) demo a few more times before release day next week, simply because I want to revisit this amazing world again and again.

See the awesome trailer here.

I can't wait till next Tuesday.

E3 Sony Spectacular!

I got back to LA early, and I was fortunate enough to be invited to Sony's E3 Press Event. I've wanted to go to E3 since I was 8 years old, so it's an understatement to say I was excited.

In past years, E3 was a huge event held at the LA Convention Center, featuring all the consoles and most of the developers. However, this cost the developers millions of dollars per year that they didn't really need to spend. So this year E3 was quite different. It was a series of smaller events, held individually by each publisher.

I showed up at Culver City Studios and as I walked out of the parking garage, the first people I saw were Chris Roper, David Clayman and the IGN Playstation Team. I'm a big fan of IGN. I listen to their podcasts frequently and (ready for my big geeky reveal) I know all the names and faces of the staff. So I totally geeked out again, but in that silent way that I do.

We all walked simultaneously to the Studio gates for check in, and I didn't say a word. What a loser! But I thought, "what would I say anyway? 'I love your work!' Maybe I would say, 'You people are very humorous, I find.' Or perhaps, 'I'm not stalking you!'

So I just kept the trap shut.

I checked in and got my glamrock armband (see below). It was a press wristband, meaning nobody could tell the difference between me (a lowly Playstation Underground member) and the esteemed folks at Kotaku. Very awesome. So I could pretend to be important.

I made my way into the soundstage.

And sat up near the Great Wall of Camera People.

[video for the following paragraph below] - Mr. Jack Tretton then came out and introduced all the brand new changes to Playstation Home, which looks pretty wide open to user content. He briefly discussed the PS2, saying that it was still super-successful, and then quickly swept it out the door and moved on to the absolutely dead horse that is the PSP. He presented the newly redesigned SLIM PSP, which is the same useless machine, only thinner. Woo. Now it will be a few grams lighter as you play your totally crappy games with only one analog stick and no camera control. If you want to functionally redesign it, how about adding a second analog stick to bring it into the late 90's?! He then added insult to injury and had his buddy Chewbacca bring out the brand new pointless Star Wars: Battlefront PSP. And it's THIN too!


Other show highlights include Hideo Kojima (a true legend) coming out with a translator to introduce Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, and announcing that it would be the very last Metal Gear game ever, and proceeding to show a mindblowing eight-minute trailer [video below]

They showed off new trailers of Resident Evil 5 (which looks amazing), Uncharted, Heavenly Sword, and more. You can see more video on my YouTube page, because I've used up enough blog space already.

After the press conference, we all meandered into the arcade and immediately became children again.

It was like a disco. An awesome disco with videogames everywhere. And cookies on a stick.


The vidogame blog, Kotaku, used the above photo for their lead story on E3 this year. How exciting!

Many more E3 pics on my Flickr stream.