It's well-enough known that Earthbound is probably my favorite video game of all time. I won't argue that it's the best game of all time, or even the best RPG or the best SNES game. (It might be close on that last one.) But after observing what the video game-producing world has had to offer for the last fifteen or twenty years, I will argue that it's the one I like the best.
So, if other games feature more detailed graphics and immersive environments (Oblivion), more engrossing plots and powerful story lines (Final Fantasy X), or more entertaining multiplayer modes (Mario Kart), what makes Earthbound worthy of being my favorite ever?
A lot of it is nostalgia. Earthbound is the first, and to date one of the only, games that I "found". That is, there wasn't a huge media buzz over it that I simply succumbed to. There wasn't a mad rush among my friends to get this game that I joined once most of them had bought it too. Instead, I read a description and review of the game in the newspaper, I thought it looked interesting, and I started playing it. It turned out to be a lot of fun. And the same way that indie kids become rabidly protective of "their" bands, I started to idolize Earthbound.
Of course, it's not like Earthbound is a bad game. Otherwise it wouldn't have had the staying power that it obviously has. What works? Quirky sense of humor that gracefully vacillates between punny, absurdist, and surreal. Absolutely inspired soundtrack with a clear John Lennon influence. So many obscure, hidden treats that you're practically guaranteed to find something new every time you play through the game.
With that last one in mind, I decided I'd play through the game for probably the seventh time this past summer. I was going to take a completely novel approach to the game: complete tasks in obviously the wrong order, take the time to look for rare items I'd never bothered with in the past, make sure I sought out all those obscure hidden characters and messages that really give the game its spirit.
My observations, progress toward goals, and other thoughts about the game:
--I didn't finish, sadly enough.
--I blame my not finishing on the Broken Antenna, which upgrades to Jeff's ultimate weapon, the Gaia Beam. It took a long time to get. Fighting Uncontrollable Spheres is a pain in the ass because every time you kill one, it explodes, and you take quite a lot of damage.
--The Sword of Kings gave me a lot more trouble than it usually does... I killed a lot more than 128 Starmen Super, that's for sure. The Sword has been a running point of contention between me and my friend Nicholas because of how effortlessly I'd obtained it in the past. Once, I got it on the first try. Another time, I accidentally got two in the same game. He's never found it. I guess this is karma.
--I didn't get the Star Pendant (but I figured out how I would have approached it, had I had time to).
--The Magic Fry Pan is totally not worth the effort it takes to get. I abandoned the project a few Chomposaurs in. Paula shouldn't make too many physical attacks anyway, so unless you're really worried about Smash attacks, the Guts bonus is practically useless.
--The For Sale Sign, on the other hand, is awesome. I probably netted thousands of dollars from that thing over the course of the game, because you can use it to sell obsolete items rather than discarding them.
--There are really only three Sanctuaries you have to visit in the "right" order: Giant Step, Milky Well, and Lumine Hall. All three of these advance the plot of the game. You can skip Lilliput Steps, Milky Well, Magnet Hill, and Pink Cloud and revisit them later in the game.
--The Dusty Dunes Desert has a lot of cool Easter eggs that you wouldn't necessarily realize unless you combed every inch of it. That can be a pain because you apparently contract sunstroke if you walk around the desert for two minutes.
--The Clumsy Robot's bologna sandwich doesn't actually max out its HP.
--I never quite reached Magicant or anything beyond it, so sadly I can't comment on the rest of the game.
So while I never reached my goal of getting all the rare items and talking to every character in the game, I did find out some interesting things about the game. More importantly, I can definitely confirm that this game is awesome, and I remembered why it's among my all-time favorites.
Currently listening: "Ten Cent Blues", Eisley, from Combinations
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Basterds, plus Tarantino in General
It's taken me until right now to discover something that presumably the rest of the free moviegoing world has known for over a decade now: the only way to enjoy a Quentin Tarantino movie is not to take it seriously. I think that's why I didn't like Pulp Fiction that much--I was trying to make it make too much sense. (Alternately, maybe it wasn't actually a good movie at all, but here again, the rest of the free moviegoing world disagrees with me.)
But that's exactly why Inglourious Basterds was amazing--as long as you don't expect anything serious out of it, it's a masterpiece of ridiculousness. Sure, depending on personal taste, there might be a number of reasons you wouldn't want to see this movie. If the over-the-top needless violence in, say, Kill Bill wasn't your thing, you probably won't do well with the over-the-top needless violence in this movie. If you're expecting a thoughtful film about the sensitive issues that World War II raised, you're not going to get it here. And if you want any historical accuracy, forget it.
What you will get is a bunch of dead "Nat-zees", as Brad Pitt's character puts it. And Pitt's Aldo Raine is by far the best part of this film. His barely-literate Appalachian zeal for Nazi killing is incredibly entertaining. It's roles like this that make me actually respect the guy despite all the tabloid nonsense he spawns. Christoph Waltz is equally excellent as the primary antagonist Hans Landa. In fact, he makes a much better antagonist than, say, the Joker from The Dark Knight, because he's believable. Nobody is as deranged as the Joker, but plenty of Nazis were as deranged as Landa, and Waltz plays that derangement with such utter contemptibility and sliminess that you want nothing more than for him to lose.
So really, the movie only suffers when neither Pitt nor Waltz are involved in a scene. Nothing against Mélanie Laurent, but the scenes with Pitt and Waltz are so good that the story of her Shoshanna seems more like a subplot than an integral part of the film. Maybe her story seems weak because the backstory is still a mystery: we have no idea how she got to Paris and became successful following the death of her family. Also, I would have like to have seen the British film critic turned soldier have a bigger part in the movie.
But those flaws don't do much to reduce the awesomeness and absurdity that is Inglourious Basterds. Definitely recommended.
Currently listening: "Turn on Me", the Shins
But that's exactly why Inglourious Basterds was amazing--as long as you don't expect anything serious out of it, it's a masterpiece of ridiculousness. Sure, depending on personal taste, there might be a number of reasons you wouldn't want to see this movie. If the over-the-top needless violence in, say, Kill Bill wasn't your thing, you probably won't do well with the over-the-top needless violence in this movie. If you're expecting a thoughtful film about the sensitive issues that World War II raised, you're not going to get it here. And if you want any historical accuracy, forget it.
What you will get is a bunch of dead "Nat-zees", as Brad Pitt's character puts it. And Pitt's Aldo Raine is by far the best part of this film. His barely-literate Appalachian zeal for Nazi killing is incredibly entertaining. It's roles like this that make me actually respect the guy despite all the tabloid nonsense he spawns. Christoph Waltz is equally excellent as the primary antagonist Hans Landa. In fact, he makes a much better antagonist than, say, the Joker from The Dark Knight, because he's believable. Nobody is as deranged as the Joker, but plenty of Nazis were as deranged as Landa, and Waltz plays that derangement with such utter contemptibility and sliminess that you want nothing more than for him to lose.
So really, the movie only suffers when neither Pitt nor Waltz are involved in a scene. Nothing against Mélanie Laurent, but the scenes with Pitt and Waltz are so good that the story of her Shoshanna seems more like a subplot than an integral part of the film. Maybe her story seems weak because the backstory is still a mystery: we have no idea how she got to Paris and became successful following the death of her family. Also, I would have like to have seen the British film critic turned soldier have a bigger part in the movie.
But those flaws don't do much to reduce the awesomeness and absurdity that is Inglourious Basterds. Definitely recommended.
Currently listening: "Turn on Me", the Shins
Monday, July 27, 2009
Stunt Dorm Rooms
It's getting toward college move-in season again, and we all know what that means. No, not mandatory but useless orientation on the hottest and/or rainiest weekend of the year. Not overeager eighteen year olds drinking cases of Icehouse just because it's there. Not even student staff members who already resent their jobs, two weeks in. (Although, that last one is more true than the residents and professional staff alike might care to know.)
What it means is the annual rampant consumerist explosion known as "back to school shopping". Bookshelves. Lamps--in both desk and octopus-like floor varieties. Carpeting. Microwaves. Refrigerators--but not bigger than 3.1 cubic feet. Desks. Desk chairs. Futons. "Art". Coffee makers. Those ridiculous water dispensers. (Really, guys, there's a water fountain down the hall. I promise.)
That leaves me, and most other people who have actually been to college recently, wondering "where exactly do you put all that stuff?" The answer, if you listen to the peddlers of all this college gear, is "in your massive dorm room that you get all to yourself as a freshman". Here are a few of my favorite exaggerations:
This one's courtesy of our friends at Target. Note the massive, sun-filled window right above the bed (with neither safety screen in front of the window, nor shirtless dudes playing volleyball outside). The cleanliness. The modern, slightly-industrial decor. The new wooden furniture. The spotless mirror on the back of the door, with neither crack nor "unidentifiable smudge" from the last inhabitant. Also notice how the pale blue-gray bricks actually seem to compliment the colors in the bedding.
This one, from Bed Bath & Beyond, gives us a little less to work with, but there's still plenty of wishful thinking here. I like the luxury of putting the bed right in the middle of the room, with no need to cram it into a corner to afford the roommate some space. The bedding here, too, compliments the wall coloring. Better yet, it's available in 3 other styles--each of which comes with ready access to perfectly matching dorm rooms.
But by far my favorite in "yeah, right" awesomeness is this masterpiece from Ikea. Windows, check. Wall treatments that match your furniture and accessories, check. Enough space for a bed, a guitar, a desk-ish cube, and a bookshelf--on just your side of the room!--check. And the pièce de résistance? Hardwood floors. Because no dorms have decades-old carpeting, and surely none have dingy tile floor.
(All images copyright of their respective fantastically creative owners.)
Currently listening: "Shady Grove" as performed by Among the Oak & Ash
What it means is the annual rampant consumerist explosion known as "back to school shopping". Bookshelves. Lamps--in both desk and octopus-like floor varieties. Carpeting. Microwaves. Refrigerators--but not bigger than 3.1 cubic feet. Desks. Desk chairs. Futons. "Art". Coffee makers. Those ridiculous water dispensers. (Really, guys, there's a water fountain down the hall. I promise.)
That leaves me, and most other people who have actually been to college recently, wondering "where exactly do you put all that stuff?" The answer, if you listen to the peddlers of all this college gear, is "in your massive dorm room that you get all to yourself as a freshman". Here are a few of my favorite exaggerations:
This one's courtesy of our friends at Target. Note the massive, sun-filled window right above the bed (with neither safety screen in front of the window, nor shirtless dudes playing volleyball outside). The cleanliness. The modern, slightly-industrial decor. The new wooden furniture. The spotless mirror on the back of the door, with neither crack nor "unidentifiable smudge" from the last inhabitant. Also notice how the pale blue-gray bricks actually seem to compliment the colors in the bedding.
This one, from Bed Bath & Beyond, gives us a little less to work with, but there's still plenty of wishful thinking here. I like the luxury of putting the bed right in the middle of the room, with no need to cram it into a corner to afford the roommate some space. The bedding here, too, compliments the wall coloring. Better yet, it's available in 3 other styles--each of which comes with ready access to perfectly matching dorm rooms.
But by far my favorite in "yeah, right" awesomeness is this masterpiece from Ikea. Windows, check. Wall treatments that match your furniture and accessories, check. Enough space for a bed, a guitar, a desk-ish cube, and a bookshelf--on just your side of the room!--check. And the pièce de résistance? Hardwood floors. Because no dorms have decades-old carpeting, and surely none have dingy tile floor.(All images copyright of their respective fantastically creative owners.)
Currently listening: "Shady Grove" as performed by Among the Oak & Ash
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Folk Music Among the Oak & Ash
The Paste Magazine Culture Club podcast turned me on to one of my favorite albums of summer 2008, and just as I was thinking I needed some new music for this summer, the July 2009 edition of Paste Culture Club showed up to save the day.
Among a bunch of bizarre stuff--bizarre stuff comes with the territory in that podcast--was the track "Peggy-O" from Among the Oak & Ash's self-titled album. They're a folk/"Americana" duet who play a lot of songs by that celebrated composer "Traditional". I've always had a soft spot for Appalachia-tinted folk-y music. (I don't even mind a little bluegrass, which is far from a popular opinion.) But the big obstacle in the way of me actually acquiring some is that it feels kind of weird listening to some fifty-year old dude from Tennessee plucking an indeterminate string instrument.
That's why Among the Oak & Ash is so intriguing: they play that sort of music, but they're indie enough to live comfortably in the rest of my iPod (and among the rest of the Paste Magazine fare). I mean, the girl singer is named Garrison, and the dude wears a vest while he's playing guitar.
Folk music thrives on harmonies, and Among the Oak & Ash delivers there. Garrison Starr and Josh Joplin have a very effective vocal arrangement that shows up in several of the songs on the album, where they sing the same melody and the same pitches (with Starr an octave or two higher, naturally). It's not harmonizing per se, but it's a nice effect that suggests simplicity and unity. The other vocal trick that works well is harmonizing in perfect fourths, but with Joplin singing the higher pitch, despite his lower vocal register.
The album makes the mistake that so many others do, front-loading it with the most interesting tracks. "Hiram Hubbard" is a brilliant way to start the album, and I don't think it would have worked anywhere but the start. The next three tracks, "Peggy-O", "Angel Gabriel", and "Shady Grove", are upbeat (or at least fast-paced), and they're my favorite three tracks on the album. "Angel Gabriel" is probably the highlight of the album, combining the band's vocal excellence with some nice religious imagery.
Unfortunately, the entire album isn't as exciting as the first four songs promise. "The Water Is Wide" and "High, Low, and Wide" are both about three times as long as they need to be, and honestly none of the songs where either Starr or Joplin sings alone is as effective as the ones where they sing together. "Joseph Hillstrom" is a catchy enough original composition, and I couldn't identify it as an original rather than a traditional simply by listening to it, which is a good sign.
As first, I didn't see a whole lot that would keep me coming back to Among the Oak & Ash, but I don't think that's true at all. The band's music represents an original take on music deeply rooted in the cultural, social, and spiritual traditions of this country. Or, a contemporary view of timeless themes. Starr and Joplin say that Among the Oak & Ash is a project that's just beginning, and I can only hope we see many more albums like this one in the coming years.
Currently listening: "A World Apart", Vedera
Among a bunch of bizarre stuff--bizarre stuff comes with the territory in that podcast--was the track "Peggy-O" from Among the Oak & Ash's self-titled album. They're a folk/"Americana" duet who play a lot of songs by that celebrated composer "Traditional". I've always had a soft spot for Appalachia-tinted folk-y music. (I don't even mind a little bluegrass, which is far from a popular opinion.) But the big obstacle in the way of me actually acquiring some is that it feels kind of weird listening to some fifty-year old dude from Tennessee plucking an indeterminate string instrument.
That's why Among the Oak & Ash is so intriguing: they play that sort of music, but they're indie enough to live comfortably in the rest of my iPod (and among the rest of the Paste Magazine fare). I mean, the girl singer is named Garrison, and the dude wears a vest while he's playing guitar.
Folk music thrives on harmonies, and Among the Oak & Ash delivers there. Garrison Starr and Josh Joplin have a very effective vocal arrangement that shows up in several of the songs on the album, where they sing the same melody and the same pitches (with Starr an octave or two higher, naturally). It's not harmonizing per se, but it's a nice effect that suggests simplicity and unity. The other vocal trick that works well is harmonizing in perfect fourths, but with Joplin singing the higher pitch, despite his lower vocal register.
The album makes the mistake that so many others do, front-loading it with the most interesting tracks. "Hiram Hubbard" is a brilliant way to start the album, and I don't think it would have worked anywhere but the start. The next three tracks, "Peggy-O", "Angel Gabriel", and "Shady Grove", are upbeat (or at least fast-paced), and they're my favorite three tracks on the album. "Angel Gabriel" is probably the highlight of the album, combining the band's vocal excellence with some nice religious imagery.
Unfortunately, the entire album isn't as exciting as the first four songs promise. "The Water Is Wide" and "High, Low, and Wide" are both about three times as long as they need to be, and honestly none of the songs where either Starr or Joplin sings alone is as effective as the ones where they sing together. "Joseph Hillstrom" is a catchy enough original composition, and I couldn't identify it as an original rather than a traditional simply by listening to it, which is a good sign.
As first, I didn't see a whole lot that would keep me coming back to Among the Oak & Ash, but I don't think that's true at all. The band's music represents an original take on music deeply rooted in the cultural, social, and spiritual traditions of this country. Or, a contemporary view of timeless themes. Starr and Joplin say that Among the Oak & Ash is a project that's just beginning, and I can only hope we see many more albums like this one in the coming years.
Currently listening: "A World Apart", Vedera
Friday, July 17, 2009
Harper's Island Post-Mortem
I've been following the CBS series Harper's Island thanks to my friend Alex Harkey. Quick recap/explanation: several years ago, lots of people got killed on Harper's Island, a secluded island off the coast of Seattle; now two people are trying to get married on Harper's Island; people start dying again; the killer is one of the wedding guests or one of their friends on the island. (Spoilers follow. Most of this is taken from a conversation with Alex, and edited for coherency.)
In the end, we find out that the killer was Henry, the groom-to-be, motivated by some psychotic conception of "togetherness" with his childhood friend Abby. And if I understood the finale correctly, I think Henry and Abby might be half-siblings? That's especially creepy.
My thoughts on the reveal and the resolution:
I don't dislike Henry as the killer, mostly because I don't see him as totally implausible. Everything I said about knowing the island, and knowing the wedding party, and being central enough to have some sort of impact definitely applies to Henry. The thing that I like the least about Henry as the killer is that it was weird to watch him transform into a complete psychopath over the course of about an hour.
It was clear Henry had some downright bizarre notions about "being together" with Abby--as in he seemed like a total nutjob--but he seemed the most stable out of anyone on that island through the first eleven episodes. Given that the motive was apparently driven by insanity, I'm not sure how plausible it was to see ostensibly the most sane guy there have that motive then see the sanity just vanish as soon as it was convenient.
A killer in a murder mystery should appear as normal as, or even more normal than, the other characters. The trick in making a really good one is to put in subtle hints that some motive could exist while still appearing like a normal person on the surface. From that angle, I more could have bought the killer being someone with some kinks to their personality than the guy who was essentially the straight man to a whole lot of eccentricity.
I'm not sure if you could have positively identified Henry as the killer in any of the first eleven episodes. There's plenty of evidence against him, but I don't think there's a smoking gun. Motive would have been impossible to nail down until about the ninth episode at the earliest, when we found out that Abby's mother likely had a child with Wakefield. It would be interesting to watch through some of the early episodes already knowing how the ending and resolution to see if that colors some of the "clues" or if any of the deaths could be explained or are still suspicious.
All that said, the weakest part of the denouement was the explanation of Henry's motive. We saw that Henry wanted to go around with Abby a lot, but that's not identifiable as motive at all--they were understood to be good friends, and it's a heck of a logical leap to take that to "well, okay, what if Henry wants the two of them to be more than friends, and that's why he's the killer."
I would have preferred one of the characters to have figured out the killer rather than Henry essentially telling them. Of the characters who knew who that killer was Henry, Henry himself told Trish, Sully, Abby, and Jimmy. We don't know what eventually happened to Shea and Madison, but we can assume that Abby or Jimmy told them the truth eventually. That means that nobody actually figured out the killer for themselves, which is a little disappointing.
Finally, it would really help if we got a "debrief" sort of episode? Maybe some "here were all the clues" and "here's how Henry killed all these people and avoided suspicion"? Make it similar to the Mole, where after the big reveal, there's always a "debrief" episode where the "clues" and "sabotage" are explained. I think Harper's Island would probably benefit from something like that too. Or maybe even a writer/producer commentary track over the episodes to say things like "okay, notice how we haven't seen Henry in the last few minutes here" or "while all this is going on, here's where we imagine Henry is rigging the trapped chandelier in the church."
Thoughts on the series as a whole:
Foremost, I think it would have worked better if everyone wasn't so "sure" that Wakefield was dead at the beginning. I really dislike starting a story with the premise that an old villain was dead, then bringing back the old villain just so the good guys can fight him again. (See my comments on the new Transformers movie.) It would have been a lot easier for me to stomach if it had been something along the lines of "some people say that Wakefield died, but I have my doubts". That way, you can get people thinking from the very beginning about whether or not the guy is alive, and there's a lot less secret-keeping between Abby and her father.
It's easy to say that I would have preferred that Wakefield not come back at all, but honestly that would have changed the series so much that it's tough to say if such an overhaul would have made things better or worse. He was pretty intense as a villain, but that doesn't necessarily say that his appearance made good narrative sense. The idea that he would show up to prove his own innocence, as suggested by Harkey, is a great twist that I never even thought of, and I doubt anyone would have seen coming.
There was a definite shift in tone between the first ten episodes and the last three, when the killings went from mysterious to out in the open, or alternately the style went from "murder mystery" to "horror". Maybe that was to try and make things more exciting and intense for the last part of the series. I think it worked; the last three or four episodes really seemed like a climax to me, with the real emotional climax of the series as a whole coming at the end of the eleventh episode, when Chloe threw herself into the water so Wakefield couldn't get her.
Speaking of Chloe, I'm glad that the Cal-Chloe story and the Sully redemption story reached their resolutions. Toward the middle of the series, I kept insisting that all of those characters had to live to the end so their stories could resolve. In retrospect, though, none of those people actually did, and I think both stories were handled well. Also in retrospect, Shea pretty much had to live, unless they wanted the Madison story to end in complete tragedy. Not only can you really not kill a little girl, you really can't orphan her either, I guess.
Overall reaction to the series:
Definitely one of the strengths was the closed environment--the promise of "this is only going thirteen episodes, you will know all the answers by the end, and the killer will be revealed." It's like Lost, which hit a nadir at an episode now popularly referred to as the "flying kites in Thailand" episode, which had virtually nothing to do with the overarching plot of the series, or even the story arc of the season. Basically, the producers realized the show had no real direction, so they petitioned ABC for an end date. When they got it, the show got back on its feet, because they'd always imagined Lost as a show with a beginning, middle, and end. Short story long, having a set amount of time to get things done allows much more effective storyboarding and long-term planning, which I think Harper's Island capitalized on.
I'm not exactly sure why Harper's Island's ratings were so low. Obviously the move to a different time slot didn't help, but I think the low ratings probably started before that and the move was a reaction to falling ratings. Maybe people didn't want to wait thirteen weeks to figure out how it ended? Maybe it's because it was so serialized? I definitely think it's the sort of show where if you miss one episode, you feel lost, and you might be less than inclined to watch the next week. Of course there's always the option to watch online, but maybe not enough viewers thought that was worth it, so there was just a gradual decline in watching each week. The only other idea I've heard is that some combination of the time slot and network didn't reach the target demographic well enough.
In general, I enjoyed it a lot, and would recommend it with a few reservations (noted above). It's absolutely the sort of show that's way more fun to discuss with someone else, to make predictions and give reactions to the murders as they happen.
Currently listening: "I'm Not Over", Carolina Liar
In the end, we find out that the killer was Henry, the groom-to-be, motivated by some psychotic conception of "togetherness" with his childhood friend Abby. And if I understood the finale correctly, I think Henry and Abby might be half-siblings? That's especially creepy.
My thoughts on the reveal and the resolution:
I don't dislike Henry as the killer, mostly because I don't see him as totally implausible. Everything I said about knowing the island, and knowing the wedding party, and being central enough to have some sort of impact definitely applies to Henry. The thing that I like the least about Henry as the killer is that it was weird to watch him transform into a complete psychopath over the course of about an hour.
It was clear Henry had some downright bizarre notions about "being together" with Abby--as in he seemed like a total nutjob--but he seemed the most stable out of anyone on that island through the first eleven episodes. Given that the motive was apparently driven by insanity, I'm not sure how plausible it was to see ostensibly the most sane guy there have that motive then see the sanity just vanish as soon as it was convenient.
A killer in a murder mystery should appear as normal as, or even more normal than, the other characters. The trick in making a really good one is to put in subtle hints that some motive could exist while still appearing like a normal person on the surface. From that angle, I more could have bought the killer being someone with some kinks to their personality than the guy who was essentially the straight man to a whole lot of eccentricity.
I'm not sure if you could have positively identified Henry as the killer in any of the first eleven episodes. There's plenty of evidence against him, but I don't think there's a smoking gun. Motive would have been impossible to nail down until about the ninth episode at the earliest, when we found out that Abby's mother likely had a child with Wakefield. It would be interesting to watch through some of the early episodes already knowing how the ending and resolution to see if that colors some of the "clues" or if any of the deaths could be explained or are still suspicious.
All that said, the weakest part of the denouement was the explanation of Henry's motive. We saw that Henry wanted to go around with Abby a lot, but that's not identifiable as motive at all--they were understood to be good friends, and it's a heck of a logical leap to take that to "well, okay, what if Henry wants the two of them to be more than friends, and that's why he's the killer."
I would have preferred one of the characters to have figured out the killer rather than Henry essentially telling them. Of the characters who knew who that killer was Henry, Henry himself told Trish, Sully, Abby, and Jimmy. We don't know what eventually happened to Shea and Madison, but we can assume that Abby or Jimmy told them the truth eventually. That means that nobody actually figured out the killer for themselves, which is a little disappointing.
Finally, it would really help if we got a "debrief" sort of episode? Maybe some "here were all the clues" and "here's how Henry killed all these people and avoided suspicion"? Make it similar to the Mole, where after the big reveal, there's always a "debrief" episode where the "clues" and "sabotage" are explained. I think Harper's Island would probably benefit from something like that too. Or maybe even a writer/producer commentary track over the episodes to say things like "okay, notice how we haven't seen Henry in the last few minutes here" or "while all this is going on, here's where we imagine Henry is rigging the trapped chandelier in the church."
Thoughts on the series as a whole:
Foremost, I think it would have worked better if everyone wasn't so "sure" that Wakefield was dead at the beginning. I really dislike starting a story with the premise that an old villain was dead, then bringing back the old villain just so the good guys can fight him again. (See my comments on the new Transformers movie.) It would have been a lot easier for me to stomach if it had been something along the lines of "some people say that Wakefield died, but I have my doubts". That way, you can get people thinking from the very beginning about whether or not the guy is alive, and there's a lot less secret-keeping between Abby and her father.
It's easy to say that I would have preferred that Wakefield not come back at all, but honestly that would have changed the series so much that it's tough to say if such an overhaul would have made things better or worse. He was pretty intense as a villain, but that doesn't necessarily say that his appearance made good narrative sense. The idea that he would show up to prove his own innocence, as suggested by Harkey, is a great twist that I never even thought of, and I doubt anyone would have seen coming.
There was a definite shift in tone between the first ten episodes and the last three, when the killings went from mysterious to out in the open, or alternately the style went from "murder mystery" to "horror". Maybe that was to try and make things more exciting and intense for the last part of the series. I think it worked; the last three or four episodes really seemed like a climax to me, with the real emotional climax of the series as a whole coming at the end of the eleventh episode, when Chloe threw herself into the water so Wakefield couldn't get her.
Speaking of Chloe, I'm glad that the Cal-Chloe story and the Sully redemption story reached their resolutions. Toward the middle of the series, I kept insisting that all of those characters had to live to the end so their stories could resolve. In retrospect, though, none of those people actually did, and I think both stories were handled well. Also in retrospect, Shea pretty much had to live, unless they wanted the Madison story to end in complete tragedy. Not only can you really not kill a little girl, you really can't orphan her either, I guess.
Overall reaction to the series:
Definitely one of the strengths was the closed environment--the promise of "this is only going thirteen episodes, you will know all the answers by the end, and the killer will be revealed." It's like Lost, which hit a nadir at an episode now popularly referred to as the "flying kites in Thailand" episode, which had virtually nothing to do with the overarching plot of the series, or even the story arc of the season. Basically, the producers realized the show had no real direction, so they petitioned ABC for an end date. When they got it, the show got back on its feet, because they'd always imagined Lost as a show with a beginning, middle, and end. Short story long, having a set amount of time to get things done allows much more effective storyboarding and long-term planning, which I think Harper's Island capitalized on.
I'm not exactly sure why Harper's Island's ratings were so low. Obviously the move to a different time slot didn't help, but I think the low ratings probably started before that and the move was a reaction to falling ratings. Maybe people didn't want to wait thirteen weeks to figure out how it ended? Maybe it's because it was so serialized? I definitely think it's the sort of show where if you miss one episode, you feel lost, and you might be less than inclined to watch the next week. Of course there's always the option to watch online, but maybe not enough viewers thought that was worth it, so there was just a gradual decline in watching each week. The only other idea I've heard is that some combination of the time slot and network didn't reach the target demographic well enough.
In general, I enjoyed it a lot, and would recommend it with a few reservations (noted above). It's absolutely the sort of show that's way more fun to discuss with someone else, to make predictions and give reactions to the murders as they happen.
Currently listening: "I'm Not Over", Carolina Liar
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Transformers Sequel
I've heard a lot of facetious subtitles for this movie, any of which would have been more explanatory and willing to get me into the theater than the incomparably generic "Revenge of the Fallen". "Revenge of Megan Fox's Cleavage" is one that I like a lot but can't take any credit for. Ones I came up with include "Humans--Who Needs Them", "Attention Defec--Next Scene!", and my personal favorite, "Glenn Morshower is Unsurprisingly Awesome".
In case you haven't heard my usual Megan Fox Rant, here goes: Megan Fox is not attractive. Mostly, that's because she's fake-looking. Her breasts are probably fake, and her eyebrows and eyelashes almost certainly are. She wears way too much makeup, especially around the eyes, and she has lips that resemble a fish's. And that's not even to mention the tattoos. Weirdly, a lot more girls have told me that I should find her attractive than have guys. I'm not sure what to make of that.
And in case you don't know who Glenn Morshower is, he plays the incomparable Aaron Pierce in 24. Morshower doesn't seem like he plays any other sort of character, but he doesn't need to--he has the competent, confident "guy in charge" archetype nailed down.
One more acting bright spot in this movie was the cameo appearance by Rainn Wilson as the astronomy professor. It makes me sad, though, that it took me until his second of two scenes to realize who it was.
If the acting by Glenn Morshower and Rainn Wilson are the bright spots in the movie, are there not-so-bright spots? Yes, and sadly, it's "most of the rest of the movie".
First, the vocabulary of Transformers doesn't seem to suit itself well to a serious, live-action movie. You can throw around names like "Optimus Prime" and "Megatron" with some semblance of a straight face, but once you throw "Energon" and "Decepticons" and "Cybertron" into the mix, you're begging for something a lot campier than what this movie is going for.
Also, does it seem strange to anyone else that the Decepticons call themselves "Decepticons"? It's like in those old (yes, campy) sci-fi movies, when the evil genius refers to himself as evil. Real-life evil never thinks of itself as evil.
While we're on good old Megatron anyway, I see no need to have brought him back for this movie. If I were ever to write a list of "storytelling best practices", one of the ones at or near the top would be this: if a major villain dies in one installment of a series, there had better be a damned good narrative reason for bringing him/her/it back in the next installment.
That's one of the (several) reasons that Return of the Jedi is the weakest of the Star Wars trilogy. The Death Star was not a compelling villain anymore. We already say it explode spectacularly at the end of Star Wars--and what a great ending it was! The good guys win against all odds, and the Empire is foiled. Return of the Jedi had a lot going on anyway; surely George Lucas and company could have invented something else besides "Death Star Part 2: Revenge of Death Star". Instead, we saw that both George Lucas and Emperor Palpatine were out of new ideas.
In this case, it's Michael Bay and the Decepticons (snicker) who are out of new ideas. The Emperor Palpatine analogy isn't an accident either--the "big villain" of this movie is essentially an Emperor Palpatine knock-off. but is worse in two important ways: 1) he can't shoot lightning from his fingertips, and 2) his name is "the Fallen". Seriously? Seventeen thousand years of plotting revenge against Earth, and the best name for yourself you can invent is "the Fallen".
I can't stand the way this movie paced itself. It finally settled into something resembling coherency toward the end, but at the beginning, we were "treated" to a new scene every few minutes. One minute we're at college with Sam, and the next we're at a motorcycle shop with Megan Fox, and the next we see Satellite Decepticon talking in symbol-speech from deep orbit.
At one point, Sam defiantly tells Optimus Prime that this isn't his war, and he should just be left out of it. He's more right than he can know. Aside from the magical rail gun (I'll talk about it later) toward the end of the movie, it appears that our puny human weapons are utterly useless against the might of the Transformer. So Sam is right in a way he can't possibly comprehend. If the movie is going to do far enough out of its way to make humans suck against the Transformers, then why can't the movie just show two good hours of Transformer-on-Transformer action, double the number of explosions, and half the frequency of Megan Fox'strout face mouth.
In fact, the Transformer, with its inherent requirement for this "energon" (snicker), are hardly the alien master race they want us to think they are. That honor would have to go to...
The Plant. This thing can get its own energy from sunlight, which seems way more practical than needing to blow up a sun to procreate.
Now, let's talk geopolitics for a second. At one point in the movie, we're treated to an embarrassingly weak Egypt-Jordan border crossing, which our protagonists are able to get across by giving the Arabic equivalent of "g'day, mate", and proclaiming they're from New York. "That's right, um, we don't have any identification papers, and we're American, and oh yeah, your own intelligence agency is tracking us, but can you please let us through anyway?"
Another "did anyone else notice": what ever happened to the Egyptians who were after Sam? Probably they were abandoned into a plot hole when someone realized that in a fight of Middle Eastern intelligence in one corner and Shia LeBeouf in the other, not a lot of bets are going to get placed in favor of our man.
Geopolitics rears its ugly head once again when the Americans make a drop over Jordanian airspace--then call the Jordanians for help when something goes wrong. In case anyone hadn't noticed, we're not best friends with most of these countries. The thought that they would want to help us after we had the gall to fly unannounced and plop down old Optimus is completely implausible.
And so is the thought of breaking into the Air and Space Museum with three dudes, a girl, and a couple of tasers. And so is some crazy guy with a radio calling a ship captain about his "experimental rail gun technology" and actually getting the captain to use it. And so is the "super-secret hiding place" of the Primes being behind an inch and a half sheet of rock in Petra... and nobody having found it, ever. And so is the idea that you can walk between Petra and the Valley of the Kings in a day or two.
Looking back on the movie, that seems to be a common theme: "hasn't anyone else noticed this incredible implausibility?" Of course we have, and you'd be hard pressed to convince me that the director and writers didn't as well. They must have thought that after watching robots blow each other up for nearly two and half hours, we wouldn't really care.
Incorrect. Turns out that even if you're making a special effects movie, you still need some coherence behind it; you still need a reason to make the movie worth my time and nine dollars. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen lacks that coherence and reason entirely.
Currently listening: "The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us!", Sufjan Stevens, from Illinois
In case you haven't heard my usual Megan Fox Rant, here goes: Megan Fox is not attractive. Mostly, that's because she's fake-looking. Her breasts are probably fake, and her eyebrows and eyelashes almost certainly are. She wears way too much makeup, especially around the eyes, and she has lips that resemble a fish's. And that's not even to mention the tattoos. Weirdly, a lot more girls have told me that I should find her attractive than have guys. I'm not sure what to make of that.
And in case you don't know who Glenn Morshower is, he plays the incomparable Aaron Pierce in 24. Morshower doesn't seem like he plays any other sort of character, but he doesn't need to--he has the competent, confident "guy in charge" archetype nailed down.
One more acting bright spot in this movie was the cameo appearance by Rainn Wilson as the astronomy professor. It makes me sad, though, that it took me until his second of two scenes to realize who it was.
If the acting by Glenn Morshower and Rainn Wilson are the bright spots in the movie, are there not-so-bright spots? Yes, and sadly, it's "most of the rest of the movie".
First, the vocabulary of Transformers doesn't seem to suit itself well to a serious, live-action movie. You can throw around names like "Optimus Prime" and "Megatron" with some semblance of a straight face, but once you throw "Energon" and "Decepticons" and "Cybertron" into the mix, you're begging for something a lot campier than what this movie is going for.
Also, does it seem strange to anyone else that the Decepticons call themselves "Decepticons"? It's like in those old (yes, campy) sci-fi movies, when the evil genius refers to himself as evil. Real-life evil never thinks of itself as evil.
While we're on good old Megatron anyway, I see no need to have brought him back for this movie. If I were ever to write a list of "storytelling best practices", one of the ones at or near the top would be this: if a major villain dies in one installment of a series, there had better be a damned good narrative reason for bringing him/her/it back in the next installment.
That's one of the (several) reasons that Return of the Jedi is the weakest of the Star Wars trilogy. The Death Star was not a compelling villain anymore. We already say it explode spectacularly at the end of Star Wars--and what a great ending it was! The good guys win against all odds, and the Empire is foiled. Return of the Jedi had a lot going on anyway; surely George Lucas and company could have invented something else besides "Death Star Part 2: Revenge of Death Star". Instead, we saw that both George Lucas and Emperor Palpatine were out of new ideas.
In this case, it's Michael Bay and the Decepticons (snicker) who are out of new ideas. The Emperor Palpatine analogy isn't an accident either--the "big villain" of this movie is essentially an Emperor Palpatine knock-off. but is worse in two important ways: 1) he can't shoot lightning from his fingertips, and 2) his name is "the Fallen". Seriously? Seventeen thousand years of plotting revenge against Earth, and the best name for yourself you can invent is "the Fallen".
I can't stand the way this movie paced itself. It finally settled into something resembling coherency toward the end, but at the beginning, we were "treated" to a new scene every few minutes. One minute we're at college with Sam, and the next we're at a motorcycle shop with Megan Fox, and the next we see Satellite Decepticon talking in symbol-speech from deep orbit.
At one point, Sam defiantly tells Optimus Prime that this isn't his war, and he should just be left out of it. He's more right than he can know. Aside from the magical rail gun (I'll talk about it later) toward the end of the movie, it appears that our puny human weapons are utterly useless against the might of the Transformer. So Sam is right in a way he can't possibly comprehend. If the movie is going to do far enough out of its way to make humans suck against the Transformers, then why can't the movie just show two good hours of Transformer-on-Transformer action, double the number of explosions, and half the frequency of Megan Fox's
In fact, the Transformer, with its inherent requirement for this "energon" (snicker), are hardly the alien master race they want us to think they are. That honor would have to go to...
The Plant. This thing can get its own energy from sunlight, which seems way more practical than needing to blow up a sun to procreate.
Now, let's talk geopolitics for a second. At one point in the movie, we're treated to an embarrassingly weak Egypt-Jordan border crossing, which our protagonists are able to get across by giving the Arabic equivalent of "g'day, mate", and proclaiming they're from New York. "That's right, um, we don't have any identification papers, and we're American, and oh yeah, your own intelligence agency is tracking us, but can you please let us through anyway?"
Another "did anyone else notice": what ever happened to the Egyptians who were after Sam? Probably they were abandoned into a plot hole when someone realized that in a fight of Middle Eastern intelligence in one corner and Shia LeBeouf in the other, not a lot of bets are going to get placed in favor of our man.
Geopolitics rears its ugly head once again when the Americans make a drop over Jordanian airspace--then call the Jordanians for help when something goes wrong. In case anyone hadn't noticed, we're not best friends with most of these countries. The thought that they would want to help us after we had the gall to fly unannounced and plop down old Optimus is completely implausible.
And so is the thought of breaking into the Air and Space Museum with three dudes, a girl, and a couple of tasers. And so is some crazy guy with a radio calling a ship captain about his "experimental rail gun technology" and actually getting the captain to use it. And so is the "super-secret hiding place" of the Primes being behind an inch and a half sheet of rock in Petra... and nobody having found it, ever. And so is the idea that you can walk between Petra and the Valley of the Kings in a day or two.
Looking back on the movie, that seems to be a common theme: "hasn't anyone else noticed this incredible implausibility?" Of course we have, and you'd be hard pressed to convince me that the director and writers didn't as well. They must have thought that after watching robots blow each other up for nearly two and half hours, we wouldn't really care.
Incorrect. Turns out that even if you're making a special effects movie, you still need some coherence behind it; you still need a reason to make the movie worth my time and nine dollars. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen lacks that coherence and reason entirely.
Currently listening: "The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us!", Sufjan Stevens, from Illinois
Sunday, June 28, 2009
The Salsa Connoisseur: Trader Jose's "Salsa Autentica"
Think back to the most authentic Mexican restaurant you've ever been to. The one with the least English on the menu, or the loudest telenovela blaring from the TVs at lunch time, or the most actual Mexicans eating there with their families. Remember the salsa that the kindly old woman brought out from the kitchen? Was it some gloppy concoction of beans and corn? Probably not. More likely, it was a simple mixture of tomato, chile, onion, and not much else.
Trader Joe's (or, rather, Trader Jose's) has tried to replicate that, and they've done a pretty darn good job. One thing that you notice immediately about the salsa is its down-to-earth packaging: clear cylindrical jar; yellow top; white, black, and red label. And it tastes good too.
Texture: very good overall. Consistency is smooth and fluid; chunks of tomato and vegetables are small to nonexistent. Thickness is slightly thicker than water. Pours well.
Heat: starts off unassuming and builds to a reasonable heat in a few seconds. Trader Jose describes this as a 5 on an 8-point heat scale, which might be a little much--I'd be more inclined to put it at 4. No argument that it's a solidly "medium" heat salsa.
Flavor: unassuming, tangy, slightly generic tomato sauce flavor at first. Heat and chile flavor builds soon and is the highlight of the taste. Subtle earthy or "harvest" aftertaste. This salsa has only five ingredients: tomatoes, chiles, vinegar, salt, and spices, and that works in its favor.
Available at Trader Joe's; $1.69 buys you a 12-oz bottle (14.1 cents per ounce), which is really pretty cheap.
Definitely recommended, especially for a simple, basic, and cheap salsa that's really tasty. Also good if you don't like a garlicky salsa or an overly onion-y salsa.
Currently listening: "Summersong", the Decemberists
The Salsa Connoisseur: Introduction
If you've ever looked into wine appreciation, then you might agree with me that it's a hotbed of pretension. Terms like "bouquet" and "nose", flavors like "leather" and "tobacco", and phrases like "antithetical to the passion" abound. And recently, this sort of thing isn't even limited to wine--you can see it in other alcoholic beverages (whiskies and microbrew beers are popular), non-alcoholic beverages (coffee), and foodstuffs (often cheese and chocolate).
So if you can take a critical, almost artistic approach to describing everything else you can eat and drink, why not salsa? I'm a huge fan of the "sauce/condiment" category in general, and salsa is among my favorite ones of those. Over the last several years, I've sampled probably dozens of different kinds, and I've identified three qualities that make a salsa good.
First, the perfect salsa is uniform and has well-distributed ingredients. In general, that means I prefer fluid salsas to chunkier ones. I like my tomato to be blended into the salsa--the base for the salsa, if you will--and pieces of tomato should be small to negligible. The perfect salsa should be more viscous than water but never syrupy.
Second, the perfect salsa balances heat with flavor. A salsa should never sacrifice tasting good to get more tongue-scorching power. That said, it should always be spicy enough to convince me that I'm eating a salsa rather than a "dip" or "sauce". In general, this means I prefer salsas in the "medium" to "hot" range, but I'm okay with "ridiculous" as long as it still tastes like something.
Third, the perfect salsa uses sensible, quality ingredients. Salsas today have all sorts of bizarre, eye-catching ingredients, but they can cross over into "gimmicky" really easily. That means I prefer a salsa that has generic but high-quality ingredients to one that tries to throw in fruit but ends up muddling the salsa flavor. And never, ever add sugar.
In what I hope becomes a semi-regular feature in Isoceleria, the salsa connoisseur will review various salsas and treat them to pretentious wine-style reviews in a manner that's only halfway tongue-in-cheek. Look forward to the premiere installment, "Trader Joe's Salsa Autentica", coming soon.
Currently listening: "The Fisherman Song", Mae
So if you can take a critical, almost artistic approach to describing everything else you can eat and drink, why not salsa? I'm a huge fan of the "sauce/condiment" category in general, and salsa is among my favorite ones of those. Over the last several years, I've sampled probably dozens of different kinds, and I've identified three qualities that make a salsa good.
First, the perfect salsa is uniform and has well-distributed ingredients. In general, that means I prefer fluid salsas to chunkier ones. I like my tomato to be blended into the salsa--the base for the salsa, if you will--and pieces of tomato should be small to negligible. The perfect salsa should be more viscous than water but never syrupy.
Second, the perfect salsa balances heat with flavor. A salsa should never sacrifice tasting good to get more tongue-scorching power. That said, it should always be spicy enough to convince me that I'm eating a salsa rather than a "dip" or "sauce". In general, this means I prefer salsas in the "medium" to "hot" range, but I'm okay with "ridiculous" as long as it still tastes like something.
Third, the perfect salsa uses sensible, quality ingredients. Salsas today have all sorts of bizarre, eye-catching ingredients, but they can cross over into "gimmicky" really easily. That means I prefer a salsa that has generic but high-quality ingredients to one that tries to throw in fruit but ends up muddling the salsa flavor. And never, ever add sugar.
In what I hope becomes a semi-regular feature in Isoceleria, the salsa connoisseur will review various salsas and treat them to pretentious wine-style reviews in a manner that's only halfway tongue-in-cheek. Look forward to the premiere installment, "Trader Joe's Salsa Autentica", coming soon.
Currently listening: "The Fisherman Song", Mae
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Cell Phones on TV: Seinfeld and Harper's Island
There's no question that "The Bubble Boy" is one of the all-time great Seinfeld episodes. Of course, everyone remembers it for the titular Donald, his struggles with George, and George's insistence that the "Moops" actually invaded Spain in the 8th century.
Then there's the Ross family cabin, which every Seinfeld fan knows burns down at some point, but how many Seinfeld fans remember it happened in "The Bubble Boy"? And then there are subplots, minor character details that aren't easy to remember but are hilarious: Jerry's obsession with making his messages on his autographed pictures funny. George's obsession with "making good time". Kramer's obsession with pies.
But I couldn't help think of something as I watched this episode last week. The entire premise of this episode's humor just disappears if Seinfeld were being aired just a decade or two later. "The Bubble Boy" first aired in 1992. But pretend it's 2002, a mere 10 years later, instead. Now, when George speeds ahead of Jerry on the way to the Bubble Boy's house, Jerry can simply pick up his cell phone, call George, and ask him for the directions to the house.
To extrapolate further, what if the episode aired in 2007, fifteen years after it actually did? In that case, Jerry probably would have had a GPS that he could simply program the address into, eliminating the need to call George at all. And if it were 2012, twenty years later, presumably someone would have had a smartphone: type the address into the phone at the restaurant, click the address once you got into the car, and you only need one device instead of two. (By 2012, maybe smartphones will have the capacity for vocalized, real-time updating, turn-by-turn directions, like legit GPS does.)
Then it occurred to me: hasn't someone already covered this, making a list of all the Seinfeld episodes that just get about half as funny if all the central characters had cell phones? I can't find that list, so if anyone knows if/where it exists, please let me know. The closest thing I found is a compilation of why Seinfeld doesn't work with the iPhone. It's a good read, though it's far from comprehensive--"The Dinner Party" (aka the babka episode) immediately comes to mind as an omission, as does just about every episode involving an airport.
The point, though, is a solid one. It took only 10 years to develop a technology that completely changes the comedic landscape of the series. It's taken less than 20 to improve that technology so much that it offers not one, but two or three or more ways around most of its otherwise-funny stumbling blocks.
Another show that has a touchy relationship with cell phones is Harper's Island, a midsummer murder mystery that I've been sucked into lately thanks to one Alex Harkey. I'll talk more about the show in a few weeks, once it's run its course, but for now I'd like to talk about how cell phones change that show.
One of the necessary conceits for any murder mystery involves getting the victims alone for long enough for the murderer to do his dirty work. Of course this in turn involves having the characters "split up", whether it's to do a scavenger hunt, or to traipse off into the woods for whatever reason, or to look for a missing child. One way that characters have been isolated from each other in Harper's Island is through a number of old hunting traps--snares, pits, etc.
At some point, though, if you're caught in a snare and hanging upside down by your foot, aren't you going to pull out your cell phone? Call someone else on the island and say "hey, I was walking alone in the woods--stupid, I know--and I got caught in this trap. You want to come help me?" Harper's Island skirts this issue by explaining that "most of the island doesn't get good reception."
For now, in 2009, we're willing to buy that reasoning. If it were ten years ago, in 1999, it would be especially valid, and there might even be some characters that simply didn't have them. Twenty years ago, 1989, cell phones would have been entirely unknown. What about in 2019, or 2029? I'd bet that twenty years from now, phone technology will have advanced so much that service will be nearly ubiquitous, and that the "bad reception" argument won't carry any water at all.
Currently listening: "Strawberry Fields Forever", the Beatles
Then there's the Ross family cabin, which every Seinfeld fan knows burns down at some point, but how many Seinfeld fans remember it happened in "The Bubble Boy"? And then there are subplots, minor character details that aren't easy to remember but are hilarious: Jerry's obsession with making his messages on his autographed pictures funny. George's obsession with "making good time". Kramer's obsession with pies.
But I couldn't help think of something as I watched this episode last week. The entire premise of this episode's humor just disappears if Seinfeld were being aired just a decade or two later. "The Bubble Boy" first aired in 1992. But pretend it's 2002, a mere 10 years later, instead. Now, when George speeds ahead of Jerry on the way to the Bubble Boy's house, Jerry can simply pick up his cell phone, call George, and ask him for the directions to the house.
To extrapolate further, what if the episode aired in 2007, fifteen years after it actually did? In that case, Jerry probably would have had a GPS that he could simply program the address into, eliminating the need to call George at all. And if it were 2012, twenty years later, presumably someone would have had a smartphone: type the address into the phone at the restaurant, click the address once you got into the car, and you only need one device instead of two. (By 2012, maybe smartphones will have the capacity for vocalized, real-time updating, turn-by-turn directions, like legit GPS does.)
Then it occurred to me: hasn't someone already covered this, making a list of all the Seinfeld episodes that just get about half as funny if all the central characters had cell phones? I can't find that list, so if anyone knows if/where it exists, please let me know. The closest thing I found is a compilation of why Seinfeld doesn't work with the iPhone. It's a good read, though it's far from comprehensive--"The Dinner Party" (aka the babka episode) immediately comes to mind as an omission, as does just about every episode involving an airport.
The point, though, is a solid one. It took only 10 years to develop a technology that completely changes the comedic landscape of the series. It's taken less than 20 to improve that technology so much that it offers not one, but two or three or more ways around most of its otherwise-funny stumbling blocks.
Another show that has a touchy relationship with cell phones is Harper's Island, a midsummer murder mystery that I've been sucked into lately thanks to one Alex Harkey. I'll talk more about the show in a few weeks, once it's run its course, but for now I'd like to talk about how cell phones change that show.
One of the necessary conceits for any murder mystery involves getting the victims alone for long enough for the murderer to do his dirty work. Of course this in turn involves having the characters "split up", whether it's to do a scavenger hunt, or to traipse off into the woods for whatever reason, or to look for a missing child. One way that characters have been isolated from each other in Harper's Island is through a number of old hunting traps--snares, pits, etc.
At some point, though, if you're caught in a snare and hanging upside down by your foot, aren't you going to pull out your cell phone? Call someone else on the island and say "hey, I was walking alone in the woods--stupid, I know--and I got caught in this trap. You want to come help me?" Harper's Island skirts this issue by explaining that "most of the island doesn't get good reception."
For now, in 2009, we're willing to buy that reasoning. If it were ten years ago, in 1999, it would be especially valid, and there might even be some characters that simply didn't have them. Twenty years ago, 1989, cell phones would have been entirely unknown. What about in 2019, or 2029? I'd bet that twenty years from now, phone technology will have advanced so much that service will be nearly ubiquitous, and that the "bad reception" argument won't carry any water at all.
Currently listening: "Strawberry Fields Forever", the Beatles
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Mae: The (M)orning EP
Mae's current project is a completely different mode of song writing, production, and distribution than the traditional EP/full-length record/single we're used to. The gist is this: one song a month, which you can listen to for free on the website, then buy for a dollar. Three times this year--in the (m)orning, the (a)fternoon, and the (e)vening (ie, spring, summer, and fall)--the songs will be compiled onto an EP, along with a bit of extra material.
The other cool thing is that the proceeds from these music sales are donated to causes. And happily they're not political causes, which Mae must have identified as being far too divisive to drive sales. They're causes that actually do good things, like Habitat for Humanity and textbooks for children.
If all this sounds like it might have been an "apology tour" for Singularity, you're not the only one thinking that.
The place where Mae succeeds the most on (M)orning is in its evocation of a mood. The morning is related to hope, awakening, and--probably most importantly to the band--rebirth. We're reminded of those motifs constantly throughout the EP, not only lyrically but aurally, when birds start chirping at every turn.
Those birds are more pleasant than they might seem at first, but the album does teeter on the edge of "gimmicky" through gapless playback and weird sound effects that often end the tracks. But if that's the album's greatest flaw--and it is on (M)orning--then things could be a lot worse.
Mae combines music that sounds like it could have been at home on Singularity in the first two "monthly" tracks, "The House That Fire Built" and "Boomerang"--though they're both a lot better than just about anything from Singularity. "A Melody, The Memory" and "Night/Day" are classic Mae, combining Destination: Beautiful and Everglow cues. "Two Birds" is a curious flute-laden instrumental track that would have been out of place on any of the earlier albums, but inexplicably works in the middle of the morning.
But the track that I'm most excited about, especially if it represents a new direction for Mae, is "The Fisherman Song (We All Need Love)". Right away, it recalls the Beatles ("All You Need is Love") in its title, and that's never a bad thing. It starts off innocently enough with acoustic guitars that provide background to a musician struggling at night to write a song. As the song progresses, the man meets a (possibly crazy) fisherman who gives him some jumpy punk rock inspiration. And finally, in the epic-electric guitar finale, he finishes his song, presumably right as the sun rises ("when the light came on").
I think this is a song that you can interpret however you need to, in the vein of the best of the songs from The Everglow. You can just listen to it as a story, or it can be a metaphor about reaching out and helping people, simply because it's the right thing to do. Or, if you're spiritually-minded, I think this works as a song about Jesus too. The choice of the mysterious inspirational figure as a fisherman I don't think is random. Neither is the fact that he extols the virtues of "faith" and "hope" before declaring "the greatest of these is love."
That's a message that echoes throughout the EP: "we all need love." It's an exultantly positive message, which we Mae fans all needed after Singularity. Is this new EP better than The Everglow? Even as "close to as good as" The Everglow? Probably not. But it's nearly as good as Destination: Beautiful, and more importantly, it's a positive direction for Mae's music, one that should leave fans optimistically awaiting the (A)fternoon.
Currently listening: "Here Comes the Sun", the Beatles
The other cool thing is that the proceeds from these music sales are donated to causes. And happily they're not political causes, which Mae must have identified as being far too divisive to drive sales. They're causes that actually do good things, like Habitat for Humanity and textbooks for children.
If all this sounds like it might have been an "apology tour" for Singularity, you're not the only one thinking that.
The place where Mae succeeds the most on (M)orning is in its evocation of a mood. The morning is related to hope, awakening, and--probably most importantly to the band--rebirth. We're reminded of those motifs constantly throughout the EP, not only lyrically but aurally, when birds start chirping at every turn.
Those birds are more pleasant than they might seem at first, but the album does teeter on the edge of "gimmicky" through gapless playback and weird sound effects that often end the tracks. But if that's the album's greatest flaw--and it is on (M)orning--then things could be a lot worse.
Mae combines music that sounds like it could have been at home on Singularity in the first two "monthly" tracks, "The House That Fire Built" and "Boomerang"--though they're both a lot better than just about anything from Singularity. "A Melody, The Memory" and "Night/Day" are classic Mae, combining Destination: Beautiful and Everglow cues. "Two Birds" is a curious flute-laden instrumental track that would have been out of place on any of the earlier albums, but inexplicably works in the middle of the morning.
But the track that I'm most excited about, especially if it represents a new direction for Mae, is "The Fisherman Song (We All Need Love)". Right away, it recalls the Beatles ("All You Need is Love") in its title, and that's never a bad thing. It starts off innocently enough with acoustic guitars that provide background to a musician struggling at night to write a song. As the song progresses, the man meets a (possibly crazy) fisherman who gives him some jumpy punk rock inspiration. And finally, in the epic-electric guitar finale, he finishes his song, presumably right as the sun rises ("when the light came on").
I think this is a song that you can interpret however you need to, in the vein of the best of the songs from The Everglow. You can just listen to it as a story, or it can be a metaphor about reaching out and helping people, simply because it's the right thing to do. Or, if you're spiritually-minded, I think this works as a song about Jesus too. The choice of the mysterious inspirational figure as a fisherman I don't think is random. Neither is the fact that he extols the virtues of "faith" and "hope" before declaring "the greatest of these is love."
That's a message that echoes throughout the EP: "we all need love." It's an exultantly positive message, which we Mae fans all needed after Singularity. Is this new EP better than The Everglow? Even as "close to as good as" The Everglow? Probably not. But it's nearly as good as Destination: Beautiful, and more importantly, it's a positive direction for Mae's music, one that should leave fans optimistically awaiting the (A)fternoon.
Currently listening: "Here Comes the Sun", the Beatles
Saturday, June 06, 2009
Thoughts on the Plus/Minus Grading Scheme
Before last Wednesday's Decemberists concert, I talked with my friend Patrick and some of his friends about how their education was going at that mortal and ancient enemy of mine, the University of Georgia.
One topic that came up--and it's come up in conversations with people from other schools, too--is the "plus/minus" grading scale. It's my opinion that the plus/minus system is only moderately beneficial in some cases, but that benefit is far outweighed by prohibitive flaws at both extremes of the scale.
Let's take a student, Steven. He's a good student who does well most of the time, never outright excelling, but never failing either. In a recent semester, Steven took four classes, and he got a B in each one. In two of the classes, he was right in the meat of the "B" part of the curve. In the third, he never really understood one of the units of the class, and he was lucky to scrape by with a B. And in the fourth, he really got into the class and participated a lot, but based on his test scores, the professor couldn't in good conscience give him an A.
Assuming these four classes are equally weighted toward his GPA, he's got a 3.0. Now, what if the plus/minus system were introduced?
The first two classes, Steven would still have B's. In the third, the professor wouldn't want to give him a C, but seeing his poor performance on one third of the class, he feels completely justified in giving a B-. And in the last class, though the professor couldn't justify an A, Steven's enthusiasm might push him up to a B+. So, with the additional assumption that the "plus" is as "positive" as the "minus" is "negative", Steven's GPA is still 3.0.
A supporter of the system would argue that this is exactly why the system is good. There's no net movement up or down, and it gives an outside observer an understanding of Steven's accomplishments that's both more precise and more accurate than the standard A/B/C/D/F system.
But what about shifting all those grades up one letter? Take Leon, who really does excel in most all of his classes. He also took four classes last semester. Leon rode the top of the curve in two of them, getting a solid A in each. He fell a little behind in this third, and after a rough final performance, was lucky to keep his perfect semester intact. In the fourth class, though, Leon didn't merely ride the top of the curve--he was "that guy" that ruined it for the rest of the class.
Obviously, on the standard scale, Leon has himself a 4.0. What about with plus/minus? First two classes, Leon's secure with his A's. In the third class, though, the professor might punish the less-than-stellar finals performance with an A-. But what about the fourth? No matter how much the professor might want to give our man Leon an A+, the A+ does not exist in most conceptions of the plus/minus system.
Steven's grades were normally distributed about "B", so under either grading system, his GPA was 3.0. But even though Leon's grades are normally distributed about "A", when pluses and minuses are added, his GPA drops to 3.925. Therefore, for students at the top of the grade scale, the net effect on GPA is neutral at best and negative at worst.
Now let's take the grades in the other direction. Ronald hasn't been doing particularly well--he got C's in his four classes. We'll say those C's were in the same manner as Steven's B's and Leon's A's--that is, two "middle C's", one "high C", and one "low C/borderline D". His GPA is 2.0 under the standard system. And, because Ronald's grades are normally distributed about "C", and because C+ and C- both exist, his GPA is still 2.0 under plus/minus.
But the fact that C- represents a 1.7 might raise some issues. For instance, what if that C- were in a major class? Most majors require a certain GPA in their major in addition to a certain overall GPA. That 1.7 could have detrimental effects on the major GPA a lot more than a 2.0 could--particularly because 2.0 is a favorite cutoff mark for "passing" versus "not".
For most students, plus/minus doesn't hurt or help more than a tiny fraction of a point. However, it does have the potential to significantly harm GPA of students at the top of the scale (because of the lack of an A+) and students on the brink of passing (because the C- hurts significantly more than the C+ helps).
Is there another argument in favor of plus/minus that I'm missing? Does anyone think it's justified despite these weaknesses?
Currently listening: Handel on the Law (in handy podcast form)
One topic that came up--and it's come up in conversations with people from other schools, too--is the "plus/minus" grading scale. It's my opinion that the plus/minus system is only moderately beneficial in some cases, but that benefit is far outweighed by prohibitive flaws at both extremes of the scale.
Let's take a student, Steven. He's a good student who does well most of the time, never outright excelling, but never failing either. In a recent semester, Steven took four classes, and he got a B in each one. In two of the classes, he was right in the meat of the "B" part of the curve. In the third, he never really understood one of the units of the class, and he was lucky to scrape by with a B. And in the fourth, he really got into the class and participated a lot, but based on his test scores, the professor couldn't in good conscience give him an A.
Assuming these four classes are equally weighted toward his GPA, he's got a 3.0. Now, what if the plus/minus system were introduced?
The first two classes, Steven would still have B's. In the third, the professor wouldn't want to give him a C, but seeing his poor performance on one third of the class, he feels completely justified in giving a B-. And in the last class, though the professor couldn't justify an A, Steven's enthusiasm might push him up to a B+. So, with the additional assumption that the "plus" is as "positive" as the "minus" is "negative", Steven's GPA is still 3.0.
A supporter of the system would argue that this is exactly why the system is good. There's no net movement up or down, and it gives an outside observer an understanding of Steven's accomplishments that's both more precise and more accurate than the standard A/B/C/D/F system.
But what about shifting all those grades up one letter? Take Leon, who really does excel in most all of his classes. He also took four classes last semester. Leon rode the top of the curve in two of them, getting a solid A in each. He fell a little behind in this third, and after a rough final performance, was lucky to keep his perfect semester intact. In the fourth class, though, Leon didn't merely ride the top of the curve--he was "that guy" that ruined it for the rest of the class.
Obviously, on the standard scale, Leon has himself a 4.0. What about with plus/minus? First two classes, Leon's secure with his A's. In the third class, though, the professor might punish the less-than-stellar finals performance with an A-. But what about the fourth? No matter how much the professor might want to give our man Leon an A+, the A+ does not exist in most conceptions of the plus/minus system.
Steven's grades were normally distributed about "B", so under either grading system, his GPA was 3.0. But even though Leon's grades are normally distributed about "A", when pluses and minuses are added, his GPA drops to 3.925. Therefore, for students at the top of the grade scale, the net effect on GPA is neutral at best and negative at worst.
Now let's take the grades in the other direction. Ronald hasn't been doing particularly well--he got C's in his four classes. We'll say those C's were in the same manner as Steven's B's and Leon's A's--that is, two "middle C's", one "high C", and one "low C/borderline D". His GPA is 2.0 under the standard system. And, because Ronald's grades are normally distributed about "C", and because C+ and C- both exist, his GPA is still 2.0 under plus/minus.
But the fact that C- represents a 1.7 might raise some issues. For instance, what if that C- were in a major class? Most majors require a certain GPA in their major in addition to a certain overall GPA. That 1.7 could have detrimental effects on the major GPA a lot more than a 2.0 could--particularly because 2.0 is a favorite cutoff mark for "passing" versus "not".
For most students, plus/minus doesn't hurt or help more than a tiny fraction of a point. However, it does have the potential to significantly harm GPA of students at the top of the scale (because of the lack of an A+) and students on the brink of passing (because the C- hurts significantly more than the C+ helps).
Is there another argument in favor of plus/minus that I'm missing? Does anyone think it's justified despite these weaknesses?
Currently listening: Handel on the Law (in handy podcast form)
Thursday, June 04, 2009
The Hazards of Love, Live
If you're a Decemberists fan, like the new album and have a chance to catch the Hazards of Love tour, by all means do. The format is this: Hazards of Love in its entirety, about twenty minutes' (well-deserved) break for the band, and then roughly an hour of old music too.
I've been a big, big supporter of Hazards of Love since I first heard it, but after hearing this concert, I don't know how you could dislike the album. Most of what I said in my review of the album still stands, with a few new observations.
The band does a wonderful job, as it always does in concert. Becky Stark (of Lavender Diamond, who plays the role of Margaret) is excellent. But it's Shara Worden (of My Brightest Diamond, who plays the role of the Queen) who really steals the show with her stage antics. Excellently cast.
Colin Meloy and Shara Worden, my new favorite person. Who knew the brooding, villainous Forest Queen was so short and cute?
Listening to the album by itself, I've been finding it easier and easier to stop listening after "Annan Water", because the songs seem to get less exciting after that. But remembering the theatrical conceit, of course the songs should get less exciting after "The Crossing", which is the climax of the story. (Specifically, I think it's the cool rock organ/electric guitar bit that really seems like a sonic destination for the album.) Seeing the whole production live, those songs become not only necessary but narratively interesting.
Because the framework of the album is more theater than pop record, this is a collection of songs that really does improve when you see it live. We get scenery, costuming, lighting effects. To carry out the stage performance a few steps further, it might have been cool to do some scene changes--though the background pulled off both "forest" (with green lighting) and "river" (with blue lighting).
This probably strains the upper limit of feasibility, but how about recasting the entire staging to put the band in a pit, orchestra-style? Obviously, the point of the pit is to hide the orchestra, and the point of a live concert is to watch the band. I'm not advocating covering up the band, but maybe there's a spatial organization that creates visual distinction between the "actors" (Colin Meloy and/or Shara Worden and/or Becky Stark, depending on who's important at the time) and the "band" (John Moen, Chris Funk, Nate Query, Jenny Conlee).
And as long as we're going over the top anyway, how about live fireflies?
The rest of the show promised a "tidy selection" of old material, but we ended up with as much material is in Hazards of Love--not that that's a bad thing by any means! The general aim seemed to be to hit a highlight or two from each old album.
If I were momentarily in charge of picking the Decemberists' set list, and I knew that the goal was two songs from The Crane Wife, I certainly wouldn't have picked "O Valencia!" and "Shankhill Butchers". Personally, I'm partial to "The Island", but since that's stylistically very similar to The Hazards of Love, I can understand the not wanting to play it. That restriction probably rules out and of the "Crane Wife" cycle too.
With those constraints in mind, the obvious next choice is "Yankee Bayonet". It's not a song that's easy to perform on tour--you absolutely need a female vocalist to cover the duet part, or the song doesn't work at all. On this tour, though, we have not one but two talented female vocalists, so the Decemberists could have taken their pick--or used them both. I also like "Summersong" a lot, but that one never seemed to catch on with the general fan base as much as I think it should have. Failing "Summersong", I guess "O Valencia!" is an acceptable substitute. I never really got into "Shankhill Butchers", though. I think it's too much buildup, too much brooding tension, and no payoff.
On the other hand, if I had to pick two songs from Picaresque, "The Engine Driver" and "16 Military Wives" would have been up there on my list as well as the Decemberists'. I don't agree with putting politics into music in almost any case, but damned if the Decemberists don't make "16 Military Wives" fun to sing in person. They probably do the "pit halves of the audience against each other" during the "la di dah" bit of the chorus at every show... and it never gets less awesome. (Do they ever perform "The Infanta" on tour? It was the first Decemberists song I heard and still among my favorites.)
The crowd's tepid response to "Raincoat Song" showed how few people payed attention to Always the Bridesmaid. It was pleasant if not particularly memorable. I was surprised to hear "Shiny", which has been around for something like nine years now, and I get the idea it's not oft-performed on tour. Probably the Decemberists just seized the opportunity of "well, we have this steel guitar around, so let's do something with it." I sort of psyched myself into thinking we'd get "California One" too, as long as the steel guitar was just sitting there, but no such luck.
"July, July!" is still one of the most fun songs the Decemberists do, so I was glad to see it show up. "The Bachelor and the Bride" is still not my favorite song, but at least it sounded good. And I wonder if they end most shows with "A Cautionary Song", or if they just coincidentally did at both of the shows I've been to? Those two accordion chords are a darn fine way to end a show.
One thing that absolutely deserves mention is the Decemberists' improv theater. You've got Colin Meloy on stage, backed up by Jenny Conlee on accordion and Nate Query on bass. Chris Funk, John Moen, Shara Worden, and Becky Stark are standing in front of the stage, and Colin Meloy starts making up a story about trains and gypsies. In true "Whose Line" style, the actors and the music change in time with what Meloy calls out. The result is something profoundly entertaining and something that gives further proof--as if we needed it--as to the Decemberists' artistic mastery.
Currently listening: "Don't Bring Me Down", Electric Light Orchestra
I've been a big, big supporter of Hazards of Love since I first heard it, but after hearing this concert, I don't know how you could dislike the album. Most of what I said in my review of the album still stands, with a few new observations.
The band does a wonderful job, as it always does in concert. Becky Stark (of Lavender Diamond, who plays the role of Margaret) is excellent. But it's Shara Worden (of My Brightest Diamond, who plays the role of the Queen) who really steals the show with her stage antics. Excellently cast.
Colin Meloy and Shara Worden, my new favorite person. Who knew the brooding, villainous Forest Queen was so short and cute?
Listening to the album by itself, I've been finding it easier and easier to stop listening after "Annan Water", because the songs seem to get less exciting after that. But remembering the theatrical conceit, of course the songs should get less exciting after "The Crossing", which is the climax of the story. (Specifically, I think it's the cool rock organ/electric guitar bit that really seems like a sonic destination for the album.) Seeing the whole production live, those songs become not only necessary but narratively interesting.
Because the framework of the album is more theater than pop record, this is a collection of songs that really does improve when you see it live. We get scenery, costuming, lighting effects. To carry out the stage performance a few steps further, it might have been cool to do some scene changes--though the background pulled off both "forest" (with green lighting) and "river" (with blue lighting).
This probably strains the upper limit of feasibility, but how about recasting the entire staging to put the band in a pit, orchestra-style? Obviously, the point of the pit is to hide the orchestra, and the point of a live concert is to watch the band. I'm not advocating covering up the band, but maybe there's a spatial organization that creates visual distinction between the "actors" (Colin Meloy and/or Shara Worden and/or Becky Stark, depending on who's important at the time) and the "band" (John Moen, Chris Funk, Nate Query, Jenny Conlee).
And as long as we're going over the top anyway, how about live fireflies?
The rest of the show promised a "tidy selection" of old material, but we ended up with as much material is in Hazards of Love--not that that's a bad thing by any means! The general aim seemed to be to hit a highlight or two from each old album.
If I were momentarily in charge of picking the Decemberists' set list, and I knew that the goal was two songs from The Crane Wife, I certainly wouldn't have picked "O Valencia!" and "Shankhill Butchers". Personally, I'm partial to "The Island", but since that's stylistically very similar to The Hazards of Love, I can understand the not wanting to play it. That restriction probably rules out and of the "Crane Wife" cycle too.
With those constraints in mind, the obvious next choice is "Yankee Bayonet". It's not a song that's easy to perform on tour--you absolutely need a female vocalist to cover the duet part, or the song doesn't work at all. On this tour, though, we have not one but two talented female vocalists, so the Decemberists could have taken their pick--or used them both. I also like "Summersong" a lot, but that one never seemed to catch on with the general fan base as much as I think it should have. Failing "Summersong", I guess "O Valencia!" is an acceptable substitute. I never really got into "Shankhill Butchers", though. I think it's too much buildup, too much brooding tension, and no payoff.
On the other hand, if I had to pick two songs from Picaresque, "The Engine Driver" and "16 Military Wives" would have been up there on my list as well as the Decemberists'. I don't agree with putting politics into music in almost any case, but damned if the Decemberists don't make "16 Military Wives" fun to sing in person. They probably do the "pit halves of the audience against each other" during the "la di dah" bit of the chorus at every show... and it never gets less awesome. (Do they ever perform "The Infanta" on tour? It was the first Decemberists song I heard and still among my favorites.)
The crowd's tepid response to "Raincoat Song" showed how few people payed attention to Always the Bridesmaid. It was pleasant if not particularly memorable. I was surprised to hear "Shiny", which has been around for something like nine years now, and I get the idea it's not oft-performed on tour. Probably the Decemberists just seized the opportunity of "well, we have this steel guitar around, so let's do something with it." I sort of psyched myself into thinking we'd get "California One" too, as long as the steel guitar was just sitting there, but no such luck.
"July, July!" is still one of the most fun songs the Decemberists do, so I was glad to see it show up. "The Bachelor and the Bride" is still not my favorite song, but at least it sounded good. And I wonder if they end most shows with "A Cautionary Song", or if they just coincidentally did at both of the shows I've been to? Those two accordion chords are a darn fine way to end a show.
One thing that absolutely deserves mention is the Decemberists' improv theater. You've got Colin Meloy on stage, backed up by Jenny Conlee on accordion and Nate Query on bass. Chris Funk, John Moen, Shara Worden, and Becky Stark are standing in front of the stage, and Colin Meloy starts making up a story about trains and gypsies. In true "Whose Line" style, the actors and the music change in time with what Meloy calls out. The result is something profoundly entertaining and something that gives further proof--as if we needed it--as to the Decemberists' artistic mastery.
Currently listening: "Don't Bring Me Down", Electric Light Orchestra
Monday, June 01, 2009
Response to xkcd 588
I'm not really sure about all this discussion going about this comic on at the forum. Like almost everyone there, when I was in high school, I saw pep rallies as a colossal waste of time. But I never found them as particularly offensive either, which seems to be a minority viewpoint among the xkcd fans.
In the comic, Randall suggests that pep rallies are actually a vehicle of hatred, and at least a plurality of xkcd fans enthusiastically support this notion, with the argument culminating in one poster describing pep rallies as an "Orwellian channeling" of hatred. But I think anyone who thinks that the point of a pep rally is to encourage "hating the other school" is missing the point of the pep rally. Opposition to the "other" school is merely the most convenient commonality shared by all the students of the "one" school.
So if the pep rally isn't designed to foster hate of the other school, what is the point of the pep rally? I'd say it's much more about having pride in your own school. It's about community and finding common ground. That's something a sociologist might describe as a "solidarity ritual". What happens in the "ritual" (ie, the apparent hatred of another school) isn't nearly as important as what happens to the participants of the "ritual". In a pep rally, that effect is to achieve some sort of unity with their peers.
The comic itself raises the issue that school district assignment is not by choice, that it's essentially an arbitrary grouping based on where you live. An earlier poster expanded on that argument, saying that having pride in one's high school might make more sense if you'd chosen your high school based on some distinguishing characteristic. It's true that high schools, unlike colleges and corporations and nations, do not--and cannot--distinguish themselves from peer institutions through philosophical or operational differences. But that is not a reason that you shouldn't be able, and encouraged, to take pride in your school.
This comic, and the discussion it's spawned, touches on two important points about the American educational system. The first is that primary and secondary (and to a lesser extent, post-secondary) education is designed not only to educate, but also to socialize. It's an important mission of the school system that much of the fact-oriented, left-brainy xkcd community either doesn't recognize or has chosen to ignore. Once you do reach an organization that you want to have pride in--be that a college or corporation or anything else--these pep rallies have given you a social education that has enabled you to have that pride.
The second issue is the often-fractious nature of high school social grouping. Virtually everyone in our society has been in high school at some point, and yet there are wildly diverging opinions about whether the "Saved By The Bell" depiction of high school social structure is accurate or not. Many of the comments on this comic were not actually comments on pep rallies. Instead, they were used to dovetail into complaints about the high school social order, for example, "these cheerleaders would in real life never talk to me since I was a huge nerd, why should I listen to these people who treat me and the majority of the rest of the students poorly?" These complaints are worth hearing and probably valid, but here they only serve to confuse the issue.
What about those jocks, though? Aren't they the most likely people to develop a genuine hatred of another school through a pep rally? Maybe they are, and I'd argue that they're missing the point of the pep rally as well. But pep rallies are not--nor are they designed to be--"Orwellian". They're not "tribalism", nor a conspiracy to divert discontent away from your own school's administration. They're certainly neither "creepy" nor "fascist". They're a legitimate and necessary function of secondary education. And for students who actually try to get something out of them, they can be valuable ways to build some connections with peers and pride in the local community.
Besides, who didn't like getting out of class for an hour?
Currently listening: "The Next Episode", Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Crossword Conundrum
One more observation from my recent trip to London: foreign crosswords are really, really hard. Of course a crossword in a foreign language is going to be tough--I took a couple semesters of French, plus I studied abroad in France for three months, and I couldn't even conceive of trying a crossword en Francais. In fact, the very prospect of having to link a word by "e accent grave" is terrifying.
But crosswords in English, that's a different story. I've grown to be a pretty enthusiastic crossworder, and I've found through four years of engineering school that the daily crossword is the best way to keep my verbal mind sharp. My classmates evidently agreed with me, and before the end of my undergrad career, we turned the crossword into a daily post-senior-design therapy session.
At the very end of the semester, a handful of crossword teammates and I finally reached our goal of completing the Friday crossword in under 10 minutes, and that was at least as big an accomplishment as finishing the senior design project. So by this point, I actually consider myself not only enthusiastic but also reasonably adept.
All of that confidence in my crosswording abilities turned out to be completely moot once I reached jolly old England, and I found a few reasons why that's the case.
Clue formatting style. American crosswords, like the USA Today crossword that's become pretty much the gold standard in American crosswording, have clues that are phrases as opposed to words, quips or clever statements as opposed to synonyms, and typically three to six letters as opposed to anywhere from three to twelve.
Vocabulary. Say you had the clue "Fast food (8)", and you knew the last letter was "y". This would be immediately recognizable to an English crossworder as "takeaway". But an American puzzler would have a hell of a time trying to figure out how that "y" fit as the last letter of "carryout".
Grid layout. The American style crossword grid makes each word highly dependent on other words: a five-letter word is almost always going to intersect five other words. The British mode is sparser, making elusive clues more difficult to decipher because you have less help.
Want an example? Check out a Guardian crossword as opposed to a USA Today one.
Currently listening: This is the Life, Amy MacDonald
But crosswords in English, that's a different story. I've grown to be a pretty enthusiastic crossworder, and I've found through four years of engineering school that the daily crossword is the best way to keep my verbal mind sharp. My classmates evidently agreed with me, and before the end of my undergrad career, we turned the crossword into a daily post-senior-design therapy session.
At the very end of the semester, a handful of crossword teammates and I finally reached our goal of completing the Friday crossword in under 10 minutes, and that was at least as big an accomplishment as finishing the senior design project. So by this point, I actually consider myself not only enthusiastic but also reasonably adept.
All of that confidence in my crosswording abilities turned out to be completely moot once I reached jolly old England, and I found a few reasons why that's the case.
Clue formatting style. American crosswords, like the USA Today crossword that's become pretty much the gold standard in American crosswording, have clues that are phrases as opposed to words, quips or clever statements as opposed to synonyms, and typically three to six letters as opposed to anywhere from three to twelve.
Vocabulary. Say you had the clue "Fast food (8)", and you knew the last letter was "y". This would be immediately recognizable to an English crossworder as "takeaway". But an American puzzler would have a hell of a time trying to figure out how that "y" fit as the last letter of "carryout".
Grid layout. The American style crossword grid makes each word highly dependent on other words: a five-letter word is almost always going to intersect five other words. The British mode is sparser, making elusive clues more difficult to decipher because you have less help.
Want an example? Check out a Guardian crossword as opposed to a USA Today one.
Currently listening: This is the Life, Amy MacDonald
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Non-Lost Season Finales
Believe it or not, I do actually watch a little television that's not Lost. With the spring television season having just ended, there's plenty of finales to talk about.
24 is still my second-favorite show on television, and more than anything, this season has been about bouncing back from the abysmal season 6. Really, any season that focuses more on Audrey freaking Raines than on Jack Bauer is doomed to fail from the start. Heck, season 7 even kicked off with a movie called "Redemption", which was always a title as much about the show itself as it was about Jack Bauer.
The first half of season 7 did in fact look like it was going to redeem the show from the sixth season. Of course, we knew that the shady Sangalans weren't going to be the endgame... but I think the season might have been improved a bit by making Jonas Hodges the endgame. Jon Voight played the role of the evil, slightly cracked-up mastermind better than most in the show's history.
Instead, we got a jumbled "shadow organization" of private military people, a la Quantum of Solace, which reduced the impact of what happened in the last few episodes. Still, the resolution of "good Tony/evil Tony" made some sense, once we realized he's just crazy and and willing to play both sides to get some revenge.
I liked the finale for the most part, with Renee Walker turning ever more Jack Bauer-ish, and Jack finally boosting the Bauer Count, including a quality scalpel kill. Very nice! At this point, it's obvious that Jack Bauer isn't really going to die, particularly since he has a contract through the next season at least. Is it too much to ask for Kim to be killed/incapacitated in the process of saving him so that she won't be on the show anymore? Probably.
And oh, was it good to see Olivia Taylor get what was coming to her.
House kind of got on my nerves toward the end of that last season, to tell the truth. I did not like Amber when she was a fellowship applicant. I did not like Amber when she was Wilson's girlfriend. And I especially did not like her when she wasn't even real, but inside House's head. Am I in the strong minority here? Does everyone else in the House fan base love her?
Either way, I hope that season 6 gets out of House's subconscious. This show is and has always been about House and his eccentricities. We're perfectly willing to accept a Vicodin addiction if it means more quips and insults. I realize that the show needs some directional mobility, that it needs overarching plots and stories to keep each episode from being a curious one-off. In the past, though, this has always been much more successful when it involved an application of House's character, not an alteration of it.
Nevertheless, there were plenty of good episodes this season, particularly once you disregarded Amber. It was nice to see more Chase and Cameron, and I can't help but wonder how the "star billing" is going to look on this show next year--if I were Olivia Wilde, I'd find it a little odd that I got more screen time yet less credit than some other other actors.
Thank you, The Office, a million times, for "snapping out of it" and returning to the usual frivolities of Dunder Mifflin. "Cafe Disco" and "Company Picnic" were exactly the right way to end the season: thematic episodes that showcase the excellent characters and situations (this is a sit-com, after all), rather than trying to tie it into "real life" somehow. Even the "Michael Scott Paper Company" arc eventually avoided the unwelcome emotional seriousness that plagued the first two thirds of the season.
Even though on some level, all the CSI's and Criminal Minds are basically the same show, I enjoy them all (except CSI Miami, which I never really got into). Finales were largely good, with the device of "mysterious shooting with two seconds left in the episode" overused and not particularly impactful... but I'm sure everything will sort itself out over the next seasons of each show.
Currently listening: Abraxas, Santana
24 is still my second-favorite show on television, and more than anything, this season has been about bouncing back from the abysmal season 6. Really, any season that focuses more on Audrey freaking Raines than on Jack Bauer is doomed to fail from the start. Heck, season 7 even kicked off with a movie called "Redemption", which was always a title as much about the show itself as it was about Jack Bauer.
The first half of season 7 did in fact look like it was going to redeem the show from the sixth season. Of course, we knew that the shady Sangalans weren't going to be the endgame... but I think the season might have been improved a bit by making Jonas Hodges the endgame. Jon Voight played the role of the evil, slightly cracked-up mastermind better than most in the show's history.
Instead, we got a jumbled "shadow organization" of private military people, a la Quantum of Solace, which reduced the impact of what happened in the last few episodes. Still, the resolution of "good Tony/evil Tony" made some sense, once we realized he's just crazy and and willing to play both sides to get some revenge.
I liked the finale for the most part, with Renee Walker turning ever more Jack Bauer-ish, and Jack finally boosting the Bauer Count, including a quality scalpel kill. Very nice! At this point, it's obvious that Jack Bauer isn't really going to die, particularly since he has a contract through the next season at least. Is it too much to ask for Kim to be killed/incapacitated in the process of saving him so that she won't be on the show anymore? Probably.
And oh, was it good to see Olivia Taylor get what was coming to her.
House kind of got on my nerves toward the end of that last season, to tell the truth. I did not like Amber when she was a fellowship applicant. I did not like Amber when she was Wilson's girlfriend. And I especially did not like her when she wasn't even real, but inside House's head. Am I in the strong minority here? Does everyone else in the House fan base love her?
Either way, I hope that season 6 gets out of House's subconscious. This show is and has always been about House and his eccentricities. We're perfectly willing to accept a Vicodin addiction if it means more quips and insults. I realize that the show needs some directional mobility, that it needs overarching plots and stories to keep each episode from being a curious one-off. In the past, though, this has always been much more successful when it involved an application of House's character, not an alteration of it.
Nevertheless, there were plenty of good episodes this season, particularly once you disregarded Amber. It was nice to see more Chase and Cameron, and I can't help but wonder how the "star billing" is going to look on this show next year--if I were Olivia Wilde, I'd find it a little odd that I got more screen time yet less credit than some other other actors.
Thank you, The Office, a million times, for "snapping out of it" and returning to the usual frivolities of Dunder Mifflin. "Cafe Disco" and "Company Picnic" were exactly the right way to end the season: thematic episodes that showcase the excellent characters and situations (this is a sit-com, after all), rather than trying to tie it into "real life" somehow. Even the "Michael Scott Paper Company" arc eventually avoided the unwelcome emotional seriousness that plagued the first two thirds of the season.
Even though on some level, all the CSI's and Criminal Minds are basically the same show, I enjoy them all (except CSI Miami, which I never really got into). Finales were largely good, with the device of "mysterious shooting with two seconds left in the episode" overused and not particularly impactful... but I'm sure everything will sort itself out over the next seasons of each show.
Currently listening: Abraxas, Santana
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
More thoughts on travel abroad
There sure is a lot of Eurotrash in London. There's a lot of Eurotrash everywhere in Europe, to be sure. I mean, you can't really escape French people in France, or Italians in Italy. Turns out you can't escape them in the UK, either. How do you identify Eurotrash, or distinguish it from ordinary Europeans? Four easy steps!
1) Cigarette in hand. I mean, that one should be a no-brainer. Forget carbon dioxide emissions, the Kyoto Protocol ought to deal with the perpetual cloud of cigarette smoke that Europe is choking under.
2) Tight jeans. Especially around the calves and ankles. This one applies to men and women!
3) General rudeness. Loud conversations across a train car, no heed paid to other pedestrians, ignoring the clear (and multi-lingual) instructions to "keep moving" in the chapels in Westminster Abbey.
4) Blatant tourism. Not that we Americans aren't guilty of this--we are, far more often than I'd like us to be--but Eurotrash take it to a whole new level. Please, stop holding up traffic on the Tube to consult your "Londra" guidebook.
In England, the English is largely very good, as you might assume. Sentences are concise but complete, and always informative. "We're working to renovate the escalators for this Tube station. These repairs will last until late 2011." That, as opposed to what you'd see on, say, Marta: "ESCALATORS UNDER RENOVATION", without the luxury of punctuation, let alone a verb.
There's a handful of linguistic anomalies that the Brits are fond of, though, that don't make too much sense to me. For example, see how I used "that" in that last sentence? It's a relative pronoun, designed to introduce the clause "the Brits are fond of". There, "that" is the "correct" pronoun to use, because it's a restrictive clause. The information is necessary to make the sentence make sense. In Britain, however, "which" seems to be used for any relative clause, regardless of restriction. "That" seems to be reserved for a demonstrative pronoun. And that's sure not what I learned in high school English class.
But one thing I do remember learning in high school English, that I thought completely insane at the time, is the use of singular nouns that "act" as plural. "The family are coming to dinner", as opposed to "the family is coming to dinner." Apparently, because "family" is understood to contain more than one person, it's treated as a plural noun.
"No, nobody talks like that," I remember complaining back in high school. We use "family is", because we're talking about only one family. "Families are", for more than one family, and "members of the family are", if we're concerned with the individuals more than the group.
Turns out that people do talk like that--just not often in the United States. You hear it the most in talk about sporting teams. Here, we'd say "the Braves are looking to do better than 4th place this year," but "Atlanta is". In Britain, you get "Chelsea are looking to place well in next year's Champions League." So maybe this actually is correct English--but it's completely alien to American speakers, and I don't think it makes a great deal of sense anyhow.
The British culinary tradition is much maligned--and really, I can think of few things less appetizing than a giant pile of peas next to my sandwich--but English breakfast really ought to be regarded along with the best cooking in the world. Toast (and the Brits do love their toast), eggs, "bacon" (which is more a slab, like Canadian bacon, than the crispy strips that we're used to), sausage (which I think is required to come along with every meal), coffee or tea, juice. That part is expected.
Then you look to the other side of your plate and notice... baked beans? Mushrooms? A tomato? What trickery is this?
Delicious, is what it is.
Currently listening: "Klavier", Rammstein
1) Cigarette in hand. I mean, that one should be a no-brainer. Forget carbon dioxide emissions, the Kyoto Protocol ought to deal with the perpetual cloud of cigarette smoke that Europe is choking under.
2) Tight jeans. Especially around the calves and ankles. This one applies to men and women!
3) General rudeness. Loud conversations across a train car, no heed paid to other pedestrians, ignoring the clear (and multi-lingual) instructions to "keep moving" in the chapels in Westminster Abbey.
4) Blatant tourism. Not that we Americans aren't guilty of this--we are, far more often than I'd like us to be--but Eurotrash take it to a whole new level. Please, stop holding up traffic on the Tube to consult your "Londra" guidebook.
In England, the English is largely very good, as you might assume. Sentences are concise but complete, and always informative. "We're working to renovate the escalators for this Tube station. These repairs will last until late 2011." That, as opposed to what you'd see on, say, Marta: "ESCALATORS UNDER RENOVATION", without the luxury of punctuation, let alone a verb.
There's a handful of linguistic anomalies that the Brits are fond of, though, that don't make too much sense to me. For example, see how I used "that" in that last sentence? It's a relative pronoun, designed to introduce the clause "the Brits are fond of". There, "that" is the "correct" pronoun to use, because it's a restrictive clause. The information is necessary to make the sentence make sense. In Britain, however, "which" seems to be used for any relative clause, regardless of restriction. "That" seems to be reserved for a demonstrative pronoun. And that's sure not what I learned in high school English class.
But one thing I do remember learning in high school English, that I thought completely insane at the time, is the use of singular nouns that "act" as plural. "The family are coming to dinner", as opposed to "the family is coming to dinner." Apparently, because "family" is understood to contain more than one person, it's treated as a plural noun.
"No, nobody talks like that," I remember complaining back in high school. We use "family is", because we're talking about only one family. "Families are", for more than one family, and "members of the family are", if we're concerned with the individuals more than the group.
Turns out that people do talk like that--just not often in the United States. You hear it the most in talk about sporting teams. Here, we'd say "the Braves are looking to do better than 4th place this year," but "Atlanta is". In Britain, you get "Chelsea are looking to place well in next year's Champions League." So maybe this actually is correct English--but it's completely alien to American speakers, and I don't think it makes a great deal of sense anyhow.
The British culinary tradition is much maligned--and really, I can think of few things less appetizing than a giant pile of peas next to my sandwich--but English breakfast really ought to be regarded along with the best cooking in the world. Toast (and the Brits do love their toast), eggs, "bacon" (which is more a slab, like Canadian bacon, than the crispy strips that we're used to), sausage (which I think is required to come along with every meal), coffee or tea, juice. That part is expected.
Then you look to the other side of your plate and notice... baked beans? Mushrooms? A tomato? What trickery is this?
Delicious, is what it is.
Currently listening: "Klavier", Rammstein
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Lost Speculations and Observations, "Everything That Rises Must Converge" Edition
And here are five plots that, in my mind, have risen and must converge before the series finale next May.
1. The Richard Alpert backstory. Who is he, what’s his allegiance, when and where does he come from, and why is he ageless? Of all the recurring characters, Alpert is by far the most compelling—actually, I find him more interesting than half the main cast—and the one whose mystery is most central to the mythology of the Island. I’d absolutely love to see a Richard-centric episode in season 6, and I think it’s entirely possible. Even though he’s a recurring character, we’ve had recurring characters have centric episodes before (Rose and Bernard), and it’s clear that Alpert is way more important than those two.
Current theory: Richard, in addition to being the “Panchen Lama” of the Others, is also the high priest of whatever supernatural power is venerated at the Temple. More and more, I like the idea that we shouldn’t consider Richard an “Other” per se at all, or at least not a member of the Others’ hierarchy. Instead, he’s a mediator between the Island and its people, or an emissary from the Island to its people. Therefore, while he’s not one of the Others, he has a great deal of authority in what they do and license to ignore their leadership.
Timeline of reveal: The Richard flashback episode, if we get it, is likely to be a mid-season 6 episode. That way, Richard’s goals and motivations are set for the battle in the grand finale. Or, he might pull and Eko and die in his own centric episode, and precipitate the events that lead to the last battle.
2. Structures of the ancients. Most intriguing are the Frozen Donkey Wheel, the Statue, and the Temple. We’ve visited the Wheel twice without knowing really anything about how it works or who put it there. The Statue is production gold: it has no lines, can be represented easily with a scale model, and has shown up a total of three times in a hundred hours. But it has spawned more theorizing and discussion than probably half of the main characters. And we’ve seen around, outside, and under the Temple, but never the structure itself.
Current theory: These structures all seem to have been built by the same people, with the shared hieroglyph motif, general ignorance about their origin, and apparently ancient construction. There’s quasi-canonical evidence that the Statue is Taweret, which I’ll conveniently ignore, continuing to believe it’s Sobek, until Carlton Cuse tells me otherwise. The Wheel, I’ve got nothing.
But I’ve heard an interesting theory on the Temple that unfortunately I can’t take credit for. What if we’ve been thinking about the Temple’s time frame all wrong? We think it’s very old, mostly because the wall around it is designed to look very old. But we also know that the wall and the Temple itself aren’t necessarily related at all. Maybe the Temple is actually very new, or even futuristic? Then, the wall isn’t to protect the structure from outsiders at all, but to protect people from seeing what they’re not supposed to see of the future. There’s little evidence on the show to support this, but I love the theory because it turns so many assumptions on their head.
Timeline of reveal: The Wheel is a series finale issue, I’m sure of. The Statue has probably been “revealed” to the extent that it will be, but I believe we’ll revisit it. The Temple I can see being revealed mid-season 6, possibly serving as the setting for some of the series finale action.
3. Resurrection. What are Christian Shepherd, John Locke, and for that matter Alex Rousseau and Yemi? Who does the Island choose to resurrect, how does it happen, and why? When you’re resurrected, are you actually alive again, or are you in some sort of limbo-undead state? What sort of abilities do you gain? We know that Locke and Christian both seemed to know things they had no idea of after the Island brought them back. Finally, can you be killed (again) if you’ve been brought back?
Of course, the confirmation of Locke as a manifestation of Jacob’s enemy raises yet more questions. Can you be resurrected at all, or does this mean that every instance of resurrection or “I see dead people” is actually the Enemy?
Current theory: Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have more or less directly—as directly as they’re capable of, at any rate—confirmed that Christian and Yemi are actually manifestations of the Monster. Add that to the decidedly Smokey-ish noises when we saw Christian at the Barracks, and that theory seems good. The idea of why you’re “resurrected” is more interesting—and far tougher to explain. If we know for sure that Locke is Jacob’s enemy, and we know for (somewhat) sure that Christian is the Monster, then maybe all those entities are one and the same.
Timeline of reveal: Explicit confirmation of “Locke” as Jacob’s enemy should come pretty early on. Christian, and all the other supposedly dead people, might come further along, but I doubt that we’ll get the final Monster reveal until the very end.
4. Cataclysm. We’ve seen hints of a volcanic eruption for several seasons, and now there’s the looming threat of a hydrogen bomb. Several season finales have been described as “seismic” or “explosive”, and yet nothing until Juliet detonated Jughead’s core. Even that didn’t necessarily destroy the Island, especially if you believe “whatever happened, happened”.
Current theory: I find it entirely plausible that the volcano already exploded, sometime way in the past. But I think there’s going to be something equally as disastrous that happens at the end of the Island’s timeline, say in 2008, that kills everyone on the Island and destroys the Island… unless, of course, Desmond saves the day.
Timeline of reveal: The first half of season 6 might be about the cataclysm happening, and the second half about Desmond and company working to prevent it.
5. Desmond saves the future. There’s been a whole lot of emphasis placed on Desmond being “special” and being able to change the future. Desmond’s unique talents are the Chekhov’s gun that has to be used before the end of the show. Eloise said so, Faraday said so, and the failsafe key pretty much said so too. We don’t yet know exactly how he can manipulate past events, but that would seem to imply that Desmond has a bit of time travel left in his future.
Current theory: Desmond keeps his promise to Eloise and stays off the Island… until something very, very bad happens there. Then, because he’s such a stand-up guy, he returns per Eloise’s prediction to set things right.
Timeline of reveal: I can see at least the first two thirds of season 6 being about what Desmond is doing to try and prevent something terrible happening in the Island’s future, setting up the events for the series finale. Desmond might not even be in the first ten or so episodes of the season, only rejoining as a regular toward the end.
To wrap up this year's Lost coverage, what are your thoughts on episode titles for next season? I like "... Love" for the Sun/Jin centric reunion episode, "Progress" for a mid-season revelatory episode, "The Candidate" for a Lapidus-centric, "The Equation" or "The Numbers" for the Desmond-centric episode that finally establishes the Valenzetti equation as Dharma's mission on the Island (ie, another follow-up to The Constant), and "It Only Ends Once" for the finale. But my most brilliant suggestion--one that might actually come to pass--is "... At Sea" for the (possibly Richard-centric) Black Rock episode. You heard it here first.
Currently listening: "The Sun and the Moon", Mae, from The Everglow
1. The Richard Alpert backstory. Who is he, what’s his allegiance, when and where does he come from, and why is he ageless? Of all the recurring characters, Alpert is by far the most compelling—actually, I find him more interesting than half the main cast—and the one whose mystery is most central to the mythology of the Island. I’d absolutely love to see a Richard-centric episode in season 6, and I think it’s entirely possible. Even though he’s a recurring character, we’ve had recurring characters have centric episodes before (Rose and Bernard), and it’s clear that Alpert is way more important than those two.
Current theory: Richard, in addition to being the “Panchen Lama” of the Others, is also the high priest of whatever supernatural power is venerated at the Temple. More and more, I like the idea that we shouldn’t consider Richard an “Other” per se at all, or at least not a member of the Others’ hierarchy. Instead, he’s a mediator between the Island and its people, or an emissary from the Island to its people. Therefore, while he’s not one of the Others, he has a great deal of authority in what they do and license to ignore their leadership.
Timeline of reveal: The Richard flashback episode, if we get it, is likely to be a mid-season 6 episode. That way, Richard’s goals and motivations are set for the battle in the grand finale. Or, he might pull and Eko and die in his own centric episode, and precipitate the events that lead to the last battle.
2. Structures of the ancients. Most intriguing are the Frozen Donkey Wheel, the Statue, and the Temple. We’ve visited the Wheel twice without knowing really anything about how it works or who put it there. The Statue is production gold: it has no lines, can be represented easily with a scale model, and has shown up a total of three times in a hundred hours. But it has spawned more theorizing and discussion than probably half of the main characters. And we’ve seen around, outside, and under the Temple, but never the structure itself.
Current theory: These structures all seem to have been built by the same people, with the shared hieroglyph motif, general ignorance about their origin, and apparently ancient construction. There’s quasi-canonical evidence that the Statue is Taweret, which I’ll conveniently ignore, continuing to believe it’s Sobek, until Carlton Cuse tells me otherwise. The Wheel, I’ve got nothing.
But I’ve heard an interesting theory on the Temple that unfortunately I can’t take credit for. What if we’ve been thinking about the Temple’s time frame all wrong? We think it’s very old, mostly because the wall around it is designed to look very old. But we also know that the wall and the Temple itself aren’t necessarily related at all. Maybe the Temple is actually very new, or even futuristic? Then, the wall isn’t to protect the structure from outsiders at all, but to protect people from seeing what they’re not supposed to see of the future. There’s little evidence on the show to support this, but I love the theory because it turns so many assumptions on their head.
Timeline of reveal: The Wheel is a series finale issue, I’m sure of. The Statue has probably been “revealed” to the extent that it will be, but I believe we’ll revisit it. The Temple I can see being revealed mid-season 6, possibly serving as the setting for some of the series finale action.
3. Resurrection. What are Christian Shepherd, John Locke, and for that matter Alex Rousseau and Yemi? Who does the Island choose to resurrect, how does it happen, and why? When you’re resurrected, are you actually alive again, or are you in some sort of limbo-undead state? What sort of abilities do you gain? We know that Locke and Christian both seemed to know things they had no idea of after the Island brought them back. Finally, can you be killed (again) if you’ve been brought back?
Of course, the confirmation of Locke as a manifestation of Jacob’s enemy raises yet more questions. Can you be resurrected at all, or does this mean that every instance of resurrection or “I see dead people” is actually the Enemy?
Current theory: Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have more or less directly—as directly as they’re capable of, at any rate—confirmed that Christian and Yemi are actually manifestations of the Monster. Add that to the decidedly Smokey-ish noises when we saw Christian at the Barracks, and that theory seems good. The idea of why you’re “resurrected” is more interesting—and far tougher to explain. If we know for sure that Locke is Jacob’s enemy, and we know for (somewhat) sure that Christian is the Monster, then maybe all those entities are one and the same.
Timeline of reveal: Explicit confirmation of “Locke” as Jacob’s enemy should come pretty early on. Christian, and all the other supposedly dead people, might come further along, but I doubt that we’ll get the final Monster reveal until the very end.
4. Cataclysm. We’ve seen hints of a volcanic eruption for several seasons, and now there’s the looming threat of a hydrogen bomb. Several season finales have been described as “seismic” or “explosive”, and yet nothing until Juliet detonated Jughead’s core. Even that didn’t necessarily destroy the Island, especially if you believe “whatever happened, happened”.
Current theory: I find it entirely plausible that the volcano already exploded, sometime way in the past. But I think there’s going to be something equally as disastrous that happens at the end of the Island’s timeline, say in 2008, that kills everyone on the Island and destroys the Island… unless, of course, Desmond saves the day.
Timeline of reveal: The first half of season 6 might be about the cataclysm happening, and the second half about Desmond and company working to prevent it.
5. Desmond saves the future. There’s been a whole lot of emphasis placed on Desmond being “special” and being able to change the future. Desmond’s unique talents are the Chekhov’s gun that has to be used before the end of the show. Eloise said so, Faraday said so, and the failsafe key pretty much said so too. We don’t yet know exactly how he can manipulate past events, but that would seem to imply that Desmond has a bit of time travel left in his future.
Current theory: Desmond keeps his promise to Eloise and stays off the Island… until something very, very bad happens there. Then, because he’s such a stand-up guy, he returns per Eloise’s prediction to set things right.
Timeline of reveal: I can see at least the first two thirds of season 6 being about what Desmond is doing to try and prevent something terrible happening in the Island’s future, setting up the events for the series finale. Desmond might not even be in the first ten or so episodes of the season, only rejoining as a regular toward the end.
To wrap up this year's Lost coverage, what are your thoughts on episode titles for next season? I like "... Love" for the Sun/Jin centric reunion episode, "Progress" for a mid-season revelatory episode, "The Candidate" for a Lapidus-centric, "The Equation" or "The Numbers" for the Desmond-centric episode that finally establishes the Valenzetti equation as Dharma's mission on the Island (ie, another follow-up to The Constant), and "It Only Ends Once" for the finale. But my most brilliant suggestion--one that might actually come to pass--is "... At Sea" for the (possibly Richard-centric) Black Rock episode. You heard it here first.
Currently listening: "The Sun and the Moon", Mae, from The Everglow
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Sport in the UK
And they do call it "sport" there, rather than "sports"--you're looking at the "sport" section in the newspaper, the "sport" segment on the evening news, and so on.
The Brits are as into sports as we are across the pond--but it's entirely different sports. Instead of baseball, football, and basketball, we're looking at soccer (except they call it "football"), cricket, and rugby. Football of course takes the lead for the majority of the year... and it is pervasive.
The stereotype of the English soccer hooligan (I think there was even a Saturday Night Live sketch called that), like many stereotypes, comes from somewhere. Unlike most stereotypes, though, it's almost completely grounded in reality. Everyone has their team and a handful of bitter rivalries that go along with it, and everyone is sucked into the drama of the Premier League.
And after having been in London for only a week, the drama already got really, really compelling. Think the BCS, except stretched out for nine months, the top few teams earn the right to play football against colleges from all across North America for the continent champion... and the bottom few teams have to play against high schoolers for the next year.
If you're not familiar with "relegation" and "promotion", it's a fascinating concept, essentially allowing the most podunk club team in the middle of Wales to become the champion of all of Britain in the span of a few years. It also means that the consistently underperforming teams better re-evaluate their game plan the next season when they're playing in a lower league. If we did this in American baseball, the Nationals would have been bounced to AAA a long time ago.
It's a system that creates interest on all levels of the system, on the top and the bottom, and also seamlessly integrates the national system into an international one, with the top handful of teams earning bids into some sort of super-complicated pan-European system that an American doesn't have any hope of deciphering. It's tough to say if American sports would improve by adopting the system... but I'm sort of glad it's not used here, because I for one would waste a lot of time absorbed in the rankings tables.
Also incomprehensible to any American is the sport of cricket. If anyone can explain how a "two-innings" game is supposed to last five days, please do.
Currently listening: "This is the Countdown", Mae, from The Everglow
The Brits are as into sports as we are across the pond--but it's entirely different sports. Instead of baseball, football, and basketball, we're looking at soccer (except they call it "football"), cricket, and rugby. Football of course takes the lead for the majority of the year... and it is pervasive.
The stereotype of the English soccer hooligan (I think there was even a Saturday Night Live sketch called that), like many stereotypes, comes from somewhere. Unlike most stereotypes, though, it's almost completely grounded in reality. Everyone has their team and a handful of bitter rivalries that go along with it, and everyone is sucked into the drama of the Premier League.
And after having been in London for only a week, the drama already got really, really compelling. Think the BCS, except stretched out for nine months, the top few teams earn the right to play football against colleges from all across North America for the continent champion... and the bottom few teams have to play against high schoolers for the next year.
If you're not familiar with "relegation" and "promotion", it's a fascinating concept, essentially allowing the most podunk club team in the middle of Wales to become the champion of all of Britain in the span of a few years. It also means that the consistently underperforming teams better re-evaluate their game plan the next season when they're playing in a lower league. If we did this in American baseball, the Nationals would have been bounced to AAA a long time ago.
It's a system that creates interest on all levels of the system, on the top and the bottom, and also seamlessly integrates the national system into an international one, with the top handful of teams earning bids into some sort of super-complicated pan-European system that an American doesn't have any hope of deciphering. It's tough to say if American sports would improve by adopting the system... but I'm sort of glad it's not used here, because I for one would waste a lot of time absorbed in the rankings tables.
Also incomprehensible to any American is the sport of cricket. If anyone can explain how a "two-innings" game is supposed to last five days, please do.
Currently listening: "This is the Countdown", Mae, from The Everglow
Friday, May 15, 2009
Lost Speculations and Observations, "H-Bomb" Edition
If you missed the last Lost finale post, and you're into this sort of thing, check out the Loophole edition, which focuses on the mythology of the season finale.
One of the reasons Lost is so, so good is that there's so much going on at any given time. Mythology, plot, characters are all critical to making this show excellent, and they're all quasi-independent enough to talk about by themselves. I'd like to talk a little about characters in this installment of the finale post, because I think Season 6 is going to have to make a few critical changes.
The biggest character-y surprise from the finale was the lack of a major, impactful death. Important characters dying has been a fixture of season finales past (eg Charlie). Plus, people far more acquainted with spoiler sites than I am were convinced that there was going to be a "major" death in the finale. Sure, plenty of people died, particularly Dharma employees who has the ill fortune of assignment to the Swan station. But I can only count two characters whose names we knew that actually kicked the bucket: Phil and Jacob.
Sure, we'd gotten to know Phil, and he was in as many episodes as Horace, and we even saw a hint of development in his character. However, he was so unimportant to the scheme of things that his death could hardly be considered major. As for Jacob, while his death is undoubtedly hugely important to the scheme of things, we hardly knew the guy, having just met him two hours ago... so as a plot point, his death was major, but as a character point, it lacked impact.
Now, half of our main cast is certainly on the line for having maybe died, with Juliet's death looking the most probable. You don't sit at ground zero of an atomic explosion and live. Then again, I'd argue that you don't sit fifty feet above ground zero and live, either, unless there's some weird "electromagnetic anomaly" business going on.
Really, the Juliet ambiguity is quite clever from a production standpoint--apparently, Elizabeth Mitchell got some major role in a pilot for a new television show, and her role on Lost could change dramatically if the pilot gets picked up and lasts a while. If this means she can no longer be on the Lost cast, then of course she died after being so close to a massive release of energy. If she can still be on lost, then of course the "fluctuations" caused by Jughead and the strange matter pocket saved her.
If Juliet needs to die so Elizabeth Mitchell can move on, though, then the main cast is going to need a little overhaul. We'd be down to two female main characters, Kate and Sun, against about a dozen male main characters, and the last thing Lost needs is to turn into as much of a sausage fest as Georgia Tech. Claire coming back holds some promise--and the producers really need to address that story, but that's still lacking. Combine that with Ilana apparently being a lot more important than we thought, and I can definitely see her joining the main cast.
Speaking of the main cast, major gripe with the finale: no Desmond? What the hell? Every season finale to date have featured all the (living) main characters. Desmond's utterly embarrassing lack of screen time has been the one knock on the otherwise fantastic season 5. Eloise as much as told us, halfway through the season, that the Island was not done with Desmond. This had better come to fruition before the end of the series.
Pleasantly, Jack is no longer my least favorite character, having regrown most of his lost backbone and seemingly left "wussy" mode. He hasn't recovered all the way: the worst scene in the finale was his fight with Sawyer, which didn't seem to have much of a point. It almost seemed like that fight was really over Kate, which made my hate it even more. I really, really like season 5 Sawyer, and it made me care about his character for the first time in the series. I only hope his character stays that interesting to the end.
I still like Miles, and I still like Sun, and I've been satisfied with their screen time this season. Definitely looking forward to the Jin-Sun reunion, which I have to assume will happen toward the beginning of next season. I really want to see more Frank and more Richard, and I could do with a little more Charles Widmore too.
To end, the biggest thing to speculate about: who will the next important "group of people" be in season 6? We had the mid-section survivors in season 1, the tail section people in season 2, the Others in season 3, the freighter people in season 4, and Dharma in season 5. Maybe more of Jacob's people, such as Ilana and her ilk?
I'll finish up the season finale discussion in a few days with the "Everything that Rises Must Converge" edition, describing what I perceive as the most important plot points for the last season.
Currently listening: "Suspension", Mae, from The Everglow
One of the reasons Lost is so, so good is that there's so much going on at any given time. Mythology, plot, characters are all critical to making this show excellent, and they're all quasi-independent enough to talk about by themselves. I'd like to talk a little about characters in this installment of the finale post, because I think Season 6 is going to have to make a few critical changes.
The biggest character-y surprise from the finale was the lack of a major, impactful death. Important characters dying has been a fixture of season finales past (eg Charlie). Plus, people far more acquainted with spoiler sites than I am were convinced that there was going to be a "major" death in the finale. Sure, plenty of people died, particularly Dharma employees who has the ill fortune of assignment to the Swan station. But I can only count two characters whose names we knew that actually kicked the bucket: Phil and Jacob.
Sure, we'd gotten to know Phil, and he was in as many episodes as Horace, and we even saw a hint of development in his character. However, he was so unimportant to the scheme of things that his death could hardly be considered major. As for Jacob, while his death is undoubtedly hugely important to the scheme of things, we hardly knew the guy, having just met him two hours ago... so as a plot point, his death was major, but as a character point, it lacked impact.
Now, half of our main cast is certainly on the line for having maybe died, with Juliet's death looking the most probable. You don't sit at ground zero of an atomic explosion and live. Then again, I'd argue that you don't sit fifty feet above ground zero and live, either, unless there's some weird "electromagnetic anomaly" business going on.
Really, the Juliet ambiguity is quite clever from a production standpoint--apparently, Elizabeth Mitchell got some major role in a pilot for a new television show, and her role on Lost could change dramatically if the pilot gets picked up and lasts a while. If this means she can no longer be on the Lost cast, then of course she died after being so close to a massive release of energy. If she can still be on lost, then of course the "fluctuations" caused by Jughead and the strange matter pocket saved her.
If Juliet needs to die so Elizabeth Mitchell can move on, though, then the main cast is going to need a little overhaul. We'd be down to two female main characters, Kate and Sun, against about a dozen male main characters, and the last thing Lost needs is to turn into as much of a sausage fest as Georgia Tech. Claire coming back holds some promise--and the producers really need to address that story, but that's still lacking. Combine that with Ilana apparently being a lot more important than we thought, and I can definitely see her joining the main cast.
Speaking of the main cast, major gripe with the finale: no Desmond? What the hell? Every season finale to date have featured all the (living) main characters. Desmond's utterly embarrassing lack of screen time has been the one knock on the otherwise fantastic season 5. Eloise as much as told us, halfway through the season, that the Island was not done with Desmond. This had better come to fruition before the end of the series.
Pleasantly, Jack is no longer my least favorite character, having regrown most of his lost backbone and seemingly left "wussy" mode. He hasn't recovered all the way: the worst scene in the finale was his fight with Sawyer, which didn't seem to have much of a point. It almost seemed like that fight was really over Kate, which made my hate it even more. I really, really like season 5 Sawyer, and it made me care about his character for the first time in the series. I only hope his character stays that interesting to the end.
I still like Miles, and I still like Sun, and I've been satisfied with their screen time this season. Definitely looking forward to the Jin-Sun reunion, which I have to assume will happen toward the beginning of next season. I really want to see more Frank and more Richard, and I could do with a little more Charles Widmore too.
To end, the biggest thing to speculate about: who will the next important "group of people" be in season 6? We had the mid-section survivors in season 1, the tail section people in season 2, the Others in season 3, the freighter people in season 4, and Dharma in season 5. Maybe more of Jacob's people, such as Ilana and her ilk?
I'll finish up the season finale discussion in a few days with the "Everything that Rises Must Converge" edition, describing what I perceive as the most important plot points for the last season.
Currently listening: "Suspension", Mae, from The Everglow
Rapid-Fire Airplane Movie Reviews
Review: Gran Torino
The remarkable thing about this movie is that half of the main character's dialog is either "grrrr" or some manner of ethnic slur--and Mr. Eastwood's character sure knows a lot of those. The movie starts with Eastwood's character Walt absolutely despising anyone who isn't like him--and that extends to his white family, Southeast Asian neighbors, Mexican neighbors, and pretty much everyone else. So it's predictable in the sense that by the time everything is said and done, you know he's going to come around and be okay with at least some of the minorities.
Over the course of the movie, we see how he gets there, and how he actually manages to bring about some positive change in other people's lives, too. I suppose I can buy that seventy-plus years of bigotry vanishes over the course of just a few months, mostly because I can't buy that someone is that ridiculously bigoted in the first place. Sure, there's plenty of grizzled old dudes who don't care for the fact that their neighbors are Asian, but is there really anyone who would go so far as to throw away their gifts for no real reason?
Without giving away the ending, I'll go ahead and say that the best line in the movie comes at the end, when Walt forbids someone from painting "any of those stupid flames" on his car, or putting a "gay spoiler" on the back. It's a good movie overall--a classic tale of redemption that's nothing we haven't seen before, but well enough acted and presented that it doesn't so much matter.
Review: Quantum of Solace
Daniel Craig's new interpretation of James Bond surprised and impressed a lot of people in the last movie, Casino Royale. Gone, or at least postponed, were the days of the ultra-suave, super-sophisticated Bond, and we got a rendition that was a lot more relateable in terms of emotion. That made Casino Royale a good movie.
The other thing that made Casino Royale good was that it made sense. The whole way through. You could follow the plot, you knew who the characters were, and there was an acceptable level of doubt about who was up to what. Quantum of Solace decided not to follow that approach. Confirmation of who certain characters are and what they're doing comes way too late in the movie to help it make sense. Worse, even after watching it, I'm still not sure what the Bond Girl's involvement in anything is. (Is she Russian? South American? Something else entirely?)
Chances are good you expect certain things from a Bond movie, like exotic locales, explosions, chase scenes, and banter between Bond and his superiors. We get all that, no doubt about it. The issue comes in whether we get anything beyond that... and Quantum of Solace doesn't so much deliver.
Review: Slumdog Millionaire
I was a little skeptical of this movie at first, mostly because Indian cinema and I don't so much get along, but it turns out this movie was a lot less Bollywood than I might have thought. No spontaneous bursting into song (or dance), no characters who find out they're inexplicably related at the very end of the movie (hey, this isn't Lost here), and no four-hour duration.
The coolest thing this movie does is to use an interesting temporal structure, explaining how this poor kid from the slums knows the answers to all these trivia questions. Turns out he's had some ridiculously bad things happen to him in his life, and those moments just happen to coincide with the questions he gets asked. Fate, or something like that.
It has its flaws--notably, the main character Jamal is utterly unlikable and devoid of personality for the first third or so of the movie. And, as Ken Jennings pointed out before the movie was even released, the "trivia game" backbone of the movie is weak: some of the early questions seem impossibly hard, while the last (20 million rupee) question is comparatively stunningly easy.
However, the movie has way more going for it than wrong with it. Slumdog Millionaire manages to use the "flashes through time" device without confusing us, because both of the timelines move linearly forward, and that's a credit to the movie in and of itself. But it does a lot more than that, featuring characters you find yourself caring about and a few powerful redemptive moments.
Review: Best in Show
I love the mockumentary style--see Spinal Tap, the Office, etc. And Best in Show is one of... well, the best. I'd already seen this movie, several years ago, and the good news is it's still as funny as ever.
Currently listening: "Cover Me", Mae, from The Everglow
The remarkable thing about this movie is that half of the main character's dialog is either "grrrr" or some manner of ethnic slur--and Mr. Eastwood's character sure knows a lot of those. The movie starts with Eastwood's character Walt absolutely despising anyone who isn't like him--and that extends to his white family, Southeast Asian neighbors, Mexican neighbors, and pretty much everyone else. So it's predictable in the sense that by the time everything is said and done, you know he's going to come around and be okay with at least some of the minorities.
Over the course of the movie, we see how he gets there, and how he actually manages to bring about some positive change in other people's lives, too. I suppose I can buy that seventy-plus years of bigotry vanishes over the course of just a few months, mostly because I can't buy that someone is that ridiculously bigoted in the first place. Sure, there's plenty of grizzled old dudes who don't care for the fact that their neighbors are Asian, but is there really anyone who would go so far as to throw away their gifts for no real reason?
Without giving away the ending, I'll go ahead and say that the best line in the movie comes at the end, when Walt forbids someone from painting "any of those stupid flames" on his car, or putting a "gay spoiler" on the back. It's a good movie overall--a classic tale of redemption that's nothing we haven't seen before, but well enough acted and presented that it doesn't so much matter.
Review: Quantum of Solace
Daniel Craig's new interpretation of James Bond surprised and impressed a lot of people in the last movie, Casino Royale. Gone, or at least postponed, were the days of the ultra-suave, super-sophisticated Bond, and we got a rendition that was a lot more relateable in terms of emotion. That made Casino Royale a good movie.
The other thing that made Casino Royale good was that it made sense. The whole way through. You could follow the plot, you knew who the characters were, and there was an acceptable level of doubt about who was up to what. Quantum of Solace decided not to follow that approach. Confirmation of who certain characters are and what they're doing comes way too late in the movie to help it make sense. Worse, even after watching it, I'm still not sure what the Bond Girl's involvement in anything is. (Is she Russian? South American? Something else entirely?)
Chances are good you expect certain things from a Bond movie, like exotic locales, explosions, chase scenes, and banter between Bond and his superiors. We get all that, no doubt about it. The issue comes in whether we get anything beyond that... and Quantum of Solace doesn't so much deliver.
Review: Slumdog Millionaire
I was a little skeptical of this movie at first, mostly because Indian cinema and I don't so much get along, but it turns out this movie was a lot less Bollywood than I might have thought. No spontaneous bursting into song (or dance), no characters who find out they're inexplicably related at the very end of the movie (hey, this isn't Lost here), and no four-hour duration.
The coolest thing this movie does is to use an interesting temporal structure, explaining how this poor kid from the slums knows the answers to all these trivia questions. Turns out he's had some ridiculously bad things happen to him in his life, and those moments just happen to coincide with the questions he gets asked. Fate, or something like that.
It has its flaws--notably, the main character Jamal is utterly unlikable and devoid of personality for the first third or so of the movie. And, as Ken Jennings pointed out before the movie was even released, the "trivia game" backbone of the movie is weak: some of the early questions seem impossibly hard, while the last (20 million rupee) question is comparatively stunningly easy.
However, the movie has way more going for it than wrong with it. Slumdog Millionaire manages to use the "flashes through time" device without confusing us, because both of the timelines move linearly forward, and that's a credit to the movie in and of itself. But it does a lot more than that, featuring characters you find yourself caring about and a few powerful redemptive moments.
Review: Best in Show
I love the mockumentary style--see Spinal Tap, the Office, etc. And Best in Show is one of... well, the best. I'd already seen this movie, several years ago, and the good news is it's still as funny as ever.
Currently listening: "Cover Me", Mae, from The Everglow
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