Austin American-Statesman from Austin, Texas • 107

WW Illlililfilii 1 Exploring all things high-tech in the world of entertainment, compiled by harieyjebens, american-statesman staff networking for pro-'Lif e'-ers Lovecraft's 'Shadow' is maybe too crafty When most people are faced with the cancellation of their favorite TV shows, they probably mutter a silent exclamation. Maybe they'll write letters to the network, asking them to continue the show. When Steve Joyner heard that the critically acclaimed but little-watched My So-Called Life was in trouble, he formed an organization to save it. Joyner calls his ii -J "iA nl 'St organization "Operation Life he has been lobbying to generate a wider base of support for the show from his America Online address: Life is an hourlong drama about the adolescent trials and travails of a gawky teen-age girl, her baby boomer parents and her high school friends. ABC has announced it will air the final episode Jan.

26. Joyner says Operation Life Support has received more than 8,000 E-mail messages, letters, phone calls and faxes and has raised $3,500 in contributions to aid in keeping the show on the air. "We've generated more publicity for My So-Called Life in a month than ABC has all season," Joyner.said. Joyner's organization's latest initiative is "Project Blast Affiliate," an effort to pressure local ABC affiliates not to pre-empt the show. H.P.Lovecraft(1890-1937) was a weird bird, there's no doubt about that.

A recluse whose parents both died in insane asylums, Love-craft spent his time writing weird stories, horror tales more full of suspense than gore, stories with titles such as At the Mountains of Madness and The Dun-wich Horror. Unknown in his lifetime, Lovecraft is now mentioned in the same breath as is Edgar Allen Poe, and his influence can be seen in everything from bad Stephen King novels and second-rate horror movies to the heavy-metal music of Glenn Danzig. His tales even have spawned a role-playing I ifci- a 'f! The on-line public speaks up to support ABC's soon-to-be-pulled My So-Called Life, which stars Claire Danes and Jared Leto. Shadow of the Comet has the atmosphere of the Love-craftian world down, but its mechanics are a bit lacking. With only two more weeks left in the show's run, time is running out for Joyner and his fellow Life fans.

If you want to join the rescue effort, E-mail Joyner. If you want to write the network in support of the critically lauded show, the address is: Robert Iger, presidentCEO, Cap Cities ABC co ABC Audience Information, 77 W. 66th New York, N.Y. 10023. House has an on-line dream Los Angeles' ultratrendy House of Blues has gone high-tech.

House of Blues New Media made its on-line debut Monday, broadcasting the Sunset Boulevard club's live Martin Luther King Jr. Day program on the Internet's new MBONE network. MBONE allows for transmissions of full motion video and audio to sites with high-speed Internet linkups, i.e., mostly universities and businesses. One problem with the MBONE network: It's not accessible to most users who connect using even high-speed (14.4K or 28.8K) modems, which simply cannot process the volume of information required in a timely fashion. However, clips from the concert are available for browsing with programs such as Netscape or Mosaic at the following World-Wide Web sites: http:www.iuma.com, http:bazaar.com and http:underground.net.

This is the first step in the creation of House of Blues New Media, which will include software and on-line divisions. The software division will develop and copublish everything from CD-ROMs based on performances recorded at House of Blues venues to video games and screensavers. On-line programming might include conferences, blues reference works, biographies and information on forthcoming albums. you don't have to be a rocket scientist If you're considering playing around with FTP (anonymous file transfer protocol, a powerful Internet tool that enables remote users to pull files from a massive library of data bases scattered around the globe), NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab should be one of your first stops. The site has photos of the latest shuttle mission, the Magellan project and the very popular SL9 comet that crashed into Jupiter.

Point your FTP tool to jplinfo.jpl.nasa.gov, and look under the news directory. If you're on a web-browser, surf to http:www.jpl.nasa. gov. game called The Call of Cthulhu, named after one of Lovecraft's most famous tales. That paper-and-pencil game has spawned a computer version: Shadow of the Comet (for IBM-compatible CD-ROM computers, 386-16MHZ and higher), a game that does an adequate job of translating the Lovecraftian world of creeping dread to the computer screen.

It's got the atmosphere down, but it's in the game mechanics where things are a bit lacking. In the game, you take the role of Jonathan Parker, a British journalist sent to the sleepy New England town of Dlsmouth to capture photographs of Halley's comet blazing through the. night sky of 1910. Unfortunately, that comet signals the time when "barriers between this world and the next" will be at their weakest. With the help of some nasty Dlsmouth residents, evil "elder gods" will be able to break through those barriers, and the results of their arrival aren't likely to be too pleasant.

Parker quickly becomes embroiled in these goings-on, and it falls to him to figure out what's really going on in Dlsmouth and, once he does that, to put a stop to the evil vil- -lagers' schemes. Shadow of the Comet suffers from the same problem to which many of these adventure-role playing types of computer games fall victim: It's way too linear. For instance, you need to get into the safe in the mayor's office. But before you can get into the safe, you have to get a copy of a Bible to crack the safe's combination. The spinster Miss Picott owns a Bible, but she doesn't want to loan it to you.

The game gives you no indication how you can convince her to loan you the Bible or if hers is even the Bible you need to use to complete this part of your quest. It goes on and on this way. Since there are often no clues telling you what you need to do to get from step to step you can find yourself wandering around Dlsmouth for hours trying to figure out the correct next step, and the game won't move forward until you do figure out that next step. Frustrating. And then there's the underground maze you have to negotiate; making your way through that maze isn't interesting or fun.

It's maddening. Shadow of the Comet has its nice touches. The adventure is an engross-ing one. The game is beautifully rendered, and the animation flows smoothly. Music and sound effects are appropriately spooky (the woods that are alive with the sounds of birds chirping during the day sound menacing at night).

And encounters with characters who resemble (and talk like) Jack Nicholson, Vincent Price, Boris Karloff and other horror movie stars are a hoot. If only those game-play aspects didn't get in the way of the story. Lovecraftian weirdness could make an excellent computer game. Shadow of the Comet isn't quite that game, however. blow the dust off with a 'Studio' The latest technical gizmo from Fisher AudioVideo, a division of the Japanese giant Sanyo, is the jukebox-style "Studio 24." It lets you store and play back up to 24 CDs by inputting names or categories.

You can set up the system to separate your music by type (jazz, rock, by owner (mom's music, brother's tunes), by occasion (party mix, romantic) or by disc name. Fisher promises protection for the discs in a "virtually dust-free" environment. And the CDs are much less likely to walk away at a party when packed inside the component i Studio 24 sells for $299. If you want even bigger capacity, Pioneer, Sony and JVC are now offering 50- and 100-CD changers costing $500 to $1,000. Austin American-Statesman January 19, 1995 27.