Interestingly enough, this problem tends to be less prevalent on Blogger (or any other web journal system) than on Myspace. Notice that, upon trying to go to someone's profile, the first thing you see is an obnoxious-colored background. Then the awesome background photo loads at the same time the text shows up... too bad the background photo is mostly black and white, and the text on the page is one or the other. Before we get to the "links you can never click on because someone decided it would be an excellent idea to make them turn to bold when you mouse over them," though, you have to get through "rendition of how to make a frame that makes half your text go off the page and create a God-awful horizontal scroll bar at the bottom."
This dovetails nicely into skinnable apps. To paraphrase (or maybe quote directly) Jick from the Kingdom of Loathing, "I hate skinnable apps." There is just nothing that gets me less excited about programs than the fact that you can change what the scroll bars and menus look like. Aesthetics are important, undoubtedly, but infinite customizability is simply unnecessary. When we're paying more attention to what color the title bar is than to what the program actually does, priorities have become a little misplaced.
Take Windows, for example. Windows looks perfectly nice as is. If you don't like the colors, Windows has taken the time to include ways to change them. But if I tried to estimate the sheer number of desktop themes that are out there... I'd be estimating for more than a little while. I don't even care about my background, to tell you the truth; it's usually something amusing, or if I'm not amused by that anymore, it's probably just some neutral image. And yet, there are a preponderance of people out there who find it absolutely necessary to change not only colors and desktop images, but icons, folder backgrounds, and icon fonts. (Don't even get me started on multiple user accounts.)
I don't like Halloween. I haven't since I was about thirteen, when I discovered that I kind of looked dumb dressing up as some random video game character and begging for candy, and I probably won't again until maybe I have kids of my own who are into it. Ask me for my opinion of Halloween in fifteen years, and I may have a handful more insights and thoughts. As of now, if I really want candy, there's a handy Publix a few blocks down from the bookstore which I have on good faith sells a fair bit of the stuff. I have never been one for dressing up (though I've grown to accept the tie as of late) and seriously, even if I wanted to dress up, what do guys dress up as? Something scary? Not a fan. A superhero? Also not a fan. Girls evidently take Halloween as an excuse to dress up sluttily, especially into college age. Whatever.
All in all, Halloween is a holiday on which people do ridiculous things based off even more ridiculous superstitions. (The cynical atheist will probably say that same thing regarding Christmas or Hanukkah.) And yet... it's got a great deal of cultural gravity associated with it, as much as say Thanksgiving, which is based off something real.
Currently listening: The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner, Ben Folds Five
Monday, October 30, 2006
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Petty Annoyances
You know those little things that just irritate you? There's not necessarily a good, solid reason for any of them; you just know that if all of them stopped, you'd be okay with it. I'm not talking major obstacles like Physics II or Being a Poor College Student; I mean actions, behaviors, and patterns that you find obnoxious. A handful of these have begun to grate on my nerves as of late.
That annoying leg-bounce thing that mostly guys do (but some girls do as well). You're sitting in Differential Equations (granted, a setting that does need a bit of livening up), you notice that there seems to be an overabundance of movement in the room... and you realize that it's because the six guys seated near you are all bouncing their legs up and down really fast. Sometimes it's both legs, sometimes one or the other. Sometimes it's keeping the heel on the ground and bouncing the toe, but more often it's a heel bounce. Okay, guys. There's absolutely no reason to do this. If you're really that antsy, head to the CRC after class. Drink one less cup of coffee before you come. Take this as an opportunity to kick that cocaine habit... something.
Darfur is a geopolitical issue that I think everyone feels similarly regarding, but that activists feel the need to carry on about anyway. "Genocide? That's no good! How do I show the world that I'm an opponent of genocide?" Conveniently, there have been a large number of feel-good "student solidarity" groups that have popped up on Facebook lately. One of the most prominent is one that promises a monetary donation for every so many people to join. Hate to break it to you, but you're no Lech Walesa. Really, I don't think there are any proponents of genocide, except probably the guys doing the genocide. And what does it mean to "donate [money] to Darfur"? Are you going to put some dollars in an envelope, write "Darfur" on it, and hope the area of the country accepts its gift? If you're donating to people, what exactly are they going to do with your money? Bribe a couple of warlords not to keep genociding? It's great that people are informed about world events, don't get me wrong. But what exactly is hanging signs that say "Gee, there seems to be a bit of a genocide issue in Sudan!" going to do? By stating your mere awareness of an armed conflict there... where are you going? What do you reasonably expect anyone in power to actually do?
Possibly going hand in hand with the "lack of intellectualism" that I always complain about, negativity seems to be prevalent at Tech. It's one thing to joke about "the Shaft" but another entirely to lament how much everything sucks, all the time. If something doesn't go your way, here's a little heuristic that generally works. "Can I really do anything about this?" If yes, stop complaining and do it. If no, get over it. It's as simple as that. It gets old when you're trying to maintain a positive attitude, and others are complaining how much of an "idiot" everyone else is. A sort of corollary to this is use of "retarded" to mean "undesirable." As in "Do we really have to have this done by Friday?" "Yes." "That's so retarded!" Well, no, it isn't. It's unfortunate, it's irritating, it's annoying, but it isn't slowed by a hindered andvancement. (Also, as you probably can't change the deadline, there's nothing you can do about it anyway, so stop complaining.)
In the event that I think of more things that annoy me, I'll post them. Comments on these, or examples of what annoys you, are encouraged.
Currently listening: "Chicken Head," Project Pat
That annoying leg-bounce thing that mostly guys do (but some girls do as well). You're sitting in Differential Equations (granted, a setting that does need a bit of livening up), you notice that there seems to be an overabundance of movement in the room... and you realize that it's because the six guys seated near you are all bouncing their legs up and down really fast. Sometimes it's both legs, sometimes one or the other. Sometimes it's keeping the heel on the ground and bouncing the toe, but more often it's a heel bounce. Okay, guys. There's absolutely no reason to do this. If you're really that antsy, head to the CRC after class. Drink one less cup of coffee before you come. Take this as an opportunity to kick that cocaine habit... something.
Darfur is a geopolitical issue that I think everyone feels similarly regarding, but that activists feel the need to carry on about anyway. "Genocide? That's no good! How do I show the world that I'm an opponent of genocide?" Conveniently, there have been a large number of feel-good "student solidarity" groups that have popped up on Facebook lately. One of the most prominent is one that promises a monetary donation for every so many people to join. Hate to break it to you, but you're no Lech Walesa. Really, I don't think there are any proponents of genocide, except probably the guys doing the genocide. And what does it mean to "donate [money] to Darfur"? Are you going to put some dollars in an envelope, write "Darfur" on it, and hope the area of the country accepts its gift? If you're donating to people, what exactly are they going to do with your money? Bribe a couple of warlords not to keep genociding? It's great that people are informed about world events, don't get me wrong. But what exactly is hanging signs that say "Gee, there seems to be a bit of a genocide issue in Sudan!" going to do? By stating your mere awareness of an armed conflict there... where are you going? What do you reasonably expect anyone in power to actually do?
Possibly going hand in hand with the "lack of intellectualism" that I always complain about, negativity seems to be prevalent at Tech. It's one thing to joke about "the Shaft" but another entirely to lament how much everything sucks, all the time. If something doesn't go your way, here's a little heuristic that generally works. "Can I really do anything about this?" If yes, stop complaining and do it. If no, get over it. It's as simple as that. It gets old when you're trying to maintain a positive attitude, and others are complaining how much of an "idiot" everyone else is. A sort of corollary to this is use of "retarded" to mean "undesirable." As in "Do we really have to have this done by Friday?" "Yes." "That's so retarded!" Well, no, it isn't. It's unfortunate, it's irritating, it's annoying, but it isn't slowed by a hindered andvancement. (Also, as you probably can't change the deadline, there's nothing you can do about it anyway, so stop complaining.)
In the event that I think of more things that annoy me, I'll post them. Comments on these, or examples of what annoys you, are encouraged.
Currently listening: "Chicken Head," Project Pat
Friday, October 06, 2006
Why Labels Do Not Matter
Mr. Morford is being a little antagonistic and egging me on to post. Truth is, he's right; I do have something to talk about. So I'm by and large a big Decemberists fan. I like their music, and so I was very excited by their new release The Crane Wife. Of course, the big news wasn't that one of the most inventive and original bands of the decade had a new release; no, it was that this release was on a *major label*. The Decemberists were abandoning Kill Rock Stars! Soon the Second Angel would pour forth his vial upon the sea, right?
As it turns out, no, not so much. The Decemberists, though their new album falls a bit short of true brilliance, aptly debunk one of the great principles of the Indie Music school of thought: any given collection of music is automatically better when released on anything but a major label. Because except for a few missteps, The Crane Wife is probably their best album to date. So guess what? The transition to Columbia didn't make them suddenly suck.
This CD starts with "The Crane Wife Part 3," which is actually the last third of the musical adaptation of the Japanese folk tale of the same name. You're probably familiar with it, so listen carefully to the lyrics so you can catch the story. This first song is moving and emotional, and it's musically satisfying. About three minutes into it, I started thinking "If this whole album is this good, then we've got something amazing on our hands."
Then I heard "The Island."
I'm not going to lie, I'm surprised I didn't start breathing heavily when I heard this one for the first time. As a huge fan of "The Tain," of course I was ecstatic to find what basically amounts to "The Tain's Little Brother" in the middle of a full length album. I'm not going to talk much about this track, but suffice it to say that it's almost twelve minutes of pure brilliance from start to finish. And any band who can incorporate a Tempest allusion and a "Whiskey in the Jar" tribute within a few minutes of each other is something special indeed.
"Yankee Bayonet" is very good, taking us to the Civil War via a folky male-female duet. "O Valencia!" is unfortunately less good. There's nothing wrong with it musically, and it's put together very well, but it just toes the line of "not interesting." How many modern-day retellings of Romeo and Juliet do we really need? And how many stories of lost love can the Decemberists churn out? "The Crane Wife" and "Yankee Bayonet" are both love-lost stories, but more sincere and inventive than "O Valencia!" It's not a bad song per se, but there are about four tracks I would have picked ahead of this one to make the first single out of.
Then we really get into the doldrums of the album. "The Perfect Crime #2" is sadly the inevitable track that's going to give Mr. I'm-Better-Than-You-Because-I-Discovered-This-Band-Before-You-Even-
Knew-Indie-Music-Existed a little ammunition to cry out his "Holy crap, the Decemberists suck now just because they're on a major label" lament. There are a handful of people who will defend this song; I fail to see its musical merit. I feel like half the song is Colin repeating the words "The perfect, the perfect, the perfect, the perfect crime" over and freaking over again. Even if that's not the exact proportion, the fact that it seems like that makes it a bad piece of music. It's frustratingly repetitive and not at all imaginative, which is not something I ever thought I would say about a Decemberists song.
Next, we hear "When the War Came," which nobody but me seems to have any issue with. Maybe I'm biased against the horrendously bad trumpet lick in the chorus, but that combined with the insistent banging of the guitar riff just results in a musically jarring song. Luckily, now, the album begins its ascent back into good musical quality. I have to say that I'm not a huge fan of "Shankill Butchers" either, but it's certainly better than the two tracks preceeding it. The fact that it's based off real events is cool, and the musical atmosphere created by the song--a sort of unsettling and creepy bedtime tune--definitely works given the subject matter. But this song, more than any other on the album, just lacks energy. It doesn't go much of anywhere.
After all this, we're refreshed with the brilliance of "Summersong." This is an absolutely delightful song, as imagistic and lyrically deep as any of the Decemberists' best work. It works on a variety of levels, too: are these happy times that necessarily will end eventually? Or sad ones, in reminiscence of the better ones? What's getting swallowed by a wave: the summer itself, or some ideal that it represents? This is probably the best (non-twelve minute) track on the album: it's beautiful and catchy, and as deep as you want it to be.
"The Crane Wife 1 and 2" provides the first two thirds of the already-finished fable, and delivers well. Finally, "Sons and Daughters" is a light, hopeful, and optimistic song to end the album; it has the happy effect of leaving the message that there's always something to look forward to.
This album does add an interesting dynamic to the Decemberists fanbase. In the past, we had never seen a truly bad song from them. There were boring songs, and un-brilliant ones, certainly; never an awful one. So in the past we could tolerate an "Of Angels and Angles" in return for a "The Infanta." How many "The Perfect Crime #2"s are we willing to accept if we're going to get a "The Island" and a "Summersong" out of the deal?
All in all, with the notable exception of the middle two tracks, this album is definitely worth listening to. To remind everyone (Zach and Enrique, I know you're interested in going), Decemberists concert on the 27th, 9 pm, at the Tabernacle. It should be great.
Currently listening: Sam's Town, the Killers (review soon to follow)
As it turns out, no, not so much. The Decemberists, though their new album falls a bit short of true brilliance, aptly debunk one of the great principles of the Indie Music school of thought: any given collection of music is automatically better when released on anything but a major label. Because except for a few missteps, The Crane Wife is probably their best album to date. So guess what? The transition to Columbia didn't make them suddenly suck.
This CD starts with "The Crane Wife Part 3," which is actually the last third of the musical adaptation of the Japanese folk tale of the same name. You're probably familiar with it, so listen carefully to the lyrics so you can catch the story. This first song is moving and emotional, and it's musically satisfying. About three minutes into it, I started thinking "If this whole album is this good, then we've got something amazing on our hands."
Then I heard "The Island."
I'm not going to lie, I'm surprised I didn't start breathing heavily when I heard this one for the first time. As a huge fan of "The Tain," of course I was ecstatic to find what basically amounts to "The Tain's Little Brother" in the middle of a full length album. I'm not going to talk much about this track, but suffice it to say that it's almost twelve minutes of pure brilliance from start to finish. And any band who can incorporate a Tempest allusion and a "Whiskey in the Jar" tribute within a few minutes of each other is something special indeed.
"Yankee Bayonet" is very good, taking us to the Civil War via a folky male-female duet. "O Valencia!" is unfortunately less good. There's nothing wrong with it musically, and it's put together very well, but it just toes the line of "not interesting." How many modern-day retellings of Romeo and Juliet do we really need? And how many stories of lost love can the Decemberists churn out? "The Crane Wife" and "Yankee Bayonet" are both love-lost stories, but more sincere and inventive than "O Valencia!" It's not a bad song per se, but there are about four tracks I would have picked ahead of this one to make the first single out of.
Then we really get into the doldrums of the album. "The Perfect Crime #2" is sadly the inevitable track that's going to give Mr. I'm-Better-Than-You-Because-I-Discovered-This-Band-Before-You-Even-
Knew-Indie-Music-Existed a little ammunition to cry out his "Holy crap, the Decemberists suck now just because they're on a major label" lament. There are a handful of people who will defend this song; I fail to see its musical merit. I feel like half the song is Colin repeating the words "The perfect, the perfect, the perfect, the perfect crime" over and freaking over again. Even if that's not the exact proportion, the fact that it seems like that makes it a bad piece of music. It's frustratingly repetitive and not at all imaginative, which is not something I ever thought I would say about a Decemberists song.
Next, we hear "When the War Came," which nobody but me seems to have any issue with. Maybe I'm biased against the horrendously bad trumpet lick in the chorus, but that combined with the insistent banging of the guitar riff just results in a musically jarring song. Luckily, now, the album begins its ascent back into good musical quality. I have to say that I'm not a huge fan of "Shankill Butchers" either, but it's certainly better than the two tracks preceeding it. The fact that it's based off real events is cool, and the musical atmosphere created by the song--a sort of unsettling and creepy bedtime tune--definitely works given the subject matter. But this song, more than any other on the album, just lacks energy. It doesn't go much of anywhere.
After all this, we're refreshed with the brilliance of "Summersong." This is an absolutely delightful song, as imagistic and lyrically deep as any of the Decemberists' best work. It works on a variety of levels, too: are these happy times that necessarily will end eventually? Or sad ones, in reminiscence of the better ones? What's getting swallowed by a wave: the summer itself, or some ideal that it represents? This is probably the best (non-twelve minute) track on the album: it's beautiful and catchy, and as deep as you want it to be.
"The Crane Wife 1 and 2" provides the first two thirds of the already-finished fable, and delivers well. Finally, "Sons and Daughters" is a light, hopeful, and optimistic song to end the album; it has the happy effect of leaving the message that there's always something to look forward to.
This album does add an interesting dynamic to the Decemberists fanbase. In the past, we had never seen a truly bad song from them. There were boring songs, and un-brilliant ones, certainly; never an awful one. So in the past we could tolerate an "Of Angels and Angles" in return for a "The Infanta." How many "The Perfect Crime #2"s are we willing to accept if we're going to get a "The Island" and a "Summersong" out of the deal?
All in all, with the notable exception of the middle two tracks, this album is definitely worth listening to. To remind everyone (Zach and Enrique, I know you're interested in going), Decemberists concert on the 27th, 9 pm, at the Tabernacle. It should be great.
Currently listening: Sam's Town, the Killers (review soon to follow)
Sunday, September 17, 2006
If 100,000 people comment on this post...
then I'll be surprised by the volume of commentary that Isoceleria has achieved. A bit honored, but overwhelmingly surprised. So here's the deal. If you're a member of the college Facebook-conscious crowd, you probably witnessed the phenomenon of Threesome Dude, aka Brody Ruckus, in the last couple of weeks. If not, here's a quick rundown.
Early September 2006, a Facebook group appears advertising "If this group reaches 100,000 members, my girlfriend will have a threesome." Your personal ethics and mores nonwithstanding, that's a pretty ambitious goal. And one that the Facebook community was perfectly eager to support. The literal hockey-stick growth of this group was nothing less than astounding. A couple thousand members one day, tens of thousands the next, and over 100,000 in a mere few days. Then the landmark was changed: 300,000 members, and he gets to take pictures. Then he got that. The next watershed was supposed to be "Largest group on Facebook lets me shoot videos!" And then, the group pulled a Roanoake.
Next day, it was gone. No more Threesome Guy, no more Universal Goal of Happiness and Unity for Facebook to shoot for, and not even a scrawled Croatoan in its place. Now, its fractious remains stand: "I didn't need a facebook group to get a threesome," "I will blow up my car if this group reaches 500,000 members," etc. So what happened to Mr. Ruckus and his "red-blooded college male" aspirations? Apparently they were not real. And neither was Brody himself.
The whole thing was a put-on, an act, sponsored by Ruckus music. This group, weighing in at nearly 500,000 members at last count, certainly put a strain on the servers. And when Facebook realized that "Brody Ruckus" was not, in fact, a Georgia Tech student, they pulled the plug (more to free resources than out of any spite). So how does Ruckus itself tie into anything? Ruckus gives you free music, legally. Except... wait, you can't burn CDs of what you download, and you can't put their music on an iPod or other sort of mp3 player, and you have to use Ruckus's crappy media player to be able to listen to what you download. Ah, but if you pay a certain rate per song, you have the liberty to do that. Free indeed. Evidently Ruckus has a contract with Georgia Tech that permits this enlightened era of free (except in certain circumstances) music downloading (but not burning or transferring to an iPod). It was supposed to be a big deal. But. judging from popular opinion, most everyone realized how much it sucks and has not used it. Thus the need for Threesome Guy.
So Ruckus has a less-than-accepted music service, and a wildly popular fake Facebook group. How to connect the two? Obviously, with the effort and foresight that Ruckus put into Brody, there's no real "exit strategy." We're not going to have Brody reach the ultimate goal of largest Facebook group, then say "Thanks, guys," and leave with everyone feeling good about themselves. There's still no connection between the product and the advertisement. On the other side of the spectrum, we're not going to have a "Haha, suckers! This has been an advertisment all along!" because that would leave a whole lot of people thinking not such good thoughts about Ruckus. Hardly the desired effect of an advertisement.
The question, then, is what was the real plan? My theory is that it lies in a tenuous, but still existing, thread between the group and Ruckus music. Let's assume for a moment that Brody, if he hadn't been shut down, would have eventually reached his largest group status. So now, time for the videos to get posted to Facebook! These videos, of course, don't exist, but that's okay. Uploading them, of course, would have caused a violation of the Facebook Terms of Service, but that's better than okay. That's the whole point. Brody tells us, "Wow, guys, you are amazing, and so was the sex. Unfortunately, these prudes at Facebook won't let me post the pictures and video." Aww... how sad! People are generally down on Facebook at this point, not seeming to care that they agreed to this silly thing called a "contract" when they joined, and they demand reparations. Facebook won't give them any. (Note that Brody and Facebook would not have had to have any contact at all. This whole "fight" is another part of the ruse.) So enter Ruckus.
The great and magnanimous Ruckus, sensitive to the sexually-frustrated plight of the college student, then tells everyone in the group "We can't give you free porn... but here's some free music." Now, Ruckus is a hero, and everyone in the group goes from being Brody Ruckus fans to simply Ruckus fans. Adbertising mission accomplished.
Currently listening: Quiet is the New Loud, Kings of Convenience
Early September 2006, a Facebook group appears advertising "If this group reaches 100,000 members, my girlfriend will have a threesome." Your personal ethics and mores nonwithstanding, that's a pretty ambitious goal. And one that the Facebook community was perfectly eager to support. The literal hockey-stick growth of this group was nothing less than astounding. A couple thousand members one day, tens of thousands the next, and over 100,000 in a mere few days. Then the landmark was changed: 300,000 members, and he gets to take pictures. Then he got that. The next watershed was supposed to be "Largest group on Facebook lets me shoot videos!" And then, the group pulled a Roanoake.
Next day, it was gone. No more Threesome Guy, no more Universal Goal of Happiness and Unity for Facebook to shoot for, and not even a scrawled Croatoan in its place. Now, its fractious remains stand: "I didn't need a facebook group to get a threesome," "I will blow up my car if this group reaches 500,000 members," etc. So what happened to Mr. Ruckus and his "red-blooded college male" aspirations? Apparently they were not real. And neither was Brody himself.
The whole thing was a put-on, an act, sponsored by Ruckus music. This group, weighing in at nearly 500,000 members at last count, certainly put a strain on the servers. And when Facebook realized that "Brody Ruckus" was not, in fact, a Georgia Tech student, they pulled the plug (more to free resources than out of any spite). So how does Ruckus itself tie into anything? Ruckus gives you free music, legally. Except... wait, you can't burn CDs of what you download, and you can't put their music on an iPod or other sort of mp3 player, and you have to use Ruckus's crappy media player to be able to listen to what you download. Ah, but if you pay a certain rate per song, you have the liberty to do that. Free indeed. Evidently Ruckus has a contract with Georgia Tech that permits this enlightened era of free (except in certain circumstances) music downloading (but not burning or transferring to an iPod). It was supposed to be a big deal. But. judging from popular opinion, most everyone realized how much it sucks and has not used it. Thus the need for Threesome Guy.
So Ruckus has a less-than-accepted music service, and a wildly popular fake Facebook group. How to connect the two? Obviously, with the effort and foresight that Ruckus put into Brody, there's no real "exit strategy." We're not going to have Brody reach the ultimate goal of largest Facebook group, then say "Thanks, guys," and leave with everyone feeling good about themselves. There's still no connection between the product and the advertisement. On the other side of the spectrum, we're not going to have a "Haha, suckers! This has been an advertisment all along!" because that would leave a whole lot of people thinking not such good thoughts about Ruckus. Hardly the desired effect of an advertisement.
The question, then, is what was the real plan? My theory is that it lies in a tenuous, but still existing, thread between the group and Ruckus music. Let's assume for a moment that Brody, if he hadn't been shut down, would have eventually reached his largest group status. So now, time for the videos to get posted to Facebook! These videos, of course, don't exist, but that's okay. Uploading them, of course, would have caused a violation of the Facebook Terms of Service, but that's better than okay. That's the whole point. Brody tells us, "Wow, guys, you are amazing, and so was the sex. Unfortunately, these prudes at Facebook won't let me post the pictures and video." Aww... how sad! People are generally down on Facebook at this point, not seeming to care that they agreed to this silly thing called a "contract" when they joined, and they demand reparations. Facebook won't give them any. (Note that Brody and Facebook would not have had to have any contact at all. This whole "fight" is another part of the ruse.) So enter Ruckus.
The great and magnanimous Ruckus, sensitive to the sexually-frustrated plight of the college student, then tells everyone in the group "We can't give you free porn... but here's some free music." Now, Ruckus is a hero, and everyone in the group goes from being Brody Ruckus fans to simply Ruckus fans. Adbertising mission accomplished.
Currently listening: Quiet is the New Loud, Kings of Convenience
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Initiation and Triumphal Return
Saturday, August 26, 2006: I tell my friend Matt, also a staff member in Glenn, that he probably couldn't guess the strange place where I was the night before. Interestingly, he guessed Beta, which is probably the frattiest fraternity on the Tech campus. While this was an imaginative guess, and in fact in some respects stranger than where I ended up, it was in fact not correct.
Where I was, it turns out, was the Masquerade. The Masquerade is a concert venue in Atlanta that has a part-merited but mostly undeserving reputation for utter degeneracy. (Broken windows and decades-unpainted walls don't exactly help its case.) Concert venue? Not at all strange for a college student. Shady concert venue? Not too strange, considering its prime downtown Atlanta location. The truly strange part was the concert that I was actually seeing.
The friend of mine that organized the venture told me "Zao is toward the hardcore end of metal." Toward? "Okay, so they pretty much are the hardcore end of metal." Add them to a headliner band called Throwdown and (without any description of any music that Throwdown plays) you have a decent image of that concert. Though there are many adjectives that could be used to describe me, "hardcore" probably isn't toward the top of that list. And neither is it toward the top of my musical preferences. The truth was, I had nothing better to be doing that Friday night, and as long as I had friends who were being proactive and constructing something to do, why not go along with it? College is about experiencing things that you'd never ordinarily do... or something like that.
My immediate conclusions regarding the concert were 1) "hardcore" still isn't at the top of my musical preferences and 2) I'm not sure that it's worth it to pay twenty bucks to hear some guy go "Gaaaaaah! Wahh rahh rahh rahh!" into a microphone for three hours. However, a chance encounter at the same Masquerade but a few weeks later added a few thoughts about live concerts in general.
This time, I was going as a favor to a friend who (understandably) didn't want to get raped in downtown Atlanta. Add the facts that this time, the ticket is twelve dollars, not twenty, and I get to spend Friday night with three girls (in a welcomed inversion of the typical Georgia Tech ratio), and I'm there. This one featured a handful of bands that were listenable but unremarkable (see? I don't even remember their names), and headlined by Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. Now, I had heard the name Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, but I'd never heard their music, and I was far from being able to actually recognize any of their songs. Oh well.
My first impression was a lot better than the one I had at the first concert, because more than one in twenty people were wearing something other than black. In fact, the people here actually looked... dare I say normal? Contrast this to Green Mohawk Guy at the first one. And despite the apparent normalcy at this one, the two were remarkably similar.
Okay, so straight off the bat, mosh pits don't make any sense. Various descriptions of these collected over the past couple of weeks have included "barbarian ritual," "emo kids practicing karate kicks," and by a member of some band or another, "dance moves." I remarked how strange it was that "dance moves" translates into "run into each other as fast as you can." Closely related is crowdsurfing, which basically appears to be "get alternately manhandled and groped while not even being able to stand on your own two feet." The strangest part of these pheonmena is the fact that you can't watch the band while you're doing them. Isn't the point of going to a live concert being able to see the band that's performing? Sure, you can give the "a live show is so much higher energy" argument. But how do you notice that "energy" if you're not paying attention in the first place, instead choosing to change the venue into a gladiatorial arena-sumo wrestling ring hybrid.
With that said, let's examine the "energy" assertion a bit more. Live performances are supposed to be more energetic, closer to a "pure" performance than a recorded one. Is this suggesting that during private practices and shows where the band is not out to prove anything or impress anyone, the guitarists jump around and spin on the stage? I've got a tough time believing that. And I'm forced to conclude that guitar-dancing adds virtually nothing to a live show.
My final and biggest complaint is that people in bands take themselves way too seriously. Is it necessary to swear at the audience between every song? I might be encouraged to jump or nod my head in time with the music if you suggest that... but I'm rather inclined not to when I'm instructed to "nod my [insert expletive here]-ing head!" The lead singer of Red Jumpsuit Apparatus seemed rather put off by the fact that not everyone in the world had been listening to them for the last two years. Apparently some interviewer made the grave mistake of asking him what it felt to be an overnight sensation. His (private) response to us was "We've been around for years. Do your [expletive]ing homework." And a huge cheer from the crowd!
That said... Decemberists concert October 27. Probably no mosh pit there. Anyone interested in going?
Currently listening: "Fantasy," Earth Wind and Fire
Where I was, it turns out, was the Masquerade. The Masquerade is a concert venue in Atlanta that has a part-merited but mostly undeserving reputation for utter degeneracy. (Broken windows and decades-unpainted walls don't exactly help its case.) Concert venue? Not at all strange for a college student. Shady concert venue? Not too strange, considering its prime downtown Atlanta location. The truly strange part was the concert that I was actually seeing.
The friend of mine that organized the venture told me "Zao is toward the hardcore end of metal." Toward? "Okay, so they pretty much are the hardcore end of metal." Add them to a headliner band called Throwdown and (without any description of any music that Throwdown plays) you have a decent image of that concert. Though there are many adjectives that could be used to describe me, "hardcore" probably isn't toward the top of that list. And neither is it toward the top of my musical preferences. The truth was, I had nothing better to be doing that Friday night, and as long as I had friends who were being proactive and constructing something to do, why not go along with it? College is about experiencing things that you'd never ordinarily do... or something like that.
My immediate conclusions regarding the concert were 1) "hardcore" still isn't at the top of my musical preferences and 2) I'm not sure that it's worth it to pay twenty bucks to hear some guy go "Gaaaaaah! Wahh rahh rahh rahh!" into a microphone for three hours. However, a chance encounter at the same Masquerade but a few weeks later added a few thoughts about live concerts in general.
This time, I was going as a favor to a friend who (understandably) didn't want to get raped in downtown Atlanta. Add the facts that this time, the ticket is twelve dollars, not twenty, and I get to spend Friday night with three girls (in a welcomed inversion of the typical Georgia Tech ratio), and I'm there. This one featured a handful of bands that were listenable but unremarkable (see? I don't even remember their names), and headlined by Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. Now, I had heard the name Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, but I'd never heard their music, and I was far from being able to actually recognize any of their songs. Oh well.
My first impression was a lot better than the one I had at the first concert, because more than one in twenty people were wearing something other than black. In fact, the people here actually looked... dare I say normal? Contrast this to Green Mohawk Guy at the first one. And despite the apparent normalcy at this one, the two were remarkably similar.
Okay, so straight off the bat, mosh pits don't make any sense. Various descriptions of these collected over the past couple of weeks have included "barbarian ritual," "emo kids practicing karate kicks," and by a member of some band or another, "dance moves." I remarked how strange it was that "dance moves" translates into "run into each other as fast as you can." Closely related is crowdsurfing, which basically appears to be "get alternately manhandled and groped while not even being able to stand on your own two feet." The strangest part of these pheonmena is the fact that you can't watch the band while you're doing them. Isn't the point of going to a live concert being able to see the band that's performing? Sure, you can give the "a live show is so much higher energy" argument. But how do you notice that "energy" if you're not paying attention in the first place, instead choosing to change the venue into a gladiatorial arena-sumo wrestling ring hybrid.
With that said, let's examine the "energy" assertion a bit more. Live performances are supposed to be more energetic, closer to a "pure" performance than a recorded one. Is this suggesting that during private practices and shows where the band is not out to prove anything or impress anyone, the guitarists jump around and spin on the stage? I've got a tough time believing that. And I'm forced to conclude that guitar-dancing adds virtually nothing to a live show.
My final and biggest complaint is that people in bands take themselves way too seriously. Is it necessary to swear at the audience between every song? I might be encouraged to jump or nod my head in time with the music if you suggest that... but I'm rather inclined not to when I'm instructed to "nod my [insert expletive here]-ing head!" The lead singer of Red Jumpsuit Apparatus seemed rather put off by the fact that not everyone in the world had been listening to them for the last two years. Apparently some interviewer made the grave mistake of asking him what it felt to be an overnight sensation. His (private) response to us was "We've been around for years. Do your [expletive]ing homework." And a huge cheer from the crowd!
That said... Decemberists concert October 27. Probably no mosh pit there. Anyone interested in going?
Currently listening: "Fantasy," Earth Wind and Fire
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Three Reasons
That Georgia Tech lost to Notre Dame. It had nothing to do with the Irish being a substantially better team; rather a mere few points of contention brought about our loss.
First, Tech’s return coverage sucks. I mean, you get a kickoff that lands nicely on the 15-yard line, or a punt that goes farther than you have any right to expect it to, and suddenly the Irish (or the Bulldogs, the Hokies, the Cavaliers, or any other team that Tech makes a general practice of losing to) are on your 48. Huh? Tech must get better at making sure the other team isn’t handed thirty free yards every time the ball gets kicked.
Second, we had some questionable calls. I’m not one to blame my football misfortunes on the refs… unless there was a call so egregiously bad that it may have cost the game. In this game, we had two. The personal foul call during Notre Dame’s second touchdown drive? I’ve heard two explanations for that one: late hit, and hit to the head. From my vantage point (and bias as a Tech fan) it looked like an in-bound, clean hit to me. Even if there was some incidental contact to the head, it was just that: incidental. Five-yard penalty, not ten. Second was Calvin Johnson’s reception late in the game. This was the only reviewed play in the entire game to be reversed on review… and I’d really like to see what they called “indisputable video evidence.”
Finally... Darius Walker. Need I say more? And to think he was on the verge of going to Tech.
Currently listening: "Brand New Colony," the Postal Service
First, Tech’s return coverage sucks. I mean, you get a kickoff that lands nicely on the 15-yard line, or a punt that goes farther than you have any right to expect it to, and suddenly the Irish (or the Bulldogs, the Hokies, the Cavaliers, or any other team that Tech makes a general practice of losing to) are on your 48. Huh? Tech must get better at making sure the other team isn’t handed thirty free yards every time the ball gets kicked.
Second, we had some questionable calls. I’m not one to blame my football misfortunes on the refs… unless there was a call so egregiously bad that it may have cost the game. In this game, we had two. The personal foul call during Notre Dame’s second touchdown drive? I’ve heard two explanations for that one: late hit, and hit to the head. From my vantage point (and bias as a Tech fan) it looked like an in-bound, clean hit to me. Even if there was some incidental contact to the head, it was just that: incidental. Five-yard penalty, not ten. Second was Calvin Johnson’s reception late in the game. This was the only reviewed play in the entire game to be reversed on review… and I’d really like to see what they called “indisputable video evidence.”
Finally... Darius Walker. Need I say more? And to think he was on the verge of going to Tech.
Currently listening: "Brand New Colony," the Postal Service
Saturday, August 12, 2006
Supporting Documents to the Agenda
Firstly, I apologize for lack of posts and generally being unavailable lately. Training will soon be over, and then things will proceed to a more regular and intuitive schedule.
Now, I have two documents. The first is a throwback to the days of middle and early high school, when email/journal quizzes were something of a phenomenon. I, at one time, took the liberty of compiling as many of these as I could find into one huge quiz. An "uber-quiz," if you will. While not intended to provide a complete (or even serious, at times) portrait of the Author, it's got enough truth to surprise and enough lies to amuse. It has been added to the sidebar, as well as being available here.
The second is an essay concerning the nature of morality, good, and evil in the video game Earthbound. If you've never played the game, it may not make a great deal of sense, and if you've got a problem with citing Wikipedia as a legimate resource, then just pretend I found the books that Wikipedia cites rather than have taken the convenient route of getting the same information from the internet. This essay can be found here.
Currently listening: "Soul Meets Body," Death Cab for Cutie
Now, I have two documents. The first is a throwback to the days of middle and early high school, when email/journal quizzes were something of a phenomenon. I, at one time, took the liberty of compiling as many of these as I could find into one huge quiz. An "uber-quiz," if you will. While not intended to provide a complete (or even serious, at times) portrait of the Author, it's got enough truth to surprise and enough lies to amuse. It has been added to the sidebar, as well as being available here.
The second is an essay concerning the nature of morality, good, and evil in the video game Earthbound. If you've never played the game, it may not make a great deal of sense, and if you've got a problem with citing Wikipedia as a legimate resource, then just pretend I found the books that Wikipedia cites rather than have taken the convenient route of getting the same information from the internet. This essay can be found here.
Currently listening: "Soul Meets Body," Death Cab for Cutie
Monday, July 31, 2006
If this one's not good enough
Many readers of this blog know (probably thanks to my speculation post after its season finale) that I'm a fan of the television show Lost. It's well done as a drama in that the characters and their interactions are actually interesting; it's well done as a suspense because the "what's going on on this island?" is genuinely something the viewers want to know. Unfortunately, summer = no Lost, so the producers et al. came up with the "half content, half marketing" gimmick called the Lost Experience.
The Experience is an "alternate reality game" that addresses some of the still-unresolved mysteries of the television show. I've been playing the game with sort of low to moderate involvement; I like to see the content as it comes up, but I'm rarely on the forefront of discovering that content. I just don't have time to scour the appropriate websites to find the clues. But some people do, and I'm grateful toward them so I can leech off their progress. Brief aside concerning that progress: the game is currently in Act 3 of either 3 or 5 (Holy Grail reference nonwithstanding). Right now, the point is to collect video fragments across the internet to form one supervideo that will "tear the Hanso foundation apart." As of now, I think Bearded Dude is Alvar Hanso, and that this Orientation video is concerning the Valenzetti equation. Mittlewerk is showing that same video to his savants, who are working with some unknown but urgent stimulus to solve the equation. Finally, the Numbers are either solutions or critical components of that same equation; that's why they keep showing up.
Anyway, one of those people who does a lot of everyone's work for them is a guy who calls himself Matt the Pale. Mr. Pale recently posted a long, scathing, and controversial rant saying how TLE was "not an alternate reality game" because too much was spoon-fed to the players, there were too many missed opportunities to impress the fanbase, etc. He said that his only motivation for continuing to play is a morbid curiosity. I think that's a load of crap, because if he really didn't care, then he'd sit back and watch the game from afar rather than continue to be its most prominent player. On the other hand, though, if anyone is entitled to make such a complaint, it would be him.
The point here is that he listed Perplex City as an example of what an alternate reality game is really supposed to be like. I checked it out... and I'm stunned. Puzzles, ranging from "match these dinosaur names to their skeletons" to "give a proof of the Riemann zeta function" lead the players to clues of who stole the Receda cube. There's a ton of backstory, characters, podcasts, and real-world events to back it all up. I'm really excited about playing this game, and I only wish that I could have discovered it before a year after it was released.
Currently listening: How to Save a Life, the Fray
The Experience is an "alternate reality game" that addresses some of the still-unresolved mysteries of the television show. I've been playing the game with sort of low to moderate involvement; I like to see the content as it comes up, but I'm rarely on the forefront of discovering that content. I just don't have time to scour the appropriate websites to find the clues. But some people do, and I'm grateful toward them so I can leech off their progress. Brief aside concerning that progress: the game is currently in Act 3 of either 3 or 5 (Holy Grail reference nonwithstanding). Right now, the point is to collect video fragments across the internet to form one supervideo that will "tear the Hanso foundation apart." As of now, I think Bearded Dude is Alvar Hanso, and that this Orientation video is concerning the Valenzetti equation. Mittlewerk is showing that same video to his savants, who are working with some unknown but urgent stimulus to solve the equation. Finally, the Numbers are either solutions or critical components of that same equation; that's why they keep showing up.
Anyway, one of those people who does a lot of everyone's work for them is a guy who calls himself Matt the Pale. Mr. Pale recently posted a long, scathing, and controversial rant saying how TLE was "not an alternate reality game" because too much was spoon-fed to the players, there were too many missed opportunities to impress the fanbase, etc. He said that his only motivation for continuing to play is a morbid curiosity. I think that's a load of crap, because if he really didn't care, then he'd sit back and watch the game from afar rather than continue to be its most prominent player. On the other hand, though, if anyone is entitled to make such a complaint, it would be him.
The point here is that he listed Perplex City as an example of what an alternate reality game is really supposed to be like. I checked it out... and I'm stunned. Puzzles, ranging from "match these dinosaur names to their skeletons" to "give a proof of the Riemann zeta function" lead the players to clues of who stole the Receda cube. There's a ton of backstory, characters, podcasts, and real-world events to back it all up. I'm really excited about playing this game, and I only wish that I could have discovered it before a year after it was released.
Currently listening: How to Save a Life, the Fray
Monday, July 24, 2006
Vast Improvements
Once you disregard that they both have cute girls in leading roles and that sailing is central to both, Wedding Crashers and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest really have nothing to do with each other, at least cinematically. I saw Pirates within a week of its release in theaters, and Wedding Crashers for the first time about a year after its release, and after seeing both, the one commonality between the two films is that they were both a lot better than I thought they would have been.
Review: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
I did not see the first Pirates movie until the end of 2005, after it had been on DVD for quite a while. I associated the girly "Omigod, it's Johnny Depp! And Orlando Bloom!" mentality with that movie, and I expected it be sophomoric comedy. Turns out, I was wrong. It was actually a pretty decent movie. I wasn't blown away by it (though I should probably watch it again; a tiny screen and a DVD player with an identity crisis didn't help that movie's case) and I had no real drive to go see the second one in theaters. I figured I probably would see it, because many of my friends are inexplicably into the "let's go see everything in the theater as soon as it comes out" mentality. That's exactly what happened.
I was expecting something halfway between "decent" and "good" and I ended up with "excellent." This is seriously a great movie. Don't believe what you might hear about it being "incomprehensible." There are multiple plotlines. Deal with it. Just because there happens to be more than one thing going on at once in this movie does not make it hard to follow. It makes it interesting.
It probably helps that I'm a big fan of the historical/seafaring/colonial age genre. I mean, listening to the Decemberists, reading Neal Stephenson, and eating dinner at Dante's Down the Hatch is one thing (okay, three things) but to me, Pirates is the defining movie of that genre. Swashbuckling action, which might look cool but usually doesn't impress me cinematically, here has an actual purpose of defining the setting. A three-way sword fight? Pretty cool; I doubt that's ever been done before. The water wheel, the pendulum cage... these are what special effects ought to be; things that you can't see in everyday life but actually could exist and that you've never thought of.
The acting in this movie is noteworthy as well. For all the crap I heap on Johnny Depp's fanatical cult of "every teenage girl ever," the man knows how to act. He's taken Jack Sparrow from a simple pirate captain in an entertaining series of movies into a cultural icon. (Jack is an example of how a character is supposed to work, like I talked about a few months ago, with both a competent director to define the role and a competent actor to execute it.) He's charismatic and he possesses a humorously large vocabulary. Depp plays this character with just enough quirks to be entertaining, but not such antics that he's in Anchorman territory. His accent and personality are both flawless, never dropping either, greatly enhancing the credibility and enjoyment of the character.
Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom do very well in their respective roles as well. As one article I read put it, Knightles does well playing the "damsel doing just fine, thank you" as opposed to the damsel in distress. If this character type seems cliched at this point, it's only because Knightley herself made it so. If anything, Knightley seems less attractive than she used to, not quite sure why. I think she's a bit too skinny. And, though his role takes less finesse than Depp's, Bloom does a fine job as well. He's a great foil to Depp, courageous and serious to the self-interested and flippant Sparrow.
Now, a lot of people thought Gollum from Lord of the Rings was the coolest special effect achievement ever. I might be the only one who didn't much care about Gollum, and in that case I'm probably alone in not much caring about Davy Jones either. The character was good, and I guess the tentacles were cool if you're into that sort of thing, but it just didn't impress me. That said, Davy Jones is an excellent villain, a worthy followup to Barbossa, and I'm looking forward to seeing him again in the third installment.
As is easy to do in a pirate flick, Dead Man's Chest features great cinematography. How could those lovely, sweeping shots of a bustling port and majestic eighteenth century warships and vast open ocean really be omitted from this film? The cinematography reminded me of that from Master and Commander, which won an Oscar for its brilliant camera work. The music was awesome as well, enhancing the overall epic feel of the movie. This is actually the sort of movie that might entice one to become a "movie person" and randomly go to movies, expecting to get a great deal of entertainment value out of it. Unfortunately, Dead Man's Chest is so entertaining that you'd be sorely disappointed with virtually everything else out there.
Review: Wedding Crashers
Yep, I'm a year late on this review. This is one of those spur of the moment, "Hmm, I heard this was funny, so why not throw it in the Netflix queue?" ideas. Again, expectation pointed to "typical frat pack comedy, probably going to be a lot of gaggy humor" but whatever. As it turns out, the balance of "frat pack" comedy to romatic comedy was more stilted toward the "romantic comedy" direction. Usually, given two alternative styles, "romantic comedy" is not the direction you necessarily want to go. Compared to the sort of humor I was expecting, though, that was probably a pleasant surprise.
More of the pleasant surprise came from how witty Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn really were as the titular wedding crashers. One scene where Vaughn's character Jeremy provides Wilson's John with a copy of the Secretary of the Treasury's position paper on Micronesian economics, and the followup where John actually has a pseudo-intellectual discussion with the Secretary about Micronesian economics... genius. Some of the backstories they use to get into weddings are downright inspired, a far cry from the kind of stupidity I thought would surface.
But the best part of this movie is that is actually has a soul. At one wedding, John bumps into a girl who does not exist in real life. This girl combines "extremely attractive without being sleazy" with "playful and witty" with "sweet and charming" with "sophisticated but not arrogant." Now, if any male were to encounter a girl this incredibly ideal in the real world, he'd drop everything to pursue her. As it turns out, instead of pull some sort of eye-rolling immature stunt, this is exactly what John does. Thus, the movie has a real sort of likability that goes way beyond sophomoric jokes.
Likability, of course, doesn't imply perfection. We don't need to see what breasts look like. Nude scenes do not add to the cinematic value of a movie. They may get some single-minded guys in the door (and I of anyone realize that movie making is a business) but they simply are never cinematically justified. Also, the entire movie was extremely predictable. Of course Perfect But Nonexistent In The Real World Claire Cleary (a stunning Rachel McAdams) ends up dumping her loser boyfriend (and I wish the movie had been a bit less explicit as to his cheating on Claire, so it would have make John's achievement seem more impressive) so the Heroine and Hero can Reunite at the Triumphant Climax of the Film. Of course the Hero's Sidekick with No Moral Code but who has a Girl Proclaim Her Love to Him ends up actually loving her and another Happy Couple is born. We didn't need to watch past half of the movie to know what was going to happen at the end. But Vaughn and Wilson play such funny and compelling characters, and Rachel McAdams is so darn cute (and her character so darn amazing), that we want to watch it.
Currently listening: "To Zanarkand," Final Fantasy X, Nobuo Uematsu
Review: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
I did not see the first Pirates movie until the end of 2005, after it had been on DVD for quite a while. I associated the girly "Omigod, it's Johnny Depp! And Orlando Bloom!" mentality with that movie, and I expected it be sophomoric comedy. Turns out, I was wrong. It was actually a pretty decent movie. I wasn't blown away by it (though I should probably watch it again; a tiny screen and a DVD player with an identity crisis didn't help that movie's case) and I had no real drive to go see the second one in theaters. I figured I probably would see it, because many of my friends are inexplicably into the "let's go see everything in the theater as soon as it comes out" mentality. That's exactly what happened.
I was expecting something halfway between "decent" and "good" and I ended up with "excellent." This is seriously a great movie. Don't believe what you might hear about it being "incomprehensible." There are multiple plotlines. Deal with it. Just because there happens to be more than one thing going on at once in this movie does not make it hard to follow. It makes it interesting.
It probably helps that I'm a big fan of the historical/seafaring/colonial age genre. I mean, listening to the Decemberists, reading Neal Stephenson, and eating dinner at Dante's Down the Hatch is one thing (okay, three things) but to me, Pirates is the defining movie of that genre. Swashbuckling action, which might look cool but usually doesn't impress me cinematically, here has an actual purpose of defining the setting. A three-way sword fight? Pretty cool; I doubt that's ever been done before. The water wheel, the pendulum cage... these are what special effects ought to be; things that you can't see in everyday life but actually could exist and that you've never thought of.
The acting in this movie is noteworthy as well. For all the crap I heap on Johnny Depp's fanatical cult of "every teenage girl ever," the man knows how to act. He's taken Jack Sparrow from a simple pirate captain in an entertaining series of movies into a cultural icon. (Jack is an example of how a character is supposed to work, like I talked about a few months ago, with both a competent director to define the role and a competent actor to execute it.) He's charismatic and he possesses a humorously large vocabulary. Depp plays this character with just enough quirks to be entertaining, but not such antics that he's in Anchorman territory. His accent and personality are both flawless, never dropping either, greatly enhancing the credibility and enjoyment of the character.
Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom do very well in their respective roles as well. As one article I read put it, Knightles does well playing the "damsel doing just fine, thank you" as opposed to the damsel in distress. If this character type seems cliched at this point, it's only because Knightley herself made it so. If anything, Knightley seems less attractive than she used to, not quite sure why. I think she's a bit too skinny. And, though his role takes less finesse than Depp's, Bloom does a fine job as well. He's a great foil to Depp, courageous and serious to the self-interested and flippant Sparrow.
Now, a lot of people thought Gollum from Lord of the Rings was the coolest special effect achievement ever. I might be the only one who didn't much care about Gollum, and in that case I'm probably alone in not much caring about Davy Jones either. The character was good, and I guess the tentacles were cool if you're into that sort of thing, but it just didn't impress me. That said, Davy Jones is an excellent villain, a worthy followup to Barbossa, and I'm looking forward to seeing him again in the third installment.
As is easy to do in a pirate flick, Dead Man's Chest features great cinematography. How could those lovely, sweeping shots of a bustling port and majestic eighteenth century warships and vast open ocean really be omitted from this film? The cinematography reminded me of that from Master and Commander, which won an Oscar for its brilliant camera work. The music was awesome as well, enhancing the overall epic feel of the movie. This is actually the sort of movie that might entice one to become a "movie person" and randomly go to movies, expecting to get a great deal of entertainment value out of it. Unfortunately, Dead Man's Chest is so entertaining that you'd be sorely disappointed with virtually everything else out there.
Review: Wedding Crashers
Yep, I'm a year late on this review. This is one of those spur of the moment, "Hmm, I heard this was funny, so why not throw it in the Netflix queue?" ideas. Again, expectation pointed to "typical frat pack comedy, probably going to be a lot of gaggy humor" but whatever. As it turns out, the balance of "frat pack" comedy to romatic comedy was more stilted toward the "romantic comedy" direction. Usually, given two alternative styles, "romantic comedy" is not the direction you necessarily want to go. Compared to the sort of humor I was expecting, though, that was probably a pleasant surprise.
More of the pleasant surprise came from how witty Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn really were as the titular wedding crashers. One scene where Vaughn's character Jeremy provides Wilson's John with a copy of the Secretary of the Treasury's position paper on Micronesian economics, and the followup where John actually has a pseudo-intellectual discussion with the Secretary about Micronesian economics... genius. Some of the backstories they use to get into weddings are downright inspired, a far cry from the kind of stupidity I thought would surface.
But the best part of this movie is that is actually has a soul. At one wedding, John bumps into a girl who does not exist in real life. This girl combines "extremely attractive without being sleazy" with "playful and witty" with "sweet and charming" with "sophisticated but not arrogant." Now, if any male were to encounter a girl this incredibly ideal in the real world, he'd drop everything to pursue her. As it turns out, instead of pull some sort of eye-rolling immature stunt, this is exactly what John does. Thus, the movie has a real sort of likability that goes way beyond sophomoric jokes.
Likability, of course, doesn't imply perfection. We don't need to see what breasts look like. Nude scenes do not add to the cinematic value of a movie. They may get some single-minded guys in the door (and I of anyone realize that movie making is a business) but they simply are never cinematically justified. Also, the entire movie was extremely predictable. Of course Perfect But Nonexistent In The Real World Claire Cleary (a stunning Rachel McAdams) ends up dumping her loser boyfriend (and I wish the movie had been a bit less explicit as to his cheating on Claire, so it would have make John's achievement seem more impressive) so the Heroine and Hero can Reunite at the Triumphant Climax of the Film. Of course the Hero's Sidekick with No Moral Code but who has a Girl Proclaim Her Love to Him ends up actually loving her and another Happy Couple is born. We didn't need to watch past half of the movie to know what was going to happen at the end. But Vaughn and Wilson play such funny and compelling characters, and Rachel McAdams is so darn cute (and her character so darn amazing), that we want to watch it.
Currently listening: "To Zanarkand," Final Fantasy X, Nobuo Uematsu
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Evil Monkeys Abound
Review: Lady in the Water
First off, M. Night Shyamalan is a genius, because he recognizes that monkeys are evil.
Now that that's taken care of... almost every time you watch a movie, you know what you're getting yourself into. You thrust Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn into starring roles and you immediately know what kind of movie Wedding Crashers (see a future post) is going to be. Dead Man's Chest (also see that future post) is going to be exactly like Curse of the Black Pearl except later. With Lady in the Water, you're probably thinking "Okay, Shyamalan flick, a bit of creepiness, massive twist at the end." As it turns out, Lady in the Water has none of that. The movie is much less classic Shyamalan and much more Neil Gaiman.
If you haven't read anything by Gaiman, pick up American Gods right now and read it. Lady in the Water was less evocative of American Gods and more of Neverwhere, but either book will give you a much better idea what to expect out of Lady in the Water than any of Shyamalan's earlier films. In fact, I was thinking "holy crap, this is Neverwhere" through the entire movie. The comparison isn't entirely fair, especially since the book's mythology focuses on its setting, and the movie's mythology has much more to do with a sequence of events than where they take place. But once you take into account the "regular world guy" who gets visited in the regular world by the "magical mystical girl with special powers but who needs regular world guy to survive," which in turn slowly reveals the "fantastic subculture that affects humans but humans have no idea it exists"... the movie gets Gaiman-esque very quickly.
So that's the first caveat of Lady in the Water. If the premise of fantasy bothers or annoys you, don't bother seeing this movie. A corollary to the first caveat: Lady in the Water is indeed a fantasy movie; it is not scary in the least. (The movie does, however, make the same mistake that The Omen and so many other contemporary "horror" films do. That is, it confuses "startling" with "scary." A loud, unexpected noise that makes you jump is not scary.) But fantasy doesn't mean George RR Martin style sword and sorcery, in either Lady in the Water or Neil Gaiman's books' case. It means affinity toward the supernatural and a creative sense of mythology. And Lady in the Water certainly has both.
And really, that's the mark of a good fantasy setting: the permeability of the mtyhos into the setting. It's easy to say "I have set my story in quasi-medieval times, and there is magic." It's not much more difficult to add "My characters believe in this supernatural force that sometimes actually aids them." But to craft your characters and story so well that its gods seem like actual beings, its legends serve as actual sources of inspiration, and its included ethical debates are ones actually worth having in the real world, you've created something magnificent. This is why Final Fantasy X was such a powerful game: the Yevon mythos gave rise to a much deeper sense of realism to the setting. The mythology was so thorough that it became believable, and the player actually felt as if he were doing something important, sacred even, when he arrived at Zanarkand. And to bring things full circle, the Shyamalan-magnitude twist when the player finally reached Zanarkand was all the more incredible because the mythology was so ingrained. (Inversely, this is why Final Fantasy IX was such a dismal game, because you were playing through a story with no overarching mythology to lend it credence.) George RR Martin does this differently than Final Fantasy X, with central conflicts coming over the authenticity of some of the myths (which integrates nicely with his vague and blurry magic system), but he also does it well. And while not as masterfully as Final Fantasy X, as thoroughly as American Gods, or as intriguingly as something from Song of Ice and Fire, Lady in the Water holds its own when it comes to internal mythology.
This mythology starts simple, then grows more complex as the movie progresses. The audience is on a sort of "need to know" basis, which works just fine. We see pictographs at the start of the movie, giving a general outline of the legend, then a few specifics, then more precise details as they become important to the storyline. This works well because it's more the audience learning concepts than having a shovelful of mythology stuffed in its face at the beginning and being mandated to learn it all. Shyamalan uses the "story" device throughout the movie to acheive this effect. One of the recurring themes of the movie--painfully obvious by the fact that the titular Lady in the Water is a magical being named Story--is that there are a few universal "stories" that you have to learn to believe in. These may seem fantastic at first, but they have their validity. Shyamalan's characters aren't necessarily aware that they're in a movie, but there are plenty of self-aware references to plots and characterization (see below) that result in a sort of "translucent" fourth wall. As such, the mythology is able to be revealed gradually rather than with a shovel in the form of a few of the main characters discussing a bedtime story. I'm not sure if this is cheesy or clever--in truth, it's a little of both.
As the movie's best part comes from its mythology, its worst part comes from its attempts at commentary on the theater. I think Shyamalan speaks a bit too loudly as would befit his level of influence. Shakespeare, the greatest playwright of the last millennium, didn't venture to delve this deep into the murky water (my apologies for the bad pun) of "criticizing a genre from within a work of that genre" until Hamlet, about eleven years into his career as a playwright. After writing a couple of dozen plays, he's entitled to make those witticisms about "pastorical-comical, historical-pastoral" actors and how the art of the theater is not in the state it should be. After one movie with huge critical and commercial achievement, and a few further releases with dubious success, Shyamalan is not entitled to the same. While critics' viewpoints can diverge wildly from popular opinion of a film, the truth is that many moviegoers are going to listen to what the critics have to say before deciding to see a film. Therefore, it's important as a director to make a film that appeals to critics, not because you necessarily care what the critical opinion is, but because there are potential audience members that do care what that opinion is.
So is it not intuitively obvious that making a film critic the least immediately likable character in the entire movie is shooting yourself in the cinematic foot? Let me say that I actually like this guy, because his deadpan reviews of vapid artiness are grounded in a strong dose of realism. The movie's best line comes when Cleveland (the main character) is discussing a romance film the local paper had him see. The Critic complains that the climactic moment of the movie, when the characters finally profess their love for each other, was during an unnecessarily cliched rainfall. Cleveland suggests that maybe this was a metaphor for cleansing and rebirth, and the Critic answers simply, "No. It's not." After this clever attack on critics who think themselves wonderfully insightful for pointing overused metaphors to the filmgoing proletariat, it's no wonder that critics hate Lady in the Water: they all got their feelings hurt. The movie's weakest scene, still furthering the negative sentiment many critics have toward this film, when both the fourth wall and the credibility of the entire story are at their most fragile, is when the Critic makes a few predictions regarding the plot of the story he realizes he is in immediately before his death. At this point, the rest of the theater laughed the most--because hey! This is obviously meant to be funny, and I'm clever enough to have picked up on that intention, so I'm going to laugh! A bit of pointless comic relief, coupled with the decidedly negative portrayal of a film critic, accomplish nothing for the complex mythology that Shyamalan has built to this point in the movie, and probably in fact weaken his message.
What was that message? Now comes the third caveat about Lady in the Water (the second being, if you're a critic, this movie will probably feel like a personal attack). The movie, while doing a lot to criticize other movies for using tired out devices (like the rainbound kiss), doesn't have that much to say when it comes down to originality of theme. "Find yourself," it urges, "be open to all sources of inspiration." Guess what? Hamlet beat Lady in the Water to the punch there too.
Other elements of what make a movie either good or bad didn't really stand out in this one, as Lady in the Water is a concept- and plot-centric film. The acting didn't strike me as particularly excellent or horrible: Paul Giamatti as Cleveland was believable and sympathetic but not revolutionary; Bryce Dallas Howard carried a character that even the most self-absorbed high school drama kid could have pulled off. The cinematography and special effects were present and neither good nor bad. I have strong praise for the music, which was on the whole melodic and a welcome departure from the atonal "mood music" that seems to plague suspense movies.
In the end, Lady in the Water is a movie I don't feel all that strongly about either way. I certainly don't think that the film merits the scathing reviews that critics have delighted in saddling it with. On the other hand, with such an extraordinary creation of a setting and an urban-fantasy set of legends to color that setting, more attention could have been paid to what all of that mythology actually means, what the statement behind the concept actually says. Ultimately, King Kong hid a complete lack of meaning behind a sense of epic scale, huge special effects, and an over-the-top aesthetic-heavy visual experience... no matter how good those visuals may have been. If Lady in the Water hides a complete lack of meaning behind a complex mythology, no matter how good that mythology is, is there really a difference? The movie is undoubtedly entertaining, and not at all bad, but with a little extra thought could have been actually good. In other words, it's probably worth seeing, as long as you understand the caveats, but don't expect either The Sixth Sense (what you might think this movie should be like) or Final Fantasy X (what this movie really should have been).
Currently listening: "Jupiter, Bringer of Jollity," Gustav Holst (from The Planets)
First off, M. Night Shyamalan is a genius, because he recognizes that monkeys are evil.
Now that that's taken care of... almost every time you watch a movie, you know what you're getting yourself into. You thrust Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn into starring roles and you immediately know what kind of movie Wedding Crashers (see a future post) is going to be. Dead Man's Chest (also see that future post) is going to be exactly like Curse of the Black Pearl except later. With Lady in the Water, you're probably thinking "Okay, Shyamalan flick, a bit of creepiness, massive twist at the end." As it turns out, Lady in the Water has none of that. The movie is much less classic Shyamalan and much more Neil Gaiman.
If you haven't read anything by Gaiman, pick up American Gods right now and read it. Lady in the Water was less evocative of American Gods and more of Neverwhere, but either book will give you a much better idea what to expect out of Lady in the Water than any of Shyamalan's earlier films. In fact, I was thinking "holy crap, this is Neverwhere" through the entire movie. The comparison isn't entirely fair, especially since the book's mythology focuses on its setting, and the movie's mythology has much more to do with a sequence of events than where they take place. But once you take into account the "regular world guy" who gets visited in the regular world by the "magical mystical girl with special powers but who needs regular world guy to survive," which in turn slowly reveals the "fantastic subculture that affects humans but humans have no idea it exists"... the movie gets Gaiman-esque very quickly.
So that's the first caveat of Lady in the Water. If the premise of fantasy bothers or annoys you, don't bother seeing this movie. A corollary to the first caveat: Lady in the Water is indeed a fantasy movie; it is not scary in the least. (The movie does, however, make the same mistake that The Omen and so many other contemporary "horror" films do. That is, it confuses "startling" with "scary." A loud, unexpected noise that makes you jump is not scary.) But fantasy doesn't mean George RR Martin style sword and sorcery, in either Lady in the Water or Neil Gaiman's books' case. It means affinity toward the supernatural and a creative sense of mythology. And Lady in the Water certainly has both.
And really, that's the mark of a good fantasy setting: the permeability of the mtyhos into the setting. It's easy to say "I have set my story in quasi-medieval times, and there is magic." It's not much more difficult to add "My characters believe in this supernatural force that sometimes actually aids them." But to craft your characters and story so well that its gods seem like actual beings, its legends serve as actual sources of inspiration, and its included ethical debates are ones actually worth having in the real world, you've created something magnificent. This is why Final Fantasy X was such a powerful game: the Yevon mythos gave rise to a much deeper sense of realism to the setting. The mythology was so thorough that it became believable, and the player actually felt as if he were doing something important, sacred even, when he arrived at Zanarkand. And to bring things full circle, the Shyamalan-magnitude twist when the player finally reached Zanarkand was all the more incredible because the mythology was so ingrained. (Inversely, this is why Final Fantasy IX was such a dismal game, because you were playing through a story with no overarching mythology to lend it credence.) George RR Martin does this differently than Final Fantasy X, with central conflicts coming over the authenticity of some of the myths (which integrates nicely with his vague and blurry magic system), but he also does it well. And while not as masterfully as Final Fantasy X, as thoroughly as American Gods, or as intriguingly as something from Song of Ice and Fire, Lady in the Water holds its own when it comes to internal mythology.
This mythology starts simple, then grows more complex as the movie progresses. The audience is on a sort of "need to know" basis, which works just fine. We see pictographs at the start of the movie, giving a general outline of the legend, then a few specifics, then more precise details as they become important to the storyline. This works well because it's more the audience learning concepts than having a shovelful of mythology stuffed in its face at the beginning and being mandated to learn it all. Shyamalan uses the "story" device throughout the movie to acheive this effect. One of the recurring themes of the movie--painfully obvious by the fact that the titular Lady in the Water is a magical being named Story--is that there are a few universal "stories" that you have to learn to believe in. These may seem fantastic at first, but they have their validity. Shyamalan's characters aren't necessarily aware that they're in a movie, but there are plenty of self-aware references to plots and characterization (see below) that result in a sort of "translucent" fourth wall. As such, the mythology is able to be revealed gradually rather than with a shovel in the form of a few of the main characters discussing a bedtime story. I'm not sure if this is cheesy or clever--in truth, it's a little of both.
As the movie's best part comes from its mythology, its worst part comes from its attempts at commentary on the theater. I think Shyamalan speaks a bit too loudly as would befit his level of influence. Shakespeare, the greatest playwright of the last millennium, didn't venture to delve this deep into the murky water (my apologies for the bad pun) of "criticizing a genre from within a work of that genre" until Hamlet, about eleven years into his career as a playwright. After writing a couple of dozen plays, he's entitled to make those witticisms about "pastorical-comical, historical-pastoral" actors and how the art of the theater is not in the state it should be. After one movie with huge critical and commercial achievement, and a few further releases with dubious success, Shyamalan is not entitled to the same. While critics' viewpoints can diverge wildly from popular opinion of a film, the truth is that many moviegoers are going to listen to what the critics have to say before deciding to see a film. Therefore, it's important as a director to make a film that appeals to critics, not because you necessarily care what the critical opinion is, but because there are potential audience members that do care what that opinion is.
So is it not intuitively obvious that making a film critic the least immediately likable character in the entire movie is shooting yourself in the cinematic foot? Let me say that I actually like this guy, because his deadpan reviews of vapid artiness are grounded in a strong dose of realism. The movie's best line comes when Cleveland (the main character) is discussing a romance film the local paper had him see. The Critic complains that the climactic moment of the movie, when the characters finally profess their love for each other, was during an unnecessarily cliched rainfall. Cleveland suggests that maybe this was a metaphor for cleansing and rebirth, and the Critic answers simply, "No. It's not." After this clever attack on critics who think themselves wonderfully insightful for pointing overused metaphors to the filmgoing proletariat, it's no wonder that critics hate Lady in the Water: they all got their feelings hurt. The movie's weakest scene, still furthering the negative sentiment many critics have toward this film, when both the fourth wall and the credibility of the entire story are at their most fragile, is when the Critic makes a few predictions regarding the plot of the story he realizes he is in immediately before his death. At this point, the rest of the theater laughed the most--because hey! This is obviously meant to be funny, and I'm clever enough to have picked up on that intention, so I'm going to laugh! A bit of pointless comic relief, coupled with the decidedly negative portrayal of a film critic, accomplish nothing for the complex mythology that Shyamalan has built to this point in the movie, and probably in fact weaken his message.
What was that message? Now comes the third caveat about Lady in the Water (the second being, if you're a critic, this movie will probably feel like a personal attack). The movie, while doing a lot to criticize other movies for using tired out devices (like the rainbound kiss), doesn't have that much to say when it comes down to originality of theme. "Find yourself," it urges, "be open to all sources of inspiration." Guess what? Hamlet beat Lady in the Water to the punch there too.
Other elements of what make a movie either good or bad didn't really stand out in this one, as Lady in the Water is a concept- and plot-centric film. The acting didn't strike me as particularly excellent or horrible: Paul Giamatti as Cleveland was believable and sympathetic but not revolutionary; Bryce Dallas Howard carried a character that even the most self-absorbed high school drama kid could have pulled off. The cinematography and special effects were present and neither good nor bad. I have strong praise for the music, which was on the whole melodic and a welcome departure from the atonal "mood music" that seems to plague suspense movies.
In the end, Lady in the Water is a movie I don't feel all that strongly about either way. I certainly don't think that the film merits the scathing reviews that critics have delighted in saddling it with. On the other hand, with such an extraordinary creation of a setting and an urban-fantasy set of legends to color that setting, more attention could have been paid to what all of that mythology actually means, what the statement behind the concept actually says. Ultimately, King Kong hid a complete lack of meaning behind a sense of epic scale, huge special effects, and an over-the-top aesthetic-heavy visual experience... no matter how good those visuals may have been. If Lady in the Water hides a complete lack of meaning behind a complex mythology, no matter how good that mythology is, is there really a difference? The movie is undoubtedly entertaining, and not at all bad, but with a little extra thought could have been actually good. In other words, it's probably worth seeing, as long as you understand the caveats, but don't expect either The Sixth Sense (what you might think this movie should be like) or Final Fantasy X (what this movie really should have been).
Currently listening: "Jupiter, Bringer of Jollity," Gustav Holst (from The Planets)
Monday, July 10, 2006
It Never Seemed So Strange
These are the days, this is the time, where $20 an hour is to be made by watching some Korean students play 20 Questions. It is a good time to have a summer job.
Something I realized the other day: my generation does not care about Communism. We do not see communists as a threat, we think McCarthy and Nixon were somewhere between paranoid and lunatic. (Okay, so older people see Nixon as paranoid too.) We see communist ideology as more laughable than dangerous. We do not understand why the Vietnam War was fought, nor why "containment" was such a laudable goal. There was a time where "card-carrying member of the Communist Party" was a phrase that portended doom for whomever it was attached to. No longer; now the Red Menace merely seems like an empty threat.
I discovered this when a radio talk show host took a call who was virulently condemning a few members of Congress as those same "card-carrying members of the Communist Party." How would you have responded to this? My personal response would have been along the lines of "Who cares? So that member of Congress happens to believe differently than you and me." This host, however, decided to return with "Communism? That's a serious and dangerous charge." Misguided, certainly; even dead wrong, sure. Serious? Not really. And dangerous? Not at all.
I don't doubt that during the Cold War, the Soviet Union would have rather the United States been a communist nation. I also don't doubt that there were those in America that would have rather the United States been a communist nation. But would the American people have stood for that? And I recognize the superiority of the free market to the command economy. But does that mean the United States as we know it would have been shot to hell if a few more satellite countries had "fallen" to communism for a few decades?
The threat of communism, as the current generation sees it, does not exist. But radio demagogues and others continue to preach it as if the country once--and still does--lived or died based on the presence of a handful of communists in the government. And that threat just is not relevant anymore.
Stick another tack into the world map. I have now eaten Persian food, and I am impressed. This was the simplest of all ethnic meals I've eaten in my world tour of eating exotic stuff, and it was every bit as good as anything else. Main course: chunks of lamb, kabob-style; rice. Exactly two ingredients (plus whatever spices and seasonings made their way into the dish). Then there were some appetizers: Pita-like bread, and herbs, cheese, and nuts to eat with the bread. More rice (crispy this time) and some beef and bean stew. Nothing to it.
Currently listening: "Suddenly I See," KT Tunstall
Something I realized the other day: my generation does not care about Communism. We do not see communists as a threat, we think McCarthy and Nixon were somewhere between paranoid and lunatic. (Okay, so older people see Nixon as paranoid too.) We see communist ideology as more laughable than dangerous. We do not understand why the Vietnam War was fought, nor why "containment" was such a laudable goal. There was a time where "card-carrying member of the Communist Party" was a phrase that portended doom for whomever it was attached to. No longer; now the Red Menace merely seems like an empty threat.
I discovered this when a radio talk show host took a call who was virulently condemning a few members of Congress as those same "card-carrying members of the Communist Party." How would you have responded to this? My personal response would have been along the lines of "Who cares? So that member of Congress happens to believe differently than you and me." This host, however, decided to return with "Communism? That's a serious and dangerous charge." Misguided, certainly; even dead wrong, sure. Serious? Not really. And dangerous? Not at all.
I don't doubt that during the Cold War, the Soviet Union would have rather the United States been a communist nation. I also don't doubt that there were those in America that would have rather the United States been a communist nation. But would the American people have stood for that? And I recognize the superiority of the free market to the command economy. But does that mean the United States as we know it would have been shot to hell if a few more satellite countries had "fallen" to communism for a few decades?
The threat of communism, as the current generation sees it, does not exist. But radio demagogues and others continue to preach it as if the country once--and still does--lived or died based on the presence of a handful of communists in the government. And that threat just is not relevant anymore.
Stick another tack into the world map. I have now eaten Persian food, and I am impressed. This was the simplest of all ethnic meals I've eaten in my world tour of eating exotic stuff, and it was every bit as good as anything else. Main course: chunks of lamb, kabob-style; rice. Exactly two ingredients (plus whatever spices and seasonings made their way into the dish). Then there were some appetizers: Pita-like bread, and herbs, cheese, and nuts to eat with the bread. More rice (crispy this time) and some beef and bean stew. Nothing to it.
Currently listening: "Suddenly I See," KT Tunstall
Monday, June 26, 2006
You're a Fickle Little Twister
(are you sweet on your sister?)
Quick: the master of modern epic fantasy. Robert Jordan? Not anymore. Maybe back when his books were still interesting. David Farland? An excellent author, who tells a great story, but who still needs to prove he can write something beyond a fairy tale. Terry Goodkind? Hovers between amazement and tedium.
George R.R. Martin? Ah, yes, of course. A Song of Ice and Fire is a brilliant work. (A note here: I will avoid using names to attempt to avoid spoilers, at least for the time being.)
Other fantasy authors try to convey some sort of superficial disbelief in and disapproval of magic among the inhabitants of the world, while the reader has already seen magic raze cities and restore the dead to life. In A Song of Ice and Fire, Martin actually makes the reader think about what's magic and what's not. A character who claims to practice magic, then is revealed merely to be practicing medicine. A character who really should have no supernatural significance or powers who gives his breath of life to a dying woman. The same woman, who probably should be dead, returns as a vengeful wraith--or is she simply a living shell of what she once was? A red priestess who sends an assassin to kill a usurper king--or was that "assassin" really a spirit; a shade?
Take this, and add the most complex but consistent feudal political system ever written of. A powerful noble raises in the North and is murdered at his own wedding by his presumedly loyal sworn house, who had conspired with a slighted family because the noble refused an offer of marriage. An ambitious queen mother who supplants her son's entire council to win the realm for herself--and to hide the shameful secret of that son's birth. A scheming lord, removed from his station on that same royal council, installs himself at his lord son's protector, and arranges a marriage for his ward, a young girl who through a system of ancient birthrights and alliances will eventually claim that fortress. This girl happens to be the sister of that same murdered noble from the north, anxious to reclaim her birthright. Martin does all of this and more, flawlessly.
Having just finished the fourth book in A Song of Ice and Fire, A Feast for Crows, I feel the need to comment on it. Spoiler warning, in full force. If you haven't read A Feast for Crows but someday plan to, do not read ahead. (Samantha, this means you.)
The action in this book was a little slower than in A Storm of Swords. Then again, I can't name a book with faster events than A Storm of Swords. Some fair-weather fans are criticizing the book, saying that Martin had "Robert Jordan" syndrome. At least plotlines were advanced in Martin's "necessary-plot-advancement" book, in contrast to Jordan's Crossroads of Twilight, in which nothing at all happened. And most of Martin's characters are so darn good that I can't really begrudge an occasional "get all the characters up to speed, so a future book will be really amazing" episode.
Now, about those characters. The book was awfully Jaime and Cersei heavy, so we'll start with them.
Cersei got what she had coming to her all along. She's going to kick the bucket, but I think not until the very last book. She's evil, villainous, and hated by practically every fan of the series. Martin can't dispose of her too quickly; where would we be for antagonists if she were to die too soon? Her arrest for treason, etc. at the end of the book was a way of placating fans who desperately wanted to see something bad happen to her. And we got that. We got even more when we saw Jaime's reaction to her desperate plea for help...
Tommen Baratheon, King on the Iron Throne, is probably doomed. Grand Maester Pycelle is too old to run the kingdom, and Tommen is too young. We can assume that Margaery Tyrell has some designs on the throne, but as of now she's got the same trial to look forward to that Cersei does.
Jaime has become my favorite character in the series (as well as the inspiration for this otherwise-cryptic Decemberists reference as a title). He's certainly the best-developed. We've seen him go from traitorous to nasty and self-centered to actually having a soul. Jaime's denial of Cersei's "please help me! I love you!" was, without a doubt, the best moment of the book. I enjoyed following his storyline a great deal.
Brienne may or may not be dead. Kind of like how a lot of characters end up. I kind of like the theory that she's going to end up in Catelyn Stark "I'm not quite dead yet" mode, even though there's not much to support that. And of course there's the matter of what that word she yelled before she may of may not have died. I suspect we'll find that out, but not until book 6.
Sansa now looks poised to gain a whole lot of political power in not too much time. I think she underwent some pretty interesting changes in this book as well, a whole lot more subtle than Jaime. I only wonder how her interactions with her husband Tyrion are going to change if and when she reclaims her birthright.
I don't really care what happens to any of the Greyjoys, to tell the truth. They're far from compelling characters. Asha is especially annoying (proclaiming "my queensmoot" and then not being able to back up her boasts). Really, I haven't gotten past seeing any of them as minor annoyances, just there for their own weird goals and to screw over the rest of Westeros. These guys are the only weak link in A Song of Ice and Fire and the only set of characters who I don't especially want to hear a PoV from ever again in the future.
The Martells are an interesting addition to the series. I'm a bit surprised that Myrcella didn't die in Arianne's little coup, and the fact that she's still alive when she could just as easily and reasonably be dead suggests that she's going to have a bigger part to play in the future. Also, there are some possibly intriguing ramifications of Prince Doran's desire to unite Martell and Targaryen. I think Arianne's a dangerous character, and should some disaster (or just the gout) befall Doran, she's not going to be content merely to sit in the desert and let someone else take over Westeros.
Arya of House Stark, or should I say Cat, continues to develop into someone truly dangerous. Cersei and the rest of Arya's list had better look out. When she comes back from Braavos with her secret ninja moves from the government, it's going down. Then again, suspicious temple dude didn't seem too happy with her murder of Dareon, evidently blinding her for retaining some of her identity... so maybe getting back from Braavos won't be so easy after all.
I don't really think that the Samwell chapters were necessary in the book, but the plot point that now he's going to be a maester is important. While he's down in Oldtown, he's probably going to find out some archaic piece of information that will help whoever's left defend the kingdom from winter when it comes.
And now, as I've seen on some discussion websites, my Sacred Cows/Marked for Death list.
Sacred Cows:
--Daenerys. It seems intuitive, even obvious, that once everyone in Westeros is done killing each other, Daenerys and her dragons are going to show up and save everyone's ass from whatever in the hell is lurking beyond the wall. Then she reclaims her dynasty's Iron Throne, and everyone lives happily (?) ever after.
--Jon Snow. He will be just as instrumental as Dany in defeating the threat from beyond the wall. Ice and Fire, right? He'll end up marrying Dany; if the speculation that Jon is actually half Targaryen, and seeing as how the Targaryens often marry each other, this prediction makes even more sense.
--Tyrion Lannister. The Imp is one of Martin's favorite characters, which Martin admitted himself. Tyrion is going to continue bouncing around the kingdom, making and foiling plots for quite a while.
--Arya, at least for a little while. She's not going to die before she comes back to Westeros and exacts some revenge on her hit list.
--Sam Tarly. He's got an importance to the final epic struggle, even though we don't know what it is yet.
--Davos Seaworth, at least for now. He's not really dead. I don't think a confirmed PoV character would die that far removed from the action.
--Bran Stark. He still has to become the fated creepy mystical little kid!
Marked for Death
--Stannis Baratheon. We've already seen Robert and Renly die, and I think that Stannis is not far behind. House Baratheon started this war by rebelling against the Targaryens, and I think that the war won't end until the house is completely broken. Besides, by following Melisandre, what does he expect? Symbolically, relating to the overall theme of the series, his "fire" is not going to be the right one to save the kingdom; Dany's will.
--Cersei Lannister. But not for a while, as mentioned earlier. The little brother that kills her is going to be Jaime (who, if I remember correctly, is a few minutes younger than Cersei?), not Tyrion. The irony of Cersei, the most false and money-hungry character in the series, being killed with a fake golden hand that her former incestuous lover wears? Too much to pass up.
--Jaime Lannister. But not before he kills his sister. Just when he gets dangerously close to becoming good, he's going down. Maybe at the hands of Catelyn's little zombie band?
--Walder Frey. So much attention was paid to his line of succession in A Feast for Crows that would be completely irrelevant if the Lord of the Crossing stayed alive the whole time.
--Robert Arryn. Being sickly and weak in this series does not lend itself to living a long time (see Hoster Tully and Maester Aemon). The question is, will it really by his weakness that kills him, or an unfortunate "accident" brought on by Littlefinger?
--Roose Bolton. This guy already made enemies of the Starks and the Greyjoys; no telling when he's going to turn on the Lannisters too.
--Euron Greyjoy. He doesn't even have his entire house behind him, not to mention making enemies of the Lannisters and Tyrells and Hightowers.
So there. Can't wait to find out how much of this ends up being true... A Dance with Dragons, early 2007.
EDIT: Jon Snow's parentage consipracy theory. After talking to my friend Patrick about the matter, I have even stronger evidence to that theory. The general theory, which I cannot take credit for, is that Jon is not Eddard Stark's bastard at all, but the product of a union between Lyanna Stark (Ned's sister) and Rhaegar Targaryen. I can only claim credit for some of the following supportive details.
First, parentage matters. People in Westeros are willing to go to great lengths when it comes to the parentage of a child. Take Roose Bolton's betrayal of Robb Stark, which was (at least partially) motivated by wanting to legitimize his bastard son and get an heir. Additionally, even though it's "metagaming," Martin himself has said that it matters who Jon Snow's parents are. So we're not wasting time by theorizing. "It matters" in A Song of Ice and Fire talk means we're not dealing with a commoner; it has to be someone of noble blood.
Second, people in Westeros die. Who would know the truth of Jon's birth? Under this theory, Lyanna Stark certainly would. She's dead. Ned Stark would, too. Dead. Catelyn might know, but in her zombified condition, it's not like she's striking up conversation with passersby about her family secrets. All of the Stark kids would be too young to know anything about what happened. Brandon Stark (Ned's brother) and Rickard Stark (Ned's father), both dead. The only person who would know and be in any condition to tell, at least on the Stark side, would be Benjen.
Benjen Stark is still alive, no doubt about it. He's been listed as "presumed dead" since the prologue of the first book in the series. In A Song of Ice and Fire, you've either got the curly braces around your name, or you're still kicking somewhere. So Benjen Stark is the only one on the Stark side that potentially knows about, and of any main character, Jon Snow is the only one with any chance at all of interacting with him.
So what? So one person on the Stark side might know about Jon's parents. How about the "other" side? If Rhaegar is really Jon's father, he's dead. So is every other Targaryen except Dany, who's too young to know anything. The reason this is evidence is that if Jon's other parent were some random noblewoman, the secret of his birth would be a lot less secret than if it lay with a dead family. Somebody would have come forth with that information, probably to extort money or land out of Ned, if that random noblewoman really existed.
Third, and most importantly, Rhaegar and Lyanna had something going on. After winning the Harrenhal Tourney (year 282), Rhaegar Targaryen takes Lyanna Stark to a tower (year 283). Ned Stark and company go to the tower, kill a few Kingsguard, and find Lyanna in a pool of blood. Lyanna forces Ned to make a promise to her, then she dies. A pool of blood could mean that Rhaegar killed her... but is it possible this was from childbirth? That would explain her death, too, as a lot of people in A Song of Ice and Fire seem to die during childbirth. Looking at the timeline, it's most likely that Lyanna's child by Rhaegar was conceived during or immediately following the Tourney. We know this is when Jon Snow was conceived; Jon is of age with Robb Stark. Robb was 16 at the Red Wedding in 299, meaning he was born in 283 and probably conceived in 282. So Jon Snow's birth coincides almost exactly with the time Lyanna was at the tower.
Robert Baratheon supposed that Rhaegar raped Lyanna (Robert's betrothed) and took her to the tower against her will. Maybe that's true; maybe Jon is the product of Rhaegar's rape of Lyanna. Then, Rhaegar took Lyanna to the tower against her will to protect his own secret. Or, looking at it from another angle, maybe Rhaegar's union with Lyanna was consentual. And Rhaegar took Lyanna to the tower for her protection, not against her will at all. Either way, it would be awfully convenient for nobody to be able to see Lyanna during the months she was pregnant.
And this promise that Lyanna made Ned make? To take care of Jon. Agreeing to raise and care for his sister's baseborn son is exactly the kind of thing that the morally upstanding Ned Stark would do.
While we're at it, fourth, Ned Stark's a really good guy. Does he strike you as the kind of guy who would have a bastard son? Moreover, when Jon was born, Ned and Catelyn were already together (as evidenced by Robb Stark). So not only would Eddard have had to have given birth to a bastard child, it would have had to have been while he was with Catelyn. I just can't see one of the only righteous and honorable people in all of Westeros doing that.
And finally, it would fit the series theme. Ice and fire, right? Jon would have been born from a noble of the north (ice) and a Targaryen (fire). Now, look ahead to when Daenerys comes back to fight the enemy beyond the wall. Jon's going to be right there by her side. Jon (with the Night's Watch; ice) and Dany (with her dragons; fire) are going to defeat that unknown enemy. Then--how's this--they get married. Ice and fire. Under this theory, Dany would be Jon's aunt, and among a family known for marrying brother to sister, that would probably actually be accepted.
If that's not conspiracy theory, what is?
Currently listening: Symphony No. 7, Antonin Dvorak
Quick: the master of modern epic fantasy. Robert Jordan? Not anymore. Maybe back when his books were still interesting. David Farland? An excellent author, who tells a great story, but who still needs to prove he can write something beyond a fairy tale. Terry Goodkind? Hovers between amazement and tedium.
George R.R. Martin? Ah, yes, of course. A Song of Ice and Fire is a brilliant work. (A note here: I will avoid using names to attempt to avoid spoilers, at least for the time being.)
Other fantasy authors try to convey some sort of superficial disbelief in and disapproval of magic among the inhabitants of the world, while the reader has already seen magic raze cities and restore the dead to life. In A Song of Ice and Fire, Martin actually makes the reader think about what's magic and what's not. A character who claims to practice magic, then is revealed merely to be practicing medicine. A character who really should have no supernatural significance or powers who gives his breath of life to a dying woman. The same woman, who probably should be dead, returns as a vengeful wraith--or is she simply a living shell of what she once was? A red priestess who sends an assassin to kill a usurper king--or was that "assassin" really a spirit; a shade?
Take this, and add the most complex but consistent feudal political system ever written of. A powerful noble raises in the North and is murdered at his own wedding by his presumedly loyal sworn house, who had conspired with a slighted family because the noble refused an offer of marriage. An ambitious queen mother who supplants her son's entire council to win the realm for herself--and to hide the shameful secret of that son's birth. A scheming lord, removed from his station on that same royal council, installs himself at his lord son's protector, and arranges a marriage for his ward, a young girl who through a system of ancient birthrights and alliances will eventually claim that fortress. This girl happens to be the sister of that same murdered noble from the north, anxious to reclaim her birthright. Martin does all of this and more, flawlessly.
Having just finished the fourth book in A Song of Ice and Fire, A Feast for Crows, I feel the need to comment on it. Spoiler warning, in full force. If you haven't read A Feast for Crows but someday plan to, do not read ahead. (Samantha, this means you.)
The action in this book was a little slower than in A Storm of Swords. Then again, I can't name a book with faster events than A Storm of Swords. Some fair-weather fans are criticizing the book, saying that Martin had "Robert Jordan" syndrome. At least plotlines were advanced in Martin's "necessary-plot-advancement" book, in contrast to Jordan's Crossroads of Twilight, in which nothing at all happened. And most of Martin's characters are so darn good that I can't really begrudge an occasional "get all the characters up to speed, so a future book will be really amazing" episode.
Now, about those characters. The book was awfully Jaime and Cersei heavy, so we'll start with them.
Cersei got what she had coming to her all along. She's going to kick the bucket, but I think not until the very last book. She's evil, villainous, and hated by practically every fan of the series. Martin can't dispose of her too quickly; where would we be for antagonists if she were to die too soon? Her arrest for treason, etc. at the end of the book was a way of placating fans who desperately wanted to see something bad happen to her. And we got that. We got even more when we saw Jaime's reaction to her desperate plea for help...
Tommen Baratheon, King on the Iron Throne, is probably doomed. Grand Maester Pycelle is too old to run the kingdom, and Tommen is too young. We can assume that Margaery Tyrell has some designs on the throne, but as of now she's got the same trial to look forward to that Cersei does.
Jaime has become my favorite character in the series (as well as the inspiration for this otherwise-cryptic Decemberists reference as a title). He's certainly the best-developed. We've seen him go from traitorous to nasty and self-centered to actually having a soul. Jaime's denial of Cersei's "please help me! I love you!" was, without a doubt, the best moment of the book. I enjoyed following his storyline a great deal.
Brienne may or may not be dead. Kind of like how a lot of characters end up. I kind of like the theory that she's going to end up in Catelyn Stark "I'm not quite dead yet" mode, even though there's not much to support that. And of course there's the matter of what that word she yelled before she may of may not have died. I suspect we'll find that out, but not until book 6.
Sansa now looks poised to gain a whole lot of political power in not too much time. I think she underwent some pretty interesting changes in this book as well, a whole lot more subtle than Jaime. I only wonder how her interactions with her husband Tyrion are going to change if and when she reclaims her birthright.
I don't really care what happens to any of the Greyjoys, to tell the truth. They're far from compelling characters. Asha is especially annoying (proclaiming "my queensmoot" and then not being able to back up her boasts). Really, I haven't gotten past seeing any of them as minor annoyances, just there for their own weird goals and to screw over the rest of Westeros. These guys are the only weak link in A Song of Ice and Fire and the only set of characters who I don't especially want to hear a PoV from ever again in the future.
The Martells are an interesting addition to the series. I'm a bit surprised that Myrcella didn't die in Arianne's little coup, and the fact that she's still alive when she could just as easily and reasonably be dead suggests that she's going to have a bigger part to play in the future. Also, there are some possibly intriguing ramifications of Prince Doran's desire to unite Martell and Targaryen. I think Arianne's a dangerous character, and should some disaster (or just the gout) befall Doran, she's not going to be content merely to sit in the desert and let someone else take over Westeros.
Arya of House Stark, or should I say Cat, continues to develop into someone truly dangerous. Cersei and the rest of Arya's list had better look out. When she comes back from Braavos with her secret ninja moves from the government, it's going down. Then again, suspicious temple dude didn't seem too happy with her murder of Dareon, evidently blinding her for retaining some of her identity... so maybe getting back from Braavos won't be so easy after all.
I don't really think that the Samwell chapters were necessary in the book, but the plot point that now he's going to be a maester is important. While he's down in Oldtown, he's probably going to find out some archaic piece of information that will help whoever's left defend the kingdom from winter when it comes.
And now, as I've seen on some discussion websites, my Sacred Cows/Marked for Death list.
Sacred Cows:
--Daenerys. It seems intuitive, even obvious, that once everyone in Westeros is done killing each other, Daenerys and her dragons are going to show up and save everyone's ass from whatever in the hell is lurking beyond the wall. Then she reclaims her dynasty's Iron Throne, and everyone lives happily (?) ever after.
--Jon Snow. He will be just as instrumental as Dany in defeating the threat from beyond the wall. Ice and Fire, right? He'll end up marrying Dany; if the speculation that Jon is actually half Targaryen, and seeing as how the Targaryens often marry each other, this prediction makes even more sense.
--Tyrion Lannister. The Imp is one of Martin's favorite characters, which Martin admitted himself. Tyrion is going to continue bouncing around the kingdom, making and foiling plots for quite a while.
--Arya, at least for a little while. She's not going to die before she comes back to Westeros and exacts some revenge on her hit list.
--Sam Tarly. He's got an importance to the final epic struggle, even though we don't know what it is yet.
--Davos Seaworth, at least for now. He's not really dead. I don't think a confirmed PoV character would die that far removed from the action.
--Bran Stark. He still has to become the fated creepy mystical little kid!
Marked for Death
--Stannis Baratheon. We've already seen Robert and Renly die, and I think that Stannis is not far behind. House Baratheon started this war by rebelling against the Targaryens, and I think that the war won't end until the house is completely broken. Besides, by following Melisandre, what does he expect? Symbolically, relating to the overall theme of the series, his "fire" is not going to be the right one to save the kingdom; Dany's will.
--Cersei Lannister. But not for a while, as mentioned earlier. The little brother that kills her is going to be Jaime (who, if I remember correctly, is a few minutes younger than Cersei?), not Tyrion. The irony of Cersei, the most false and money-hungry character in the series, being killed with a fake golden hand that her former incestuous lover wears? Too much to pass up.
--Jaime Lannister. But not before he kills his sister. Just when he gets dangerously close to becoming good, he's going down. Maybe at the hands of Catelyn's little zombie band?
--Walder Frey. So much attention was paid to his line of succession in A Feast for Crows that would be completely irrelevant if the Lord of the Crossing stayed alive the whole time.
--Robert Arryn. Being sickly and weak in this series does not lend itself to living a long time (see Hoster Tully and Maester Aemon). The question is, will it really by his weakness that kills him, or an unfortunate "accident" brought on by Littlefinger?
--Roose Bolton. This guy already made enemies of the Starks and the Greyjoys; no telling when he's going to turn on the Lannisters too.
--Euron Greyjoy. He doesn't even have his entire house behind him, not to mention making enemies of the Lannisters and Tyrells and Hightowers.
So there. Can't wait to find out how much of this ends up being true... A Dance with Dragons, early 2007.
EDIT: Jon Snow's parentage consipracy theory. After talking to my friend Patrick about the matter, I have even stronger evidence to that theory. The general theory, which I cannot take credit for, is that Jon is not Eddard Stark's bastard at all, but the product of a union between Lyanna Stark (Ned's sister) and Rhaegar Targaryen. I can only claim credit for some of the following supportive details.
First, parentage matters. People in Westeros are willing to go to great lengths when it comes to the parentage of a child. Take Roose Bolton's betrayal of Robb Stark, which was (at least partially) motivated by wanting to legitimize his bastard son and get an heir. Additionally, even though it's "metagaming," Martin himself has said that it matters who Jon Snow's parents are. So we're not wasting time by theorizing. "It matters" in A Song of Ice and Fire talk means we're not dealing with a commoner; it has to be someone of noble blood.
Second, people in Westeros die. Who would know the truth of Jon's birth? Under this theory, Lyanna Stark certainly would. She's dead. Ned Stark would, too. Dead. Catelyn might know, but in her zombified condition, it's not like she's striking up conversation with passersby about her family secrets. All of the Stark kids would be too young to know anything about what happened. Brandon Stark (Ned's brother) and Rickard Stark (Ned's father), both dead. The only person who would know and be in any condition to tell, at least on the Stark side, would be Benjen.
Benjen Stark is still alive, no doubt about it. He's been listed as "presumed dead" since the prologue of the first book in the series. In A Song of Ice and Fire, you've either got the curly braces around your name, or you're still kicking somewhere. So Benjen Stark is the only one on the Stark side that potentially knows about, and of any main character, Jon Snow is the only one with any chance at all of interacting with him.
So what? So one person on the Stark side might know about Jon's parents. How about the "other" side? If Rhaegar is really Jon's father, he's dead. So is every other Targaryen except Dany, who's too young to know anything. The reason this is evidence is that if Jon's other parent were some random noblewoman, the secret of his birth would be a lot less secret than if it lay with a dead family. Somebody would have come forth with that information, probably to extort money or land out of Ned, if that random noblewoman really existed.
Third, and most importantly, Rhaegar and Lyanna had something going on. After winning the Harrenhal Tourney (year 282), Rhaegar Targaryen takes Lyanna Stark to a tower (year 283). Ned Stark and company go to the tower, kill a few Kingsguard, and find Lyanna in a pool of blood. Lyanna forces Ned to make a promise to her, then she dies. A pool of blood could mean that Rhaegar killed her... but is it possible this was from childbirth? That would explain her death, too, as a lot of people in A Song of Ice and Fire seem to die during childbirth. Looking at the timeline, it's most likely that Lyanna's child by Rhaegar was conceived during or immediately following the Tourney. We know this is when Jon Snow was conceived; Jon is of age with Robb Stark. Robb was 16 at the Red Wedding in 299, meaning he was born in 283 and probably conceived in 282. So Jon Snow's birth coincides almost exactly with the time Lyanna was at the tower.
Robert Baratheon supposed that Rhaegar raped Lyanna (Robert's betrothed) and took her to the tower against her will. Maybe that's true; maybe Jon is the product of Rhaegar's rape of Lyanna. Then, Rhaegar took Lyanna to the tower against her will to protect his own secret. Or, looking at it from another angle, maybe Rhaegar's union with Lyanna was consentual. And Rhaegar took Lyanna to the tower for her protection, not against her will at all. Either way, it would be awfully convenient for nobody to be able to see Lyanna during the months she was pregnant.
And this promise that Lyanna made Ned make? To take care of Jon. Agreeing to raise and care for his sister's baseborn son is exactly the kind of thing that the morally upstanding Ned Stark would do.
While we're at it, fourth, Ned Stark's a really good guy. Does he strike you as the kind of guy who would have a bastard son? Moreover, when Jon was born, Ned and Catelyn were already together (as evidenced by Robb Stark). So not only would Eddard have had to have given birth to a bastard child, it would have had to have been while he was with Catelyn. I just can't see one of the only righteous and honorable people in all of Westeros doing that.
And finally, it would fit the series theme. Ice and fire, right? Jon would have been born from a noble of the north (ice) and a Targaryen (fire). Now, look ahead to when Daenerys comes back to fight the enemy beyond the wall. Jon's going to be right there by her side. Jon (with the Night's Watch; ice) and Dany (with her dragons; fire) are going to defeat that unknown enemy. Then--how's this--they get married. Ice and fire. Under this theory, Dany would be Jon's aunt, and among a family known for marrying brother to sister, that would probably actually be accepted.
If that's not conspiracy theory, what is?
Currently listening: Symphony No. 7, Antonin Dvorak
Friday, June 23, 2006
Primacy and Recency
Two bands to whom I have been introduced over the last year have recently released new CDs. Here follows the reviews of both of them.
First, a bit about steak.
I ate dinner at a restaurant called Stoney River yesterday. A steakhouse, kind of a hunting lodge style atmosphere, with standard fare. Lots and lots of wine, probably very good, which I will be more qualified to comment on in a year and a half. Salads and appetizers, from which I chose the lobster bisque. Wonderful, and along with the bread, a great first course to the meal. A page of "entrees" including chicken, fish, etc. dishes, which might be decent, but I'll never know because eating anything but steak at a steakhouse is heretical.
The steak I ended up with was advertised as the house special. (No, it wasn't cojones, for those familiar with one of my favorite jokes. If you've not heard the cojones joke, ask me to tell it to you sometime.) This steak, a filet, was very good. Stoney River apparently has a Secret Blend of Seasonings they put on all their steaks, and it was delicious. But eating this filet just served to confirm for me that I like the ribeye a lot better. A filet is probably a better cut if you want a single piece of ultra-high quality meat. It's probably healthier, as a large portion of the ribeye's flavor comes from the marbelization (ie, the fat). But as long as I'm going to order three quarters of a pound of meat anyway, I'll take the ribeye and six dollars over the filet any day.
Now, a bit about quasi-coffee.
Starbucks, contrary to popular opinion, is only halfway a coffeehouse. The other half is "purveyor of all drinks wonderful, warm, and cold, that may or may not tangentially involve coffee as one of their ingredients." One of these (that can either be ordered with or without a coffee base), new for and limited to the summer, is the banana coconut frappucino. I've had both the coffee-based and the creme-based, and it's hard to say which is better. But it doesn't matter, because both are amazingly good. It's refreshing, perfect for 96-degree summer days. This is the sort of thing that probably actually exists in the Caribbean, except it's probably half rum and half all that other stuff. Despite its lack of rum, the Starbucks version is certainly worth a drink, with the caveat that if you don't like coconut, you may want to request the drink without it, and if you don't like banana, stick with something else. All in all, though, this (in addition to the Blackberry Green Tea frappucino) makes summer second only to Christmas as Starbucks' best season.
Review: Ganging Up on the Sun
Guster's latest release was sadly underreported. I looked in a Best Buy ad, and saw that the CD was now for sale. I thought this was probably a recent development, and headed to iTunes to buy it. As it turns out, it had been out for like two weeks already, with no iTunes coverage at all. (And yet, we see Nelly Furtado's mug all over that enterprise. That "Promiscuous" song really, really grates on my nerves. It needs to go away. And is it just me, or does she look positively mentally retarded on the cover of her new album? I digress.) Some of the user comments said that this was a slight departure from old Guster, but most everyone gave it a really great rating.
Deservedly so. Ganging Up on the Sun a worthy followup to Guster's other great albums. My biggest (and really only) complaint is that it lacks the band's trademark bongos in most of the songs. But aside from that, nothing to complain about at all. "Manifest Destiny" is the mosy readily listenable song on the album, with a pleasantly pop-ish piano line in the background for almost the entire song. Think Ben Folds, or maybe the Decemberists at their most bright and happy. Interestingly, the parallels to other songs does not stop there. "The Captain" is a Western fantasy, and would be as easily in place on a Rilo Kiley CD as where it is. We even get a female vocalist (but she's probably not as good as Jenny Lewis). Subsequent songs evoke Coldplay and Muse in places and Sufjan Stevens in others.
Remarkably, all of the songs have a stylistic element in common. They all sound like Guster. The band's sound is there on all of the tracks (minus the bongos), the vocals are still solid, and the styles are more varied than they've ever been. Fans of the band, assuming they're not stuck-up "purist" fans of the band, as in "they don't sound exactly like they used to so I don't like them anymore" will love this release.
Review: Under the Iron Sea
Keane's second release has been lauded as being more adventurous than the band's first. That's probably true, if only marginally so. The album has a different collective "feel" about it, but the actual sound of what's going on it largely the same as it ever was. For the unfamiliar with Keane, think Coldplay minus a guitar, and you've got it. There are people out there who would decry that estimation as ignoring certain nuances of sound, and they might be right. But that's the parallel that I drew upon hearing the band, and that's the one that makes the most sense to the most people.
Some of the tracks on this CD fail to deliver. The first, "Atlantic," is steeped in tritonic dissonance and gave me serious doubts about the ultimate quality of this album. Most of the middle of the album--after "Is It Any Wonder?" and before "Crystal Ball," is okay but rather uninteresting. But there is a lot of good to hear as well. The aforementioned "Is It Any Wonder?", which will probably become the best-known and most-played track on the CD, is a fun one to listen to. And the album gets really good toward the last few tracks. "Crystal Ball" all the way up through "Let it Slide" (which apparently is an iTunes exclusive?) is awesome. My favorite track is "The Frog Prince" which is musically superb and tells a fascinating story at the same time.
I suppose this entire album can appeal to certain people, though probably not all at once. There are tracks that I find boring and unmusical, but that others can probably draw a parallel to Radiohead (which I also find boring and unmusical) and immensely enjoy. The ones I like, certain fans are probably going to denounce as being too "mainstream" and easily musical. The point is, any given listener is going to like at least half this album.
Currently listening: Under the Iron Sea, Keane
First, a bit about steak.
I ate dinner at a restaurant called Stoney River yesterday. A steakhouse, kind of a hunting lodge style atmosphere, with standard fare. Lots and lots of wine, probably very good, which I will be more qualified to comment on in a year and a half. Salads and appetizers, from which I chose the lobster bisque. Wonderful, and along with the bread, a great first course to the meal. A page of "entrees" including chicken, fish, etc. dishes, which might be decent, but I'll never know because eating anything but steak at a steakhouse is heretical.
The steak I ended up with was advertised as the house special. (No, it wasn't cojones, for those familiar with one of my favorite jokes. If you've not heard the cojones joke, ask me to tell it to you sometime.) This steak, a filet, was very good. Stoney River apparently has a Secret Blend of Seasonings they put on all their steaks, and it was delicious. But eating this filet just served to confirm for me that I like the ribeye a lot better. A filet is probably a better cut if you want a single piece of ultra-high quality meat. It's probably healthier, as a large portion of the ribeye's flavor comes from the marbelization (ie, the fat). But as long as I'm going to order three quarters of a pound of meat anyway, I'll take the ribeye and six dollars over the filet any day.
Now, a bit about quasi-coffee.
Starbucks, contrary to popular opinion, is only halfway a coffeehouse. The other half is "purveyor of all drinks wonderful, warm, and cold, that may or may not tangentially involve coffee as one of their ingredients." One of these (that can either be ordered with or without a coffee base), new for and limited to the summer, is the banana coconut frappucino. I've had both the coffee-based and the creme-based, and it's hard to say which is better. But it doesn't matter, because both are amazingly good. It's refreshing, perfect for 96-degree summer days. This is the sort of thing that probably actually exists in the Caribbean, except it's probably half rum and half all that other stuff. Despite its lack of rum, the Starbucks version is certainly worth a drink, with the caveat that if you don't like coconut, you may want to request the drink without it, and if you don't like banana, stick with something else. All in all, though, this (in addition to the Blackberry Green Tea frappucino) makes summer second only to Christmas as Starbucks' best season.
Review: Ganging Up on the Sun
Guster's latest release was sadly underreported. I looked in a Best Buy ad, and saw that the CD was now for sale. I thought this was probably a recent development, and headed to iTunes to buy it. As it turns out, it had been out for like two weeks already, with no iTunes coverage at all. (And yet, we see Nelly Furtado's mug all over that enterprise. That "Promiscuous" song really, really grates on my nerves. It needs to go away. And is it just me, or does she look positively mentally retarded on the cover of her new album? I digress.) Some of the user comments said that this was a slight departure from old Guster, but most everyone gave it a really great rating.
Deservedly so. Ganging Up on the Sun a worthy followup to Guster's other great albums. My biggest (and really only) complaint is that it lacks the band's trademark bongos in most of the songs. But aside from that, nothing to complain about at all. "Manifest Destiny" is the mosy readily listenable song on the album, with a pleasantly pop-ish piano line in the background for almost the entire song. Think Ben Folds, or maybe the Decemberists at their most bright and happy. Interestingly, the parallels to other songs does not stop there. "The Captain" is a Western fantasy, and would be as easily in place on a Rilo Kiley CD as where it is. We even get a female vocalist (but she's probably not as good as Jenny Lewis). Subsequent songs evoke Coldplay and Muse in places and Sufjan Stevens in others.
Remarkably, all of the songs have a stylistic element in common. They all sound like Guster. The band's sound is there on all of the tracks (minus the bongos), the vocals are still solid, and the styles are more varied than they've ever been. Fans of the band, assuming they're not stuck-up "purist" fans of the band, as in "they don't sound exactly like they used to so I don't like them anymore" will love this release.
Review: Under the Iron Sea
Keane's second release has been lauded as being more adventurous than the band's first. That's probably true, if only marginally so. The album has a different collective "feel" about it, but the actual sound of what's going on it largely the same as it ever was. For the unfamiliar with Keane, think Coldplay minus a guitar, and you've got it. There are people out there who would decry that estimation as ignoring certain nuances of sound, and they might be right. But that's the parallel that I drew upon hearing the band, and that's the one that makes the most sense to the most people.
Some of the tracks on this CD fail to deliver. The first, "Atlantic," is steeped in tritonic dissonance and gave me serious doubts about the ultimate quality of this album. Most of the middle of the album--after "Is It Any Wonder?" and before "Crystal Ball," is okay but rather uninteresting. But there is a lot of good to hear as well. The aforementioned "Is It Any Wonder?", which will probably become the best-known and most-played track on the CD, is a fun one to listen to. And the album gets really good toward the last few tracks. "Crystal Ball" all the way up through "Let it Slide" (which apparently is an iTunes exclusive?) is awesome. My favorite track is "The Frog Prince" which is musically superb and tells a fascinating story at the same time.
I suppose this entire album can appeal to certain people, though probably not all at once. There are tracks that I find boring and unmusical, but that others can probably draw a parallel to Radiohead (which I also find boring and unmusical) and immensely enjoy. The ones I like, certain fans are probably going to denounce as being too "mainstream" and easily musical. The point is, any given listener is going to like at least half this album.
Currently listening: Under the Iron Sea, Keane
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Suddenly, Everything Has Changed
"And it's root, root, root, for the home team..."
I have just watched the Atlanta Braves lose their tenth straight game. The announcers tell me this is a feat not accomplished since the mid 1980s. The Braves are not playing "bad baseball." They are not in a "slump." They stink, plain and simple. This is America's Team, right? The Team of the 1990s... but not of the 2000s. To fans like today's children, Skip Caray correctly points out, this is not supposed to happen. It is a nightmare, a terrible perversion of the Way Things Are. To me, it's a window into the years of my birth and infancy. I knew this sort of disaster used to happen. Potential for it existed, but never made it into this catastrophic kinesis.
The inevitable question: how does a team go from 14 straight division championships to last place in the division? From winning nearly every series at home to a winless homestand? (As my dad adroitly pointed out, we do not need to see "First to Worst" on the front page of AJC Sports.)
The bullpen is really bad, unquestionably. 15 blown saves to 15 converted saves is not an acceptable ratio. The Braves are, what, 15 games out of first place? And 15 blown saves? How interesting. (Of course, a team cannot convert every save opportunity. But being, say, 3 or 4 games out of first is a lot better than 15 back.) It's almost like the team cannot possibly hope to win unless it has an insurmountable lead coming into the 7th inning. And with the Braves' hitting being lackluster at best lately, that insurmountability isn't showing up too well. Abysmal batting averages with runners in scoring position. No average from the first two hitters, and no home runs from numbers 3-6 in the lineup.
And so the trade rumors start.
Trade Andruw Jones and Chipper Jones, some rumors say. Or John Smoltz, maybe. Jeff Francoeur? Brian McCann? I don't know enough about that to say. I'm not a manager. And then some say that Bobby Cox has outlasted his ability, some say the same about John Schuerholtz. Regarding that, though, I certainly have something to say. Bobby Cox, in particular, has shown time and time again that he can make a team great. Consider 1990, the last time the Braves were not champions. Then consider 1991: the Braves go to the World Series. Both of these managers have deftly handled the team year after year. Let's give them the chance to do so again in the future.
Finally, a massive trade for a single big-name player is probably not the way to go either. The Jim Thomes, Ichiros, and Albert Pujolses of the world? Of course they're talented baseball players. Of course they can guide their teams to victory. But can even they singlehandedly turn a miserable team's fortunes around? I doubt it. A solid hitter, even an All-Star caliber one, cannot erase 15 of 30 blown saves.
Two weeks ago, I would have said that something needs to be done soon, but I think it's already too late for this season. Braves fans, bow your heads, and acknowledge that all things must pass. It's been a good run. But something does need to be done. And we need to trust Cox and Schuerholtz to do their jobs.
Oh, World Cup Fever. The United States lost to Ghana. Oh well.
Currently listening: Ganging up on the Sun, Guster
I have just watched the Atlanta Braves lose their tenth straight game. The announcers tell me this is a feat not accomplished since the mid 1980s. The Braves are not playing "bad baseball." They are not in a "slump." They stink, plain and simple. This is America's Team, right? The Team of the 1990s... but not of the 2000s. To fans like today's children, Skip Caray correctly points out, this is not supposed to happen. It is a nightmare, a terrible perversion of the Way Things Are. To me, it's a window into the years of my birth and infancy. I knew this sort of disaster used to happen. Potential for it existed, but never made it into this catastrophic kinesis.
The inevitable question: how does a team go from 14 straight division championships to last place in the division? From winning nearly every series at home to a winless homestand? (As my dad adroitly pointed out, we do not need to see "First to Worst" on the front page of AJC Sports.)
The bullpen is really bad, unquestionably. 15 blown saves to 15 converted saves is not an acceptable ratio. The Braves are, what, 15 games out of first place? And 15 blown saves? How interesting. (Of course, a team cannot convert every save opportunity. But being, say, 3 or 4 games out of first is a lot better than 15 back.) It's almost like the team cannot possibly hope to win unless it has an insurmountable lead coming into the 7th inning. And with the Braves' hitting being lackluster at best lately, that insurmountability isn't showing up too well. Abysmal batting averages with runners in scoring position. No average from the first two hitters, and no home runs from numbers 3-6 in the lineup.
And so the trade rumors start.
Trade Andruw Jones and Chipper Jones, some rumors say. Or John Smoltz, maybe. Jeff Francoeur? Brian McCann? I don't know enough about that to say. I'm not a manager. And then some say that Bobby Cox has outlasted his ability, some say the same about John Schuerholtz. Regarding that, though, I certainly have something to say. Bobby Cox, in particular, has shown time and time again that he can make a team great. Consider 1990, the last time the Braves were not champions. Then consider 1991: the Braves go to the World Series. Both of these managers have deftly handled the team year after year. Let's give them the chance to do so again in the future.
Finally, a massive trade for a single big-name player is probably not the way to go either. The Jim Thomes, Ichiros, and Albert Pujolses of the world? Of course they're talented baseball players. Of course they can guide their teams to victory. But can even they singlehandedly turn a miserable team's fortunes around? I doubt it. A solid hitter, even an All-Star caliber one, cannot erase 15 of 30 blown saves.
Two weeks ago, I would have said that something needs to be done soon, but I think it's already too late for this season. Braves fans, bow your heads, and acknowledge that all things must pass. It's been a good run. But something does need to be done. And we need to trust Cox and Schuerholtz to do their jobs.
Oh, World Cup Fever. The United States lost to Ghana. Oh well.
Currently listening: Ganging up on the Sun, Guster
Friday, June 16, 2006
Like Hell This Song Isn't About LSD
Upon getting an eye exam today, I had to be entered into the database (because it'd been far too long since I'd had my last). All the usual fields were there: First Name, Last Name, Date of Birth, and Gender. Now, you'd expect Gender to be either "Female" or "Male"... right?
Not so.
Inexplicably, we have "Female," "Male," and "Other."
My mom and I were prompted to wonder... do they actually have enough cases where this option comes into plat to warrant adding it? Part of me really, really wanted to ask my eye doctor exactly what that was supposed to mean, and how often neither "Female" nor "Male" seems to cut it.
Currently listening: Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Beatles; Soundtrack from Hero
Not so.
Inexplicably, we have "Female," "Male," and "Other."
My mom and I were prompted to wonder... do they actually have enough cases where this option comes into plat to warrant adding it? Part of me really, really wanted to ask my eye doctor exactly what that was supposed to mean, and how often neither "Female" nor "Male" seems to cut it.
Currently listening: Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Beatles; Soundtrack from Hero
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
In Celebration of 6/6/6
Here's a piece I wrote a couple of years ago that I think is fitting for today.
Currently listening: Deadbeat Sweetheartbeat, The Juliana Theory; and My Flame Burns Blue, Elvis Costello
Quinto die ante Kalendas Mai; secundo anno Domitian imperatore
I recently read your latest work, “Revelation.” This is a most excellent piece of writing, and being a particular eschatology aficionado, I enjoyed your account of events depicted therein. The numerical symbolism was especially thought provoking: I understand the number seven as perfection and the number six as imperfection (although this displays a clear bias toward your side), but I am a little unsure as to the significance of the number ten. Perhaps this can be clarified somewhat in a future printing.
Now there are a few points on which I feel you must be corrected. Foremost, you refer to the “harlot
Secondly, although one cannot know the exact outcome of the great battle at the End of Days, you purport to know that your side will be victorious. While I know I cannot dissuade you from this opinion, I feel it is my duty to correct an egregious inaccuracy regarding the location of the battle. As is evident from Chapter 16, your account has the battle happening in Judea, near
Finally, according to your account, again in Chapter 16, the three demonic spirits assigned to perform works to the world resemble alligators. While their amphibious reptilian nature cannot be denied, I believe (if my notes are in fact veritable) that these spirits are planned to resemble frogs more closely than alligators. It would be somewhat impractical for the Prophet (the one whom you refer to as the “False” Prophet) to be forced to emit such a creature from his mouth.
By the way, I was most interested in knowing in your true identity. Is it true that you were actually one of the original disciples of the Prochrist, as the rumors claim? If this reckoning is accurate, then you would be about ninety years old, and I am afraid to say that my sources inform me that lifespans lasting this long will not be common or even attainable until about eighteen hundred years from now. Granted, “John” is a fairly common name, but perhaps you should consider signing your eschatological work as “John*” and affix the appropriate footnote explaining your identity. I would (you will admit, understandably) not want to go through the editing process with you only to have the work not published because of issues concerning the author’s identity.
Please correct these inaccuracies posthaste or I am afraid that legal action must be brought against you. As my organization and I both realize that neither defamation of character nor false forecast of events was intended by your writing, we hope that a future edition will make these necessary changes so that you may avoid recourse. I would also encourage you to write in the future; perhaps essays on current would events would be in order… if the Emperor Domitian sees fit to release you from prison.
The blessings of your (false) deity be with you,
Uzgoroth
Currently listening: Deadbeat Sweetheartbeat, The Juliana Theory; and My Flame Burns Blue, Elvis Costello
Sunday, June 04, 2006
On the Placement of Products
The onset of Tivo. A foreboding omen, a dark portent, a harbinger of doom for the advertising industry. After all, if people aren't watching a television show in real time, they'll Tivo it and gloss over all of the precious hundred thousand dollar commercial spots. So something had to be done. And thus was born product placement, the practice of blatantly inserting references to your product into whatever medium you like. The standard issue "creepy secret government organization" black SUVs in 24 aren't generic black SUVs but Ford SUVs. And so forth.
(No, this is not yet another entry about television. It's about advertising practices.)
You know what? It doesn't bother me, really. And it's not going to influence me either. To follow the motif of not engaging in popular cultural practices simply because they're there, but not rebelling against them simply because they're popular either. Traditional-style commercials and product placement: I'm not going to be subliminally influenced to buy a product because I see it advertised, and I'm not going to actively rebel against the product because I've seen it advertised.
So that got me thinking: how effective, really, is advertising? I know it makes sense if you've got a new product or service to display: "here's something that didn't exist before, does exist now, and you might be interested in." To me, it does not make sense if it's "here's something that you already know exists, and here's why you should be interested in it. Watch me demonstrate its amazingness." That kind of approach just doesn't work for me, and I'd like to know in general how effective it is.
Audience poll: are you more, less, or as likely to buy a product/service if you've seen it advertised? Do you find your opinion of a product/service changes after you see an advertisement for it?
The reason I ask is because I recently participated in a strange survey/market research scheme. I received a phone call regarding my television and movie watching habits, and before I knew it, I was agreeing to watch a video mailed to me and provide my feedback on it. I watched said video today, which contained the most God-awful sitcom I have ever subjected myself to, King of Queens included. Before and after I watched it, I was to fill out forms corresponding to what I would like to receive as a prize should I be selected for a sweepstakes. I got (sometimes bizarre) categories to choose from, and had to pick an item from each. Without going into too much detail, if a box containing some Oreos, Aquafresh toothpaste, and Mrs. Dash Garlic and Herb seasoning salt shows up on my front porch, I'll have a pretty good idea why.
The strange part about it was the date on this God-awful sitcom: 1997. That's an almost ten year old show they're having me watch? For what purpose? This isn't Seinfeld; pilots from a decade ago don't mysteriously resurface, especially not ones that bad. Then take the before/after aspect of the prize booklets. An obvious thought would be that I was supposed to have been influenced by the commercials on the tape to change a few of my selections. Only one of the product categories in the "after" booklet had a corresponding commercial during the show: batteries. Even more strangely, batteries did not show up in the "before" booklet, but guess what the very first category was in the "after"?
So my current conspiracy theory, which my dad and I formulated as these strange events progressed: it's all about the batteries. The show is a red herring; they couldn't care less what I thought of it. They just want to know how the Energizer commerical affected my desire to buy Energizer batteries.
In the "after" booklet, for my preferred battery brand, I picked Duracell.
Currently listening: Weezer (Blue Album)
(No, this is not yet another entry about television. It's about advertising practices.)
You know what? It doesn't bother me, really. And it's not going to influence me either. To follow the motif of not engaging in popular cultural practices simply because they're there, but not rebelling against them simply because they're popular either. Traditional-style commercials and product placement: I'm not going to be subliminally influenced to buy a product because I see it advertised, and I'm not going to actively rebel against the product because I've seen it advertised.
So that got me thinking: how effective, really, is advertising? I know it makes sense if you've got a new product or service to display: "here's something that didn't exist before, does exist now, and you might be interested in." To me, it does not make sense if it's "here's something that you already know exists, and here's why you should be interested in it. Watch me demonstrate its amazingness." That kind of approach just doesn't work for me, and I'd like to know in general how effective it is.
Audience poll: are you more, less, or as likely to buy a product/service if you've seen it advertised? Do you find your opinion of a product/service changes after you see an advertisement for it?
The reason I ask is because I recently participated in a strange survey/market research scheme. I received a phone call regarding my television and movie watching habits, and before I knew it, I was agreeing to watch a video mailed to me and provide my feedback on it. I watched said video today, which contained the most God-awful sitcom I have ever subjected myself to, King of Queens included. Before and after I watched it, I was to fill out forms corresponding to what I would like to receive as a prize should I be selected for a sweepstakes. I got (sometimes bizarre) categories to choose from, and had to pick an item from each. Without going into too much detail, if a box containing some Oreos, Aquafresh toothpaste, and Mrs. Dash Garlic and Herb seasoning salt shows up on my front porch, I'll have a pretty good idea why.
The strange part about it was the date on this God-awful sitcom: 1997. That's an almost ten year old show they're having me watch? For what purpose? This isn't Seinfeld; pilots from a decade ago don't mysteriously resurface, especially not ones that bad. Then take the before/after aspect of the prize booklets. An obvious thought would be that I was supposed to have been influenced by the commercials on the tape to change a few of my selections. Only one of the product categories in the "after" booklet had a corresponding commercial during the show: batteries. Even more strangely, batteries did not show up in the "before" booklet, but guess what the very first category was in the "after"?
So my current conspiracy theory, which my dad and I formulated as these strange events progressed: it's all about the batteries. The show is a red herring; they couldn't care less what I thought of it. They just want to know how the Energizer commerical affected my desire to buy Energizer batteries.
In the "after" booklet, for my preferred battery brand, I picked Duracell.
Currently listening: Weezer (Blue Album)
Saturday, May 27, 2006
Hollywood Lacks New Ideas (Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington!)
Hooray for the Memorial Day blockbuster. O big, flashy, cost-80-million-to-make-but-probably-pulls-in-100-million number... where would the country be without you? And as I was viewing my choice of Memorial Day blockbusters, I realized that there's nothing original going on here. We're not just talking about recycling plotlines (a new one of which we've not seen since Shakespeare, and even the Bard himself ganked a lot from Aeschylus and his ilk)... we're talking straight-up repitition of concept. Almost all new movies you see today are 1) remakes of existing movies; 2) movie adaptations of existing plays, comics, video games, or books; 3) sequels to existing movies; or 4) film adaptations of true stories.
Think about it. Big movies of right now: X3. Mission Impossible III. The DaVinci Code. All fit into the above categories (and in fact X3 is both a movie adaptation of an existing comic and a sequel to an existing movie). Movies that have been nominated for or won Oscars in the recent past: Return of the King. Ray. Munich. Capote. Brokeback Mountain. King Kong. The Aviator. I could go on, but the point is made. I'm not saying they're bad movies or anything... just, dare I say, unoriginal?
So how about that X3?
Review: X-Men: The Last Stand
In the sequel-happy state of affairs in which we find ourselves, The X-Men series is perhaps the only one for which I have seen all of the movies. The thing is, this isn't so much out of some huge love for the X-Men concept. It was out of being in the right place at the right time... as in "I've got X-Men on DVD. Want to watch it?" Then, "On second thought, I don't really feel like watching The Matrix Reloaded. Let's see X-2 instead." And most recently, "Hey Matt, what are you doing today? We're watching X3."
The thing about the X-Men movies is they're not too bad at all. Never having been a huge fan of the superhero concept, and recently becoming bored with action movies, I'd expect this series to be something that I pretty much shrug off as mindless entertainment. And it is mindless entertainment, but at least it's actually entertaining mindless entertainment. One piece of high praise I have for these movies, and for X3 in particular, is that I was actually impressed by the special effects. Where certain other movies lauded for their special effects didn't impress me to say the least (eg King Kong), the effects in X3 were quite good. Like Magneto lifting the Golden Gate Bridge. Absolutely amazing. Between that and Jean Grey's atomokinesis (and heck, Jean Grey herself), this movie is visually impressive.
Even without being a superhero buff, it's pretty obvious that one concept that differentiates X-Men from other superhero settings is the moral discussion of difference from mainstream society. Where most superhero settings are focused on one or a handful of protagonists, in X-Men, there's an entire subculture of "mutants," giving rise to intellectual debates about integration, toleration, etc. This is especially evident in the third movie, where one of the two main plotlines involves a so-called "cure" for being a mutant. Ethical dilemmas abound! While this is hardly Crime and Punishment, you've gotta give some credit to this movie for wanting to make us think, if only secondarily to watching stuff blow up.
The other primary plotline shows the apotheosis of Jean Grey, who doesn't hesitate to go from loyal friend of Xavier to evil servant of Magneto to "Ah, screw it, I'm just going to disintegrate everything." Her transformation gives rise to yet another debate, this one discussing the proper use of restraints; self-identity weighed against "this psycho is going to blow up all of California if we don't stop her." Not that that would necessarily be a huge loss.
As usual with the X-Men movies, the acting was merely solid at worst and quite good at best. Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart? It's like a geek actor dream movie. (Given the movie's events, it's questionable whether Stewart will be reprising his role as Charles Xavier in a hypothetical sequel, which would be a huge loss.) Some moments were especially cheesy. The whole Rogue-Iceman subplot... I don't care. At all. Magneto wondering "what have I done" after doing plenty of mean and downright evil things--like going as far as to tell Mystique (who saved him earlier in the movie) that she wasn't one of them anymore? Ridiculous.
Of course, "Don't you know who I am? I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!" was brilliant. There's a flash dubbing of an old X-Men cartoon somewhere on the Internet (I don't have the link; if you've got it, let me know) that features that exact line... and seeing it in the actual movie was amazing. All in all, a highly entertaining movie... not award-caliber, not inspiring, and not revolutionary... but so what?
And no, the point of that review was not so that I could use the word "apotheosis" in a sentence and make a pretentious literary reference while doing it. Really. I promise. (But a dozen points if you can name the reference, without Googling it.)
Currently listening: Comfort Eagle, Cake
Think about it. Big movies of right now: X3. Mission Impossible III. The DaVinci Code. All fit into the above categories (and in fact X3 is both a movie adaptation of an existing comic and a sequel to an existing movie). Movies that have been nominated for or won Oscars in the recent past: Return of the King. Ray. Munich. Capote. Brokeback Mountain. King Kong. The Aviator. I could go on, but the point is made. I'm not saying they're bad movies or anything... just, dare I say, unoriginal?
So how about that X3?
Review: X-Men: The Last Stand
In the sequel-happy state of affairs in which we find ourselves, The X-Men series is perhaps the only one for which I have seen all of the movies. The thing is, this isn't so much out of some huge love for the X-Men concept. It was out of being in the right place at the right time... as in "I've got X-Men on DVD. Want to watch it?" Then, "On second thought, I don't really feel like watching The Matrix Reloaded. Let's see X-2 instead." And most recently, "Hey Matt, what are you doing today? We're watching X3."
The thing about the X-Men movies is they're not too bad at all. Never having been a huge fan of the superhero concept, and recently becoming bored with action movies, I'd expect this series to be something that I pretty much shrug off as mindless entertainment. And it is mindless entertainment, but at least it's actually entertaining mindless entertainment. One piece of high praise I have for these movies, and for X3 in particular, is that I was actually impressed by the special effects. Where certain other movies lauded for their special effects didn't impress me to say the least (eg King Kong), the effects in X3 were quite good. Like Magneto lifting the Golden Gate Bridge. Absolutely amazing. Between that and Jean Grey's atomokinesis (and heck, Jean Grey herself), this movie is visually impressive.
Even without being a superhero buff, it's pretty obvious that one concept that differentiates X-Men from other superhero settings is the moral discussion of difference from mainstream society. Where most superhero settings are focused on one or a handful of protagonists, in X-Men, there's an entire subculture of "mutants," giving rise to intellectual debates about integration, toleration, etc. This is especially evident in the third movie, where one of the two main plotlines involves a so-called "cure" for being a mutant. Ethical dilemmas abound! While this is hardly Crime and Punishment, you've gotta give some credit to this movie for wanting to make us think, if only secondarily to watching stuff blow up.
The other primary plotline shows the apotheosis of Jean Grey, who doesn't hesitate to go from loyal friend of Xavier to evil servant of Magneto to "Ah, screw it, I'm just going to disintegrate everything." Her transformation gives rise to yet another debate, this one discussing the proper use of restraints; self-identity weighed against "this psycho is going to blow up all of California if we don't stop her." Not that that would necessarily be a huge loss.
As usual with the X-Men movies, the acting was merely solid at worst and quite good at best. Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart? It's like a geek actor dream movie. (Given the movie's events, it's questionable whether Stewart will be reprising his role as Charles Xavier in a hypothetical sequel, which would be a huge loss.) Some moments were especially cheesy. The whole Rogue-Iceman subplot... I don't care. At all. Magneto wondering "what have I done" after doing plenty of mean and downright evil things--like going as far as to tell Mystique (who saved him earlier in the movie) that she wasn't one of them anymore? Ridiculous.
Of course, "Don't you know who I am? I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!" was brilliant. There's a flash dubbing of an old X-Men cartoon somewhere on the Internet (I don't have the link; if you've got it, let me know) that features that exact line... and seeing it in the actual movie was amazing. All in all, a highly entertaining movie... not award-caliber, not inspiring, and not revolutionary... but so what?
And no, the point of that review was not so that I could use the word "apotheosis" in a sentence and make a pretentious literary reference while doing it. Really. I promise. (But a dozen points if you can name the reference, without Googling it.)
Currently listening: Comfort Eagle, Cake
Thursday, May 25, 2006
What the heck just happened there?
I'm talking about the Lost season finale. Like most episodes of that show, it answered a few questions, but for every question it answered, it asked two or three more. I'm going to attempt to do for Lost what I did for 24 earlier, but I'm afraid this is going to be much more toward listing questions asked than astually formulating hypotheses. Spoilers, of course.
First, something I figured out. Think back to the "Lockdown" episode. Locke and fake-Henry are trapped in a section of the hatch during the lockdown so that they can't access the computer. Locke is stuck under the blast door. He tells fake-Henry that something terrible is going to happen if he doesn't type in the numbers before the countdown reaches zero. So fake-Henry crawls through the ducts, and a few minutes later, the countdown resets. Fake-Henry tells Locke that he didn't do anything, that he didn't type in any of the numbers. However, we now know this to be a lie. Very bad things happen inside the station (and off the island, too) when the button is not pressed. Therefore, fake-Henry has to have pressed the button. He then lies to Locke, telling him that the place is a lie.
The most obvious theory is that fake-Henry has every idea what happens when you don't press the button, he didn't want that to happen when he was inside the station, but for whatever reason he didn't want Locke to think that pressing the button does anything at all. How does fake-Henry know this? Another theory is that fake-Henry doesn't actually know the effects of not pressing the button, he wants to find out, but he doesn't want that to happen with him in the hatch. So, he manipulates Locke into doing it for him.
Now, questions that were raised from the season finale, and ones that still linger from earlier:
The big one: what in the heck is going on with the Others? We found out that Mr. Friendly's name is Tom, and that Mrs. Klugh's name is Bea. They aren't in charge of the Others, but they both have some measure of authority. We also now know that fake-Henry is more important than either one of them, but whether fake-Henry is the "He" in charge of the Others, or if fake-Henry merely answers to "Him," we don't know.
Why do the Others have a Dharma hatch mockup at their camp? Furthermore, is that really the Others' camp? Walt says the Others aren't who they say they are. Tom has been wearing a fake beard for months (apparently at the suggestion of fake-Henry). So there is evidence that the Others are faking things; maybe that entire camp is a fake.
How did the Others get the boat (and fuel for it)? How do they know about the Pala ferry? Where does the Pala ferry go (more on this later)?
Are Michael and Walt off the show now? What's significant about compass heading 325? It's not a permutation of any of the Numbers; it's not an exact directional heading (315 would be exact northwest. 325 is approximately northwest by north.) Are they actually going to be rescued? The Others have made several bargains in the past and kept them all, so I see no reason why they won't be rescued.
Where's Sayid at this point? Last we saw of him, he opened the mockup of the Dharma station door. If the Others ever return to that camp, they're not going to be very happy to find a gun-slinging Iraqi there...
What's up with the four-toed statue? This is a nicely obtuse reference to the Numbers... but where did that thing come from? Who built it? Is it broken or merely unfinished?
Where's Cerberus been lately? Assuming the general theory of "island monster=Cerberus=black smoke" is true, we've not seen it much at all lately, since it appeared to Eko earlier this season. On the Blast Door Map, does "CV" in fact mean "Cerberus vent," as has been speculated? What was the Cerberus malfunction that the aforementioned map referred to?
How extensive is DharmaTel? Are the shutdowns that are mentioned on the map on some sort of schedule? It would seem like this is the case, and that's what Locke experienced in "Lockdown." Does the supply drop coincide with the lockdown?
How can Radvinsky be traced back to the original Dharma Initiative? Were he and Kelvin part of the Initiative? Or did Kelvin make his way to the island in some other manner, and he was added to the staff in the same way that Desmond was when we arrived? For that matter, was Radvinsky even part of what was originally going on there? Why did Radvinsky edit the orientation tape, and why did he hide part of the tape in another hatch?
Widmore. Shady as hell. First, we've seen that the island isn't just a snowglobe as Desmond claims; observers from outside the island can and do notice what's going on there. How deeply is Widmore connected with Hanso and Dharma? Already we've seen references to Widmore (Widmore Construction and Widmore Labs). I'd be willing to bet that Widmore knows something about what's going on on the island. Penny Widmore evidently knows to look for a magnetic anomaly, and the only way she'd know that would be through Dharma and Hanso.
Remember the power cable that goes off into the ocean that was discovered in season 1? What ever happened to it?
Desmond, Locke, and Eko. Dead or alive? Keep in mind that we don't actually have any idea what Desmond's turning the key did. Can we assume that it caused the magnetic fluctuations to stop permanently? Maybe Dharma actually built an electromagnet at the site of the Swan? I don't think so much involving Desmond's backstory (including Penny, the Portuguese guys, and Widmore) that may have an impact on season 3 would have been revealed had Desmond not lived.
My theory for what's going on here:
The Others are tied, somehow, to the original Dharma Initiative project. This would explain the Pala ferry and the fact that fake-Henry seems to know the consequences of not pressing the button. Their real camp is in a Dharma station (one of the stations whose name we do not yet know, but the symbol is probably a door). According to the Blast Door Map (which we now know to have been worked on by Desmond, Kelvin, and Radvinsky), things started to go badly for the Dharma Initiative in the mid 1980s. The "AH/MDG incident" occurred in 1985, and Cerberus "malfunctioned" sometime around then as well. We also know that the Hanso Foundation stopped funding the Dharma Initiative in 1987 (which is, coincidentally, when Rosseau showed up on the island). So, the "incident" made the Dharma stations stop working--we know the Staff, at least, was abandoned at this time. Maybe the Swan was the exception to this abandonment? Someone must have been pressing that button since 1985. Radvinsky?
Either way, the people who we now know as the Others stopped participating in the Dharma Initiative's research, banded together, and formed their own weird little civilization. Between 1985 and 1987, Hanso and Dharma tried to get it under control, but failed; this ultimately led to Hanso stopping funding Dharma in 1987, and Hanso trying to distance itself from Dharma and the island. Now, fake-Henry thinks that they're the "good guys" because only they know the truth about how evil Alvar Hanso is.
So how did Hanso come to fund the Dharma Initiative at all? Magnus Hanso (whose "resting place," according to the Blast Door Map, is the Black Rock) was Alvar's father; he was the captain of the Black Rock. Alvar first came to the island while he was looking for his father. At this time, he became aware of the strange electromagnetic fluctuations coming from the area around the Swan. Hanso decided to fund the Dharma Initiative to study those fluctuations.
At any rate, it's going to be a great 3rd season, if in fact season 3 continues the great quality and suspense that season 1 and 2 had. The only downside? Four months of no Lost.
Currently listening: "Los Angeles, I'm Yours," the Decemberists
First, something I figured out. Think back to the "Lockdown" episode. Locke and fake-Henry are trapped in a section of the hatch during the lockdown so that they can't access the computer. Locke is stuck under the blast door. He tells fake-Henry that something terrible is going to happen if he doesn't type in the numbers before the countdown reaches zero. So fake-Henry crawls through the ducts, and a few minutes later, the countdown resets. Fake-Henry tells Locke that he didn't do anything, that he didn't type in any of the numbers. However, we now know this to be a lie. Very bad things happen inside the station (and off the island, too) when the button is not pressed. Therefore, fake-Henry has to have pressed the button. He then lies to Locke, telling him that the place is a lie.
The most obvious theory is that fake-Henry has every idea what happens when you don't press the button, he didn't want that to happen when he was inside the station, but for whatever reason he didn't want Locke to think that pressing the button does anything at all. How does fake-Henry know this? Another theory is that fake-Henry doesn't actually know the effects of not pressing the button, he wants to find out, but he doesn't want that to happen with him in the hatch. So, he manipulates Locke into doing it for him.
Now, questions that were raised from the season finale, and ones that still linger from earlier:
The big one: what in the heck is going on with the Others? We found out that Mr. Friendly's name is Tom, and that Mrs. Klugh's name is Bea. They aren't in charge of the Others, but they both have some measure of authority. We also now know that fake-Henry is more important than either one of them, but whether fake-Henry is the "He" in charge of the Others, or if fake-Henry merely answers to "Him," we don't know.
Why do the Others have a Dharma hatch mockup at their camp? Furthermore, is that really the Others' camp? Walt says the Others aren't who they say they are. Tom has been wearing a fake beard for months (apparently at the suggestion of fake-Henry). So there is evidence that the Others are faking things; maybe that entire camp is a fake.
How did the Others get the boat (and fuel for it)? How do they know about the Pala ferry? Where does the Pala ferry go (more on this later)?
Are Michael and Walt off the show now? What's significant about compass heading 325? It's not a permutation of any of the Numbers; it's not an exact directional heading (315 would be exact northwest. 325 is approximately northwest by north.) Are they actually going to be rescued? The Others have made several bargains in the past and kept them all, so I see no reason why they won't be rescued.
Where's Sayid at this point? Last we saw of him, he opened the mockup of the Dharma station door. If the Others ever return to that camp, they're not going to be very happy to find a gun-slinging Iraqi there...
What's up with the four-toed statue? This is a nicely obtuse reference to the Numbers... but where did that thing come from? Who built it? Is it broken or merely unfinished?
Where's Cerberus been lately? Assuming the general theory of "island monster=Cerberus=black smoke" is true, we've not seen it much at all lately, since it appeared to Eko earlier this season. On the Blast Door Map, does "CV" in fact mean "Cerberus vent," as has been speculated? What was the Cerberus malfunction that the aforementioned map referred to?
How extensive is DharmaTel? Are the shutdowns that are mentioned on the map on some sort of schedule? It would seem like this is the case, and that's what Locke experienced in "Lockdown." Does the supply drop coincide with the lockdown?
How can Radvinsky be traced back to the original Dharma Initiative? Were he and Kelvin part of the Initiative? Or did Kelvin make his way to the island in some other manner, and he was added to the staff in the same way that Desmond was when we arrived? For that matter, was Radvinsky even part of what was originally going on there? Why did Radvinsky edit the orientation tape, and why did he hide part of the tape in another hatch?
Widmore. Shady as hell. First, we've seen that the island isn't just a snowglobe as Desmond claims; observers from outside the island can and do notice what's going on there. How deeply is Widmore connected with Hanso and Dharma? Already we've seen references to Widmore (Widmore Construction and Widmore Labs). I'd be willing to bet that Widmore knows something about what's going on on the island. Penny Widmore evidently knows to look for a magnetic anomaly, and the only way she'd know that would be through Dharma and Hanso.
Remember the power cable that goes off into the ocean that was discovered in season 1? What ever happened to it?
Desmond, Locke, and Eko. Dead or alive? Keep in mind that we don't actually have any idea what Desmond's turning the key did. Can we assume that it caused the magnetic fluctuations to stop permanently? Maybe Dharma actually built an electromagnet at the site of the Swan? I don't think so much involving Desmond's backstory (including Penny, the Portuguese guys, and Widmore) that may have an impact on season 3 would have been revealed had Desmond not lived.
My theory for what's going on here:
The Others are tied, somehow, to the original Dharma Initiative project. This would explain the Pala ferry and the fact that fake-Henry seems to know the consequences of not pressing the button. Their real camp is in a Dharma station (one of the stations whose name we do not yet know, but the symbol is probably a door). According to the Blast Door Map (which we now know to have been worked on by Desmond, Kelvin, and Radvinsky), things started to go badly for the Dharma Initiative in the mid 1980s. The "AH/MDG incident" occurred in 1985, and Cerberus "malfunctioned" sometime around then as well. We also know that the Hanso Foundation stopped funding the Dharma Initiative in 1987 (which is, coincidentally, when Rosseau showed up on the island). So, the "incident" made the Dharma stations stop working--we know the Staff, at least, was abandoned at this time. Maybe the Swan was the exception to this abandonment? Someone must have been pressing that button since 1985. Radvinsky?
Either way, the people who we now know as the Others stopped participating in the Dharma Initiative's research, banded together, and formed their own weird little civilization. Between 1985 and 1987, Hanso and Dharma tried to get it under control, but failed; this ultimately led to Hanso stopping funding Dharma in 1987, and Hanso trying to distance itself from Dharma and the island. Now, fake-Henry thinks that they're the "good guys" because only they know the truth about how evil Alvar Hanso is.
So how did Hanso come to fund the Dharma Initiative at all? Magnus Hanso (whose "resting place," according to the Blast Door Map, is the Black Rock) was Alvar's father; he was the captain of the Black Rock. Alvar first came to the island while he was looking for his father. At this time, he became aware of the strange electromagnetic fluctuations coming from the area around the Swan. Hanso decided to fund the Dharma Initiative to study those fluctuations.
At any rate, it's going to be a great 3rd season, if in fact season 3 continues the great quality and suspense that season 1 and 2 had. The only downside? Four months of no Lost.
Currently listening: "Los Angeles, I'm Yours," the Decemberists
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