I Drove All Night

This is one of those songs that I love but also rant about.

It's a great song. There are so many great versions; Cyndi Lauper, Roy Orbison, Celine Dion...  I really like the version by The Protomen too. It's like the Roy Orbison version, but ramped up and more epic.

BUT!

I just want to say to the two guys who wrote this song... "No, it's totally not alright".

Seriously, if I was dating a guy and I thought he was 200 miles away but he got horny and drove up, snuck and crept in to my bed and woke me up by [surprise sexy times] I'd wake up terrified assuming it's an intruder and lamp him. If it didn't end in fatality it would end in "We need to talk".

And you know! You know by listening to the song the guy knows he's doing something terrible, or he wouldn't have to ask "is that alright?" so much. No it's not alright!

And I don't know if this is just what I get out of it, but I feel like he thinks he's earned his sexy times just because he drove so far, and he's going to be mega pissed off and act like a pest if he gets home to "go away, I'm sleeping!". There's definitely a sense of entitlement I get out of these lyrics.

The fact it's sometimes covered by women doesn't make it better. It's still creepy.

And I know this was written before mobile phones so phoning to ask "is that alright" before driving all that way isn't that simple.

This song... I have so many problems with it and I don't think of it as romantic at all, but I still like it, and I really like the various artists who've performed it. I suppose that's a bit weird.

Perfect balance

I just looked up how many people there are in the world. There are 7.7 billion people. I also saw that in 1960, there were 3 billion. So if Thanos did his thing, he'd have to come back and do it every 40 years or so to really achieve "balance".

Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night is a really great game

I kickstarted Koji Igarashi's new super-not-a-Castlevania game "Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night" 4 years ago and got my copy last Tuesday. Played it *a lot*.

It really is a great game. I think it's possibly better than a IGA-era Castlevania game because there are so many weapons to use, leading to so many play-styles, and I do like variety. Other than that - same basics you would expect from an "Igavania". 2D platformer, explore a huge castle, fight some bosses, collect enemy drops and skills, use new skills to explore further... and yes there is a "backstep" button. :)

The story of the game is alchemy / anti-church / experimenting on children / post-apocalypse (hmm, that makes it sound like Bat Out Of Hell 2100. It's not anything like Bat 2100!), but you can happily ignore that if you like. There are both English and Japanese voice options. I played in Japanese (honestly I don't think the English dub for Symphony Of The Night is worth celebrating, I know it became a camp cult hit for its awfulness but I have no attachment to it).

You can also change the colour of blood in the options. I like that you can do that, and I turned blood purple. There are lots of little Easter Eggs too. And cool weird things like... enemies that look like giant heads of people's pets (I think this was a kickstarter reward!)

The only thing I didn't think was great in the design of the game was that with the art they used in the game (which is beautiful); sometimes it was hard to see what's foreground and background, but I got used to it after a few hours of playing.

I started the game pretty much as soon as I could, so I started playing on version 1.01 and a few hours later they released version 1.02, but I read that it messed up the save file so I decided to finish the game as soon as possible and not update until I was done. Well, I don't know if that was the best idea, because version 1.01 was patched because a few of the last boss fights in the game didn't show up on the in-game bestiary list.

So I updated the game with patch 1.02 and started a New Game+ and completed the entire game again. There were a few things changed with the patch. I think poison was nerfed, I beat a lot of the bosses first time round using poison and keeping my distance, but that seemed less potent in version 1.02. Also I thought the secret boss fight with the vampire librarian was much harder in version 1.02.

I got the platinum trophy on PSN for completing every trophy on Sunday night after 5 days and 5 hours of intense gaming (the time taken is logged on psnprofiles). I think it was a really great game.  It's updated to version 1.03 now so everything I said specific to patches is probably irrelevant now too, haha.

I didn't fight IGA because his secret boss fight (not very secret) wasn't patched in to the PS4 version yet. I'll have to return at some point!

Conclusion: well worth waiting 4 years for this game, even though I finished the whole thing twice within 5 days!

Dear world: Meat Loaf's name is Meat Loaf. It's that simple!

One thing that's really getting to irritate me a little more all the time, is how everyone who wants to talk about Meat Loaf is obsessed with either the "origin" of his name, or will insist on calling him Marvin Lee Aday.

If he's in interview, it's often one of the first thing they ask, or if it's an article, they'll be all "Oh but Marvin Lee Aday is his REAL name".

But I know a few different people who have had troubled backgrounds who decided to legally change their name, because they desperately want to be disassociated with that family name, they want to leave that behind, they want to be themselves, they want to be judged on their own merit.

And to dredge up the old name like that, it's a thing you don't do. It's just uncomfortable, rude.

The old name is dead. The new name, that's who they are.

With Meat Loaf, that's his name. His real name. It's also the name of his stage persona, but it's also his actual name. People who know him just call him "Meat" in his life. It's not the same as an actor who acts under a stage name.

Meat changed his name legally several times - he changed it to "Meat Loaf", but he said - he had trouble passing through customs (and for someone was was seemingly on endless world tours, this is a problem) - so he legally changed it to "Michael Lee Aday". The system is happier with this. But everyone on a personal level calls him Meat.

So every time I hear those same words from an interviewer "so the name Meat Loaf...", I cringe a little. No wonder he makes up a new "origin story" every time.

Is Steve Steinman related to Jim Steinman?

I see this question a lot. The answer is no, he is not.

In 1993, a Yorkshireman named Steve Murray was on the TV talent show "Stars In Their Eyes" as Meat Loaf. Later, to help promote his tribute act, Steve changed his stage name to Steve Steinman. Under companies house, his business "Steve Steinman Productions" names Steven Murray as the sole officer.

He has never worked with, or had any association with, Jim Steinman.

Steve has in fact said a few unkind things about Jim Steinman's Bat Out Of Hell in promotion of his own work.