Now Playing At

March Madness 2011

2011-04-01T08:00:00.000-05:00

Holy crap – I may win my pool.

I have absolutely nothing invested in March Madness – never have, never will. I fill out a bracket as often as I think about it which is not often despite the deafening hype each year. Basketball is a sport, one among many, that I never clicked with and as a result never cared for. Whether the players are paid or not is beside the point for me. So, whenever I filled out my brackets this year for the office pool I picked the teams that seemed most natural to win.

I know that upsets are the nature of the beast and the catch to a successful bracket is in knowing what the likeliest ones are. But then you have people like me who never, ever tune into a game during the season. For me, it was $10 wasted on 30 seconds of amusement which is exactly the length of time I devoted to it.

Fast forward to this week and I’m presently behind four people in our office pool. However! All four have already peaked as their national champions have all been knocked out. Should Kentucky win this weekend and advance to the final game, that puts Yours Truly on top. Only two of us picked Kentucky to hit the final game, and between me and the other guy, I have more successful picks.

Go figure. We'll find out tomorrow so go Kentucky!

Now Playing: Devil

2011-03-31T12:00:00.000-05:00

“Who are you?” “Today?”

To the credit of all involved with “Devil,” they managed to wring every ounce of tension out of five people trapped in an elevator. That’s it. That’s the story. Oh, wait. Slight twist to this setup: One of the five happens to be the Devil. So, what we’re looking at is how the Devil is out to collect a group of very bad people and the only thing we can do is watch.

The other observers are the police who are investigating a suicide that occurred at the building. As things get stranger and the body count rises, the police and building security realize that something is definitely wrong with one of the passengers. All of this happens in under 90 minutes too, credits and all. The result of such a limited time span and an equally limited budget is a determined focus on core characters to the exclusion of all the normal trappings inherent to this genre.

Usually films like this go off in several directions and refuse to stay in the box, primarily as a way to alleviate the tension. When that happens in Devil, it’s so that we get to know the people in the elevator. Instead of having everyone in the box discuss who they are, what their feelings are for the world at large, etc., we find out about them as the police do. And once we find out their respective MOs, we come to understand why the Devil was drawn to this particular group in the first place.

There isn’t much in the way of mystery either. Once things get going, one of the building security guards begins to spell out the beats of the rest of the film. This isn’t much of a surprise considering that, at times, the film feels like an extended episode of The Twilight Zone. This also isn’t surprising considering writer/producer M. Night Shymalan has been ripping off the show his entire career.

So what is surprising? The effectiveness of good, old fashioned practical effects. The number of special effects shots in the film can be counted on one hands (maybe both). Everything else happens in camera via nifty editing tricks and clever use of sound effects. That’s it. That’s the ballgame. Frankly, I love it when film makers rely more on imagination rather than hurling CGI at the screen and expecting you to be afraid of it.

But the setup is a bit disingenuous. In essence, we’re stuck in a box for 70 minutes or so (excluding the setup and epilogue) with four bad guys and Satan so who is there to root for? Why, I’m so glad you asked. We get to root for the wooden cop trying to rescue the passengers. How wooden might he be? I dubbed him “redwood” right about the time things started going crazy.

I love how simple things like the lights starting to flicker indicate that someone’s about to bite it, and that when things do go dark that the sound effects take center stage. You never see the devil’s handiwork in action, only the results as they bleed out on the floor. The tension is ridiculously high, you’re not sure of the motives of everyone until the end, and even though the major twist is easy to peg about five minutes in, it still delivers a corker of an ending.

On the whole, its brevity definitely works in its favor and as a result Devil is short, but very sweet.

Max’s Unbearable Sweetness & Light

2011-03-31T08:00:00.000-05:00

Seriously. This kid is a walking saint. He’s so good natured and has such the sweetest disposition that if he ever turns evil, I’m going to spare no expense towards hunting ~~Senator Palpatine~~ those responsible down.

Case in point: I went to pick him up at daycare this week and arrived earlier than usual. I hung back to observe how he interacted with the other kids. It’s something I’m curious about but rarely get to see. Normally when either My Fair Lady or I show up, the rest of the parents are in the midst of scooping up their children, so Max is ready to go. But on this day, he and the others were enraptured by what their teacher held. She showed off a small tower comprised of four ladders and a plastic frog was stuck in the middle. The teacher would talk softly to one of the kids and touch the ladders to the top of their head before doing it to the next child.

Max and a little girl stood at the back of the circle of kids, so when it was his turn he gingerly stepped forward. He wasn’t entirely sure but he trusted his teacher not to lead him astray. She touched the item to his head and he pointed at the frog, at which point I’m sure he said, “froggie!” Then it was the little girl’s turn but she was having none of it.

At. All.

She stepped back and vigorously shook her head side to side. No way! The teacher calmly asked Max if he could convince her that it was alright.

Max looked at the little girl, then reached over and took her hand in his. He had a look on his face that said, “it’s okay, I did it and it’s alright.” He didn’t pull her into the circle either. He gently tugged on her, urging her forward with a sense of caring for the well being of another that I hadn’t seen from him. The girl still wouldn’t do it, so Max let go of her and walked over to the teacher to try and get the froggie out. Yes, he was successful.

That was the point where I stepped to the door and got his attention. He immediately smiled, pointed at me to let the teachers know that he was outta there, then ran to the door. When we got out in the hall, I gave Max a big hug and whispered in his ear, “I’m so proud of you big man. Thank you for being so sweet.” He replied, “I poopie!” and grabbed his crotch.

And a month later...

2011-03-30T21:47:00.001-05:00

Shut it. Posting to recommence in 5... 4.... 3.... 2....

Mommy's Robe

2011-03-08T08:00:00.000-06:00

A few years ago, I gave My Fair Lady an anniversary gift of a fluffy pink bathrobe. It’s soft, comfortable, and she hates that she can’t wear it during the height of summer due to the heat. Our little man has, apparently, taken a shine to it as well. Once we take him into his bedroom post bath, we set him down on the changing table and proceed to put on his diaper and jammies. He then likes to say “Mommy’s robe.”

Whenever I would read to him and lay him down, I wear my robe which is actually two robes in one. Both are old and in need of replacing, but I combined them a number of years ago to maximize my comfort level. Max would continue to say “Mommy’s robe!” even after I put mine on.

This was disheartening on a number of levels.

For starters, it told me that he preferred mommy to put him down at night. For another, I began to think that he didn’t like my robe. Why the hell is a two-year-old critical of my fashion selection? I don’t CARE if the edges are frayed and the thing is falling apart. Don’t you dare tell me how to dress!! AHHH!!

Sorry.

So on a whim, I put on mommy’s robe and he was all smiles. I wore it while reading to him. I wore it while rocking him a little bit afterwards, and walked out of the room with it still on. I’m man enough to do what it takes to make my child happy.

My Fair Lady, on the other hand, was disheartened to see that our little man more enthusiastic about her robe than with either of us. I was just satisfied to know that it wasn’t me that was putting him off. So going forward, mommy’s robe will be the one used to put him down. I’m now adding a manlier version of this robe to my 2011 Christmas list.

Gaming Thoughts 03/07/11

2011-03-07T08:00:00.002-06:00

Okay, so I’m a little late with this. Last week was a running exercise in absolutely lacking motivation. Combine that with anxiety over a possible upgrade on my day job which ultimately failed to materialize, and I haven’t exactly been the most focused of late. But with my inability to seal the deal on this last, I’ve come to a reluctant conclusion. I intend to keep my head down, work hard, earn a paycheck, and focus on my family and hobbies for the remainder of 2011.

Which means no additional distractions will be allowed in. Due to the public nature of this blog, I’m not going to specify those. Suffice to say, that this year will be a writing intensive year and that trend goes forth right now. When you consider I turn 34 this weekend, I’m long past the point where I should have “gotten on this.” I have a hard deadline of early June for a script contest I’ve decided to enter, which is about a week before I leave for E3. That follows several weeks worth of trips and parties and precedes more weeks of trips and parties. Then we’re into the fall and you can forget about it because from October on, each and every year, my feet barely touch the ground.

Ahh, the joys of adulthood.

Speaking of travel, this trailer for “Dead Island” should not be on your must-watch list if you’re heading to Hawaii anytime soon. It’s gorgeous, emotionally devastating, black hearted, and mean as hell. It’s for a video game and it depressed the hell out of me. I’m not kidding. I defy you to watch this and not sit there in shock at the end of everything you just saw. It also does in three minutes what "The Walking Dead" failed to do in six hours.

The catch on this game is the difficulty. You’re a tourist on an island and a zombie outbreak occurs. Fine. Heard that one a million times. But the catch on this one is that the only weapons available are those that would naturally be found in such a scenario. No rocket launchers. No gatling guns. No flamethrowers or heavy artillery or boxing gloves with knives strapped to them. What you find is a fireaxe in the hallway near a fire alarm. A paddle next to a kayak at the docks. A gun hidden in a safe in the manager’s office with only nine rounds of ammunition and no more in sight.

Feel safe yet?

I’m dying to try this one out based on the concept that you’re finally an average soul in the middle of a worst case scenario with the freedom to go anywhere. The challenge is going to be figuring out how best to defend yourself against an army of undead when weaponry is limited in scope, and few and far between in location.

And that trailer is a knockout, pure and simple. It’s stunning. It’s all digital, it’s about a zombie game, and it packs more of an emotional wallop in two minutes than most of the movies Hollywood released in all of last year. Looking at you “Scott Pilgrim.”

I’ve still been playing “Enslaved” of late and the game continues to improve the further you go. Watching as the central characters further the growth of their relationship is astounding. I honestly care what happens to them both right now and that wasn’t the case when I started the game. There’s only been one significant hiccup thus far and it’s having to race through a minefield. It’s a play on the old “memorize the pattern/path” and it’s easy enough to beat the third or fourth time you try. But the point is that gaming should have evolved past this process. It was fine in the coin-op days when developers had to milk every last quarter out of our pockets. But now it’s just stupid, along with save points.

To that end, I’m encouraged by reports coming in that Activision is flailing. That may sound odd coming from a member of the gaming press, but here’s the catch: They ain’t the only ones. The big dogs of the gaming world spend millions upon millions for retreads (how much was spent beating the Guitar Hero franchise into the ground?) with nary an original thought to be found. Then guess who walked in the door?

Apple.

The iPhone has sparked a revolution in countless ways, but one of which is the democratization of video game development. Can a guy working out of his office crank out the next Grand Theft Auto? Probably not. But the trick is that he now gets the chance to at least try. This is where Yoda and I disagree. If you don’t try, how will you know if you can? The game Angry Birds is apparently sweeping the country and I can’t figure out why. I’ve played it. Yawn. There’s not much to it and it’s a simple strategy game… unless this is the first game you’ve ever tried. Then it must come off as genius.

Seriously. All the Junior Leaguers and other people who I know that have never tried games before are hooked on Angry Birds. What this means is that they’re more willing to try more and more games for $.99 on their iPhones which translates to vastly more opportunities for indie developers to have their wares seen. For a relatively small amount of money, one person can build a game and sell it to the public at large via digital distribution.

Hello Future, so good of you to kick in my front door and help yourself to the fridge. STAY OUT OF MY ICE CREAM!

I don’t have numbers on me right now, but they’re available online if you really want to look. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a large number of mergers and acquisitions occur in the next 24-36 months in the games industry as one large company gobbles up another and another. I don’t think consoles are going anywhere, but I DO think that the games industry has been blindsided by the rapid growth of iPhone and Android compatible mobile games. Their monopoly on flogging franchises isn’t over by any means, but they can definitely see the horizon and it’s filled with an army of younger, hungrier indie developers who are no longer chained. Those new voices may not always make the best or even the most successful games, but at least now they have the opportunity and the format in which they can try.

And what iPhone game am I most hooked on? Dungeon Raid. At heart, it’s a match three tile game but its theme is that of an RPG. You match gold coins to buy weapons, spells, and general upgrades. You match shields to increase your armor to the point where you can upgrade that. You match red potions to increase your health. And you match swords to do damage to enemies. Where the strategy comes into play is that as you increase in strength, so to do your foes. Among the monsters are occasional bosses who perform different means of attack each round. Strategy is required along with a healthy dose of luck. Entire games have blown past without seeing particular status enhancing drops, then three of the same will appear in a row in a subsequent round.

The game also takes a hilarious swipe at the conventions of the genre by randomly generating a backstory for your character at the outset. It always varies in some form of you being the chosen one, which is absolutely hilarious for anyone who has ever played those games. Whatever happened to your character minding his/her own business before the world came crashing down on your front door step?

If you have an iPhone, it’s a lot of fun and worth checking out.

Showing Off

2011-03-04T08:00:00.000-06:00

Max has started showing off. Monday night saw Casa de Skim play host to our neighborhood high-stakes winner-take-all ~~fight-to-the-death~~ bunko matchup. It was also a day that bore witness to said house being professionally cleaned top to bottom for, I believe, the first time ever. We decided to try out this service because of a friend’s recommendation and the very real need to have it scrubbed ceiling to floorboard.

I showed up about 6 p.m. and she was still there. Apparently she has an assistant who helps out but was unavailable this time. The woman arrived there at 10 a.m. and was still freaking there at 6 p.m. and had STILL not mopped and cleaned the kitchen. I wasn’t apoplectic or anything, but it stunned me to think of how long it must have taken her to do each room. For the record, it’s not like we’re one McDonald’s bag away from starring on “Hoarders.” We keep things pretty straight and tidy but don’t run the Roomba as often as we should.

My calm exterior belied a raging undercurrent when I walked in. But all that evaporated as I inspected the rest of the house. In a word, it was perfect. The windows were spotless, the floor was dirtless, and we could eat off the bathroom counters. So she may have moved rather slowly, but her determination to clean the Hell out of each room was evident.

The trouble was, she hadn’t finished a critical room that would be filled with neighborhood ladies in approximately one hour. The scramble was on to feed Max and finish off the work after she left.

Let’s just say it was a mad dash down to the last second. Once the women started showing up, I took Max into his bedroom where we wrestled, played, and read a few books. Before his bath time, he ran out and greeted the women. He also climbed up on his horse to show how awesome a rider he was. He pointed out his kitchen and in general ran around acting like he was slightly off-kilter. It made us laugh when we realized he was showing off, so I let him do so longer than I should.

Of course, he wanted no part of his bath and threw a tantrum. I’m pouring water on him and washing him down and he’s crying his head off. Ahh, parenthood. Once I dried him off, I threw him into his monkey pajamas and took him out to see momma. He looked around at the women, My Fair Lady hugged and kissed him goodnight, and then we returned to his room to finish the nightly routine. At that point he was calm, and was excited about picking out his books. Fortunately, he went down easily after reading “Horton Hears A Who.” One of the ladies later remarked that her child has screamed bloody murder the entirety of their bunko match.

We got lucky that night, kids. Real lucky.

Gaming Thoughts 02/09/11

2011-03-03T12:00:00.000-06:00

Should have gone up in the last few weeks but here it is as I play catch up.

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I managed to finish off two titles this past weekend and I like this drive to finish what’s on my plate before moving on to the next meal. That’s been my MO for 20 years, and it’s continued to this day despite my best efforts. Last week, I received a game via trade that I’ve been dying to play but opted to hold onto it until I completed at least two of the three games I was working on. As such, I knocked off “Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena” on Saturday night and “Darksiders” on Sunday night and my world was the better for it.

“Dark Athena” still feels like an expansion pack to “Butcher Bay” and I can’t recommend it. It was fun enough for the most part, but the story just stopped about 2/3 of the way through, the villain’s final line was utterly nonsensical under the circumstances, and the finale lends no credence to it being a prequel to the movie “Pitch Black.” It also failed to make convincing use of Vin Diesel as the titular character, which is an amazing feat considering you’re playing as Diesel start to finish. But I rang up some achievements along the way and now I’m done with Riddick.

Moving on to “Darksiders,” I have to take major issue with THQ for this. The final dungeon, such as it is, was totally unnecessary to, well, everything. The setup for the final goes like this: You finally free a big demon named Samael who teleports you to a giant tower. Upon entering, you find the Angel of Death, Azrael, suspended by an energy field. He provides some long missing exposition, then you have to channel three separate energy beams to his prison in order to free him. This ENTIRE dungeon took me the better part of an afternoon to complete. I can say with absolute certainty that the game was not enhanced in any way by this sequence. Strip this sequence out, have a lengthy cutscene where Azrael lays out the story for you, then be on your way. THAT’S how it should have gone, and I’m routinely puzzled by developers who fail to realize that sometimes less is more.

Once you complete the massive waste of time dungeon, you have to track down seven sword pieces scattered across the numerous maps (none of which are small), take them to another place to get them reforged into the Real Ultimate Weapon™, before finally tracking back to Azrael who sends you up against the big bad guy. That’s a heck of a lot of puzzling and problem solving for a story following one of the four horsemen on an act of revenge against an army of monsters. “Darksiders” may have ripped off “The Legend of Zelda” whole hog, but a Zelda-only clone this ain’t. I thought “Darksiders” pilfered everything the industry had seen in the last five years, but I considered throwing in the towel once the “Portal” gun appeared. Seriously? We’re ripping off “Portal” in a game where the mechanic makes absolutely no sense to implement?

To its credit, the finale was pretty good despite blatantly setting up a sequel. To add insult to injury, word came out a week or two ago that the sequel (slated to hit in spring of 2012) would in fact take place at the same time as the first game, thereby not continuing the story so much as milking the same cow from a different angle. Sigh. Throughout “Darksiders,” you get the sense that a much, much larger story is at work even if those nuggets of information are few and far between. If you have a “LOST” vibe then you’re not alone. When some big revelations hit late in the game, they allow for all manner of directions in a sequel. But that would have to be a sequel which continues forward rather than steps to the side.

Stupid is as stupid does I guess.

Fortunately I’ve found a dazzler. Upon completing “Darksiders,” I transitioned over to “Enslaved” and I think I’m in love. Right now I’m up to chapter four (of about 13 or 14 I think) and it’s fabulous. Thus far. I reserve the right to change my opinion should the game suddenly drop off the Cliff of Stupid as so many other titles do. They start out strong, gain momentum, then… nothing. Either they simply run out of ideas and repeat themselves (looking at you “Halo”) or they fail utterly to stick the landing (too many to count). So fingers crossed for “Enslaved” but I’ll tell you what my favorite aspect is—the setting.

The game is set in the far-flung future where mankind has been decimated and some unknown apocalypse has flattened the globe. Cities lie in ruin. Heavily armed mobs of rusting robots patrol the broken streets. No signs of life are to be found anywhere. Sound familiar? To me, it sounds like just about most every post-apocalyptic game ever released. But “Enslaved” has a crucial distinction, one which I think will lead people in the future to reconsider its appeal.

In the future of “Enslaved,” Mother Nature has reclaimed the land. Vines, shrubs, grass, and trees grow everywhere—even from the tops of crumbling buildings. The cloudless sky is a beautiful azure blue. Sunlight glints off exposed, rusting girders. Through this genuine urban jungle, the two main characters must venture. They arrived courtesy of a slaver space craft (though whether from outer space or a different part of the planet hasn’t been specified as of yet) and have to trek some 300 miles to the west to find sanctuary. Thus far, the two have started working as a team and begun to rely on one another.

In short, it’s brilliant. The game takes you to dizzying heights that rapidly fall out from under you, throws new environment-based challenges at you so quickly it’s tough to keep up, and focuses a tremendous amount of energy on the evolving relationship between the male and female leads. As I said, I love it. I can’t wait to see where this thing goes and if it fails to stick the landing I’m going to be sorely disappointed.

Snowbound

2011-03-03T08:00:00.000-06:00

Below is the story I wrote during the snowpocalypse of '11. Obviously, didn't quite get it posted until now but here it is.

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If you aren’t still stuck under 13 feet of snow in the northeast, north Texas got hammered this past week by a massive ice storm. If that wasn’t enough, the storm called in reinforcements which proceeded to drop several inches of snow on top of the ice. Oh, and the temperature hovered around 15 for pretty much the whole week.

This was exactly the kind of weather Texas is known for, which made for an especially amusing spectacle as Arlington played host to the Superbowl at Jerry World.

There was a joke running rampant that this was Tom Landry’s revenge upon Jerry Jones and I had to laugh. Even though I wasn’t even a teenager at the time, I can clearly remember the level of vitriol directed at Jones for how he outright fired Landry. It remains to this day a classless and tasteless act that no single Cowboys fan of the era will ever forget or forgive. I say this as someone with no attachment to the team or the sport at large. But if you live here and were conscious at the time, then you know and understand the lingering anger towards Jones.

Ergo, Landry’s revenge.

But more than that, the storm essentially shut down the metroplex for a week resulting in a staggering loss of productivity. My Fair Lady was at work every day last week save Friday, while I missed both Wednesday and Friday. The roads weren’t too bad on Thursday, and once you exited the suburbs things improved dramatically. Things were looking up until midnight on Thursday when the snow hit. By Friday morning, there was over six inches of snow on the ground at my house. When I tried to go to the store as a test run, I power slid down my alley and almost punched through a neighbor’s fence. This was the point where I turned around, went home, and dutifully notified my boss that I would not be attended work that day. The office closed for the day an hour later.

Being trapped in the house Friday did have its advantages. We cranked up the fireplace, let Max run outside and play in the snow, and My Fair Lady made a snow angel. Once Max woke up from his nap, we introduced him to “Toy Story 3” which, funny enough, I’d never seen (full review pending). He got a major kick from it but then asked to watch “Horton” again (as in “Horton Hears A Who”). We opted to feed him dinner then put him to bed.

Once the snow melted, we bolted to the store and I didn’t realize until that point how much cabin fever had set in. I can tolerate being at home for a few days, but anything more than that and I start to go postal. Throw in weather that’s the rough equivalent of the apocalypse in this neck of the country, and I was full blown stir crazy by Saturday. I don’t mind being at home voluntarily, but I go nuts when I’m held there against my will. And yes, I say against my will because unlike some other people I am not the best driver on ice and snow and recognize that fact. Ergo, I do my best not to drive on it until it melts.

Now we’re looking at the same hitting again on Wednesday but it’s only one night. I mean, how bad can it get?

/takes shelter

And here we are a month later

2011-03-02T21:11:00.001-06:00

My how time flies. Been an insane month. Lots of posts typed up and are coming right now.

Weekly Gaming Notes

2011-02-02T08:00:00.000-06:00

I’d like to start off the second month of 2011 by blogging more. The concept took hold roughly two years ago but didn’t really take. However, this past weekend saw me complete a wide variety of tasks that had been left either incomplete for several years, or were never started in the first place. I want to keep that ball rolling uphill and return some of my free time back to writing. One of those goals is to give a sort of weekly update on what games I’m working through, why, and what’s still on deck. These updates may be long, short, or in between. If you’re looking for gaming news, I’d recommend the site I write for – Gaming Trend.

So what do I have on deck at the moment? Well, since I sold my PS2 three months ago and haven’t touched the Wii in ages, I’m left with the 360 and PC. I haven’t used my PC for long gaming nights for a while due to the mass clutter in the office. You know how once you move into a house, there is always one room that becomes the equivalent of a black hole? It just consumes everything you can’t find a place for eventually spilling out of the closet, all over the floor, and even climbing up onto the shelves.

That would be our office for the last two years. To compound matters, my office desk has been a black picnic table since 2000. It may lack points in style, but it’s a sturdy beast with a wide breadth. While the rest of the office saw a gradual accumulation of stuff from My Fair Lady, myself, and Max over the years, the junk on my desk has been exclusively mine. Bills, documents, story ideas, stickers, CDs, a printer, and even a small Dia de los Muertos doll I’ve named Manny.

The reason I bring this up is because I need you to imagine sitting at such a “desk” with all that stuff piled high on it, and a ton of stuff on the floor back behind you. If you peg the sensation in your mind as “claustrophobic” you’d be correct. My Fair Lady recently asked me why I never seemed to game much in there anymore. I pointed out that whenever I sat at my desk for longer than 30 seconds, I felt like I was about to be crushed in a trash compactor.

One thing’s for sure, I’d at least be a lot thinner.

Then My Fair Lady got a wild hair. Either that or she finally snapped and had enough. Over the course of three days, she harnessed her considerable willpower and aimed it squarely at the office’s heart. As a result of her diligence and devotion, we can once again see the floor (I think the last time was the day we moved in). I also took an evening to clean up and organize my desk so even those piles are gone. The end result--I no longer mind when she claims the main television because I can play games on my PC once again.

And there was much rejoicing.

As such, my backlog grew by one a few weeks ago when I snagged Darksiders via Steam for $9. Certainly can’t go wrong on the price tag. It’s a third-person action game where you control War—as in one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—during the Final Battle™. Or at least that’s what War thinks it is, at first. Evil and Good clash on the surface of Earth and naturally people are freaked out. Chaos reigns and demons and angels clash everywhere. War shows up, starts laying down a considerable amount of pain before figuring out that something’s wrong.

He’s the only Horseman who showed up. Apparently the Seventh Seal was never broken (which is what signals the End of Days and summons the Four per Biblical lore) so the battle shouldn’t even be happening. Right as he’s demanding to know what’s going on, War is defeated by a demon roughly the size of a building. He goes before judgment in the netherworld where he’s given a reprieve since technically it wasn’t his fault. He can’t come unless called, ergo he couldn’t have started the war in the first place since starting things is not his specialty.

Ending things, however, is exactly what he specializes in and he sets out on a path of vengeance… and where have we heard that before? To its credit, “Darksiders” is filled with an amazing amount of inventive grotesque. The character designs, backgrounds, animation, finishing moves, and bevy of otherworldly elements are uniformly terrific. The action is non-stop, most of the puzzles are easy enough to figure out despite taking a hell of a long time to finish, and the story is intriguing enough to want to see where things go. But there are two problems here that need addressing.

1) The story can’t possibly have a happy ending. War is defeated at the start and disappears into the ether as I mentioned. When he’s sent back, it’s 100 years later and humanity and practically everything else has been wiped out. War literally traverses a dead planet hoping to find whoever essentially set him up but to what end? What’s the ending here? Say he finds the bad guy, whips his/its ass, and stands victorious? Over what exactly? Ash? Bombed out and ruined buildings? A planet so bereft of anything that it would need to be destroyed and recreated by God just to make things as they were (thereby effectively calling it Earth 2)?

2)War himself. If all it takes is a Horseman for the Apocalypse to kick off, why pick the one who is guaranteed to kick your ass? Pick Famine as your foe. What’s he gonna do—raze your crops? Fine. That helps you out if you’re intent is to wipe out humanity and claim their souls. Bring Famine on down! But War? The essence of pure conflict crammed into the body of Arnold Schwarzenegger wrapped in body armor adorned with skulls and wielding a sword the size of a freaking car? Sure, pick a fight with that guy and let me know how that works out for you.

Obviously, I haven’t completed it yet otherwise I’d have my answer on #1. One thing I’ll give the developers credit for is they crafted a heck of a long game considering the storyline isn’t its strong suit.

The same goes doubly for Chronicles of Riddick—Assault on Dark Athena which came out two years ago and that I’m finally playing now. It’s a double bill with the original Xbox title “Escape From Butcher Bay” available too. It’s just as well considering that Dark Athena looks, feels, and plays like an expansion pack for Butcher Bay. The first game was exciting when I played it at the time, but less so now. Apparently nostalgia has again blinded me because it hasn’t aged well. Both titles serve as prequels to Pitch Black, which is a gem of a sci-fi monster movie if you’ve never seen it.

The setup for it is a spaceship crashes on a deserted planet. The survivors include a motley assortment of colonists, a mercenary, and the prisoner he was transporting. Said prisoner happens to be the most notorious killer in the galaxy and is known simply as Riddick as played by Vin Diesel in his breakout role, Riddick is primarily about screwing with people’s minds more so than hunting and killing them. He doesn’t seem to mind being stuck on an empty world because hey, it’s better than prison right? Things get a lot more complicated when the pilot discovers the planet’s about to go into a year-long eclipse at which point millions of nocturnal monsters will head to the surface, hungry after a 30-year hibernation.

Like I said, it’s a hell of a little film that does not in any way play things safe. The two games are set prior to movie’s events so that we’d get to see the hardened Riddick actually break out of a maximum security slam. The first game nails the atmosphere of a futuristic, gritty, underground prison so much so that you can practically feel the grim on the walls. The missions, though, are little more than fetch quests between a total of about 10 different non-playable characters (NPCs). Due to tech limits of the time, it wasn’t an open world game by any means. You also have to finish missions a certain way and in a particular order and that absolutely kills the immersion and replayability many years hence.

But I blew through it anyway to get in the right mindset for Dark Athena. I then raced through Athena in roughly five hours and I’m nearing the final mission now. Wow. Talk about short and a lost opportunity. Riddick is a strong character, albeit a fairly narrow minded one, that good writers could have a field day with. I’d still love to see good writers take a shot at crafting a good story for the character because I have yet to see one. I enjoyed Butcher Bay again in large part because the concept and story were so good, but the execution is what suffers. It may have been fine at the time, but current technology combined with general improvements to games have rendered it obsolete. Dark Athena plays much the same way without adding any such improvements, the result being a lifeless, stilted title in search of a stronger narrative.

But finishing it off gets me this much closer to clearing out my backlog. That’s my overall goal this year because while there will be games I need to lay claim to in 2011, I want to finish one or two games before picking up a new one. That’s my plan anyway. We’ll see how many weeks it takes me to violate that pledge.

An Alphabet Sampling

2011-02-01T08:00:00.000-06:00

The other night, Max was getting his bath and he started rattling off his A-B-C’s and, for the most part, it was in order. I looked at my watch to confirm. Yup, he’s only 26 months old and already getting at least the order down. My Fair Lady argues that he actually managed to get about 18 of the letters correct and in order, but unless my schooling failed me, I don’t recall T coming before P.

Regardless, he was doing this throughout the entirety of his nightly bath routine up to and including his potty time. He was going strong too until I brought out my phone to record the audio of it. Then, naturally, he clammed up. But trust me, it was great.

Know what else is great? Holding your arms out and asking your son for a hug, and watching him give you a coy smile before turning around and walking off to play with Elmo. Max may wake up one morning to find out Elmo ran away in the middle of the night to join the circus. My response?

“Who knows what strangeness lurks in the mind of a Muppet?”

Playing with Frogs

2011-01-31T21:27:00.001-06:00

This week, Max discovered a new game and it’s been quite amusing. He has a little boat with a miniature Elmo and Ernie for deck hands, and he loves to play with it in the bath. It came with a small dingy (heh heh) and up until this week, that’s all it’s been.

Now it’s a breeding ground for small froggies.

He gets the boat filled with water, then reaches in to it. When he lifts his hands out, the thumbs of both hands are pressed against their respective forefingers. He then shouts, “Frogs!” or “Froggies!” and hands them to me. I cup them in my hand saying soothing things like, “Hello Froggie, how are you today?” Then I snap my head back hard, acting like the Froggie just punched the crap out of me. My hands flail about as the Froggie facilitates his escape from my clutches. Max and I shout for Froggie to come back, but by that point he’s halfway to Cabo. Sometimes I even catch the Froggie and hand it back to Max, who opens his mouth wide and acts like he eats it.

Good times, these. I love seeing his little imagination develop and even the smallest of games are ones My Fair Lady and I encourage. He’s past two now and his brain is running a mile a minute from the moment he wakes up. I don’t know when or if he’ll ever lose that energy, but if it happens it will be very far in the future. He’s going to look back on his childhood and smile if we have anything to say about it.

That is until he starts to think about the times he was sick, like this most recent instance. It’s been a brutal couple of weeks due to day care. He enjoys the heck out of it but being surrounded by viral carrier monkeys all day every day will test even the strongest of immune systems. This latest bug started as a head cold before gradually revealing its true nature as something far more insidious.

It sapped his energy, then filled his head with total congestion followed by a raging cough and a scorching fever. And for good measure it threw in a minor ear infection. In short, Little Man was nine kinds of screwed. I took him to the doctor and received word that we should try out a breathing machine on him to see if that worked. We also were given an antibiotic. Fast forward several days later and I’ve got it, because sharing is caring don’tcha know, and he wasn’t showing any sign of improvement. To make matters worse, his eyes started filling with junk to the point where they were sealed shut by morning. It’s great fun as a parent to wake up to a screaming child who physically can’t open their eyes.

We returned to the doctor who wisely prescribed an even stronger antibiotic along with some eye drops.

Two days later his fever broke and he started feeling much better. By Friday, he was running around the house playing with his Tootsie (my mother who graciously watched him all week). But the even better news was with the weather as awesome as it was this weekend, we were able to get out and enjoy it without hacking up our lungs. He enjoys running around the yard, especially with his play structure in the back. Whenever he slides down it he always says, “wheeee.” It’s not a shout or anything, more like a statement of fact which makes it even funnier and cuter when he does it. Which pretty much sums up most everything he does now.

Yup, I’m kinda glad we have him.

"Where are you off to?" "Work."

2011-01-04T20:55:00.001-06:00

Recently, little Max decided he needed to go to work. So he picked up a pool floatie that conveniently came with a strap, put it over his shoulder, turned to us and said “Bye bye” then walked out the back door to the car. When he got there, he turned to me and said, “Open!” In between fits of laughter, I was able to unlock the car door and open it for him. He climbed up in the driver seat, and waved good bye to us. My Fair Lady and I could barely stop laughing at the sheer cuteness.

It appears that we’ve hit yet another turning point. Now he knows how to go to work and by God if it’s good enough for Mommy and Daddy, then it’s good enough for him! We let him play in the car for a while and it was amusing to here him scream “WORK!!!” when we rang the dinner bell an hour later.

Apparently he’s also ready to eat on the go, but that’s a skill I’ll teach him another day.

-------------

This week saw the beginning of a new phase in our lives – Daycare. With My Fair Lady ~~finally~~ going back to work, we had a short window in which to track down a quality daycare. Fortunately, we found a strong one near our house that I can hit en route to the office. The ultimate plan is for her to work 7-4 while I do 8:30-5:30 so I can drop him off and she’ll pick him up. We did a half-ish day for his first time out since I had the day off. It went as well as could be expected when we first arrived – he burst into tears and wailed at me to come back.

I actually did have to come back an hour later for the initial parent orientation which neither of us had had time for up to that point. While there, I checked in on him and there was nary a tear to be seen. He was focused on coloring and did a bang up job at it too. When I picked him up, he was all smiles and ready to go but he did hug his teacher and another little boy on the way out the door. It was a man hug, just so we’re clear.

In the hallway I asked him if he had fun that day. He replied, “School fun.” The second day he walked right in without any tears, sat down for breakfast, and was promptly served a pop tart and an orange. No complaints from the little man, no complaints from Big Daddy.

The Long Path to Glory

2010-12-02T12:00:00.000-06:00

So a few weeks ago, My Fair Lady and I purchased a large wooden play structure from Costco for Max. The idea was to put it together the weekend of Halloween because of two factors: a) That’s when it was supposed to arrive; b) That’s also when Brother G would have a free weekend to swing by and help out.

Considering the magnitude of this project, I wanted (and MFL agreed) to keep this a family affair. No friends, no offshoot relatives—strictly immediate family. It meant something special to me that my brother and I (along with my wife and possibly my dad) would build a play fort for my son. The thought just warmed my heart. So we placed the order in early October, and kicked back to wait. Here’s what happened:

1) The order shipped later that same week and was delivered the following Monday, which resulted in us having 500lbs. of play equipment and wood beams sitting on a palette in our garage. As such, the garage would be rendered useless to us until we got the structure built. Not to worry though because the forecast for the coming weekend was perfect.

2) That Wednesday, I got hit with a massive sinus infection. Massive. I’ve a veteran of these, regrettably, so I know when I’m going to be good and thoroughly worked over and when I’m going to just complain for a few days before getting over it. This was the former, big time. Woke up Saturday morning and promptly threw up. A lot. While MFL was downtown at the Komen Walk For The Cure, naturally. I’d told her the night before that I’d be fine the next day and would be able to handle Max with no issues. Whoops. Called my parents whispering for help since I could barely function. I managed to hold on until my dad showed up, at which point I went back to bed until MFL showed up. No work was done this entire weekend.

3) The next week, MFL and I actually opened the boxes and investigated our purchase. To say that I’ve put together a large number of items ranging from computers to furniture to everything else is putting it gently. I was immediately grateful that despite the intimidating 40+ pages of instructions, everything was neatly organized as it should be. The parts were clearly labeled, and the nuts and bolts were efficiently categorized. May a thousand blessings fall onto the house of the people who make this product. Buy something from IKEA and follow those instructions. Go on, I dare you.

4) That following weekend saw an extensive rain delay. So I got to look my two-year-old in the eyes and say, “No play structure for you.” At which point he climbed all over the boxes and acted like he was king of the mountain before filling his diaper with pure awesome and taking a nap.

5) The next weekend, Brother G was available… which was Halloween weekend as originally planned. The details of which are below:

Question: “How many adults does it take to put together a child’s play structure?”

Answer: “As many as you can find.”

We busted out the play structure once Brother G arrived on site, and began the assembly. Were I to list the sheer volume of wood beams, planks, parts, and screws for this beast, you’d laugh and shake your head in wonder. Yes, there really were that many parts. I spent the better part of the day fondly recalling how I grew up with nothing more than a stick.

Brother G lent a hand for the majority of the day and it made all the difference. Having someone hold up the beams while I worked on assembly was time-consuming enough. Then throw in an excited two-year-old running around and playing with daddy’s power tools and you’ll begin to realize why it took three adults to put the base frame together.

Things were wobbly at first. It was not uncommon to hear some variation of “Holy crap, is the whole thing gonna lean like that?” followed shortly after by “Max put that down!” The only thing this circus was missing was a clown car.

I’m mostly kidding about this. The whole enterprise went relatively smooth. Despite the beams leaning this way and that through much of the morning, primarily because they weren’t attached to one another, we managed to get the core assembly done post haste. As we connected the beams to one another, the overall stability increased. Shocking! But the real pain came due to the hex bolts that attached the beams to one another and the wood screws for the flooring. The bolts were huge and while we lacked a hex head for my power drill, we figured out that by screwing them in by hand followed by hammering them the rest of the way through, they held steady.

The same could not be said for the wood screws, which took on the form of Nemesis before the day was out. Only one drill bit was provided which by itself wasn’t much of an issue. But when the drill could only push the screw in about a quarter of an inch into the beams/planks/etc., then we had to improvise to get them the rest of the way in. This involved me putting the drill bit into the head of the wood screw, then using a wrench to twist it all the way in. It was highly aggravating and something that slowed us down considerably.

I looked at the planks for the floor of the fort, all of which required four screws per board, and started crying in anticipation of it. I wisely opted to leave that for another day. Ditto the rock wall which had 10 planks that each required four wood screws.

It bears repeating that the manual for the structure clocks in at north of 40 pages. By the time Brother G left at 3 p.m., I think we were on step 14. It may not sound like a heck of a lot was accomplished, but that’s untrue. It isn’t a complicated project on the whole, but it is a tedious one with a lot of little parts that have to be mixed and matched in just the correct order to ensure the structure doesn’t collapse while a bunch of kiddos are jumping on top of it.

Once we had the frame up and relatively stable on the deck, Brother G and I carried it to the yard and set it down where My Fair Lady and I reasoned would be the safest place.

MFL: “It doesn’t look level.”

Yours Truly: "Of course it doesn’t. That’s because our house sits near the top of a slight hill so the southwest corner of the yard slopes at an angle more so than the rest of the yard. Duh. Why the heck would it look level there?"

But the entire back half of the yard, frankly, slopes down at an angle so we weren’t going to be much better off anywhere else. So we did what any normal person would do under these circumstances: We stood around and speculated on ways to level the thing.

“Can we elevate it with shims?”

“How about we dig a hole and put it in there?”

“Should we start over? It’s still leaning.”

I love armchair quarterbacking. LOVE. IT.

Around that time, Brother G had to make like a banana and split, thus leaving My Fair Lady and I to race the sun by ourselves. During Max’s nap, we sifted through the dozens of boards to find the floor for the fort as well as the parts for the rock wall. Apparently kiddie forts come with small rock walls these days. Again, I had a stick. Max will grow up with a rock wall and touch screen technology.

Damn you, Star Trek!!! Why couldn’t your tech have been available when I was a young ‘un?!?!

Around the time Max woke up, we hit the instructions for building and attaching the ladder. We laid it out, drilled the holes properly, and hooked it onto the structure with nary a hitch. But My Fair Lady made the excellent call to swap the location of the ladder and the slide. In the manual, the slide was on the left and the ladder on the right. She correctly pointed out that these could be flipped without any problem, and then Max would be able to use the slide without ending up in the fire pit.

This is what’s known as a good thing.

Once the slide was set up and Max was able to climb the stairs and slide back down again, all while shouting “weeeee” mind you, we looked at the ebbing sunlight and called it a day.

The next day was effectively shot due to a request for our presence at another kid’s birthday party. Lots of food and cake were consumed, but there’s no need for further details. Why? Because this picture pretty much sums it up:

The following Saturday, my dad came over bright and early. We were determined to finish this beast by the end of the day. He brought tools with him as well so we were set. Max, My Fair Lady, and Yours Truly set out to put that sucker together. Since I’d skipped a few steps (such as the rock wall boards) we opted to look at those once we’d figured out how to level the beast.

YT: Dad, what do you think?

Dad: Well, how ‘bout we use some of that slate over there and some of those brinks and level it out that way?

YT: /facepalm

One of the things none of us had tried up to that point was sitting right there – rows of thick slate that we pulled out of our firepit. So we lugged several of those over to the base, lined them up, and voila! The fort was ~~mostly~~ level. Then it was on to work. But first I brought dad up to speed on what we’d accomplished thus far. He did, however, have a few questions.

Dad: So these wood screws are the real killer?

YT: Yup.

Dad: How’d you get ‘em in?

YT: Hand screwed them in with this wrench.

Dad: There’s gotta be an easier way. We’ll get to that.

Then we set out putting things up. Actually, we started pulling beams and planks and such out and getting things lined up. Dad’s drill wasn’t strong enough so he took off for a bit to go pick up a new one along with a hex head tool. While he was gone, My Fair Lady and I collected wood like good little gatherers and figured out what piece went where and what the next few steps would be.

Once Dad showed back up he pulled out the new drill, slapped in a battery, and picked up one of the wood screws. He fiddled with his drill for a second then lined it up against the wood. ZZZZZZZZZ! The screw went in all the way on the first try.

YT: What the hell did you do?

Dad: Cranked up the torque on the drill.

YT: How did you do that?

Dad: See these numbers on the drill? Just shift the arrow until it matches the torque you want.

I immediately picked up my drill and saw the arrow pointing at 1. I flew into a Hulk rage, stomping my feet in impotent fury. I’ve had this drill for three years and performed dozens of home repair/construction projects. Never once did it occur to me that torque was a factor. I naively believed that the drill simply drilled screws into objects and that it would just work. Any encountered problems would be on the part of the object being screwed (snicker). Imagine my shock that I could have saved myself a hell of a lot of time previously by twisting a dial on the drill I’ve owned FOR THREE FREAKING YEARS!!! The arrow was staring at me THE WHOLE TIME!!!

I didn’t just blow a fuse. I took out the entire grid. It was so complete that Nakatomi Tower went down again.

After I recovered and could see again, it was time to get back to work. After our discovery, slapping the boards on the rock wall and the flooring on the base of the fort took, like, 20 minutes total.

OMGHULKRAGEAGAIN!!!!!

Sorry. Better now. Once the flooring was done, we started prep work for the swing beam, better known as “that heavy sumbitch in the corner.” We dragged that out along with the legs and the assorted parts. But then, good news hit—lunchtime! We set our tools down, slapped Max in the car seat, and headed out. By this point, it was down to the three men-folk as My Fair Lady had to abscond to a wedding luncheon for Diva. She dined at The Mansion. We ate at Snuffers.

For the record, we won.

After setting Max up, we placed our order and talked while watching college football on the fore and aft TVs. Max flirted with all the waitresses (I swear this kid is going to be a player when he grows up) and we waited for our food. When it finally arrived, the three of us dug in. Dad was surprised that Max was munching away on his hot dog (which is a heck of a lot of food for a regular person, by the way) and being as content as can be. Max never wanted to get down and run around, nor did he squeal too loudly or anything of the sort. He was there to hang out and eat a hot dog with his peeps.

That’s my boy.

Once we finished lunch, we headed over to Home Depot to swap out Dad’s new drill. In short, it wouldn’t close around the head of any drill bit. Weird, I know. The torque wheel twisted just fine but the interior locking mechanism refused to budge. While Dad consulted with a guy who knew a guy, I showed Max a forklift that was in the process of moving numerous palettes around. I love the light in my son’s eyes when he watches how things work. It doesn’t matter if it’s large or small things—it thrills me that he wants to know how the world works.

The guy who knew a guy ultimately concluded that yup, the drill wasn’t working. He pulled out a second one, slapped in the freshly charged batteries from dad’s original drill, then tried the locking mechanism which worked exactly as it should. We buttoned up and headed out. On the way out the door, I saw a second guy who knew a guy examine the original drill for a moment before proceeding to repeatedly slam it on the counter. BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM! Keep after it fella, that’ll make it work.

On the way home (and this is a five minute drive, by the way) Max cratered in the back. He was snoring by the time we pulled up, so I carried him inside and laid him in his crib. It’s tough work for a little man and he needed his sleep. Back to work for the menfolk!

Our next assignment was properly laying out the swing beam legs for assembly. Again, this is where torque came in handy because there were no pre-drilled holes and a lot of large hex screws that needed to go into the legs. These were thick beams, too, only slightly more so than “that heavy sumbitch in the corner.” We knocked in the holes, got everything drilled, and properly aligned the beams. Right around the time this assembly was complete, My Fair Lady returned to bear witness to our handiwork.

We set it aside for a moment before tackling the mounting on the fort itself. At that point, it was simply a matter of putting the right screws in the correct place then setting the primary beam on the fort. Once that was hook to the fort, we maneuvered the legs into position, attached them, and had a standing fort that only required a few more bells and whistles. In short, the hard part was done. To wrap things up, I quickly threw together the top portion of the fort. Once that was done (little more than a board here and there) we installed the protective canopy and called it a day.

Max came out around this point, and appraised the situation. “Wow! What’s this?” That’s his favorite line when it comes to expressing shock and amazement. He says it at the funniest times too, but more often than not it’s reserved for moments that truly grab his attention. Hearing him say that always puts a smile on my face, and that afternoon it was ear-to-ear, baby.

It was the best day I’ve had in a long time. We’re talking years. My Fair Lady and I have been through a hell of a ringer the past few years and every time it seems like we have a chance to get ahead, we’re beaten down despite our best efforts. The stress surrounding our lives since 2008 alone has been enough to give me white hairs (oh yes, they have come) but days like this make it all go away. My dad and I have a pretty strong bond despite such disparate interests in life. That’s normal to me. But it felt great to have him and Brother G help put together the fort for my son. Three generations joined together to build a play structure for the newest member of the family, and such an event is one I’ll cherish to the end of my days.

I hope when I’ve traded places with my father, that I get to help do something similar for my grandson/daughter. Thank you to my dad and brother for helping out on this. I means the world to me and will someday to little Max. In the meantime, he’s wanting to go back out and ride the slide again.

Gaming Thoughts

2010-12-02T08:00:00.000-06:00

I freely confess to being a 30-something gamer. I sit up late at night on the weekends (not as much during the week anymore) and play video games. I love it, I write about them at Gaming Trend.com, and I would have a hard time in my life without them as an outlet for fun. But as with anything, gaming can be taken to the extreme.

The videos I recently found are a collective speed run of the PS3 game Demons Souls. The run clocks in at 54 minutes which is, frankly, insane. In the game, the player literally sprints past every enemy they can to reach a far off goal, die, and respawn back at the start. From there, they turn right and head off in a different direction to do the exact same thing. It culminates with them taking out a boss, moving on to the next level, and repeating.

Why in the hell I would watch 54 minutes of that escapes me, but, based on the comments at the site, there are people out there who get a kick from stuff like this. They are free to know themselves out. I’d heard good things about the game, but after watching the speedrun through the first level my interest dropped to zero.

I’m done with the “flip the switch” mentality which afflicted every game from the mid-90s through the early 2000’s. I’m not saying the medium has evolved to the next level, at least not entirely. Heck, I just completed “Dead Space” which can be summed up in a single word: fetch. How is that different than going to Place X to flip Switch Y?

Currently, I’m plowing through a second (technically fourth or fifth) run of “Dead Rising 2” because it’s just too much fun. Once you’ve increased your level to the point where you’re on an even playing field with the bad guys, then the fun factor skyrockets. It’s unfortunate that said playing field is only marginally level once you hit the mid to high 20s (out of a possible 50 experience levels), but no one ever said the learning curve wasn’t steep.

The catch is I’d never try a speedrun of this, let alone film it, let alone film it then post it to the internet as a means by which I can be judged as awesome. In a nice little twist, I’m writing this and posting it on an internet blog which no one reads because I only update it once every blue halfmoon.

Speaking of Dead Rising 2, I can’t recommend it enough. Fans of horror and zombie horror games in particular will get a huge gas out of it, despite the ridiculously steep learning curve. For example, a critical dodge move (which can and will save your life more than once) isn’t unlocked until players hit level 18. You can read my GT review here.

I will continue though by saying its way more fun the higher your level. Your character Chuck is stronger, more agile, quicker, can carry more stuff, and is capable of taking more damage from the zillions of zombies and psychopaths. But being able to rescue every survivor and kill every psycho while ensuring your little daughters’ safety feels… great. It feels awesome to be able to play savior in a zombie apocalypse without the silly photography mechanics from the first game. Even though the story remains idiotic (this is Capcom we’re talking about), it is 19 different kinds of fun. Duct taping a sledgehammer to a fire ax results in a ton of zombie killing fury.

While this is sucking up my nights, Just Cause 2 just sits there staring at me. I have so many settlements left to free from a dictator I already killed. Wait. Why should I play this any more? Because the game can be summed up by this phrase: I bet I can base jump off that.

Usually this equates to me high-jacking a car, driving into town, blowing stuff up, being pursued by military police until a helicopter shows up which I then high-jack and use to get to the top of a building that I proceed to base jump off of. In short, this is also one of my games of the year for the sheer amount of fun.

If you haven’t played either game, get thee hence to the store and pick them up. Hours upon hours of fun await.

Associations

2010-12-01T22:28:00.001-06:00

NOTE: The following was written about a month ago, so set your clocks back and it'll be accurate timing wise.

Max has been picking up a number of associations lately which impresses the hell out of me. I don’t recall what age my parents said I spoke this clearly, but I’m certain that he’s more adept at it than I was. As we left the other morning for my parents’ house, he watched me lock the front door and said, “Keys… lock.” We walked out to the car and heard an airplane flying over. He looked up and said, “plane… look.” He also pointed to the street and said, “Mommy… work.”

Most of his friends aren’t this advanced, and I’m certain it’s because we don’t raise him via television. We play with him, we talk to him, compliment him when he gets things correct, and continuously interact with him. I’m not saying the other parents don’t do the same, but my observations lead me to believe that we do it more than they do.

In short, he’s a gem but we worked hard to mold him into one. Let it never be said that parenting was easy because it most certainly is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

###

We’re gearing up this weekend to put a play structure together for Max. The story on how this goes will constitute its own post as some point in the near future depending on how successful we are. Thus far, we received it two weeks ago, it’s been sitting on a palette in our garage since then, and we haven’t had time for one reason or another to get to it until now. Add to that our actions this past weekend to shrink our fire pit and this could prove interesting.

As our budget is severely constrained at the moment, this will be the last large scale project for 2010. That’s not to say there won’t be more starting next year, but once this is completed we’re out for the remainder. Outside of the normal holidays, the next big event is Diva’s wedding in December. Following that is staying here for Christmas this year—something we’re immensely looking forward to. After the nightmare that was Christmas 2009, anything would be an improvement.

But the thought of waking up in our own house on Christmas morning and watching Max open his presents makes me feel all warm and gooey inside. I’m going to hold onto that feeling this weekend as I’m hammering and nailing the crap out of his play structure, and continue to tell myself that it’s all part of being a parent.

I Wish We Had 22 Just Like Him

2010-10-19T21:18:00.004-05:00

Every Thursday, Max goes to our church for school. It’s less “school as education” and more “school as Mom gets the kid out of the house for six hours once a week,” but he genuinely enjoys it. Apparently, the two teachers love having him there as was made crystal clear in our first parent-teacher conference (call). I was going to be at work during the call, but My Fair Lady wanted my help in developing a list of queries regarding his performance.

Me: “Do you really think all that is necessary? Can’t you just ask how he’s doing and let her talk?”

MFL: “No! We have to go over his specific performance indicators to ensure he’s appropriately tracking for his age.”

*pause

Me: “What the hell does that even mean? Is he a car? Does this mean if he gets unruly we can trade him in for a newer model before he hits 13?”

*ignoring me

MFL: “Things like, is he passive? How does he respond if the other kids take his toys away from him? How well does he eat?”

So we came up with a list that included the above along with a few other questions. To be fair, I managed to get through it with a straight face. But referring to children in tones similar to Best Buy employees hocking flatscreens unnerves me. I want to make sure that Max is having fun and not stabbing the other kids with sharp objects. I’m less anxious to ensure he’s tracking along a pre-defined matrix for societal norms.

I’m in marketing. I deal with the esoteric enough at work. I don’t need any more of it in my home life if I can help it.

So My Fair Lady gets on the conference call and the tone was set right from the start by the teacher.

Teacher: “I don’t even know why we’re having this call. Max is perfect. I wish we had 22 just like him.”

Our son, for the record. Not yours.

The teacher explained that he’s very well behaved, he listens, minds them both, talks a lot but not too much, and plays well with others. At which point, she switched tracks and went on a lengthy screed about what the other kids do that piss her off.

“Max is the only one who sits there at the table and eats his lunch. The. Only. One. All the rest take their food and walk around. They’re making a mess of the new carpet! It’s a nightmare trying to corral everyone. And Max just sits there eating. He watches everyone walk around but doesn’t try to get down with the rest of them. And naptime? Oh my God! The others run around and we have to coax them into laying down. Max? We say nap time and he goes and lies down on his mat, grabs his blankie, and is all ready to go.”

Game. Set. Match. My Fair Lady and Yours Truly are officially better parents than 44 other people. I may not be a raging success in a whole host of areas, but in the one instance that directly affects the future I’ve scored perfect marks. Booyah.

The teacher then went on another tangent, the gist of which was that it all comes down to the parents and why don’t they take responsibility for this or that and how lax discipline at home results in a nightmare for teachers at school.

This is true. It drives us crazy when parents allow their kids to run wild at restaurants, or sit in the middle of the floor while the parents blissfully drink wine and talk as though they’re back in college with their buddies. If that’s how you’re going to treat your kids, then you’re better off getting a dog.

Has it been a beating getting to this point? Absolutely. There were days when neither of us knew if we’d get through it. Max is still in that “Terrible Two” phase where he’ll throw tantrums if he doesn’t get his way. But you want to know what’s nice? We’ve managed to train him enough so that is never seen out in public.

If he doesn’t get his way in a store, then that’s too bad. He accepts it and moves on. He’ll go nuts in the house when it’s just the three of us, but that’s fine. He knows we love him and that he can absolutely push his boundaries as much as he wants because regardless of whether or not we break out the Taser and shock collar, we’ll merrily read him three books every night before he goes to bed.

We love him dearly, but there are limits. We’re flexible on things and have reached a nice compromise with him. For example, instead of simply telling him that every drawer in the kitchen is off limits, we tell him that all but two drawers are not “Max Drawers.”

Those other drawers are filled with tuperware which he loves getting into a throwing all over the floor. It’s a pain to clean up, but I’d rather him do that than reach into the knife drawer and start throwing those. Apparently the cumulative effect is a dream child at school.

It’s so nice to have a great report. Once he gets to high school, I’m going to dig up this old post and compare it against his current status. We’ll see if the two mesh, or if Yours Truly is going to want a do-over.

Now Playing: Red Dead Redemption

2010-09-16T08:00:00.002-05:00

I get a lot of flack on Gaming Trend because I don’t bow before the alter of Rockstar. Here’s why—I believe they create great worlds that are fluid and alive, but absolutely do the bare minimum of quality assurance. I believe they know how to tell a basic story but have no talent for heightening dramatic tension. I believe they create unique characters and hire the perfect voice actors for them, but then let them ramble on long past the point of no return.

Yet their games routinely score in the mid to high 90’s or higher. I find myself baffled by the reviews because I play the same games as everyone else but clearly don’t believe that a game should automatically start at 90 just because it is an open world where you can go anywhere and do anything. I’m literally left feeling like the last sane man on the planet screaming at the birds over head because no one else will listen.

So here I am, screaming at the vastness of the Internet via my blog in a sort of narcissistic rage. So let’s get on with it,

Red Dead Redemption is an open world game set in the Wild West. Rockstar does score major points right off the bat by setting it in the early 1900s. The Model T has been invented, telegraph lines are everywhere, and civilization is encroaching on what’s left of the untamed frontier. John Marsten, a former outlaw, is forced by the U.S. government (the precursor to the FBI) to hunt down and eliminate the surviving members of his former gang. An unspoken question that hangs over everything is this: Will Marsten be allowed to roam free after all is said and done?

It’s a great setup, but one that immediately goes south. The villains are seldom seen, despite being talked about almost non-stop, and as such their threat is diminished right from the start. Even the head bad guy, Bill, barely registers when he finally shows up. The game instead keeps the focus on Marsten and his interactions with everyone across the plains. So right off the bat, the only driving force is the need for Marsten to expound at great length on virtually everything. And no, you can’t skip the conversations that happen while en route to a goal.

I’m from the school of thought of show don’t tell. Call it the film geek side of me, but that’s what happens in the best of films. They make do with a limited amount of exposition then show you the rest. The best video games deal with a limited amount of exposition then let you experience the rest. They don’t rattle on and on endlessly before giving you a short gun fight or a wagon race.

I referred on the GT forums to this game as a self-indulgent bullshit fest because that’s exactly what it is—a game so chockablock with words that you could choke Shakespeare on the script. I appreciate good writing, and there are several lines that soar, but writing that doesn’t know when to shut the hell up and get out of the way of the action is wasted effort.

Now, that being said, I genuinely like the world Rockstar created. I’m a huge fan of Westerns, and to say they nailed the exact look and feel of the Old West is doing a disservice. They managed to get the accuracy down to the dirt, the tumbleweeds, and the types of trees. Exploring this vast, untamed land is so much fun its ridiculous. You have a massive world to explore, and while there isn’t a whole lot going on out on the prairie, you can still find things to do. Collect plants, hunt down escaped bounties, and more. It’s all right at your fingertips and it is genuinely wonderful.

But then you want to move the plot forward, or encounter subplots, and another Rockstar-ism kicks in—the fact that everyone in the world around you is absolutely insane. I’ve yet to play a Rockstar game where there was a sane, or at least not deeply flawed, tertiary character whom you interact with. For example, one of the first subplots involves people going missing in the hills. When you finally track down the villain responsible, the guy turns out to be a cannibal.

Really? That’s the best you got, Rockstar? It couldn’t be a group of rogue Comanche or Confederates forcibly recruiting for Civil War 2? It has to be a damn cannibal? Or how about the guy who wants flowers for his wife? You know, the skeleton in the chair?

And so on.

You see what I mean? When you can do things all by yourself, the game is great. But the second you do a story or side mission-related adventure, the game goes to hell due to the sheer stupidity of what you’re experiencing. It’s a long game if you do absolutely everything (and as of this writing I’m at 98.5% complete and am going for the 100% completion achievement for no reason other than I made it this far so why not hit it big?) but the story isn’t worth the effort. Playing in the game world IS worth your effort though, so I found myself in a bit of a pickle.

I lambaste the game because so much is worthy of scorn, but the world itself is so brilliantly executed that there is a ton of fun to be had despite the flaws, bugs, glitches, and general nitpicks. I’m all in favor of chasing down wild animals, but do I need a cougar leaping out of nowhere to kill me? Nope. How about discovering buried treasure only to not be able to open the chest because I haven’t found the map in the previous chest leading me to the one I was standing over?

And so on.

Unless Rockstar makes another Western, I’m done with them. I swore off them with GTAIV, but then they hit me in the sweet spot with a Western. Never again. Until the next Western.

But I’m still puzzled by the accolades. Their games are worth noting in the mid to low 80s at best. I guess since I’m not a fan of KoolAid, I’ll remain in the dark.

Now Playing: From Paris With Love

2010-09-15T12:00:00.000-05:00

There is absolutely no reason in the world why you won’t fall head over heels in love with the ludicrous nature of “From Paris With Love.” It’s loud, obnoxious, ridiculous, offensive, sexist, and it wears all that as a badge of honor. Hell, it wears all that as a bandoleer strung across the chest of a man who’ll beat you to death before grabbing a burger and fries. I laughed start to finish at what can only be described as sheer lunacy.

The film kicks off with a clerk at the U.S. embassy in Paris (Jonathan Rhys-Myers doing a genuinely horrible American accent) performing routine surveillance duties for his boss and for some unknown superior on the phone. He lives happily with his drop-dead gorgeous girlfriend in a nifty little apartment, and all is well. Yet he yearns for a more action-packed lifestyle. As though living in Paris with a brunette as hot as his girlfriend isn’t enough.

Such are the silly travails of action stars.

His world is flipped upside down when he’s called in the middle of the night and told to pick up his new partner, Charlie Waxler, at the airport. Wax, as he’s called, has been detained by customs which presents a problem for the Powers That Be. We then meet Wax, played with full-throttle gusto by John Travolta. Channeling his over-the-top terrorist from Face/Off, Travolta hurls expletives almost as fast as he shoots bad guys. But who are the villains, you ask? I honestly couldn’t tell you.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a film that asks you to accept on blind faith that everyone the lead actor shoots/blows up/otherwise annihilates is a de facto enemy of the state. Initially, he’s in Paris for an acceptable reason, but that reason quickly begins to change in roughly five minute intervals. By the mid-point, I couldn’t care less what the villains did to deserve Wax’s wrath. I gave myself over to the gleeful energy of the bloodbath because of the wanton abandon. There are only two sides in “From Paris With Love,” Wax’s side and everyone else.

The film rests on the rapport between Rhys-Myers and Travolta and to their credit they both shine. Travolta has performed this role for over a decade so he’s got it down to a science. He takes crazy to a whole different level here, though, and what kept me laughing is how fast Wax adapts to every environment. I laughed the hardest at his response to the man who offers him tea, but equally funny is Rhys-Meyers spending 30 minutes holding a vase filled with cocaine. The two leads have completely unique energies as performers and they genuinely connect here.

This film also manages a neat trick though with the twist you know is coming right from the start. Every film like this has one, but the way they introduce it is a shocker. It would have been nice to have a stronger conclusion, but I’ll run with the coda the film makers gave us. It doesn’t wrap everything up in a tidy bow, but that’s sort of the point. Just kick back and hang on for a wild, hilarious, blood-soaked and highly profane ride.

“From Paris With Love” is 90 minutes of gleeful stupidity and I highly recommend it.

Pre-Pre School

2010-09-15T08:00:00.000-05:00

A number of weeks ago, My Fair Lady and I joined a church by the house. It was less about a more convenient avenue by which to praise God™ than it was being granted access to the Mother’s Day Out program. While My Fair Lady remains at the house, she needed at least one day a week where she could get things done without having to also watch him.

Day 2 was today. Today was also the first full day which included the kids utilizing their nap mats. So how did things go?

Apparently they went great. Max was all ready to go when they left the house, complete with putting his bag on his shoulder and marching out to the car. Then he freaked out when they walked into the church, and was very upset about being left behind. Which, of course, kicked off My Fair Lady’s waterworks once she’d left the building. So she called back to find out how he was.

Three minutes later he was off and playing with the other kids, the toys, and whatever else he could find. Typical.

What cracked My Fair Lady up was when she showed up after lunch to pick him up. The way their schedule works is the morning is devoted to play time, arts, outside, etc. Then they have lunch, followed by nap time. The parents usually pick them up after the nap so the kids are raring to go. But not Max.

Oh no. Not him.

The little man was still sound asleep when My Fair Lady came a callin’. All the other kids had already been picked up or were running around in the room laughing and having a great time. But in the corner lay Max, snoring a thousand z’s. What can I say? The little man loves his sleep.

Fortunately for us, he only slept for about an hour before she had to wake him up. He came to pretty quickly, but was awake throughout the rest of the afternoon. Based on his activity for the day, I know the exact time he’s going to sleep which means we’ll have more of our night than normal. Which is both sad and awesome. It’s sad because I don’t get to spend as much time with him once I get home from work, but awesome in that I don’t have to spend as much time with him once I get home from work.

When he reads this in the future, he’s going to come slap me for saying as much. But here’s the kicker—even extremely involved dads like Yours Truly sometimes don’t want to mess with being a parent after a long day at the office. It’s great on the weekend, but towards the end of the week I just want to eat and go to sleep.

Yes, I’m getting old. I expect to shoo the other kids off my lawn any day now.

Reversal of Roles

2010-09-14T23:05:00.002-05:00

Yes it's been forever since I blogged and believe it or not I'm actually crafting a post that explains it. But in the meantime, here's a Max story:

Max’s bedtime window is between 8 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. each night. We try to hew as closely as possible to this, with allowances for periodic deviations. One such happened the other night, but the reason for it was because Max put us to sleep in his room before going into ours and watching football.

My Fair Lady was sitting in the far corner, comfortably ensconced in Max’ beanbag chair. I sat next to the door which let Max walk up my chest and face to get to the lightswitch. We were talking back and forth while Max played between us. Then a light must have gone off in his head because he did the following:

1) Climbed up my chest/face and turned off the light.
2) Closed the door from the outside thereby leaving us on the floor in the dark.
3) Giggled as he ran off down the hall.

I opened the door and peaked my head out. When I didn’t see him, I crawled all the way out of the room. He was sitting on the bench in front of our bed watching the football game and casually swinging his feet to and fro. He spotted me, laughed out loud, hopped down, and ran at me.

He grabbed me by the throat, pushed me back into the room, and put me back up against the wall. He climbed my chest/face, turned on the light, ran over to mommy, and gave her a big kiss. Then he ran back to me, climbed my chest/face again, turned off the light, shut the door, etc. He was laughing hysterically the whole time he performed this routine.

I find it increasingly difficult to put an end to his fun. He’s almost two, and just seeing such blissful joy on his face as he plays with us is a reminder of why I got into this business to begin with. I hope he’s still a great kid when he’s a teenager and every decision we make is ipso facto repression. But the memories he’s creating for us right here right now are worth all the pain that (may) come our way. He’s a great, sweet child who genuinely enjoys just living. It’s hard to argue with that level of enthusiasm.

Oh, and he’s started reading to his bear. For the record, he has more than a few stuffed animals, but the one he’s bonded with is the oldest among the lot. It’s one from My Fair Lady’s childhood, and he never gave it much attention until recently. We always read to him before bed time, and about a week ago he sat on my lap and refused to listen to any more Dr. Seuss. I closed the book, then he pointed at the bear. I picked it up and sat it right next to him on my lap. Max nuzzled in to both of us and I started again.

We made it all the way through our nightly triple header. One little Max head and one little Bear head were intently focused on the books in question. When I put the little man down, I sat the bear in the crib next to him. I checked in on Max about an hour later and found him sound asleep on the bear’s legs.

It’s memories like these that make everything worth it.

Waterbabies

2010-07-21T21:12:00.002-05:00

It's official: We have a water baby.

I know I haven't blogged in forever, and I could rehash the employment drama engulfing my family for the last several months but I'm not going to. Suffice to say My Fair Lady and I both are unemployed, hopefully that will change this week or next (or the next, etc.) and we're both looking for work.

But in the afternoons, we've started taking Max to the pool. And lo, the joy unleashed upon yon baby's face revealed great depths of sheer bliss. Verily.

The area where we live has a giant rec center with an outdoor pool that closely resembles a water park. There are massive slides, a big kiddie area with water spouts everywhere, and an adult pool that's only about 3.5 feet deep. Also, the place is never packed except possibly on the weekends. In short, it's perfect.

Max has discovered Heaven.

He gets excited at the house when we ask him if he wants to go to the pool. From the minute we get there, he just stares at the water, chomping at the bit. We initially take him to the kiddie area and when he gets there, he immediately sits down in the water. He gets wet, splashes a bit, then heads for the water spouts. He thinks it's hilarious when they blast him in the face. He runs and runs and runs around splashing in the water, all the while wearing an ear-to-ear grin.

But today he did something new in the adult pool.

When you first get in, to your left are two smaller areas where people can sit on a ledge next to some other spouts. Max enjoys walking around these edges since the water only comes up to his mid-chest there. We've been trying the last few times to get him to jump to us, but he hasn't. Until today. And after he did it once, it was on.

My Fair Lady or I would float in front of him and say, "Come on. Jump to me!" He'd then walk off the ledge and splash in our arms as we caught him. Then he wanted to splash into the water by himself. Fortunately, there are life jackets aplenty there and he's firmly secured into one. Watching him close his eyes and step off into the water was hilarious, as was his reaction later when he yanked the sunglasses off my face and threw them to the bottom. Oh, was that a fun game.

Max has a squealing cackle when he gets infinitely excited, and he was cackling at full volume with this game. He thought it was the greatest thing ever to pull my glasses off, drop them to the bottom, watch me retrieve them, and then we'd start over. This went on and on, even after I added a twist. He'd drop my glasses, and I'd drop him and let him bounce in the water while I got the glasses back. He'd bob, splash, and get dunked in the split second I was under. I'd pick him up, he's be smiling ear to ear again as water ran down his face.

In short, it was a great, great time. We're doing this every afternoon too, which makes putting him to sleep that much easier. He usually craters at night anyway, but this ensures it. Plus, it gets us out of the house, into the sun, and exercising while staying cool. It's a win-win for America.

Now if only the job I'm waiting for will be mine....

Tales of the Max

2010-04-10T21:13:00.002-05:00

The following is no particular order since I've been AWOL forever. I keep saying I'll try and blog more frequently, yet I never do. Maybe someday...

Time will show how negligent I was in my role as herald for my children, especially in their early years. But by way of penance, I hereby present a list of things Max has done in the past few months. He’s not talking yet, nor is he running despite his best efforts. This list is hardly comprehensive. It is, however, a matter of record now that he can eventually look back on and laugh at.

Or sue me in court for, depending on the path his life eventually takes.
-----

Feeding Max is a bit of a chore. He’s 16-months-old (at the time of this posting) which means getting him to sit still and focus on eating is more of an effort than one might think. He’s also become a bit of a foodie, due in no small part to My Fair Lady’s relentless efforts to expose him to as much variety as possible. He pops green beans and peas like they were candy, knocks back meatloaf with nary a complaint, and devours pork loin, gourmet pizza, and more.

He also has a love for Eggos, all types of fruit, and several ounces of milk each meal. This is probably why we get so frustrated when he doesn’t want to eat. He eats so well so much of the time that when he doesn’t, we immediately think something’s wrong or that he’s just being difficult for the sake of being difficult. It takes some reminding that a) he’s smaller than us and can’t eat as much, and b) sometimes people just don’t feel like eating. So why should he be any different?

-----

Max recently discovered climbing. Shortly thereafter he discovered dancing. Guess what? He likes to climb on top of our coffee table (handmade out of oak by My Fair Lady’s grandfather in the 1920s) and dance. A baby dance is hilarious because it bears an eerie resemblance to Elaine’s dance on “Seinfeld,” best described as “a full body dry heave set to music.” One of his signature moves is to hold on to something then stick his right leg out behind him. He doesn’t do anything else, just sticks that leg out. I keep waiting for him to at least bounce it up and down, but it just stays stuck out.

Naturally, my family decided to continue warping him. We discovered at the July 4th parade that he’s a fan of the Beach Boys, and whenever that hits the rotation at Casa de Skim, sure enough he starts jiving. My mother fired up “The Blues Brothers” soundtrack while she was babysitting him one day, and he never stopped moving. This was followed by me firing up the actual movie and hitting all the musical sequences. He went nuts for James Brown’s number in the church, and it is a showstopper without doubt. The extended cut of the film doesn’t work on the whole (a subject for another post) but the longer musical numbers means more time for baby dancing.

My Fair Lady, a hardcore band geek and music nerd, plays all sorts of tunes for him, then taps the beat on his arm so he can start to understand it. He kind of gets it, but we’re not expecting Mozart given his age. But I did tear up a little knowing I was getting to show “The Blues Brothers” to my son, and can’t wait to show the full thing to him eventually.

When he’s old enough to not shout out, “I hate Illinois Nazi’s!” on the playground that is.

-----

Speaking of which, we’re working on language skills. My Fair Lady was so paranoid about Max’s inability to speak or properly identify items when he was 12 months old, it drove me crazy.

Me: “He’s just discovered he can take his socks off! What more do you want?”
MFL: “I want him to say my name, bitch!”

Funny enough, he has come close with that by saying “Mommom” when he looks at her. His other word thus far is “buh buh” for “bye bye.” He waves when you leave, and Friday he said “buh buh” as I left for work. That high managed to carry me all the way to the office.

-----

“Monsters, Inc” was already a funny movie, but it’s become downright hilarious due to Max. The little girl in it, Boo, is exactly what we’re going through and we can see how the animators had to have drawn on their own experiences as parents. We haven’t led him down the hall with a trail of Cherrios, but that night he did walk down the hall to his bedroom wearing a little plastic fireman’s hat. He fiddled with it the entire length of the hall, and we followed behind him snickering. This was subsequent to an earlier incident when he opted to use a giant stainless steel mixing bowl as a helmet. We called him Private Maxwell and asked him to report for duty. He then tipped over from the weight and cackled.

Good stuff.

-----

Max has started to imitate me and it’s both hilarious and deeply touching. Here are two instances from this weekend alone:

My Fair Lady and I have a tendency to not clean out our refrigerators as frequently as we should. That’s not saying our kitchen is filth-ridden by any means. If anything, our kitchen is pretty damn clean 95% of the time. But the spare fridge we have in the back is where we tend to put things, then forget about them for a while. Such was the case with a plate of lettuce and tomatoes from a cook-out we had a few weeks back.

Sunday morning while My Fair Lady was at church, I decided to get rid of that plate. So I toss the stuff in a bag and set it on the counter. I turn around, and it’s leaked down the counter and onto the floor. No worries. I throw it into another bag, a much thicker one, then use some paper towels on the spill. Dried it right up, then reached for the Fantastic. Max walks up beside me then starts playing with the paper towel holder. I think he’s messing with it just to mess with it so I keep trying to get him to stop. Finally, I threw in the towel (so to speak) and just focused on cleaning up the mess.

He manages to rip off a paper towel, drops the towel on the spot where I’m cleaning, and proceeds to move the towel back and forth exactly like daddy was doing. I felt a little tear forming in one eye.

Later that afternoon, we came inside after an extended period in the yard and I noticed a large spider on the floor. I asked My Fair Lady to bring me my shoe, and after a couple of slams the spider was very dead. I handed my shoe back to her, went into the kitchen to get a paper towel, and began my return journey. While I was en route to the scene of the homicide, Max walked back into the kitchen, picked up my shoe, walked to where the spider’s remains were, then dropped the shoe on the body. He then picked up the shoe, and dropped it on the spider again. Just to finish the job.

I frankly love that he’s emulating me. I get the whole father-son dynamic now. I didn’t at first, beyond the inherent joy males feel when they have a son, but I understand it now. When he’s riding on my shoulders and laughing and squealing with glee, or when he imitates my actions in terms of pest control because he wants to help and be just like me, my heart soars.

----

He was having difficulty going to sleep tonight, and he'd turned on his mobile. I let him be for a while, then when it sounded like he still wasn't going to sleep, I left the office to go check on him. Outside his room I could hear the mobile going full blast when we normally keep it on the lowest setting. I walk in and the room is pitch black. Fortunately, I can see in the dark. Quite well in fact, thank you for asking.

Max is standing at the edge of his bed as far from his mobile as he can. He looks at me with this expressions of, "I done broke it WTFLOLOMGBBQ!" He was trying to get away from it since he'd been messing with it and cranked the volume to full while successfully turning off the lighting. So for all he knew, this sound system was turning his crib into an kiddie-version of a Van Halen concert and he couldn't turn it down from an 11.

I reset it, then he plopped down and changed expressions again. This one said, "Here we go again." So I picked him up and held him. Immediately he laid his head on my shoulder and snuggled in to get comfortable. I sat down in our rocker, then slid down to turn my chest into as flat a surface as possible. After about five minutes of gentle rocking and rubbing his back, he was snoring.

Who's his daddy?

----

Parenthood is an absolute beat-down physically and emotionally, but I get now why people go through it. I hope in the end my son (and the new No. 2) will be extremely happy and intelligent people. If we do our jobs correctly as parents, the benefits are significant beyond anything we can imagine. That wasn’t something I understood when we started.

But I get it now.

Christmas 2009

2010-01-20T21:05:00.000-06:00

Christmas Eve, 2009. My Fair Lady, Max, and I have finished loading up the car. Our plan is to drive that day out to Lubbock, TX, from Dallas and be there in a few hours. Under perfect driving conditions, it normally takes me about six hours and change to drive there, and about five on the way back. If you’re unfamiliar with the terrain, here’s a quickie synopsis:

Lubbock essentially sits on a plateau south of the Texas Panhandle. Once you start heading in that direction, you’re going uphill. The two primary routes to take are I-20 (way the hell south of our house) out into West Texas, then turn north on State Route 84 (I think). This takes you straight into town. The catch along this part is Ranger Hill, which has a steep (around 35%) grade that makes climbing it virtually impossible in bad weather. The other route, the one we opted for, was to take State Highway 380 west then join onto State Highway 114 which, more or less, winds through every small town in that part of the state before depositing you on the furthest end of Lubbock. The benefit is you’re gradually going uphill the whole way so you don’t really notice.

For those of you who may have missed the weather report, a freaking blizzard of unimaginable size and fury happened to be blowing through Lubbock at that point and was headed east. So take a wild guess what happened?

All those of you who said, “Mitch forgot to look at the map on Weather.com,” go ahead and award yourselves a cookie.

My Fair Lady assured me it was little more than a strong snowstorm and, while we would see snow en route, it shouldn’t be that bad. No worries all around. So we loaded up in the car and took off.

The drive itself wasn’t too bad for a while. Once we were on 380, we cruised right into Bridgeport which is where I figured we’d encounter the first flurries and I was right on the money. As the flurries steadily increased, we began noticing the cars heading east were increasingly covered with more and more and more snow. Being the ignorant yokels we were that day, we figured it wasn’t that big a deal. Heck, My Fair Lady was excited at the prospect of snow.

About an hour later, it started dawning on us that we may have made a mistake. The roads were starting to become treacherous, the snow was thickening, and the cars in front of us began slowing down. I honestly don’t recall the exact moment we realized how hard we were screwed, but I think it was the first of several realizations that I physically could not see the road.

It bears mentioning that I have 20/15 vision, which is remarkable considering several family members wear glasses. I will too, eventually, but the further out that day is the happier I am. We started to slow down to a crawl as the snow grew thicker and thicker. It was sticking to the ground and after another hour of this, it was sticking to the road. Combine that with sleet and you can guess how screwed up the roads had become. We looked at one another and mentally we both regretted leaving the house.

A little while later, I saw a dark shape straddling the middle of the road. We were down to about 20 miles per hour at this point, hazard lights flashing, and silent prayers were being mouthed. As we drew closer, we saw it was a truck that managed to barely steer out of the way before we passed him. Further down the road, we were forced to come to a stop behind a convoy of equally stopped vehicles.

Anyone who has ever driven through white-out conditions in a blizzard knows you have to keep going. It sucks the life right out of you, but the chances of getting through it are better if you keep moving. It proved to be fortuitous that we stopped for a moment, though, because the wipers were freezing up. I leaped out of the car, and immediately was sliced and diced by sleet hurled at me by 60 mph winds. In 20-degree weather. What fun.

I pried the ice off the wipers, then saw some trucks driving past us. I got back in the car, tested the wipers, then followed the new convoy past the old convoy. We inched forward little by little for the better part of four more hours.

You read that right.

In the meantime, it bears mentioning the conditions on the road. We’d long since passed the point where we were driving on a sheet of ice covered by inches of snow. Several cars were stopped on the side of the road, or were in ditches. One more thing to know about west Texas is how much of it is farmland. The majority of west Texas is as flat as a board so we’d drive past acres of open land that was covered in sheets of snow. Throw in high winds and the road, and everything else in front of us, would sometimes just vanish. We’d see far enough in front of us to know we weren’t going to hit anyone, then the wind would blow and POOF! Road, vehicles, everything in front of us was gone. Just… gone.

Eventually we made it to the small town of Seymour and pulled over into a gas station. By this time, we were pale, physically drained, and starving. The Enclave still had half a tank of gas, which was awesome, but we figured it would be best to have a full one. The snow had begun to taper off by this point, so the three of us ran inside and huddled for a little bit. Minute by minute the snow faded, until it stopped altogether.

When we looked east, all we could see were the blackest clouds covering the horizon. Had we actually looked at the online weather map, there is exactly zero chance we would be in that spot. We went ahead and loaded up on snacks and gasoline, then My Fair Lady took the wheel giving me a rest. She pulled out and we took off, slowly but surely.

For a bulk of the drive, we were on ice and snow but at some point, and I honestly couldn’t tell you where we were, the roads cleared up. No ice or snow anywhere on the roads, but plenty on the sides. My Fair Lady floored it and we probably picked up almost two hours worth of time during this stretch. It felt great to be moving again, because by this point we weren’t racing the weather.

We were racing the sun.

The second the sun dips below the horizon in west Texas, the temperature plummets. Being as bone dry as it is, we knew that whatever was on the ground was going to refreeze instantly and that would stretch this nightmare commute even longer. A few towns away from Lubbock, we ran into some serious ice on the roads and were forced to slow down again. Fortunately, My Fair Lady has experience driving in this sort of weather (hilariously ironic when you consider the N00b, i.e. Yours Truly, drove through the blizzard), so the rest of the trip went smoothly. Slow, but smooth.

To his eternal credit, Max was a dream the entire trip considering he was strapped into his car seat for nine hours. As we rounded the last bend and pulled off onto the road leading to the in-laws’ house, he started to lose it. He fussed for about 10 minutes and then we pulled in and were able to get out of that damn car. Seriously, I know of no child who would have been happy the entirety of that trip.

We went in and were greeted warmly. All we wanted to do was sleep because we were beyond exhausted. Everyone ate, we put Max to sleep, we visited for a while, then My Fair Lady and I cratered around 10:30 p.m. All was well.

Until 1:30 a.m. when Max woke up coughing.

We tried to calm him down, but he just kept coughing. We picked him up out of the crib, and brought him to bed with us to try and prop him up. This worked for about 10 minutes. Then he threw up all over us. Then he did it again. Any thought of sleeping was banished instantly. There’s a particular panic button every parent has. It’s behind glass that reads, “Only break in case of emergency.” The second your child starts vomiting, regardless of circumstance, that glass is shattered and the button is pressed.

Helloooooooooooooo adrenaline rush!

My Fair Lady held him while he just sat still with the most forlorn look on his face. I raced into the bathroom, swooped up towels, and ran back to the bed. I wiped him down, stripped the comforter off, and put a towel in front of him just in time for him to hurl all over it. The wiping down continued, and all Max could do was sit there with the most forlorn look on his face as his body expunged everything he had ever eaten in his short life.

Eventually he passed out. We cleaned up as best we could, then both of laid on the bed to keep watch. Bear in mind this is a small freaking bed so with three people on it, “crammed” would be a subtle yet accurate description. Max woke up and threw up again roughly an hour later. He’d cough for a bit, then start hurling, then cough again, then pass out. All we could do was hold him and hope for daybreak. It seriously became one of those times where you literally find yourself praying for the night to be over.

Please God, let the sun come up. Now would be great.

After another hour or so of this, we gave him some water. He promptly threw that up. So I dipped my fingers in the water and let him suck on the moisture. We did this off and on until around 5 a.m. or so when My Fair Lady finally called the overnight nurse’s line to ask what the hell we should do. We’d agreed beforehand that unless we saw blood that we weren’t going to call her in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve. We could, and did, manage just fine.

When My Fair Lady finally spoke to the nurse, it turned out we were one of several people to call her describing the exact same symptoms. Apparently, there was a bug going around that turns you inside out for a few hours, then stops. Fabulous.

Eventually, the sun peaked over the horizon. My Fair Lady staggered out to the family room to brief the in-laws. Max and I laid down on the floor on some pillows and literally blacked out. An hour or so later, My Fair Lady peaked in on us and Max and I were sound asleep on a makeshift pallet. It would be cute if any of us were coherent.

She woke us up and we padded out to the living room for Christmas morning. It was so sad watching little Max. He’d be sucking his thumb, holding onto his blanket, walking a few steps then laying down. Didn’t matter where he was. He’d just lay down on the floor and rest for a moment. The two of us were right there with him. You know you’re completely done when you expect to fall over at any given moment and hope you at least hit the floor.

We opened presents and had a generally pleasant morning. My father-in-law was gracious enough to run to the store that morning and pick up some Pedialite, which is essentially Baby Gatorade. The nurse said if he drinks some of it and keeps it down then he’ll be fine. So we gave him a little bit at a time, and he of course screamed when we took it away from him. Considering how thirsty he was, I couldn’t blame him. Were I in his shoes, I’d have stabbed anyone in the face who dared try to take my drink away from me.

We kept watch over Max throughout the day and to his credit, he was very subdued. He obviously felt like hell, but he never cried about it beyond when we’d take his drink away. We obviously didn’t want him throwing it back up so the morning became an exercise in gradually reintroducing liquid to his system. It was difficult but necessary and he managed to pull through it. At some point, I may have taken a nap as well. I honestly don’t remember much from the day other than it eventually was over. I was able to feed Max a bottle of formula and put him down. We thought he should be able to take that since he hadn’t thrown up since that morning.

Around 1:30 a.m. Max threw up again in his crib. Whoopee!!!!

That damn button was pushed again. I immediately picked him up and took him into the bathroom. Plopped him down in the tub, turned on the heating lamp, and stripped him out of his pajamas. He looked up at me and gave me a ghost of a smile. It was both sweet and heartbreaking because all I wanted to do was comfort him and make this bug stop its rampage. I smiled back at him, told him everything would be okay, then got to work.

I wiped him down and wrapped a towel around him to help keep him warm. I looked around for his diaper supplies, then realized they were in the family room. On the other side of the house. I swooped him up in my arms and he was swallowed by the towel. A little baby face poked out of this massive towel and looked at me quizzically. I moved as fast as possible to the family room, and located the supplies. Wishing I had two more arms, and a team of surgeons on standby, I managed to pack his changing supplies into my pockets and on him. He’s such a good helper.

We made it back to the bedroom where I changed his diaper then put him into fresh pajamas. This whole time he just looked at me and occasionally smiled. Even that, I think, was exerting energy he didn’t have but it was one of those lights moments that puncture a never ending darkness. I propped him up in bed with me, and then watched him until he went back to sleep. Which was about five minutes later.

I blacked out at some point. Later, My Fair Lady came to check on us and I snapped awake. I rapidly briefed her on the situation. She then wound up sleeping with us as well, and soon I found myself literally on the edge of the bed in the most cramped position I could imagine. There was literally no way to get remotely comfortable. At all. I’ve been told the bed is a queen, but if that’s so then they must have measured a small-ass Queen. One person can sleep comfortably on it. Two? Not so much. Certainly not two and a half.

Every time Max would cough, I’d snap awake and tilt him forward so he wouldn’t choke. Then he’d go back to sleep and I’d tried to work the cramps out of my back and spleen. Somehow that happened. Not sure how, but the pain was real. So are the flashbacks.
You can imagine how much sleep we got that night.

The next day, we went to get family portraits made, followed by me helping Lone Star clean the ice and snow off the drive way. Because what’s needed after a few days like that was some serious physical labor. I’d never shoveled snow before in my life, and I hope this remains the lone instance. I actually measured a sheet of ice we pried up from under the snow bank, and it was two inches thick. And it was covered by over a foot of snow. All this was just in the driveway. It took us a few hours, but we managed to clear it up and it did feel good to do something productive.

As opposed to doing what I really wanted which was laying on the floor wishing I was back home in my bed sleeping.

The good news was that the extensive snow allowed My Fair Lady to put Max on her old sled, which Lone Star then pulled over the banks. Max didn’t quite know what to make of the snow considering that was his first time to really experience it. Eventually, he’ll dig it but this time he just looked at it, then back at us wondering why we were smiling at him.

Fast forward to Saturday night ‘round 6:30 p.m. That was the moment when My Fair Lady said, “I don’t feel so hot.”

Take a wild guess where this is going.

She heads to the bathroom, and about 30 seconds later we hear her regurgitating with gusto. I was hoping wasn’t next. Those hopes vanished about 10 minutes later when I started feeling a little off. You know when you’re body is literally out of sync and that your immediate future is going to be filled with a lot of pain and bodily fluids? I knew it on the spot, and planned accordingly. By my reckoning, I had another 15 minutes before the freight train hit me so I quickly spoke with the in-laws.

My Fair Lady and I were essentially screwed for the night. Please take care of feeding Max and make sure he eats what little food he can. Ensure that he stays hydrated. Also, if you could please call a plumber that night to take care of the clogged toilet on the guest side of the house, we’d cover half the bill.

Forgot to mention that gem. Three toilets in the house. One in the master, one in the guest area, one by the kitchen. Two of those were guaranteed to be occupied off and on for the next six hours so the sooner all three were functional, regardless of cost, the better. Father-in-law picked up the phone to call the plumber right as my 15 minutes were up. I headed to the master bath where about 30 seconds later the freight train struck.

The best description I’ve come up with in the weeks since the incident is to imagine all of your insides twisted up like when you ring out a wet towel or t-shirt. Then ring out the water on both ends at the same time. I don’t know what this bug was, but it was the most violent, vicious little animal I’ve encountered in years. Everything I’d had for the day was blasted out of me with the force of a fire hose.

I could take it. I knew My Fair Lady could as well. I was amazed that Max was able to as well. I cannot understate the amount of pain this thing inflicted, and to know that he was able to handle it without being a blubbering mess amazed me. Trust me, the desire to have someone step into the bathroom and kill me was very real. After this round of fun, I cleaned up and rejoined the family. My Fair Lady was back at the table and as soon as I sat down, she was up like a shot and back in the bathroom.

This is pretty much how it went for the rest of the evening. By this point, the plumber was there so we had him walking across the roof and in and out of the house as well. Max started crying then because he still felt wrung out, and he could tell that both of his parents were screwed as well and neither of us could feed him or comfort him.

So let’s review:

1) Max is sitting there crying his head off because he wants his parents to comfort him and we can’t.
2) Some unknown plumber is trying to fix a clog.
3) My Fair Lady and I are constantly hurling in the two remaining bathrooms.
4) All of this at the in-laws in Lubbock which was under several feet of snow and ice.
5) Following a day that was spent entirely on the road in a blizzard and icy conditions.
6) Which was followed by a night of Max puking on us as we tried to make sure he lived until the morning guaranteeing that none of us had really slept for close to 72 hours.

Merry Christmas.

It stopped long enough for me to bathe Max and put him down. I may have thrown him into the crib. Doubtful, but that night was sort of a blur. Once he was down, I had to sprint to the bathroom again. I think it all finally stopped around midnight or so, but I can’t say for sure. It was around then. Doesn’t matter. It stopped long enough for me to black out in the room with Max while My Fair Lady cratered in the other guest room.

The following day was fortunately vomit-free. Max’s appetite started to return. He is a trooper if nothing else. I think I had some soup around 3 p.m. and maybe some toast that night. Not entirely sure. I vaguely recall the rest of our trip, and what’s there involves me laying on the couch or the floor babbling incoherently while Max played with his toys.

Originally, I was slated to drive home Sunday morning. Considering the festivities Saturday night, that plan was shot. So I spent another day in Lubbock resting up. Monday morning, I was ready to go. My Fair Lady would follow on Tuesday with Max. All of us pretty much wanted to be home right then, but this was the plan and we were going to make good on it. She gave me the night to sleep in the other guest room while she watched over Max, and I crashed. A bomb or three could have gone off right outside the door and I never would have moved. As it turns out, that’s exactly what happened.

Max apparently started coughing Sunday night and kept waking up, so My Fair Lady wound up quasi-sleeping with him again. He’d toss, turn, cough, and so forth yet never threw up. So she was exhausted again.

I loaded up the car in the morning, then made like a banana and split. Had the roads been 100% I think I would have broken the sound barrier fleeing the city. Fortunately, there was only one small town that still had ice on the ground. Everything else was fine. I made it back in about five hours flat, which was great. I intended to do laundry and straighten up the house when I got back, yet I wound up pretty much zoning out for a few hours. I think it was later that night before the wheels started actually turning in my head again.

Tuesday afternoon I went to Love Field to pick up the family. Seeing My Fair Lady walking up the way was… interesting. In one hand was more stuff than I figured anyone was capable of carrying. With the other she was pushing Max’s stroller. They both smiled at me with weary eyes that spoke volumes. I could tell they were glad to be home, which My Fair Lady confirmed the second we hugged.

Then we went to baggage claim and the waiting game began.

My Fair Lady was the last one off the plane due to having to carry so much stuff single-handedly so in theory her bags should have already been on the carousel. Such thinking would be incorrect. We waited for close to another hour before the bags finally started showing up, during which time Max passed out and it started snowing outside.

Oh, there were flashbacks aplenty.

We finally picked up the bags, and booked it to the car. Threw the bags in the back, tossed Max into his carseat, and gunned it out of the garage. I got us home as fast as possible considering the weather, but the drive was surprisingly smooth. When we walked in, all three of us pretty much collapsed.

Fingers crossed that Christmas 2010 is a merry one.

The Coming Storm

2010-01-15T12:35:00.001-06:00

I'm working on the Christmas post but once I blew past three pages I realized it may take a bit longer. Just got to the real exciting part and I'm only getting to the violent part.

Why I Wish I Spoke Spanish

2010-01-14T17:00:00.000-06:00

I keep getting spam phone calls on my cell that are pre-recorded in Spanish. It would help to speak the language so I know before I hang up whether or not they’re at least trying to warn me of impending doom. Or that I won a cruise.

Basically the same thing in my book.

2009 in a Nutshell

2010-01-14T12:00:00.001-06:00

January 5 --> Laid off.

January 7 --> My Fair Lady gets contract job with Fortune 500 firm as their real estate attorney. Promised the job once they were ready to take things permanent.

Mid-February --> I get a part-time gig with a former co-worker with plans to revolutionize the medical industry via new software. Brilliant ideas, determined nature, effectively keeping things small and slow while money is tight, and I’m listened to when I make suggestions regarding things I understand implicitly. I learn first-hand how screwed up the medical industry actually is.

Mid-July --> Money for this firm vanishes and I’m left with insurance for the family but no income. Not the best trade off in the world, but I’ll take it. Begin tail spin into depression.

Mid-August --> We receive word that Fortune 500 is planning to hire attorney at some point in the fall. We get our hopes up as our bank account dries up. The work My Fair Lady was supposed to receive for a while has all but vanished. We assume it’s piling up on her desk at her future office, but uncertainty continues to cloud the air.

Mid-September --> I’ve been actively job hunting for several weeks. We’re continuing to watch our finances dry up and have no idea how we’ll pay our mortgage come October. We begin to have conversations about whether or not to sell the house. Future grows bleaker by the moment.

Mid-September Part 2 --> My Fair Lady’s work begins to flow again. Disaster is averted but just barely. I’ve taken a personal vow to go a full month without eating $.99 Mac & Cheese again.

Mid-September Part 3 --> I submit an application to a recruiter I’ve been submitting applications to for over a year with no results. The position is for a copywriter. I don’t expect to hear anything back but we need to get out of the house since we’ve spent the last two weeks sitting on the floor staring at one another for entertainment. We leave and go walk around an outdoor mall for some air. I get a call from the recruiter saying they want me to come in and interview for a position they have with one of their clients. We’re thrilled, even more so when 20 minutes later I get a second call from another firm that wants me to come interview.

Mid-September Part 4 --> I interview with the recruiter and they have a different position in mind for me than the one I applied for. They want me to have a phoner with their client the following Monday. I agree, we set it up, and I leave. Later that week I have a lengthy interview with Prospective Employer #2 and it goes really well. I’m flying high. The following Monday, I have a great interview with Prospective Employer #1 on the phone and we seemed to click. Fingers are crossed.

Mid-September Part 5 --> Next day I get the phone call in the afternoon that I landed the gig I interviewed for on the phone. It’s a long-term contract so who knows how long it’ll run. But I have it for a really solid salary, and I get to be a writer for a big name real estate/financial firm. Booyah.

September/October --> I start at firm, immediately click with crew, and begin doing what I want to do – write professionally at a big firm in the marketing department. Some of it is boring, some of it repetitive, some of it I have no idea what the hell I’m talking about. I love every second of it though and the people are great. My Fair Lady continues to get strung along by Fortune 500 though.

November --> Holiday rush insanity starts, magnified by Max’s 1st birthday party. This starts what we anticipate will be six weeks of non-stop crazy due to his birthday followed by Thanksgiving followed by Christmas followed by New Year’s. We’re expecting not all of this will go smoothly. Holy crap, will that prove to be an understatement.

December --> Month goes by like a flash. My Fair Lady goes into the office routinely and lands tons of work. Still not feeling the love from her co-workers, but the extra cash will help us get through the year in fine fashion. I’m also contacted by an old co-worker who wants me to help his new firm out on the side with some marketing and IT work. We’ll meet after the New Year to discuss more in-depth but things sound very promising as well as continuous. My actual work continues to go well. Been so busy lately that I haven’t posted squat on Gaming Trend in over a month. Will get back into that in 2010. Christmas hits, and it was such an Epic Fail on so many previously undiscovered levels that it deserves, and will receive, its own post. Hint: Spending Christmas Day wishing you were dead is not the most festive way to observe the holiday. We eventually make it through the other side and New Year’s is uneventful. We hope for good things in the new year.

Was 2009 a traumatic year? Yes. I pretty much stopped writing here and at GT because to do so at both while literally pondering how to pay our mortgage struck me as silly. Why spend time on a hobby when I’m not making any money at it and have no prospects for doing so? Why not spend that time looking for an actual job to help pay the bills?

So, has 2010 started better? You bet your assets. There was a silver lining throughout 2009 in watching Max grow for his first year. Simply put, it was amazing. We saw all of his firsts together (rolling over, sitting up, walking, et al.) and we fully recognize how rare it is nowadays for both parents to be able to see those. Here’s hoping this year goes smoother than last, but it’s starting off well.

Now on to that Christmas post...

I'm the Un-Sharer

2010-01-14T08:00:00.000-06:00

I’m not the biggest sharer in the world, especially when it comes to private (i.e. family) matters. I’m just not. I am, however, a big believer in the phrase “write what you know” which I’ve always taken to mean “utilize stories and personalities around you to enhance the reality of what you write.” Its fine to drop in a name or a personality quirk into a story based on whatever genre you choose, but when it comes to actually telling real stories about real people I find myself in a quandary.

My primary frustrations with it are how damn opinionated everyone in my family is. I don’t mind that on the whole, but when you blog about it the results are immediate. I’ve been called by family members griping about how they’re portrayed, and I’ve been griped at regarding my lack of coverage in certain areas. Then when I turn to those areas and exaggerate a detail or so for comic effect, the only effect I get is a comment saying, “You make me sound like an ass!”

After a while, you just lose interest in being hassled. Even later, you stop caring altogether and just enjoy the moments as they happen without feeling the need to report them to the world. Factor in the economic calamity of the past year and throw in a dash of “holy crap an Office Max exploded all over my desk” and you can physically feel the impetus to write about your personal life on the web dwindle little by little every day.

So here are my words of wisdom to kick of 2010: Screw that.

This goes to all of you (family included) who may gripe and complain enough for me to censor myself. This goes out to myself especially to get off my ass, shut the hell up, and chronicle the goings-on in my world so that my son will one day have a record of what happened when he was growing up. I’ve only retained certain memories of my own childhood, not all of them welcome, and it would be neat to be able to look back 20 years hence to compare where I was as a child to where I ended up as an adult. I think my children may enjoy that.

If not, then at least I have material for their wedding toasts.

If you have a problem with what I have to say, tough. Get your own blog and bitch at me from afar. That’s what the Internet was invented for, after all. In the meantime, I’m going to get back into this and stay in this come hell or high water. I’ll confess it helps that the high water of last year appears, for now at least, to be receding a bit. It’s enough to breathe at least and I’ll take it. So get ready for some sharing because 2010 is going to be a better year on the whole for me, my family, and even you.

But not you in the back. You had your chance and we’re done.

One

2009-11-20T07:27:00.002-06:00

I want to wish a very happy birthday to my son, Max, who turns one today. It has been an absolutely wild, bumpy ride this past year. But the result is one of the sweetest, happiest, most intuitive toddlers I've ever seen. He's the joy of our lives. Watching him squeal with glee and run to the bedroom and bathroom when he knows it's bedtime is one of many such things he does that makes us laugh every time. We love you, Max, with all of our hearts and wish you a very happy first birthday.

On a side note, I understand I've been away from the blog for two months now. On the dot, actually. I'll post an update early next week explaining my absence and what will, hopefully, be in my future.

I now have a Toddler - by My Fair Lady

2009-09-20T15:31:00.003-05:00

It seems as if Max's baby days are already over. At 9.5 months he started walking much to our surprise. However, as any parent knows, the first days of walking are filled with much more crawling than walking. Well, today he turns 10 months old, and now he walks more than he crawls :( While I am so happy that he is happy, healthy, growing and advanced for his age, a little part of me is so sad that my baby is already growing up. It is a constant push - pull - wanting your child to succeed and grow - and wanting your baby to be your baby forever.

In other news, along with the walking comes many more bumps and bruises. At Gymboree this week, Max took quite a tumble before I could catch him. He was walking across the carpet trying to get to a inflatable ring and caught his foot on the edge of the playmat and fell on the play equipment. However, after some love and affection from Mom, along with an icepack for his poor little cheek, he was up and running in no time, ready for more action. I think Max recovered much more quickly than poor Mom. I know he will have some falls which will include bumps and bruises while he explores his new world, but as his Mommy, I hate to see him hurt.

But, along with his toddling comes great fun as soon he will be able to run everywhere giggling and squealing as he goes with me running after him :)

And now my phone has a blog

2009-09-06T16:13:00.001-05:00

Coming to you courtey of my iPhone which has several blog apps. Booyah.

IT'S ALIVE!!!!

2009-09-03T22:49:00.002-05:00

So My Fair Lady and I are sitting on the floor playing with Lil Max when he stands up. Not entirely out of the ordinary as he'd been doing that off and on for the past few days. But then he walked and our mouths dropped in shock.

He and I were playing a game where I held out a glass of water and he would try and get it. So I raised it up and he balanced off my knee to try and get it. Then he let go and stumbled forward a few steps. We were stunned. Then he stood up again, went for the glass again, only this time made a hard left and walked to the fire place.

We were stunned. So much so we just had to have him walk between us again and again. Then later that night we got video of it, sort of, and it's hilarious. I'll see about posting it some day. In the meantime, we have to batten down the hatches because by this time next week he'll be running.

A week after that he'll be driving and then all bets are off.

"Yes."

2009-09-03T21:26:00.003-05:00

The other day while I was looking for a job, an ad popped up in my Gmail for a literary agency out of NYC. I clicked it with the intention of keeping it for the future when I have stacks of completed manuscripts and need an agent to sell them. As I happen to have a script ready to go, I scrolled through their site to see if they had a screenplay agency. They did. I clicked it and filled out their form, dropped in my logline, and fired it off. The form said they'd get back to me within 48-72 hours.

Lo and behold, I received an email from them today. They wanted to see my script.

That loud thunderclap everyone heard this morning was my brain exploding with glee. I wrote back to them answering their questions (basically a get-to-know-you email telling them a little about myself and so forth), and attached the PDF. BAM! Screenplay is off to an agency, and a solid one at that. It's small, relatively new, and they are looking for COMMERCIALLY VIABLE material (it was in all caps in the email). This tells me a few things:

1) They're hungry and want a solid script that delivers on everything producers want at any given moment.

2) Since they're based out of NYC, they have a work ethic lacking from the California lifestyle. Agents in NYC will kick down the door and threaten people for their clients. Agents in LA schedule a three hour power lunch and talk to you about five minutes while talking on their iPhone to their other clients the rest of the time.

3) They don't take 4-6 weeks to reply with a one sentence message saying they're interested or not. 48-72 hours for the initial response, and 7-10 days after receiving material they let you know whether they like it enough to move forward.

So I'm in a good spot emotionally right now. Because an agency, even a small one, said "Yes."

And now that's broken

2009-09-01T14:27:00.001-05:00

In other news, unrelated to the post below, the second set of blinds in the office is now broken. Tried to lower it to keep the sun out of the office while I'm working in here, but it only got about halfway down before stopping altogether. And now I can't raise them either. Fabulous.

But this in no way, shape, or form is related to me taking out my anger at Ninja Gaiden II on a pair of helpless blinds.

Now Playing: Ninja Gaiden II

2009-09-01T14:24:00.000-05:00

Seriously? Screw this game. I mean screw it with a drill and stomp on it for good measure. My Fair Lady commented that she was under the impression gaming should be relaxing, and shouldn't cause my veins to buldge and my fury to explode into Hulk-like rage.

I'm strangely conflicted though with "Ninja Gaiden II" because while there is literally no end to the staggering amount of frustration, the other end of the spectrum is present as well. The ways in which you can just kill the ever loving crap out of evil ninjas is astonishing. Your character, Ryu, starts out as a badass and continues from that lofty perch up to the level of furious monster that will kill you so hard. But in between these moments of blood drenched bliss are so many sequences of frustration that will literally cause you to blow all of your fuses at once.

Take these examples of both ends of the spectrum:

1) When fighting ninjas, the ways in which you dispense the pain are countless. When decapitating a foe is just the beginning of you killing them, then you know you're in for a good time. It just melts your brain when you pull off a combo that results in 15 dead ninjas and 60+ body parts. I'd start swinging swords, flails, or this big ass scythe and all around me body parts and gore are flying. And when you think you've killed someone enough, Ryu stabs them in just the right way and really tears their body apart. It's tough to beat that.

2) Then you have boss fights either in the middle of a level or at the end of it that make you want to literally kill the development team, resurrect them, and kill them again until you get bored. Or you can hit the level I did last night (Ch. 13) which funnels you down a long series of tunnels packed to the gills with monsters, all of whom can hit you constantly, and there are no save stations in sight. Also, it doesn't help that the camera is glued to Ryu's heavily muscled ass. I don't mind fighting a room full of bad guys, but when half of them are off camera and able to hit me without me being able to at least judge the distance between us, I get frustrated.

On any given playthough, I scream in fury at the game. Not helping matters is the fact that 95% of the enemies are cheating bastards. Oh no, I shall not be replaying this game, Team Ninja, not now or ever. But at this point I'm one chapter away from the end and I'm going to soldier on and complete it just to say I did it. Screw this game. I'm going to beat it into the ground and then I may stomp on it for good measure.

A long walk, a short pier, and much more

2009-08-31T16:02:00.000-05:00

It never fails - I sit down to finally blog after so long and my mom calls. And then My Fair Lady wants me to proof her email correspondence. Hahahahahaha.

Let me start off by saying in the grand scheme of things challenging Yours Truly, My Fair Lady, and Lil Max, keeping up with "Now Playing At" hasn't been real high on my priority list. In fact, looking down at the floor I'd it's closer to if not under the stack of "must do now" items that have piled up. At the top of that pile?

Find a job. Like, right now. Right this second would be helpful too.

Basically, we've in a major bind since the first of the year when I was laid off. Two days later, My Fair Lady was hired in a contract capacity as a real estate attorney and has done a bang up job for her employer... who has kept her on contract. I signed on in February with a non-profit start-up as a writer/project manager and they're funding dried up in July. In the meantime, we've had to deal with an infant, an inability to afford daycare, and massive amounts of juggling as one will take him while the other works and so forth.

So here we are at the end of August when things have, in theory, started moving again. I've applied to practically every writing job I can find (four today if you can believe it) and I've even had a few interviews. Actually landed a quickie contract job for a company out of Florida last week where I rewrote all the text on their website. The worry here is we're majorly up against the wall, massively stressed out, and feeling more than a little terrified over what's going. I've applied to so many jobs I've had to start a Word document to track them all so I don't get confused.

In other words, the blog has been on hold for a while now due to market forces strangling the holy hell out of me.

I'd love to get back into doing this on a regular basis, I really would, so I again must hope for the best. In happier news, I've completed my screenplay and sent it off to a horror script contest in LA, and have a few friends hunting for agents that will take my call. I've also continued outlining and actually started a book, as well as outlined three new scripts that someday I hope to actually write. I strongly believe that in the next few weeks, good things will happen but it's the waiting game that is absolutely killing me.

But enough about that. How's Lil Max? In a word, exhausting.

Earlier in the year, he would lay on the floor like the blob a three month old is and just whine and whine some more. We'd feed him, try to play with him, but he'd just whine. Strangely enough, once he figured out how to do the Army Man Crawl™ he stopped whining. Why? Because then he could follow us. He quickly graduated from Army Man Crawl™ to Man In The Desert™ to finally Full Contact Crawling™. But a few weeks ago, he made two bigger discoveries:

1) Sleeping all the way through the night means Lil Max is even happier during the day.

2) Standing up and cruising along Mommy and Daddy's furniture is nine kinds of nifty.

When I say he's a handful, or he's exhausting, or both, it's because there's more energy and joy of life packed into this little nine month old than anything I've ever seen. From the second he wakes up, his grin is ear-to-ear and he's excited to play.

Then he does something way advanced like he did last night and My Fair Lady and I fall out laughing.

We have a large box (courtesy of buying diapers in bulk online) and since he prefers playing with random household items instead of his toys (for the most part), he uses the box as a climbing tool. Yesterday I decided to try to chase him around it so I dropped to all fours and threatened him with tickles. He giggled loudly then squealed with glee when I moved after him. Around and around the box we went, laughing all the time.

Then he ducked inside the box (it was on its side) and "hid." I was under the impression that a nine month old shouldn't be able to initiate hide and seek, yet there he was doing just that. He would "hide" in the box, and squeal when I "found" him. It was hilarious.

At the very least, watching Lil Max grow and learn every single day for the last several months has been a joy. It's been stressful due to the financial situation, but bonding with Lil Max has been one of the best things I've ever done. He's been down for his afternoon nap for about two hours now (he caught the sniffles last night) so it's time to wake him.

After I swing by the kitchen and hit the pan of brownies first...

Script #1 = Registered

2009-08-07T12:04:00.002-05:00

This should have gone up on Monday after I did it, but better late than never. I registered my first screenplay with the WGA on Monday and I feel pretty dang good about it. This is a day that has been a long time coming and I'm excited. I have my feelers out there looking for agency names, and people who may have an interest so here's hoping things come to fruition sooner rather than later.

I'm also prepping to fire it off next week to a screenplay contest so we'll see. Right now I'm condensing a 108-page script into a single paragraph synopsis, which is tougher than it sounds. Oddly enough, condensing it down into a single sentence logline was simpler. Go figure.

As for the near future, I'm making notes now on a book I've been playing with off and on for the past year, as well as beginning to outline a script I wrote a rough draft for last year. Didn't really have an outline at the beginning of that one, which explains why it only runs 85 pages and sucks. But that one, since the first draft is done, should probably be my new focus so I'll at least have two scripts ready to go.

And yet again, this blog suffers from my inability to find time beyond Facebook status updates to let the world know what I'm doing. I'd get a Twitter account, but I feel stupid every time I go there so that's a non-starter. Even posting new GamingTrend reviews in our Twitter account leaves me feeling worried about the mental capacity of future generations. Though, in a hilarious bit of irony, ABC News last night commented at how John Quincy Adams essentially wrote journal entries of comparable length to Twitter posts, and he became president.

History may not always repeat, but it does often rhyme.

The Life of the Party - by My Fair Lady

2009-07-29T10:58:00.001-05:00

That is what I am now calling Max. I am constantly amazed at how social and easy going my baby boy is. It is truly amazing. Take tonight for example.

We met a couple for dinner at 7:00pm. Max is typically in bed by 8:30, so we thought, no sweat, he can handle it! Well, we haven’t seen these friends for awhile and of course we ended up staying at the restaurant until 9:05 pm. During which the WHOLE time, including after his normal bedtime, Max never fussed! He was happy, smiley, just having a great time! Makes Momma so proud!!

And, then he did what he has done before. We put him in the carseat to drive home (which was a 5 minute drive – maybe 8) and he cried the whole way home.

Why am I so amazed you ask? Because he ALWAYS keeps it together for company or social occasions. This baby learned his company manners when he was 3.5 to 4 months old. Sure he can be a little rough afterwards (he did go down after his bottle and bath immediately), but he is a dream while we are out with friends, at parties, etc.

I never knew a baby could figure out so young when it is time to be happy and have fun and when it is just Mommy and Daddy and I can tell them I am not so happy anymore. Now, we rarely (almost never) keep him out past his bedtime. But, it sure makes me breathe easy knowing that he will be a doll for the company, but may show me his frustration when it is just the three of us.

WOW!! I love Max for infinite reasons, and tonight is just one of the smaller reasons.

My baby is 7 months old! - by My Fair Lady

2009-07-29T10:55:00.000-05:00

EDIT - This was written but not published when Max was 7 months old. So here it is now.

Max is such a good little baby. Although as everyone has seen, he doesn't sleep through the night consistently, that is a small price to pay for such an amazing baby. Max is so happy and I love to make him laugh. He laughs very easily and I think he gets that from me. It is so funny to make funny faces and get him going.

Tonight while Mitch and I were eating, Max was sitting in his high chair between us eating a rice cake, and he fell asleep while he was sucking on his rice cake. Too funny!! Of course we immediately started to take pictures of him to capture the moment.

Max is a very inquisitive baby and studies everything while we are out and about.

Time to dust this one off

2009-07-10T22:02:00.002-05:00

Alright, so I was lied to when people told me I would still have time to do my own thing even after having a child. For all of you out there who still believes this, WAKE! UP! NOW!

Basically your life is consumed wholly and utterly and if you're a sort like Yours Truly who prefers to blog and write when I think up something funny, or want to moan about movies and games, then you're effectively in the dog house. I don't think I have ever been this exhausted EVER in my life, and that includes four years of college where I lived, on average, on three hours of sleep a night. But then a funny thing happened last week...

Little Max slept through the night. Then he did it again. Then he did it again. Then he screwed us by getting a bug of some sort that hurt his tummy and ruined all of our nights. But that wasn't his fault and despite us being frustrated, we'd picked up enough sleep from the previous nights to get through it.

Then the next night he slept through it again.

Now, for a little clarification on how Max sleeps through the night. He goes down around 7:30 p.m. or 8 p.m. depending on how hard he's crashing. Then he wakes up between 11:30 p.m. and midnight which is when we change his diaper then feed him an 8 ounce bottle of formula. Treat with Mylicon, burp him if possible, then put him back down. He's then out until 7 a.m.-ish.

After almost eight months of not sleeping through the night, this has been a divine blessing. Sleep. Blessed sleep. And here I am blogging again. Who knows how long this kick will last? But I can tell you this much:

Had a phone interview today for a part time writing gig where the writers are expected to burn out between 500 and 1000 words a day. Pffft. I can do that in my sleep. Should I get the gig, and My Fair Lady continue to work in hers, then our fortunes could turn around right quick. Not to mention that sort of constant adrenaline-fueled writing binge on a daily basis is EXACTLY what I need. Like any other skill, the ability to write is useless unless you write.

That's something I've not been doing a lot of lately, except on my script which is now on draft #4. I'm incorporating edits from my readers as well as from my own two eyes and the script is vastly superior now to my original draft. I want to get everything together by next week then start drafting out loglines and queries to the various agencies on my list. After all these years of talking about it, I'm finally on the verge of actually sending my script to Hollywood. It is difficult to understate how much of a personal accomplishment that day will be. Which reminds me - I'm going to shout for joy when I register my script with the WGA and the USPA.

And that day is coming very, very soon.

In theory, if I get this spot then it'll kick my ass hard enough that I'll write more here and for myself since I'll essentially be writing all the time. Since it's part time, that sort of intensive writing would be a perfect kick off for the day. More as it develops.

Whew!

2009-06-06T20:16:00.000-05:00

So that's what it feels like to buckle down for three weeks and blow through a screenplay. And here I thought I'd be able to finish off this latest draft in no time flat. That train of thought left the station right around November which was, conveniently enough, the same time little Max was born.

I've been trying to finish the rewrite ever since.

Despite My Fair Lady giving me plenty of time here and there to write, it still hasn't been enough. The massive level of stress induced by a newborn (magnified tremendously by both parents working from home and being with him24/7) has pretty effectively neutralized my creative impulses. Not to mention consumed both of us more than we'd like. With newborns, you have to make a list of things you want or need to complete, then expect to get no more than two done a day. That's if you're lucky. If not, then nothing will get completed until (maybe) tomorrow.

With that in mind, I've spent more time in the last three weeks devoted to finishing this thing than was probably healthy. So I decided that I would have it locked by 5 p.m. 06/05/09. Setting a hard deadline was literally the only thing that would help me because I'd tried everything else. Finally, I just looked in the mirror, told myself that it was time and set that deadline. Completed it Thursday night at 11:30 p.m. But! .....

Factor the sort of lifestyle we're now living into trying to craft a feature length screenplay and make it good, and the challenge most closely resembles Mt. Everest. As an example, here's what happened the night I completed it.

Put Max down about 7:30 p.m. For the next 45 minutes I cleaned the kitchen and straightened around the house. My Fair Lady will think this reflects poorly upon our skills as parents. I disagree. I think it reflects that we're parents. Then I ate something quick and finally sat down at my computer around 8:20 p.m. or so. Cranked through the finale of my script and all was going well. I actually knew exactly where I was going at that point and the light at the end of the tunnel was brilliant.

At 9:30 p.m. I'm five sentences away from completing it when I hear Max wake up. If you're planning on having kids, I'd recommend this Safety 1st Baby Monitor set as the one to get. Great range + crystal clarity = win for America. I pick him up and try to rock him down. He's having none of it. I rock him some more. No go. I stare at my computer screen. Oh so close.

My Fair Lady was out at an event so this was entirely my shop for the night, just to clarify.

After a 30 minute power struggle, I finally get him back down. I drop back in my seat and it takes me a bit to calm down and then go back to finishing. By that I mean I played some Fairway Solitaire to soothe my nerves, then jumped out of that and opened my script back up. Where was I? Oh yes! I was....

"Waaaaaaaaaaa!!!!"

At that point I was banging my head on the desk. Probably harder than I should have, to be honest. I checked back on Max, and believe it or not he was more awake than he had been previously. Bottle time!

Changed his diaper first, then fixed him a large bottle, followed by trying to rock him back down. My Fair Lady showed up then right as I was rocking him down, and she helped me get him into bed again. He was snoring by the time I walked from his crib to the door.

Once we were out of earshot I exploded in frustration. I wasn't angry at her for going out, nor was I angry at him being up constantly. Had I been screwing around on "Left 4 Dead" or "Ninja Gaiden II" I wouldn't have cared. But the fact I was five sentences away from completing this yet was stymied royally pissed me off.

So I took out those frustrations on a bad guy at the end. He was going to live. Not now. Oh no. Not at all. Originally he just learned a lesson. Now he gets shredded. Subtle? Nope. Satisfying?

Absolutely.

ADDENDUM:

I started this blog post at 1:57 p.m. and am finishing it at 8:16 p.m. If that doesn't pretty much spell it out for you what raising an infant is like, I'm not sure what else will.

Baptism

2009-05-21T21:35:00.000-05:00

This weekend was a big one in terms of family because we had Max baptized on Sunday. This meant My Fair Lady's family was in town (staying with us, naturally) and my family hosted lunch. It also meant that Max had to be on his best behavior in front of a large congregation while wearing a dress and getting what he might regard as a bath.

So the challenge unfolded before us. Should we continue his training in the finer arts of adult-baby interaction? Or should we instead assume that he had reached the pinnacle of his training and was ready to go forth on his own? We opted for the latter. It was just a question of how would everything turn out.

We raced about the house that morning, frantic to gather our equipment and our wits. Little Max opted to forgo sleep the night before, instead deciding it best to psych himself up for his debut on the world stage. An unfortunate by-product of this was tremendous suffering on the part of his poor, beleaguered parents who by this point should be used to him not sleeping.

When he finally decided he was finished with his bed that morning, he let us know via a steady stream of babbling to his frog. We got him ready, fed him, and proceeded to wrangle ourselves and the in-laws into our vehicles. The mad dash to the church began.

Down the Tollway we raced, our hearts beating in our throats. Would we make it in time? Would Max throw up all over the minister? Would he do worse? Would the minister throw up all over him, either through illness or retaliation?

These were the thoughts that began to drive us mad with worry.

Once we arrived, we confirmed the location of both family parties then headed to the room specifically set aside for baptism babies. There we met two other couples, one of which was in our orientation meeting the prior month. The ministers arrived, said their pieces, and we paused for a moment of prayer. Which was the exact moment Max decided he liked his daddy so much he just had to deliver a slopping wet Baby Kiss right then and there.

Normally when we say "Baby kiss!" to Max, he turns and opens his mouth wide and plops it up against our heads. Recently though he figured that wasn't demonstrative enough of the love, so he grabs our hair with both hands, opens his mouth as wide as possible, then pulls himself to our faces.

Consider yourself warned if you're ever holding him and the phrase "baby kiss" is uttered in your vicinity. You then have about a second to make your peace with God before your face is mauled by an over-enthusiastic six month old.

As everyone finished their prayers, I was struggling to free myself from Max's surprisingly strong grip. The ministers left, I wiped my face down and pulled a chunk of hair from each of his little hands, then made sure he was ready. Away we were ushered to the sanctuary. We sat in the pews to the side, and I spotted Diva and Brother G waving at me from a few pews over.

Then the worm squirmed.

Maybe it was the choice of hymns. Presbyterians have an odd assortment of hymns, and the current reigning minister of our church has eclectic tastes to put it mildly. Or maybe he took after his old man. He'd also never seen that many people in one place so he started looking around, eventually smiling at and making faces for the elderly woman sitting behind us. Then the singing started and his little head spun around to say, "Wassat?"

Then we were called up for the sacrament and the three of us followed the other families to the front of the sanctuary. The child to our left was five months, Max was six months, and the other child was closer to 10 months old. We stood in the middle and the minister began prattling on in his usual way (I'm not his most ardent fan) when an odd noise echoed through the hall.

"Bbbbbbbbuuuuhhbbbbbb."

The 10 month old picked that moment to realize moving his finger up and down rapidly on his lips produced a funny noise.

"Bbbbbbbbuuuuhhbbbbbb."

The congregation busted out laughing. The minister tried to keep a straight face but to no avail. He picked up the first child and began delivering his spiel as he baptized the child.

"Bbbbbbbbuuuuhhbbbbbb."

Next up was Max who looked at the man more curious than anything else. He seems fascinating by elderly people, I guess because their faces look so much different than ours. He's with us almost 24/7 so seeing something new is fascinating to him. He smiled a little bit as the water hit his head, and then he was officially square with the Lord.

"Bbbbbbbbuuuuhhbbbbbb."

Next up was Blabbermouth who also handled the water well. Then the minister closed with a lengthy prayer (very, very lengthy) and we were directed to our seats.

"Bbbbbbbbuuuuhhbbbbbb."

Max decided at that point that he'd had enough of sitting on our laps, so we quickly made our way out and dropped him at the day care. Fortunately, he was the only one there and a grandmother roughly 354 years old was anxious to hold him. Unlike last time, he didn't take a nap in those petrie dishes they refer to as "cribs" so illness failed to find him again. The rest of the service was perfectly fine up to the sermon, when the minister figured a mixing of several different hymns would illustrate his point. After all was said and done, I had no idea what the hell his point must have been.

Fail.

After taking several pictures outside (and the weather was perfect), we headed to my parents' house for lunch and more pictures. Max was a doll through this whole ordeal, doubly funny considering his behavior the night before. We can only hope that eventually he'll get to where he can be with lots and lots of people and not get stressed out.

But since he's apparently my clone, fat chance of that happening... ever.

The extra good news from the day's events though was getting a rare picture of both our families together. My Fair Lady has moaned for years that we never did that during our wedding, but fortune smiled upon us Sunday and granted her wish.

Oh, and Diva threatened to abscond with Max back home to LA due to his increasing adorability. Yes, he's adorable and grows more so every day. No, you can't have him Diva. Steal someone else's.

Now Playing: Star Trek

2009-05-13T08:00:00.000-05:00

They finally did it. But first a quickie history:

"Star Trek" began in the 1960s, ran for three years, was subsequently canned despite solid ratings (an imprecise science back then), then brought back to great fanfare as "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" in the late 1970s. The film was meant to be the rebirth of "Star Trek." Yet for all the money hurled at it, and director Robert Wise's misguided, though bold, idea to make the film a genuine science fiction picture, the result is best summed up by comic writer Harlan Ellison's derisive dubbing of it, "The Motionless Picture."

A few years later, gold was struck. The budget was considerable slashed for the sequel, sets and effects were all reused, but it didn't matter. What mattered was the greatest villain of the series, Khan, was brought back and Ricardo Montalban delivered one of the single most legendary performances to grace cinema. Good villains are a dime a dozen but the great ones are near mythic in their infrequency. Khan was such a villain and that set the stage for the rest of the film series. There would be highs (parts IV and VI) and lows (part V and some of part III), and of course there would be new shows.

I wasn't as big a fan of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" as my friends were because I understood, even if I lacked the proper TV lingo, what a "reset button" was. Every episode would do something drastic then by the end everything was fine and on their merry way the crew went. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. But then came "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" and suddenly "Star Trek" was dangerous again.

For the record, the show did not start well. It took a season and a half for them to find their footing despite some stellar one-offs mixed in. But once the show figured out what it wanted, it never looked back and by the end of it primary characters were dead, worlds left in waste, and half the Federation starfleet was decimated by a war that was so large it took two (almost three) seasons to cover. The show demonstrated that creator Gene Roddenberry's vision of a Utopian human society could be achieved while still bringing some awesome drama. Unfortunately, the staggering amount of lexicon developed over the preceding decades peaked here and all subsequent shows relied more and more on tech-speak and less on drama.

The less said about the "TNG" movies, "Voyager," and "Enterprise" the better.

JJ Abrams must have said "Screw all that!" because the first thing he did with his brilliant resurrection of the franchise is ensure that it is first and foremost a "Star Trek" for everyone. This new film is confident, swaggering, and filled with so much energy and passion and rich, rich emotional drama that I can scarcely believe I saw just one film instead of five. It brings back the original characters fans grew up with and reinvigorates them with an mission sorely lacking from the most recent shows.

In short, this film is filled with win front to back and I can't wait to see it again.

It kicks off with an event that brought My Fair Lady to tears - an attack on the USS Kelvin. Through an act of selflessness, the newly minted captain goes down with the ship in a last ditch effort to at least hurt their unknown attackers. The survivors include his wife who managed to give birth and leave enough time for the captain to participate in the naming of their son - James Tiberius Kirk.

That this singular event is what changes the whole of the "Trek" universe is genius. In the original storyline, Kirk's dad was his inspiration for boldly going through the Academy. So what happens if you remove the inspiration for someone whose actions later in life would literally shape the future of a galaxy? What sort of future would you be left with?

Oh by the way, this is indeed a time travel film in the sense that time travel is involved. That it opens with a game changer and throws another one at you roughly every 15 minutes or so is par for the course. You never know what to expect here and any film that can keep viewers this on their toes deserves all the accolades one can lavish upon it.

I loved the introduction of the characters (especially the hilarious throw-away line that describes where McCoy gets his future nickname). I loved how Uhura gets more lines in the film than the original did in the entire series. I love the awful and hilarious fate of the red shirt, as well as the entire setup for the joke. I love that Christopher Pike is not just in this film, but is a key player. I love that we get to see the test by which Kirk made his name, and it is every bit as hilarious as we'd hoped for with a punchline that left me howling. I love the advanced-yet-retro feel for the equipment and the costumes. And most of all I loved the way the cast absolutely nailed their characters.

Chris Pine is going to be the next Brad Pitt, albeit with more range. I think Pitt does brooding and crazy well, but the in between is where he repeats himself. Pine has the looks for sure, but he simply oozes confidence throughout which is exactly what he has to do as one of the biggest alpha males Hollywood has ever come up with. He's not playing Shatner either. He's playing James T. Kirk and he is note-perfect. Ignore how rapid his ascension to the captain's chair is for a moment, and stand in awe at how wonderfully Pine plays it. He's also got rock solid comic timing. All of this bodes well for future installments.

Zach Quinto has the toughest job in the film. Not only does he have to play a more emotionally conflicted Spock, he has to do it up against the actual Spock. Taking on a legendary character is one thing but doing so while the original actor is in that same character has to be terrifying, but Quinto is perfect. He even has the vocal mannerisms down pat, despite lacking the timber Leonard Nimoy adds to words like "fascinating."

Karl Urban has never left much of an impression on me other than "hey, it's that guy." But he resurrects the great DeForrest Kelly and gives us Dr. McCoy anew. He's older, been beaten down by life, and Starfleet is his only recourse. His banter with both Kirk and Spock is classic and I can't wait to see this trio continue.

The other actors do what they can, but they're limited in this installment. My one major beef is that Scotty shows up over an hour into the film and he's barely given enough time to breathe. That being said, when he's on screen he kills and the way he fits into this universe is perfect. Of course, the only question regarding Simon Pegg as how funny he would make Scotty and the answer is "very." Oh, and of course he uses one of Scotty's catch-phrases at exactly the right moment.

Despite a few things worth nitpicking (the entire sequence on the ice planet, for starters, may as well have been labeled "insert exposition sequences here") this film is so filled with goodies for movie lovers that it is worth seeing again and again. I haven't even spoken about the villain (who is functional but not memorable), or the references to past "Star Trek" lore, or the way there is no sound in space, or the genius of the entire space diving sequence, or the way this film fundamentally changes the universe and keeps going at the end.

They finally did it. They finally made a "Star Trek" film the eshews the problems that plagued the various shows. They finally made a "Star Trek" with an insane budget where every cent appears on screen. They finally made a "Star Trek" that my non-Trek fan wife can't wait to see a second time. The finally made a "Star Trek" with real danger and real consequences that pulls no punches and sets the stage where anything is possible.

They finally made a "Star Trek" for everyone and it is GLORIOUS.

Happy Mother's Day to My Fair Lady

2009-05-10T07:30:00.000-05:00

My Fair Lady celebrates her very first Mother's Day this year and now is a perfect time to tell her thank you for everything she does:

1) She keeps me grounded. I have the attention span of a flea and historically jump from one project to the next to the next without finishing much if anything. As much as I hate it when she reigns me back in by reminding me about project X, it ensures that I maintain focus and ultimately complete it. I've become infinitely more productive since meeting her.

2) She's fun to mess with. She's a genuine sweetheart but sometimes lacks a sense of the obvious. This combined with me having a solid poker face means I can usually pull the wool over her eyes regarding something that may obviously be outrageous. The trick is to see how long I can string her along with an ever-increasing series of bogus claims without her figuring it out. This usually provides remarkable entertainment.

3) She's dedicated. When she decides she's going to do something, she attains it no matter what or when. Her path to becoming an attorney would have made lesser men and women quit in disgust but she persevered. It is a testament to her determination and will serve notice to Max and #2 in the future that she won't back down from them, regardless of how unruly they become.

4) She's a sweetheart. I've never met anyone so enamored of the "can't we all get along?" side of life. She's a genuine, honest, and forthright person that always has to do the right thing because to do otherwise is simply unacceptable. Even skirting a gray area gives her considerable pause. You don't find many people like this in the world and the ones who exist should be cherished.

5) I still crush on her. We've been together seven years, five of which are married years come August, and I still have a crush on her. I like the way she walks, and the way she holds herself, and for some bizarre reason I enjoy her refusal to ever "reveal anything." This sometimes includes anything that even remotely hints at cleavage, of which she has an ample supply. I find this endlessly funny, but hey - more for me. :)

6) She's the mother of my son. The fact I can say that I have a son continues to astound me, especially as he rolls on the floor while I type this. It's wild and terrifying to be a parent, and the journey we've already taken with Max has been a game changer for me. I love him dearly, and I love her for giving him to me.

7) I love her. I do. Plain and simply, I do.

Happy First Mother's Day to My Fair Lady, and I hope that you continue to enjoy all the rest to come. Now if you'll excuse me, Max is grunting with such gusto that he's either passing his body weight in poop or is more in need of a laxative than anyone else ever.

Mom's Musings Part II

2009-05-03T11:28:00.004-05:00

Bear with me - I don't bring the funny like other contributors to this site - but I am a numbers gal (despite the fact that I am a lawyer) and my dear sweet hubby is the wordsmith.

Anyhoo, I need to blog more - enough said! Max is now five months old. He has evolved from a tiny baby who would lay about and sleep most of the day to a very active baby. Gone are the days where you put him in one spot, walk out of the room to get a drink, and return to find he hasn't moved an inch. Now, we put him in the middle of our big living room, I walk out to get a drink, and he has moved five feet from where I put him. Oh, the joy of baby proofing begins!

Max and I enjoy reading alot. I read to him every day however, not at bedtime. I find him more engaged and interested when I read to him during the day instead of at bedtime. He turns the pages of the book and has since he was three months old. His Tootsie thinks this is amazing. I just thought it was typical. I recently bought him some soft books so that he can turn the pages and chew on them at the same time. :) So, hopefully I am turning him into a lifetime reader like me. I have read all my life and I hope he does as well.

I am so excited about this coming summer! I love to be outside and go on picnics and whatnot. Max, being the outdoorsman that he is, should have so much fun this summer playing outside. We took him to the Arboretum for their annual spring flower festival and he was such a happy camper! I have scheduled quite a few outings for this summer including the Fourth of July parade. Yeah!! We also recently acquired a very nice jogging stroller to take him for walks. I run 5ks - and will be doing one in four weeks - but I think he is too small for me to run with him. When he gets bigger, I will jog with him for the 5ks, but for now, his Daddy will watch him while I run. There will come a day when I hope to run with him. We can start on one mile fun runs and work our way up. :) It is funny - part of me thinks he is growing up WAY too fast and the other part of me is so excited about what the future holds when he is bigger. I guess that is why everyone says that your baby is always your baby no matter how old he is.

Mom's Musings

2009-05-03T11:15:00.000-05:00

Mom's Musings. Max is now three and a half months old. WOW!! Time flies! Every day he is becoming so much more fun to play with. Max recently discovered his toes and now seems fascinated with the fact that he has feet. His pediatrician told us that first babies realize they have arms, then hands, then fingers - I assume the same holds true with the discovery of hey - I have legs, to hey I have feet - then WOW I Have TOES!! Imagine that! Max is such a joy and I love how he coos and talks. He also is starting the process of learning to crawl - two weeks ago he started putting his cute baby butt in the air and then trying to scoot forward. I am still trying to explain to him he needs to put his weight up on his arms to move. I can't wait to see what happens next! :)

Progress of sorts

2009-05-03T11:00:00.002-05:00

Last night was an odd one. For us at least. Our tale starts as Max began a full fledged meltdown at 4 p.m. that turned into a baby laughing fit and ends with a remarkable amount of sleep for both him and for My Fair Lady while I was unable to sleep due to a massive rain storm for only the second time in my life.

Two weeks ago we had three trees cut down in our front yard. Piles and piles of large branches were lined up behind our fence per the city's instructions on where to leave such refuse, but there was still a massive collection in our driveway. The city tagged it and moved on expecting us to call out a cherry picker, or I could take a few days and cut down the pile myself.

I chose the latter.

As I chopped and hacked and slashed my way through the better part of Saturday, My Fair Lady reorganized the garage while Max sat very patiently in his stroller. He just watched us both very pleasantly and continued to prove that he's an outdoorsman. I swear, you take this kid outside and he's golden for three or four hours solid. Such was the case yesterday up to the point where it was time to feed him cereal.

We'd been inside and done with yardwork for about an hour when My Fair Lady reminded me that he needed his cereal. So I took him into the kitchen and put him in the Swedish Chair (his high chair) and that's when the meltdown began.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!"

I yanked him out of the chair and he immediately stopped.

"What the hell was that?" I asked him. He just looked around. I put him back in the Swedish Chair and the result was the same. This time I finished the process of strapping him in and assembling the chair. Then I dragged him over to the kitchen sink so he could watch me preparing his meal. This whole time he's crying, by the way.

My Fair Lady walked into the kitchen concerned by the goings on and all I could do was shrug.

"He's fine," I argued. "One second he's good the next, this. I'm prepping as fast as I can."

Once his cereal was ready (two tablespoons worth of rice cereal), I slid him over to the table and used the crying to my advantage. He would rear his head back and I slipped the spoon into his mouth. He wasn't expecting that. He knocked it back and tried to cry out again. Again his mouth encountered my spoon, loaded for bear with cereal. This process went on for some time at which point it became increasingly clear that the amount was insufficient for him.

"Um... hon? How much should I feed him of this?"

"How much has he eaten?"

"About to clean his plate and he's still going strong. Thoughts?"

"Try another tablespoon and see how he does."

So I prepped another tablespoon worth of cereal. Again, he cleaned it right up. Again, he continued to fuss and cry though with slightly reduced intensity. So I made him round four which again he knocked back with ruthless efficiency. Desperate to fill the black hole that apparently my son has for a stomach, I snagged the remaining bottle of formula, slapped a nipple on the top and plugged it into his mouth.

"Snarf... snarf... snarf."

The formula began to rapidly disappear. My Fair Lady and I just watched mesmerized by how much this five month old being had consumed. But then his drinking began to taper off. With an ounce left to go in the bottle, he was finally sated. I withdrew the bottle and Max and I just stared at each other. Then, like the four year old I am, I made a farting noise with my mouth.

That cracked him up. So I did it again. He cracked up again. Oh, we had a happy baby again and yet more proof that when he cries or is fussy, feed him. This is something we seem to be reluctant to accept or comprehend for some bizarre reason. My Fair Lady, of course, snagged the video camera and captured the extent to which a dad will go to amuse his baby.

In my case, that would be 10 minutes of farting noises. I assured My Fair Lady that at no point in the future will Max ever grow out of laughing at this. We men are a simple folk.

After that it was a matter of playing with him until he went down. We've really nailed his night routine and now he's adopted a morning routine as well - which is great except on the days when we have to blow it on account of circumstances.

BUT!

Last night we put him down no sweat by 6:45 p.m. My Fair Lady nursed him, patted him, put him to sleep - nothing out of the ordinary. He wakes back up shortly after 9 p.m. at which point we feed him a 6 ounce bottle of formula (or a Baby 40 as I call it) and then he conks right back out. He wakes back up at 10 p.m. but puts himself back to sleep. He wakes up again at 11:45 p.m. and for 15 minutes coos in his bed as he tries to soothe himself back down. Ultimately he was unsuccessful so I went in, picked him up, patted him on the back for five minutes and he went out again.

He woke up again at 4:30 a.m. Almost made it through the dead of night and went over six hours between feedings. This is a win for America.

Last night we had a major rain storm in the Dallas area, so much so that minor flooding was a genuine threat. Instead of sleeping peacefully through it as I used to do, I couldn't sleep at all due to constant panic that the storms would wake Max up. Yes, I can't wait for him to sleep through the night without worries.

But baby steps is what it will take and our progress continues.

Now Playing: Igor

2009-04-29T14:00:00.000-05:00

Maybe its because I'm getting older, but some movies I can't sit through. I try. I do try. But some of them are literally so bad that I just can't do it. I've seen enough movies in my time to peg the good ones and the bad ones and the mediocre ones all right from the start. I'm up for giving anything a try, but when all it does is try my patience then I shout, "Out with thee!"

"Igor" definitely tried my patience before finally exploding it.

The idea for it is great. An entire country worships a collection of mad scientists who try to one-up each other with ever increasing means of destruction. These scientists compete every year to see who is the baddest of the bad, and each scientist has an Igor for an assistant. So the question is, what happens if one of the Igor's decides to try for the title himself?

The results are scattershot to say the least. John Cusack voices Igor, and he has his own motley assortment of characters around him. One of them is a demented bunny voiced by Steve Buscemi who is, apparently, unable to die and quite bitter about that. He tries continuously to kill himself but always heals back up, which leads to some morbid running gags.

But like the rest of the film, those gags run out of steam after the second time.

Eventually Igor decides to build his own monster, and when it decides to become an actress I tuned out completely. No child is going to understand any of the "Sunset Boulevard" references let alone get why repeated suicide attempts are funny. The film (as much as I saw) is about as lifeless as the corpses Igor tries to reanimate, and the less said the better. Skip this one.

Now Playing: The Foot Fist Way

2009-04-21T12:00:00.000-05:00

This is a thundering dud of unfunny that I turned off about half an hour in to. It stars the great (and I mean that) Danny McBride as a martial arts instructor who may have suffered one too many blows to the head in his career. McBride is normally hilarious (he easily stole many scenes in Tropic Thunder and that sounds impossible considering the level of insanity in that film) but here, in his debut, he sort of clunks along.

That's alright, because the film is one of those indie flicks that I have developed a sense for. It's the kind that is poorly written, shot, directed, and acted yet there are fans. Ardent fans too. The kind of fans who have difficulty understanding why Serenity is a schlocky, brutal slap in the face for everyone who loved Firefly. Different digression for another day.

My point is that if you've seen one bad indie film you have honestly seen them all, including this one. They include the same level of weak-to-awful acting, unenthusiastic staging or camera movements, comedy that lacks quality timing, and characters you have strong feelings for. Doesn't matter if you hate them - you at least feel something.

The only thing I felt after half an hour was ripped off and I got this via Netflix. Skip it.

Thoughts on Fallout

2009-04-21T08:00:00.001-05:00

It was announced this week that the next installment in the Fallout series will take place in Las Vegas. But that's not what has the gaming world jumping for joy. The stand alone (i.e. not a sequel to Bethesda-developed Fallout 3) is in development at Obsidian.

Most of the crew at Obsidian came from Black Isle. Black Isle developed the original Fallout and is renowned among us long-timers as one of the best houses ever. They stand alongside BioWare and LucasArts (in their golden age) as one of the development houses that could do no wrong, and Fallout was their crown jewel. Knowing that they get to take another crack at the universe they created fills me with joy.

I have never played Fallout 3 but I have very little interest in doing so. For starters, I don't even remotely have 100 hours of my life to sink into a game anymore. Just doesn't exist for me. Second, Bethesda developed it. I've tried both of their last role playing games (Morrowind and Oblivion) and found them both lacking narrative cohesion and soul.

What they DIDN'T lack was a robust engine that the mod community could go wild on, and in both cases it was six to eight months post release when that same community added a crucial element to both games: Fun. This is the reason why I think Bethesda and id Software both should lay off building games and focus on building engines. But if members of the original Black Isle team were let loose in the Fallout world again, then that might be something genuinely special.

My Fair Lady and I can't discuss games. I mean she'll put forth an effort to banter with me about the latest LEGO game, and she's grown accustomed to my late night gaming, but she doesn't have the history with it that I do. Nor do I have the history with marching band that she does. She played the bass clarinet, and when we were at a concert recently she was stunned that someone was switching in mid-piece between bass clarinet and contra-bass clarinet. A thousand years from now I still wouldn't have the slightest clue what the hell that means. But the Fallout universe means a lot to me, more so than I have ever let on to anyone and here's why.

I didn't go crazy for the original Fallout when I played it. I had a complete and revelatory emotional experience throughout it, and I only played it once. Just once. I put it down after that and never went back. I skipped the sequel a few years later because despite picking up 80 years later, I just couldn't bring myself to go back into that world. Why? Because the story was finished. More than that.

It was complete.

Your character starts out in an underground Vault built before the bombs dropped. At some point, nuclear holocaust struck the world and it did so during the 1950s. Technology advanced with that mindset and the results were simultaneously strange and hilarious. Fallout's now legendary opening cinematic established a tone that combined gallows humor, optimism, and a shocking level of sorrow and pathos all in a single shot.

Once you've established your character's stats, you leave in search of a replacement microchip for the Vault's water supply. This part of your quest is ultimately resolved sooner rather than later, but it opens your eyes to a post-apocalyptic world filled with as many possibilities as there are corpses.

During my playthrough, I first encountered a mangy dog aptly named Dogmeat near a decayed border town. Dogmeat joined me on my quest and the two of us set off across the desert. Eventually we entered another town where a firefight ensued. This resulted in another companion aiding us, though his name escapes me. He was a tall man in a black leather jacket. Those are the only details I can clearly see through the haze of memory. But the three of us journeyed across the land, eventually coming into contact with a race of super mutants.

These things were massive. You have to, for a moment, bring your mind back to the world of graphics in the late 1990s. When I say "massive" I mean in terms of the isometric viewpoint of the world. These things were twice as big as a man, and four times uglier. They were large, green, vicious creatures who routinely carried heavier artillery than would fit in my backpack.

We came upon a burned out settlement. The rusted and ramshackle buildings, the ones left standing, were missing entire sections of roof. You could see just enough hallway to get a feel for the building, but in my gamer youth I failed to understand that it wasn't what I could see - but what I couldn't see.

A couple of mutants exited the buildings and came right at us. The way combat was handled was via allocation of move and attack points. We could move X amount of spaces but that might deduct from the Y amount of attack points, thus affecting range and amount of damage. Fallout was my first genuinely tactical game, in more than one sense, and you really had to invent a new strategy for each encounter.

For this one, the three of us made short work of a mutant we caught outside the buildings. I sent the man in black ahead to check out another building while Dogmeat and I fended off a mutant on our right flank. We brought down the beast, but both of us were dangerously low on move points. It was then that the man in black reached a long hallway that was missing a section of roof, thus allowing me a perfect view.

It was then that I realized I couldn't see the end of the long hallway that the man in black stood in the middle of.

All of a sudden a large mutant wielding the biggest flame thrower I'd ever seen stepped around the shadowed corner. He locked on to the man in black and squeezed the trigger. In my dreams that night I honestly heard the man scream as the flames engulfed the hallway. Dogmeat and I only had enough move points to retreat. My last save was an hour or so previous. The man in black stayed where he fell.

Eventually Dogmeat and I encountered a long-buried outpost in the desert that was a previous nuclear research facility. From what I recall (keeping in mind it's been over 10 years since I played) it was where one of the missiles launched from. It was filled with cutting edge technology - powered suits of armor, heavy artillery, laser doors, and a heavy amount of radiation. We dared not linger. It was close to the finale (play enough games and you can always sense when the final battle draws near) and I was anxious for my adventures to come to a close. Too anxious as it turned out.

I moved through the facility trying to exit in a hurry and that's when we came to a laser door, the last one on the way out. I moved when it was open and could see the light of the exit. Dogmeat's move points, however, were just enough to land him in the doorway as the laser closed cutting him in half. Again, my previous saves were useless. We'd braved an evil and deadly wilderness together and in my haste I'd managed to kill my most loyal companion inside a pit where no one would ever find him. I pressed on to the end. Alone. Openly grieving.

Only to encounter a relatively weak-ass ultimate boss that you can basically talk into self destructing. It's more complicated than that, but not by a whole lot. It didn't matter. Even with the world saved, my friends were dead and at least one I felt genuinely responsible for. Their deaths hurt, genuinely hurt, me. Then I returned to the Vault, my expedition a success in terms of goals accomplished.

It was then the Vault Leader turned me away. I was told my exposure to the world outside the Vault would doom its inhabitants, or some such nonsense. I could barely contain my rage. All of it was for the Vault. Everything I'd done, all the lives I'd saved or ended, all of it was so my character could return home and this bureaucrat stood there and had the audacity to tell me no. I was livid.

Then an in-game cinematic kicked in. The Vault Leader turned his back to me to re-enter the Vault. My character calmly drew out my shotgun and fired, blowing the pin-head in half. My jaw hit the ground in utter disbelieving shock. The game faded into a minor epilogue selling me that my character went west and established another settlement, but my mind could only focus on the bloody remains of the Vault Leader who denied me at the exact wrong time to do so. I've come to find out that this ending is not exactly rare but pretty darn close.

I've never played it sense and all others are pale imitations. But if Obsidian can deliver even half of the absorbing drama of a world without rules, a world filled to the brim with ghoulish humor, unexpected scenarios, and one emotional wallop after another, then I'm in.

Even if it takes 100 hours. I'll find a way, because an experience like this comes along once every so often. People have questioned why I'm as hard nosed a critic as I am, and I explain it is because I've played everything and nothing surprises me. This is only half right. The other half I can't explain because I would go through a story like I just told for Fallout and Planescape: Torment and Baldur's Gate II and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and have to patiently explain why each and every one rocked me to my core for different reasons.

But I may just do that in future posts devoted to those games individually that genuinely captured me. Stay tuned...

Achievement Unlocked - Foulness

2009-04-15T10:28:00.002-05:00

I opened Blogger just now and was struck by the realization I didn't have much to say. I planned to start blowing through my movie reviews, then I heard my name shouted from the other room. I burst into Max's room and he's laying on the changing table with his butt up in the air, My Fair Lady is changing him, and WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!?!?!

We have officially unlocked "Foulness" - baby's first more or less solid diaper. It is exactly as the title suggests.

When you have breast fed babies, their diapers are usually non-events. They don't smell all that bad and even at their messiest only take a few moments to clean up. Their little bodies absorb all the material from the breast milk quick as you please.

Introduce solids, however, and their diapers become some new (or I guess you could make the claim for "old") form of WMD. Had Max been able to wiggle out of this diaper and run around the house, there would have been a trail of epic foulness across my carpet, sort of like a Yellow Brick Road of the Damned.

And it is only going to get worse from here. Wheeee!

A Different Strategy

2009-04-14T09:42:00.000-05:00

One of the things that I've discovered is vital to new parents is getting on a schedule. Any yahoo who says that children don't need schedules and need to be allowed to grow on their own is, pardon my language, a fucking tool who doesn't know what they're talking about. Max was a nightmare for the first few weeks at night. We introduced him to a schedule at 8 weeks and POOF! Nightmare gone.

Then it was time to get a day schedule which regrettably proved more difficult for us to establish due to a host of reasons. Among them is the work situation which finds both myself and My Fair Lady working from the house. It is great in the sense that we don't have to pay for day care and we can raise Max right from the start all by ourselves. This has led to an increased amount of bonding between the three of us, so much so that now when we leave him for a bit he knows we'll be right back and is surprisingly calm.

But the lack of a day schedule was killing us. Max was cool with it but neither of us were getting enough work done. Then My Fair Lady had a great idea:

"What if we get up when he does, at 7:30, and then one of us takes him for five hours while the other works? Then we trade off at lunch?"

It was so simple and yet so radical an idea it just may work!

We put it into practice this past Saturday, again yesterday, and again this morning. Thus far, it seems to be working like a charm. Both of us have been able to get the work we needed to do completed (or in my case, I was able to blow through Wheelman and most of GTA: Chinatown Wars as well as five more pages on my script) and Max has been a gem to deal with.

And it only took us four and a half months. We're slow learners, clearly.

So my plan of attack is as follows - use the first hour of my daily five for blogging, then the other four are allocated for work, scripting, whatever else. I'm looking forward to catching up on my reviews as well as finally sitting down to write some things about Max for a change. Here's hoping this schedule goes well until we can afford day care.

The Crook

2009-04-08T14:15:00.002-05:00

Astute readers may have noticed an earlier reference to "the crook" which is what I have dubbed the manner in which I sometimes carry Max. It is a slight bending of the elbow which forms a small nook that Max is quickly inserted in to. He sits in "the crook" quite contentedly and looks around as I walk through the house doing chores with my off-hand.

This is essential to fathers: get "the crook" down at an early stage. It makes life easier. I would use flow charts and diagrams on how best to form "the crook" but with my drawing ability you'd wind up with a paper crane and a crick in your neck.

And wake up in Morocco.

Cutting the Cloth

2009-04-01T11:31:00.002-05:00

A few weeks ago, My Fair Lady and I decided to begin the arduous process of weening Max from his Miracle Blanket, which is great for newborns. But as soon as they start wanting to stretch out and move, it becomes an ever increasing challenge to get them back into it. Plus, Max's legs were beginning to scrunch up inside because he was getting too long.

Yet we were not ready to go all the way and break the swaddle, i.e. let Max sleep the night away with his arms out.

So there we stood in his nursery at 1:30 a.m. arguing loudly about the best way to go about this. Max, meanwhile, just stared at us from his changing table. I don't quite recall who said what exactly, but these were some of the more memorable quotes:

"Just cut it!"

"He needs to not be swaddled anymore!"
"You want to start completely right this second? We haven't slept in three months and you want to ensure we don't sleep for three months more?"

"I don't want to ruin it! What about the next child?"
"Hey look! They have a website from which we can order more!"

"What if we cut it so his feet go through but his arms are still swaddled? Is that a good middle ground for you?"

This last was asked of Max and he just blithely smiled up at us. He was fine with it. So we cut off the bottom portion of the Miracle Blanket and re-swaddled him thus conking him out immediately.

I recommend for future parents that discussions like this be held during the daylight hours when your body knows instinctively that it's supposed to be awake, even if it feels like sleeping.

Achievement Unlocked Again

2009-03-13T18:36:00.003-05:00

3 a.m. Casa de Skim. Slight rain falling outside. Everyone in the house asleep.

/sound of "Law & Order" duh-duh!

"Wait! What time is it?!?"

My Fair Lady was awake in a panic. I groggily opened my eyes, looked at the VCR which had yet to be pushed forward due to that $%^#ing time change, and swore at having to do the complicated math of adding two and one.

"Uh, three o'clock I think." I turned to go back asleep. My Fair Lady would have none of it.

"But he hasn't been fed! I never fed him! Is he alright?"

"Uh, I presume so. Haven't heard anything through the monitor yet."

This is where My Fair Lady grew persistent. Bear in mind - me asleep in the dead of night is the wrong damn time to persist in anything with me. Were the house on fire, I'd mouth off about busting out the marshmellows depending on how restful my sleep up to that point had been. And I assure you I'd had at least three hours worth of restful sleep.

"But I haven't fed him! When did you put him down?"

"8:45."

That's when my eyes went open as it finally registered that lil' Max had been asleep for six hours solid. I immediately leaped out of bed and raced to check on him. He was sound asleep in his crib. I stumbled back to our room.

"He's fine."

"Well I'm sure not! I'm swollen like you wouldn't believe? Dammit! I wanted to sleep through this!" With that, My Fair Lady grumbled off to go lower her excess levels. I went back to sleep.

For exactly one hour.

At 4 a.m. Max awoke for his first feeding of the night. If he does the same thing again tonight we will be so happy it boggles the mind. But you never, ever get something for free. Today he's been a pill for the most part and we think he's beginning to teethe.

But at least he's making progress on the sleep thing. Maybe at some point we will too.

That's better. Kinda.

2009-02-24T21:53:00.004-06:00

So I post the story about Max on Monday. Tuesday night I start feeling a sore throat coming on and a general malaise begins to sink in. Wednesday it kicks into high gear and I feel horrible. Thursday (my birthday) I wake up, throw up, lose my voice, hack up both lungs, and stay in bed most of the day. Friday, Saturday and Sunday were all exercises in frustration trying to get my voice back.

Monday morning I woke up feeling like a truck had run over me. Twice. Then backed up and did it again for good measure. But as the morning progressed, I felt better. Much, much better.

Today when I woke up, it was sans the sensation of being roadkill. Tonight I'm having another round of coughing fits but they lack the sheer intensity of the ones that have ravaged me the past week. I'm guessing at this rate I should be back to full strength with only a recurring dry cough by Thursday of this week. And my voice has started really coming back so hopefully I'll have that by tomorrow or also by Thursday at the latest.

This year's version of the cold should be avoided at any and all costs. If you hear someone coughing, run for your life.

It Goes Without Saying

2009-02-16T21:41:00.002-06:00

I'm washing Maxs clothes tonight while My Fair Lady recuperates from not feeling so well and I double checked a label on one of his outfits.

"Keep away from fire."

Thanks for the warning there, chief. I'll make sure little Max isn't roasting smores at the ripe old age of three months while in this particular jammy. The one with the frog head for a cap though bears no such warning, which means when we go camping next week and try to slay a bear with our bare (zing!) hands I'll know what outfit to pack.

What's this? What's this? There's something in the air!

2009-02-12T11:00:00.004-06:00

1) Normally I don't quote musicals while blogging but that one line was all that floated through my brain this morning.

2) Verizon FIOS has a nasty habit of resetting their boxes whenever a power surge or anything even flickers.

3) Max hit 12 weeks today.

Now, what do these three things have in common? Max almost slept through the night last night. That's what they have in common.

As all new parents know, no baby sleeps through the night right away. People who claim their child magically does are, pardon my language, fucking liars. To. A. One. Doesn't matter if your baby has colic or not. It ain't sleeping through the night for the first month, maybe not even the second. It may sleep through long stretches, but by and large those stretches are going to range between one to three hours.

Max hit almost a full 11 hours last night. I say "almost" because he was up three times but it wasn't so bad. New parents look for the good in literally anything because they want their child to mature (not grow up mind you) enough so that all of you can sleep through the night again.

Here is Max's normal nighttime routine we've established:

6:30 - 6:45 p.m. = Bath time. We strip him down, put him in the bath, and wash him every other day so as to not dry out his skin. Other days we just let him splash around. As a result, he's really taken to enjoying being in water which is a far cry from his mother.

7:00 - 7:30 p.m. = Feeding. This is his "final" feeding before bed time. Then we change him, and wrap him in the Miracle Blanket. One of us then walks him while burping him and works to put him to sleep. We lay him down in his crib, turn on the sound machine (set to White Noise) and close the bedroom door. He then sleeps normally until about 10 p.m.-ish when he'll wake up hungry. From that point on we feed him, change him, put him right back down. This last part involves rocking some nights, no rocking other nights.

Last night here's how it went.

6:45 - 7:00 p.m. = bath time
7:00 - 7:30 p.m. = feeding time
7:30 - 8:30 p.m. = me walking while holding him trying to get him to go to sleep while my dinner grew colder by the second

For whatever reason he did not want to go to sleep. He wasn't fussy at all though. He just calmly looked at me while I held him, yawned every now and then, but otherwise was wide awake. Then I put him in The Crook* of my arm and it was like a light switched off. Out he went and out he stayed.

I'll explain The Crook* in a separate post.

I put him down and went on about my night. He woke back up about 10:30 p.m. which was fine. My Fair Lady fed him, then I took over changing him and rocking him. The catch was he was so far asleep and completely limp that there was no need to excessively rock him. So I laid him down and he went back to sleep. Since I was still awake and needed something to put me to sleep, I went and played "Assassin's Creed."

Zing!

Max woke up again at 2 a.m. for his nightly feeding. I told My Fair Lady that I would change him and put him down after the feeding and to come wake me up after she was done. She agreed and I went back to sleep. Fast forward to this morning.

I hear Max crying via the baby monitor and immediately snap half out of my stupor. I look at the time on the Verizon box and it says 141. "Dammit!" I shouted, loud enough apparently to awaken My Fair Lady. "Wait a sec. Weren't you supposed to wake me when you were done feeding him?" I asked.

"Yeah, he went right down though so I just did it myself," she replied. "What time is it?"

"I have no idea." Max cried out again. "What the hell is the time?!?!"

"Oh my God," came the response from the other side of the bed. "It's 7 a.m."

We just looked at each other stunned. We got out of bed and I fetched Max while she up the feeding station. I brought him out and he immediately latched onto her. Meanwhile she and I just stared at each other and at him in complete shock. He'd actually slept and woken up at clockwork intervals, specifically ones we could handle. We needed to get up at 7 a.m. anyway and we went to sleep around 10 p.m. anyway. One time in the middle of the night is no big deal. Not a bad way to start off his 12th week.

"What's this? What's this? There's something in the air!" blared through my head at full volume.

Here's hoping there is more joy to come. Oh, and he's an incredibly happy baby right now and his parents both feel more alive than they have since November. Amazing what a decent night's sleep can do for you.

Now Playing: Run Fatboy Run

2009-02-05T12:00:00.000-06:00

I’m an ardent fan of Simon Pegg. “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz” are hilarious, surprisingly deep films made by geeks for geeks. But rather than be tribute films chock full of references to the exclusion of plot (looking at you, “… Movie” uh, movies), they were smashing entertainments all their own. That they spoke the language of their respective genres fluently was almost incidental.

“Run Fatboy Run” is not up to either of those. It’s amusing for the most part, and laugh out loud funny a few times, but on the whole is a surprisingly toothless affair. It isn’t like Pegg is incapable of going dark (witness the battle in the bar at the end of “Shaun”) but here he’s just going through the motions. Granted, several of those motions are damn funny.

Pegg plays a guy who literally ran away from his pregnant fiancé (Thandie Newton) on their wedding day, and he’s more or less been running from life for the subsequent five years. He’s stuck as a security guard for a clothing store, he’s behind on his rent, and he’s not setting the best example for his son. He’s happy with life though, despite not going anywhere at all. But that changes when his ex brings home a dashing and successful money man (Hank Azaria) who can offer her and their son all the things that Pegg can’t.

Pegg winds up deciding to run a charity marathon against Azaria and a large chunk of the film is his hilarious training. A few of the running gags killed me, like his repeated failure to set his alarm clock, but the charming story sort of runs out of gas right before the marathon.

The good news is it picks back up again in ways I wasn’t expecting once the marathon begins, and the result will leave a smile on your face. Especially the way they depict “The Wall.” You’ll know it when they come to it. So to speak.

First time director David Schwimmer of all people manages to keep things moving but overall lacks the lively touch of frequent Pegg contributor Edgar Wright. Wright brings an energy and focus to his films that is sorely lacking here.

“Run Fatboy Run” is a charming film, but far from a top notch one. Pegg is great as usual and has earned enough cred with me that I’ll see him in whatever he does. If supporting him means more films like “Hot Fuzz” and “Shaun of the Dead” then I’ll even go see him in next summer’s “Star Trek” not-a-reboot.

Now Playing: For Roseanna

2009-02-05T08:00:00.000-06:00

This is the gem I whip out whenever someone demands to know why I can’t stand “Titanic.” At least I did back when James Cameron’s magnum sudser was the de facto standard for love stories aimed squarely at the tween demographic.

In the intervening years, it’s become more popular to use “Titanic” as the punching bag I always knew it to be, but one thing needs to be clear right from the start – I called it an Epic Fail opening night and have never wavered in my judgment.

So when the inevitable “you just hate romance movies, don’t you?” lines would start up I would use “For Roseanna” as my “nuh uh!” ticket out of the conversation.

Jean Reno, favorite fanboy heavy of “The Professional” and “Ronin” fame, goes way against type as the frantic Marcello. He and his wife Roseanna (Mercedes Ruhl) lost their daughter some time ago, and Roseanna wants more than anything to be buried next to her when her time is up. Roseanna has a weak heart and could go at any time, so Marcello sees it as his life’s mission to keep everyone in the village alive long enough that Roseanna can safely secure her grave spot.

Sure it may sound morbid on paper, but the heart of it is the extent to which a loving and devoted husband will go for his wife. “Titanic” was all flash-in-the-pan affair-driven lust. “For Roseanna” is about what it’s like 20 years later, and what can happen when two people are genuinely devoted to and love one another. The passion, joy, and fun that everyone aspires to when they say “yes” followed 3-24 months later by “I do.”

That’s why I hold this film up, because it celebrates the very thing that the real world has over Hollywood – the heights that genuine, true love can reach.

Plus, the film is damn funny. Reno is simply hilarious as he juggles his wife’s illness, their restaurant, Roseanna’s sister (who lives with them), and the lives of literally every one in the town. Of particular note is his reaction to the climax of a subplot involving an ex-con that literally leaves me gasping for air each time I see it. It’s a shame I haven’t seen him in more roles like this because he imbues Marcello with an honest and bottomless heart.

Ruhl is equally dazzling as Roseanna. She masks a deep sadness regarding the loss of her child by trying to take care of everyone but herself. She knows her clock is counting down, and intends to make the most of it before the final chime sounds. Ruhl is a rock solid counterpoint to Reno, and the two of them make beautiful music together.

Hollywood is invariably focused on the here and now. That comes from 100 years of marketing to the 18-32 demographic. But “For Roseanna” aims higher and goes about it in a smaller, quieter manner. As such, this little gem remains solidly in my Top 10.

Before anyone brings it up, yes my Top 10 tends to hold anywhere from 15-30 films at any given time. Step off.

Achievement Unlocked

2009-02-04T14:40:00.001-06:00

Max just rolled over onto his left side for the first time. Then we put him on his stomach and he did it again right away. For those keeping track at home, that's called scoreboard.

Now Playing: Logan's Run

2009-02-02T08:00:00.000-06:00

The Internet Movie Database issued a challenge directly to my brain without even intending to. I found a feature on their site that when you register (free, though I imagine my inbox will shortly be deluged by spam) you have access to something called MyMovies. This nifty gem lets you add and sort all manner of films you’ve seen into whatever categories you feel like creating.

Want to create a list of all the romantic comedies you’ve seen, or only the ones you would recommend? It’s great to have options, but I took a different plunge:

I wanted to know what I’ve seen, period. In total.

Those who know me just read that sentence and laughed saying a variation on the following sentence, “Good luck with that chief, you’ll never finish that list.”

I would agree even though I blew north of 300 listed films right off the top of my head. If I really worked at it I’m sure I’d probably climb closer to 1,000 without too much of a struggle. But then I found a link on Wikipedia that lists every single film that was released in every single year since the late 1800s.

Oh yes, I found my Holy Grail™. I’m up to 1940 or so now, and I’m already dreading when I hit the 1970s. Why you ask?

Because I realized courtesy of this list that there are a few GLARING holes in my extensive cinematic knowledge. I’ve seen virtually everything under the sun, or so I thought. But then I found this list and went down the rabbithole and when you combine this with Netflix I’m able to plug those holes with gleeful abandon.

Such was the case with “Logan’s Run” and I honestly wish that hole had remained.

This film is an awful, cheap-ass 70’s sci-fi clunker with some of the dreariest dialogue, horrid costume design, and virtually no sets to speak of. Not that it lacks for imagination. Anyone trying to pass off a hotel or conventional hall lobby as the town square of the future deserves kudos for chutspaz. Even the famed “Run runner” line is poorly delivered by an emotionally constipated Michael York. Speaking of which, let’s talk motivation.

York and his pal Richard Jordan play Sandmen, futuristic hit men who execute people that would rather run instead of facing mandatory execution once they hit the age of 30. So let’s see here. I can be killed when I hit 30 by a machine called Sanctuary or be killed by a guy with a light pistol calling himself a Sandman. Hmm. How about Door #3 where I get the hell out of this place when I’m 18?

York’s Sandman is tasked with tracking down all escaped runners and destroying their hidden refuge. Since he can’t tell anyone what he’s doing, his friend goes berserk immediately when he sees York behaving strangely. This in no way implies a man-crush or unrequited love between the two. Oh no. It practically shakes you by the shoulders while screaming it in your face.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

As odd and under-financed as it appears, the movie deserves major kudos for wanton 70's nudity, which is always welcome in my DVD player. Another snicker comes from seeing the Fort Worth Water Gardens at the end as a futuristic water recycling... something. Plus I think I've been in the building they used as the primary city hall or some such, because the layout and architecture remained exactly in tact through the 1990s. I would imagine it's still there, but beyond pegging it somewhere on the Plano/Richardson border, I don't recall where it is. A shame, really.

Oh, and what’s with the weak fight at the end? The bad guy gets three love taps from a pole and rolls over? What the hell is that? THIS was a giant hit in 1976?!?!?!?!

At least Star Wars came out the following year and showed what genuine science fiction is. This film is so horrible I’m stunned it wasn’t the lead off picture of MST3K.

Now Playing: Get Smart

2009-01-28T17:04:00.004-06:00

EDIT: Due to the clever use of his eyes, NPA reader Nathan was kind enough to point out that Alan ARKIN played the Chief. So replace Alda with Arkin when you're reading this and we're good to go.

I was surprised I liked this as much as I did. I grew up on the Don Adams series and the hilarity of each episode guaranteed by small butt would be glued to the TV every time I heard the classic theme music.

First of all, Steve Carrell is spot on as Maxwell Smart. He nails the stoic nature Adams had even as events surrounding him evolved into ever increasing levels of insanity. Carrell also takes seriously the world Smart is a part of. Death and mayhem are no small element of the spy world, and there was always an undercurrent of violence in the original show. Nostalgia may prevent some from seeing that, but a cursory review of the original series hints at, when it doesn’t outright show, significant danger in the battle between KAOS and CONTROL.

One thing I hated though was Anne Hathaway’s 99. In the show, 99 adored Max. Here they have 99 loathing Max and considering him as beneath her. True, there needed to be some tension but it’s not until right at the very, very end when she even begins to crack. It’s like the film makers realized at the last second that 99 was a bitch and needed to be thawed by Max RIGHT THIS SECOND. It is highly annoying even though by the end, Hathaway does manage to capture some of Barbara Feldon’s warmth and charm.

Alan Alda’s Chief is hilarious. I loved the fury his bookwormish exterior holds at bay. Alda kills whenever he’s on screen. He respects Max for his work as an analyst but doesn’t want to lose that skill. As such, he tries his level best to keep Max chained to his desk. But once events spiral out of control (so to speak), Chief does his best to help out, usually with genuinely funny results. His confrontation with the Vice President left me gasping for air.

The film is a giant bag of silly filled with strong supporting characters like The Rock as Agent 23, Terence Stamp as Siegfried, and that fat guy from “Borat” as Siegfried’s right hand man. Other cameos abound with the funniest one saved for the very end. Oh, and everything that happens to David Koechner’s agent is side splitting. Period.

And for the record, I initially disliked how they did the infamous Cone of Silence but the second everyone started speaking I fell on the floor laughing. The movie does manage to capture the humor of the show while taking things a bit darker than the show ever could. Whether that’s your cup of tea or not is up to you. As for me, I liked the heck out of it and am ready for the sequel.

Achievement Unlocked

2009-01-28T13:57:00.001-06:00

Max just rolled over for the first time. That would be two weeks ahead of when he should, for the record. Booyah.

Time to Wash Dishes

2009-01-28T13:28:00.001-06:00

How do you know when it is time to wash the dishes? When you are down to only two spoons, and they are both sugar spoons. Then you realize you are about to use both of them. One for the soup you're having with lunch.

The other is for ice cream afterwards.

Now Playing: Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

2009-01-26T08:00:00.001-06:00

In the extras of “Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium,” there is a behind the scenes video of people clowning around on the set. At the end of it, co-star Jason Bateman sits in a chair while someone off-screen pelts him with a Nerf gun. Bateman refers to the guy by name then says, “He can write, direct, and shoot a Nerf gun.”

I turned to My Fair Lady and said, “Yeah, but he shoots the Nerf gun like he writes and directs. Poorly.”

“Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium” is an absolute disaster, a cornucopia of elaborate special effects meant to convey wonder yet fail utterly to do anything other than distract (briefly) from the limp script and razor thin characters. Natalie Portman (who I’m convinced will still look like she’s 10 even when she’s pushing 60) plays Molly Mahony, the store manager for Mr. Magorium.

The big M (Dustin Hoffman) is a 200+ year old toy maker with wild hair, an odd not-quite-a-lisp, and a child-like view of the world. He makes magical toys and wonders to amuse children and has a giant silent guy living in his basement who builds the books of Magorium’s life. Oh, and no one in NEW YORK CITY thinks it the slightest bit odd that all this goes on in a small store sandwiched between two skyscrapers.

If that sounds odd, then let me state one thing right off: That’s all the odd there is in the film.

I watched as this beast lumbers along once the emporium grows surly following Mr. Magorium’s announcement he’s leaving. His departure requires him to bring in an accountant (Bateman) to get the financials in order so he can pass the building on to Mahony, despite her heart being set on a life as a concert pianist. There’s also a kid named Eric with a hat fetish and an annoying narrative voice.

Which brings up a point that made me want to set fire to the film. It’s called “SHOW, DON’T TELL!” Basic screenwriting 101 states this message very clearly at the top of the chapter called “How to write a screenplay,” and when an amateur film maker feels the need to have a voice read off text that’s clearly visible on screen, in addition to spelling out details that are RIGHT IN FRONT OF OUR EYES, it hacks me off. Every. Single. Time.

You want an example of how to use narration to amazing effect? Watch “The Shawshank Redemption.”

You want an example of how to do childlike wonder and “pointless but it really does have a deeper meaning” philosophy? Try “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” (the Tim Burton version, not the awful 70’s version).

My Fair Lady commented after it was over how the film was ultimately pointless and I agreed. This is a mountain of suck that’s a waste of talent and, more importantly, your time.

Now Playing: Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension

2009-01-23T15:30:00.000-06:00

What the hell is this?

When I decided to fill in the gaps in my extensive movie knowledge, I figured there would be some bumps along the way. Then I got to this and I think my brain literally froze. I’ve heard it described as “a comedy with all the punchlines removed” which bears asking a simple question:

“What’s the point?”

In a comedy, saying something funny does not necessarily require the use of a punchline. For Exhibit A, I present “Raising Arizona” which in my view is one of the five funniest films ever. Nary a punchline in sight, but rip-roaringly hilarious all the same. It comes from character, you see.

The more invested you are in the characters, the more tuned you become to their particular rhythms. Not once did I care about a single character anywhere in the film or what they were doing. As such, “Buckaroo Banzai,” though ballsy in ambition, has now been consigned by Yours Truly to the bin of awful throw-away 80’s comedies.

Witness Peter Weller’s delivery in the prison. He asks his buddy, Perfect Tommy, to give his jacket to Buckaroo’s girl, Penny Pretty (no joke).

I think the only thing that works is John Lithgow’s utterly unhinged performance as Lord John Worfin. If you thought you’d seen him go over the top before, and “Cliffhanger” and “Ricochet” are pretty far out there, you’ve seen nothing. He goes berserk here and hilariously so. But it’s like he’s performing in a different movie, nay universe, than everyone else. The only thing missing is a mustache for him to twirl as he makes Snidely Whiplash look like a den mother for the girl scouts.

So this was a glaring gap in my film knowledge? Pfft. I’ve now seen it. It sucks. As such, I’m moving on.

Headed to Lubbock for the weekend

2009-01-23T11:40:00.003-06:00

The three of us are headed out west to see My Fair Lady's family this weekend, which means three full days of people I don't know oohing and ahhing over the baby. Which is fine because it gives us something more to talk about and do than just sit around and "visit." I love her family but they have a personal love of sitting aroung the kitchen table and talking about family.

Traditionally, I know only two or three people they discuss. Such is what happens I suppose.

What this also means is that Max gets his pilot wings today since this will be his first plane ride. Somewhat momentous actually considering my mother was (and remains) so deathly afraid of flying that she has a panic attack whenever she drops us off at the airport. It's fun to mess with her though.

"Be safe you two!" mom would say.

"Hope so!" I reply.

"DON'T SAY THAT!" she would shout. Then she'd sweat bullets all weekend. It's a cheap form of amusement for me though.

But I want to apologize in advance for all those traveling on the plane today. We'll try to keep him calm but now we're officially one of "those people with an infant." Should be interesting.

Now Playing: Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

2009-01-23T08:00:00.000-06:00

I’m convinced that John Carpenter knows how to direct exactly one kind of movie – rip-offs of “Rio Bravo.” Having just seen his “Assault on Precinct 13” for the first time, I have to point at it and laugh at the gross amount of time we spend watching Not John Wayne survive an attack by Not Indians. Compare this to his later films and it’s like he’s been ripping himself off, while ripping off “Rio Bravo” at the same time.

It gets confusing when you analyze it too hard.

The setup involves the leaders of a gang called Street Thunder declaring vengeance on the cops for killing several of their members. They cross paths with a father and his little girl, which eventually leads to the gang assaulting the police station in the title. That may seem a stretch but I’m leaving out a few crucial details, some considered by the time as “SHOCKING!” Maybe it’s in bad taste, but I actually laughed. Go me.

The station in question is closing at the end of the night and only a skeleton crew remains. When a prisoner transfer bus shows up, more grist for the mill arrives. Their small band of cops/crooks must hold off a gang hell-bent on wiping them out and that’s pretty much all there is to it. No fancy tricks, no special forces to the rescue, nothing. Kill or be killed with a dwindling supply of ammunition and no way out.

What should be a tense stand-off is instead rendering fairly boring by Carpenter’s evident lack of pacing skills (at the time). It was only his second film so I can’t slag him too hard (though James Cameron’s second film was “The Terminator” so make of that what you will) but the film drags when it should speed up.

It doesn’t help that all of the actors show the emotional range of a turnip. The lead actress especially goes for Smoldering and hits something closer to Insincere. I love how her reaction doesn’t change ONE SINGLE BIT when she gets shot in the arm, and later complains that it she “can’t move it, and it hurts like a sonofabitch.” That would be one word as she pronounces it, not three, and it all manner of fail.

If you’re going for a Carpenter 70’s movie, stick with “Halloween.” Even 30 years later, that movie is still scary and for all the right reasons.

Now Playing: Kingdom of Heaven Director's Cut

2009-01-22T08:30:00.000-06:00

It is an increasing rarity when my mind is completely blown by a film. I can count on one hand the number of times that’s happened in the last five years. When “Kingdom of Heaven” hit theaters I figured I might hit it at some point. It barely registered on my radar, in other words.

Then it trickled out how Fox butchered it because the suits wanted a two hour battle film in the same vein as “Lord of the Rings,” basically a highlight reel. Ridley Scott naturally balked but that’s the cut that hit screens anyway. So I ignored it figuring a more definitive cut would find its way to my desk eventually. By God’s will, so to speak.

Lo and behold, I burned through it recently and was knocked flat in awe. Wow. If you ever thought three hours could never fly by then watch the director’s cut of “Kingdom of Heaven.” It is spectacular film making across the board. Lush, vibrant, historically accurate, respectful, and engaging. Simply put, this is dynamite entertainment on the grandest scale.

All of my beefs with Ridley Scott (primarily that he focuses more on sets and costumes than on actors) somehow coalesced into a good thing. Normally, I watch his films (“Gladiator” and “Black Hawk Down” being the notable exceptions prior to this) with a sense of detachment. I’ve seen “Blade Runner” close to 20 times and I still don’t like it. I love the aesthetic and what it did for science fiction, but the hell of it remains that the story falls flat. Ditto “Alien” which is more of a ponderous bore than the haunted house film it’s made out to be.

I always get the feeling he’s more interested in the sets and the creation of worlds than in presenting a compelling story. Sure he’s had his fair share of duds (“G.I. Jane” anyone?) but for the most part he remains a film maker I respect, but whose films I usually am indifferent to. Then “Kingdom of Heaven” kicked me in the head and I sat there stunned wondering where the hell this Ridley Scott has been all my life.

Balien (Orlando Bloom) is a blacksmith in France in 1184 who finds himself swept up by a rogue crew of knights en route to Jerusalem. They’re a hardened bunch of badasses led by Godfry (Liam Neeson). Eventually, Balien winds up in the holy city only to find a political vortex inside as the leper king (a masked Edward Norton) has made an uneasy truce with the Muslim leader Saladin so that both Christians and Muslims may worship in the city walls. The Catholic church doesn’t care for that arrangement so they have their Templar Knights on hand to bring about war, one which Saladin may win due to superior numbers and experience at desert warfare.

Either way, the fate of the city will be God’s will.

This has to be the biggest film I’ve seen where God is front and center the entire running time. Both sides are right. Both sides are wrong. Both sides believe they are on God’s side, with only the ones in the middle understanding the nuances of the situation. Regardless of your beliefs, this is an epic film intricately detailing a defining moment in the world’s history. It may not be entirely historically accurate, but it is riveting entertainment that puts a human face on legendary events.

After watching this version, I consider the truncated option to be much more of a slash and burn than it probably is. An entire subplot was excised but it is a small one. It is not, however, an insignificant one and so much of what changes the characters during the back half of the film depends on this vital piece. I can see why people complained about certain characters taking a complete left turn from reality for the final 40 minutes because all reasons as to why were carelessly discarded in favor of siege towers. Seeing events play out as they were intended to, I’m left aghast at Fox’s decision to break it down to a series of large scale FX battles. Fox head Tom Rothman figured a three hour film wouldn’t play well. He must have forgotten “Titanic.”

Idiot.

If you have the chance to see this film, do so immediately. Bloom may not give the sturdiest performance, in fact he comes off as more emotionally distant at the end than his character should have been, but it is one among a great many fantastic actors who all step up and deliver. Jeremy Irons’ Tiberius in particular may be one of my favorite characters, followed closely by Alexander Siddig’s (go Dr. Bashir!) advisor and Neeson’s brief yet highly memorable turn. Also, the openness to interpretation of David Thewliss’ doctor character is magnified here. In short, I loved every frame of this film.

This is top notch entertainment.

Now Playing: Left 4 Dead

2009-01-21T22:57:00.000-06:00

The setup for this game is simple - drop you and up to three of your friends inside a zombie film based on one of four scenarios. Simple. To the point. Refreshing.

It is also absolutely exhilarating and terrifying. The levels and maps may not change, but the developer Valve had a fiendish trump card. The zombie locations are different every time and also changes based on how you play. For example, you may get swarmed right at the start of one level by a horde of really fast undead. The next time you play the exact same level, you may only see a few stragglers for quite a while.

Then when you least expect it, the horde descends upon you and tears your team of zombie movie cliches apart.

It. Is. Glorious.

You play as one of four people: Louis the accountant, Francis the biker, Bill the ex Green Beret, or Zoe the college girl. For all of us who grew up with zombie movies, this is like playing a game taken frame for frame straight out of our imaginations. To up the ante, Valve also threw in a few "special" zombies that have talents for screwing you over right when you're the most vulnerable. The Smoker has a long tongue that constricts you and pulls you out of safety and into harm's way. The Boomer is a lumbering tower of blubber that vomits all over you and explodes when shot. The vomit, by the way, not only blinds you but acts as a pheromone attracting every zombie in the game to your location. The Tank is a tower of muscle that will resoundingly screw you and your team mates over.

As for The Witch, avoid her at all costs. Do not question me.

Thus far, I've blown through all four campaigns and hopefully this weekend will get some online time with fellow GT'ers once we return from West Texas. But I'll give you a few examples of the type of insanity coming your way:

The first level I guess is called No Mercy. Each section is setup like a horror film with four levels of progressing terror capped off by a siege finale that redefines insanity. On each level, you're essentially running from your initial Safe Room to another Safe Room on the other side of the map. During the No Mercy section, you're fighting through a city and then a hospital. The setup is for you and your team to get to the top of Mercy General then call in a news helicopter to airlift you to safety. We get to the roof, and call in on the radio. The guy radios back that it'll take 15 minutes to get to us. Then we hear the shrill roar of the zombie horde.

I start praying the 'copter guy didn't mean "in real time."

We get onto the roof of the radio shack and find a mounted mini-gun aimed at the center of the roof. I mount it and pull the trigger lightly enough to spin up the gun without actually firing. Then the three others start firing like crazy but not in front of me. I turn and see an endless wave of really pissed off zombies climbing over pipes and up walls on EITHER FREAKING SIDE of us.

I jump off the gun and start blasting with my automatic shotgun (an absolute must in this game). The upside to using it is it's a heck of a crowd pleaser and can down multiple zombies with one shot, but the downside is it takes a bit long to reload 10 shots. The four of us are blasting away for a minute before I even realize ANOTHER horde is charging, this time from the front. I leap onto the minigun, spin it up, and unleash the fury. Body parts, blood and gore spray in every direction before me.

I think at this point I was laughing so maniacally that My Fair Lady looked at me like I'd lost my mind before leaving with Max. I think she mumbled something about a bad influence. Couldn't hear her over the sound of the awesome on my TV. Then I notice the screen is shaking, which can mean only one thing:

Tank.

Trouble is, I don't see him. He's kinda hard to miss considering he's 9 feet tall and about four feet thick of solid muscle. Not to mention he roars. Which he does to my immediate left at just the right moment. I drop off the minigun and spin around just in time to watch the Tank's fist connect with my face, which sends me flying right off the rooftop.

Reload.

Oh, crap, right back at the start of the final level. That's when I found out the hard way that there are no check points. Die somewhere in a level and you will start back at square one, which is a gargantuan pain in the ass when you're on the longer levels. Sometimes the game cheap shots you too by placing a Witch right in front of the Safe Room door right at a levels end (had this crap happen twice).

So I get back to the rooftop with my team, only I count two others plus me. Where's Zoe, the college girl? I spin around and don't see her. Then I catch her shadow on the other side of the roof and realize she's been tagged by a Smoker. Trouble is I can't get to her. So I get to watch as she's slowly strangled by a special zombie I can't shoot and we three are left helpless. We turn and run to the control room and radio in.

Then we hunker down to endure the horde.

Basically repeat what I said above only this time when the tank shows up, he comes in behind us. We manage to take him out, along with about 500 horde, before the helicopter swoops in. All three of us are bleeding out and on the verge of death. The helicopter lands, and we make a break for it. Right away, Louis is vomited on by a Boomer and the horde tears into him. We're all so low on health that trying to save him is pointless, so Francis and I make a break for it. We're blasting away through the horde in front of us trying to make it to the helicopter.

Naturally, when you're so focused on what's in front of you, little things like what's behind you tend to be ignored. Which explains my literally gasping in surprise when all of a sudden something grabbed from behind and started pulling me away from the helipad and right through the horde. I realized instantly a Smoker got me, and I was pretty much done for because the only way you get free from those things is if a teammate frees you. With two down, and the third somewhat busy I resigned myself to going out with a bang.

Then I get pulled over a ledge into a pile of broken concrete. Then the Smoker explodes and Francis jumps down to help despite his bleeding out. I'm incapacitated and pinned to the ground. I whip out my two pistols and start firing like crazy. Doesn't matter what I hit, just that I hit something. If those.. things... were gonna take me, then they were gonna die trying. Again. Francis and I pretty much went out at exactly the same time and as the screen faded to black I saw a Tank land on me, which pretty effectively ended my campaign that night.

------------

The following night, I tried out another campaign which culminated in a siege at a boat house. Oh, it's as awesome as you might think considering the house is small, the odds long, and the ammunition dwindling. Three of us were on the roof holding our own when a Tank hit. It came in downstairs and trapped Francis on the stairs at the exact moment when several waves of zombies attacked. I blasted swaths through the zombies with my M-16 and alternated clips - one on the horde, one on the Tank that was pretty much sitting on Francis. We managed to kill the Tank, but Francis was incapacitated and none of us could get to him before the horde did. He went down fighting, that much was clear.

The three of us were slowly being flushed towards the water which was not good. Our range of motion was decreasing faster than we could reload so we were pretty much good and screwed. Then the boat came. Trouble was, it must have blown its horn somewhere on the cape because every zombie in, I think, the world came with it.

I threw a pipe bomb away from us (this gem attracts zombies away from you before exploding) and ran for the boat. I got to the pier then turned to see the horde take down Zoe. Louis was trapped at the start of the pier and I was blasting away from the boat. Then Louis went down, and the boat pulled away. Mission complete.

As the credits rolled, there was a special shout out to the deceased, and I about fell out of my chair laughing at the spectacle of it all. I have about a dozen more stories just like this (including a doozy of a war story set at a farm house) and that's the beauty of this game. Every time you play through it, you experience a new version of hell. Strategies change on the fly on both sides. I haven't even played online with flesh and blood players - all the above was just with the AI.

Oh, and online you can also play as the zombies including as specials. If you have any love for the zombie genre you owe it to yourself to play this. Just do it at night with the lights out and the sound cranked. You'll be glad you did.

Laid off

2009-01-21T07:00:00.001-06:00

So I go into work on Jan. 5 and work for roughly an hour. Then I get called into the finance gal's office, wherein I discover her, my boss, and the head of research (this was a commerical real estate firm). Pretty much knew what was coming before anyone said anything.

I sat down. Was told my position was being eliminated and that blah blah blah blah. Tuned out pretty much all of it. I thanked them for having me on board, reminded the head of research that he had to defend our scavenger hunt title later in the year, then picked up a few things at my desk. Said goodbye to my co-worker then headed out.

I made it all the way to the car before melting down. I was the sole source of income and insurance for the family since My Fair Lady was laid off while she was several months pregnant. Since no one was ever going to hire a pregnant woman, I was it. The subsequent meltdown in the car was not a pretty one, but it was mercifully brief. I decided not to call My Fair Lady and instead figured I'd drop the news on her in person.

Having a meltdown at 75mph while on the highway is not recommended.

I managed to regain my composure enough that when I walked in, I was calm. My Fair Lady knew instantly what had happened, and I confirmed it a second later.

"I was laid off."

Four words I never, ever intend to have to say again.

We talked about it for a bit while trying to keep it together. But there we were both unemployed with a six week old. So we both had a mutual meltdown while trying our hardest not to involve the little one. But then a funny thing happened.

Ten minutes later I was fine. Not angry. Not sad. Fine. Good to go. Amazingly enough, I was unfazed. I think that must be a new record. A personal best. Regardless, I was ready to apply for work elsewhere and find what else was out there.

Then we had a conversation that started innocently enough: "What do you want to do?"

In truth, I've always known - be a freelance, well paid writer. The "well paid" aspect tends to be mutually exclusive unless you're one half of a successful writing duo in Hollywood. Short of that, most freelancers only sometimes make enough to get by and I wanted more than that. I want to be able to support myself and my family by my writing skills alone. But I lacked the discipline necessary to force me to work day after day on this. At least I did prior to Max's arrival. Once he made it into the house, I vowed to do what I could to make him happy. Once the initial insanity of having a newborn in the house wore off.

My Fair Lady agreed with me.

We decided that if I could make enough as a freelancer then I should do that. I contacted my dad and told him I'd been laid off. He told me how sorry he was then had to go to a meeting. He called me back a few hours later with two addresses. I was to gather my resume and clips and mail them off post haste to those addresses - clients of his who had openly complained about the lack of quality writing in their print materials.

Two days after I was laid off, My Fair Lady gets a call from her legal support services firm. They have a gig for her with the Watchmen. It's a contract job that turns into a permanent one, providing she survives the freshman hazing from the Comedian. We were ecstatic. Literally jumping up and down for joy. This gig pays a heck of a lot for only 20+ hours to start and a lot of it can be done from home.

A week later, I got a call from one of the two guys I sent my stuff to. He wanted to meet. Dad forwarded me two of this guy's PR pieces and yeah, they were fairly weak sauce. So I rebuilt them in Publisher, rewrote the copy, and sent those along with my resume. Apparently, he approved enough to schedule an interview.

The man was a fast talker to say the least. I wasn't there more than 15 minutes but he told me he wanted to do business and that I would be the guy. Oh, and there were several other clients he would recommend me to for this very thing.

Thus far, 2009 is shaping up pretty well for Yours Truly and My Fair Lady. She starts her job week after next and I have another meeting next week with my client to discuss what all I can do for them.

"Ka!" And might I also add... "Ching!"

Update on Max

2009-01-20T23:36:00.001-06:00

Wow. So we have a new president, the first African American since the second season of "24." Wow.

Alright, I'm past it. What are his policies? All the ones I've seen scare the hell out of me and for those of you that voted him into office, I'm going to laugh hysterically while Rome burns should he turn into Jimmy Carter II. He could be a great president. He could be an awful one. What is undisputable is that he was the best marketed president ever. Hopefully he won't turn out to be the New Coke of presidents, but that's what I've pegged him as for a long time now. I won't argue that I'd love to be proven wrong. I just don't think I will be.

And with that you will not see another political comment here unless it's in the comments sections under certain posts. Forthwith, on with the real show.

My Fair Lady has been hounding me of late to blog about Max and what he's been like, but honestly I have had neither the time nor the inclination. I'll be candid here so if I say anything that boggles the mind, believe me it won't be the first time I've done so by expressing either my opinion or my experience. Max was afflicted with colic for the first several weeks and this is where the brutal honesty comes in and could sting all prospective parents - life is pure hell for that first month.

I snicker now thinking to all those who said, "Oh, your life is gonna change in ways you can't imagine." No kidding. Try holding a three week old infant in your arms as they're screaming at the top of their tiny lungs for no discernable reason. Then have that start every single night between 8 p.m. and midnight for four weeks straight. You come to actively dread nightfall, as if your baby will suddenly morph into Mr. Hyde once the clock strikes 8 p.m.

So no, I haven't had the inclination before now to write because I knew if I did all I would do is vent and seeth and rage and come off as someone who actively regretted the decision to have a child which is not true at all. It felt like it at some points, but that's when you pass the child off to your spouse and go somewhere else to calm down for an hour. If nothing else, my belief in the strength and fortitude of single parents everywhere has gone to the sky because I honestly don't know how either My Fair Lady or I would have survived without the other.

But then a funny thing happened - he started getting better. Then one day he actually smiled. Not only that but he looked at the two of us as we changed him, our eyes bleary from another exhausting night battling the dreaded colic and having our own emotional meltdowns, and then smiled. Ear to ear, all we saw was this gummy baby smile. Then he cooed.

We felt the pain and the anguish melt away. I mean that literally too. It was like an 800lb. gorilla finally climbed off our backs and left the building. That one little smile, followed by a coo was exactly the sort of inspiration we needed. As night approached, we hunkered down in preparation. This was war, we decided, but our happy son was in there and we had to save him. So we decided to try to feed him until he couldn't feed any more and see what happens. Prior to this we'd tried to stagger his feedings to every three hours like in the hospital.

He woke up and started screaming. We fed him a lot. He calmed down. He cooed. We changed him. He cried. We fed him some more. He passed out. For the next three hours, we actually had peace. One cannot begin to imagine the sense of calm and serenity that passes over you under such conditions. Outside of a war zone, I'd be hard pressed to find a scenario more stressful than the first month of parenthood.

Over the weeks, he's grown and gotten much better. He doesn't meltdown at night anymore, and the closest he's come lately is wanting to stay awake at the 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. feeding. But aside from that, he's modestly fussy but only when he's either tired or hungry. Outside of that, he's begun to smile regularly, coo when he's happy, and he recognizes us. He actually tries to find us with his eyes now when he hears our voices, which is something more joyous than words can describe.

My parents are particularly fond of their first grandchild, and watching my mother repeatedly exclaim how precious and beautiful he is makes us both proud. We definitely did good, as they say.

But holy Mother of God the diapers. It's like an A-bomb of poo explodes out of his rear end whenever he's relaxed. Oh, and for all of you who are expecting a baby boy - buy three of these right now. Do not question me. You think you have your baby covered, then you look away for a split second. You turn back and a stream is arching across the room and into his crib.

On the other side of the room. Just wanted to repeat that in case it wasn't quite clear the first time.

The other day I changed what had to be the worst diaper ever. It smelled like death. I no longer fear walking into a morgue for I have smelled death and it lives in my baby's ass. What I am afraid of is when it comes out to play. When I changed his diaper, he decided to wait until I had strapped on a clean diaper before he went #1. Then for good measure he spit up all over himself. Then smiled up at me as if he felt so much better.

"Are we all done now?" I asked.

"Guh." I took that as a yes.

I cleaned him up, then handed him off to My Fair Lady for a minute, then went and set fire to my hands to properly santize them.

We took him to the doctor today for his two month check up and he's now 12.4 lbs. and 23 inches long. He also got two shots (one of which was a three-in-one cocktail) followed by a sugar water innoculation against rotovirus. If you want a first hand account of the havoc rotovirus can wreck on your child, check out the stories at Dubious Quality right here. I guarantee you won't be able to finish reading them before deciding to get the vaccine for your child.

But Max handled it like a trooper. He seems to have inherited My Fair Lady's unusually high pain threshold (which explains how she's stayed married to me. Zing!) so he didn't even blink at the first shot. The next one got his attention though and he screamed then cried for all of 30 seconds before calming down. After rocking him for a bit in his car seat he was fast asleep. He spent most of the day alternating between My Fair Lady's arms and mine. She was watching the inaugural events. I was playing Left 4 Dead.

Sort of like the Republican party after this election. NO! BAD MITCH! NO MORE POLITICS!

We're anxious to watch Max begin to take shape as a person. It's already been decided by my parents and My Fair Lady that he's my clone, right down to the crooked smile and the way he curls up when he sleeps. I warned her for years that a mini-me would be a bad idea based solely on how much of a hellion I was growing up. Apparently, I get to witness first hand (again, sort of) what I was like to my parents.

God save us all.

In the meantime, I'm already organizing the coterie of films I plan to introduce him to. This child will have a healthy appreciation of cinema as he grows up and will understand the wonder that is "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" and know why it is the greatest Western ever made. I don't think My Fair Lady will let me pass off "300" as a children's film about coming together for a cause you believe in, but you never know.

I plan to start posting more frequently about Max, especially now that I have more time on my hands. An explanation as to why is coming up in the very next post.

The Build-Up to iPhone

2008-12-30T16:18:00.001-06:00

The iPhone. Released last year to much fanfare only to run headfirst into a wall of scorn six weeks later when the price was slashed by several hundred dollars. It’s like Steve Jobs himself was pointing at the early adopter Apple fanatics and quoting Nelson from The Simpsons.

“Ha ha!”

But now the new generation is ready for me to pick up. I played with my dad and sister’s iPhones over the Christmas break and I thought I was hungry for it before. Oh no. I just wanted one and if I got one when my contract with Sprint was up in the spring then so much the better. But now I’m actually going to pay double the cost just to break the contract.

Because I have to have one. RIGHT. THIS. INSTANT.

This thing is hands down the sexiest piece of tech to come down the pipe in years. I mean that goes without saying. Look at it! It is stunning. What’s better? Touch screen tech that is just about flawless. Oh sure, there are certain quirks here and there (just try playing Pac-Man on it, or better yet don’t) but on the whole it is a giant leap forward in terms of user interface.

You can have 3-D. People want to know that what they see and touch is real. That’s why I firmly believe, and this is a slight digression, that the current top guys in Hollywood (Spielberg, Cameron, Zemeckis, Jackson) who are obsessed with developing a new generation of 3-D are missing the point. People love special effects and marvel at what a computer can do.

But you heard genuine gasps of awe in “The Dark Knight” when that truck flipped over. Even before that, the way that car chase ~~on Lower Wacker Drive~~ through Gotham left people gripping their seats and shouting from excitement? Why is that?

Because what they were looking at was real. It was tangible. They knew instinctively they could reach out and touch what was on screen, in spite of some CGI thrown in here and there. For the most part, it was real and the stunt work was amazing. At the beginning, when the two robbers slide from one building to the next the audience was in the moment more so than if they were CGI figures because it was real and the IMAX presentation made it seem as if they were there with them. That’s the next big thing – finding a way to IMAX everything. It brings reality so close you can touch it.

Which is exactly what I love so much about the iPhone. I’m not just pushing buttons and cycling through menu after menu. I’m sliding through menus with the touch of my hand. Or I’m shaking the iPhone so that the slot machine style interface of an application will bring up local delis in my price range. I’m interacting with it beyond just hitting a button and waiting for my call to go through. I’m stretching pictures out, finding a mind-boggling amount of information out about local eateries, and more.

But the bottom line is this – it’s not cold and impersonal. I can do a gazillion things with this little device and never once do I lose sight of it being a phone too. I’ve railed in the past about phone carriers packing more and more features into their devices transforming them from phones into PDAs. The iPhone is no different, but it does so many things so well and so smoothly that I am happy to gloss over the fact that a phone is one aspect among many.

Oh I can’t wait to get my hands on one tonight. I’ll report back on whether my lust translates into a full blown love affair or a crash-and-burn.

3Dog Nt

2008-12-30T15:40:00.000-06:00

Is 3 Dog Night honestly worth a license plate devoted to them? No sir. No they are not.

Now Playing: Dragon Quest IV (DS)

2008-12-29T10:23:00.002-06:00

The Nintendo DS is a Godsend for those of us who wax romantic about the games of our youth. The old 8 and 16-bit classics we grew up with on the original Nintendo systems were fun little time sinks, and continue to provoke endless debates when pitted against current generation software.

Which was the cooler JRPG? Final Fantasy VI or Final Fantasy XII? What’s your favorite Dragon Quest of the original seven?

Meanwhile, I’m playing Dragon Quest IV on the little handheld that could and my understanding is it never came out in the States before now. I love the facelift Square-Enix bestowed upon it. The once 8-bit game is now rife with color, humor, wonderful art and energy. It’s also filled with the need to grind, and grind, and grind, and grind some more. It’s like playing EverQuest only repeatedly cycling through the first 15 levels.

The story introduces the hero right off the bat then jumps to someone else. You take control of them for the next four to five hours and complete their introductory story. Then it jumps to another character and you repeat the cycle. Then you repeat it a third and a fourth time, each with new characters. Then finally it jumps back to the hero who is at… level 1.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why yes, Square Enix, I would LOVE to grind the first 15 levels FIVE GODDAMN TIMES IN A ROW! Doesn’t that sound like fun? Oh it surly does to me, thank you kindly. Seriously, a game like this released today would be shredded. Once the story sort of kicks in then the game picks up and starts to move but according to my in-game clock I’ve already been playing for north of 24 hours and now I’m starting over YET AGAIN?!?!

Ugh.

To be fair, this is not the kind of title you blaze through. You savor it, enjoy it slowly, and take your time with it. Pull it out at the airport and level grind while waiting for your flight, and continue grinding while ignoring your spouse during the actual flight. I can’t say I haven’t had a lot of fun with it, but I’ve been at it for two months now and I’m just getting to the primary story line. The good news is I’ve discovered a reasonable place to farm metal slimes so my characters all level a hell of a lot faster now than at the beginning.

And some of you have absolutely no clue what I just said.

For those of you new to the Dragon Quest series, let me be more succinct. Each new release of a Dragon Quest title virtually shuts down Japan as people call in sick to play it. This is not a joke, nor an exaggeration. An entire country shuts down to play one game. The fascination with this series is wild to me, but there you have it.

In this iteration, a hero is called to defeat a great evil but picks up a bunch of friends along the way. Wait, that’s pretty much every video game ever designed. Where this game differentiates itself from everything else is what I mentioned about chapters – one per supporting character, and you get to power level each one for the first 15 levels or so before getting to the meat of the story. Once you do, the game opens up and becomes way more fun but getting there is a beating.

It’s certainly charming and quirky and is a perfect fit for the DS. If you can just get through the level grinding of the majority of the game, DQIV is a nice little time killer. If you’re looking for a quick fix title to blaze through, look elsewhere. This is one you take your time with and just play at your leisure. Even after putting it down for a week or two, it’s surprisingly easy to figure out what to do and where to go next.

I get a kick from old school titles like this. Contrasting them against modern titles is fun to see the evolution of game play. Next on my “Ye Olde School Playlist” is Chrono Trigger which has developed a mythic reputation since its release. I’ve never played it, but the music from the sequel’s intro has stuck with me for years. That may be an odd recollection, but it’s the closest I’ve come to actually playing it.

But at the rate I’m going on DQIV, I’ll probably hold off on starting Chrono Trigger until sometime next year.

Information that might have been useful YESTERDAY

2008-12-22T08:59:00.002-06:00

Fired up my email this morning and had an email dated 2:07 AM Saturday. The contents of the email informed us that for the next two weeks we could dress casual at work. I'm reading this while dressed in a suit as upper management (i.e. those with Blackberrys) walk around in jeans.

Note to Santa - bring me a Blackberry.

Latest Reviews

2008-12-19T13:22:00.001-06:00

My two latest reviews at Gaming Trend are up and here they are: Madagascar 2 and Far Cry 2. You might notice a significant difference in the writing styles for both and the explanation is simple – one sucked and the other most assuredly did not.

To make it easier to discern which is which, allow me to extol the further virtues of "Far Cry 2" forthwith. I wasn’t a big fan of the first game. Much like “Doom 3,” “Far Cry” was an engine in search of a game. It presented a massive world that was top to bottom beautiful, and let players loose in it to do what they would. Sandbox style shooters are nothing new, but “Far Cry” left me bored. Even when it took a hard right into science fiction territory, it did so by just throwing a bunch of mutants at you and still letting you go on your merry way.

“Far Cry 2” has no such sci-fi elements, electing instead to keep things firmly grounded in the real world. The game immediately benefits from this by setting up a massive powder keg in the middle of Africa, then dropping you in the middle of it to find and kill a single target – the gun runner behind both sides of the conflict known simply as the Jackal. It’s an ingenious setup but what truly thrills is how the game utterly swallows you.

This is not a twitch game by any stretch of the imagination. It will take you a while to move from one place to another even after mastering the bus system, the only rapid transit available. Otherwise, you’re on your own to find transportation (surprisingly easy) and surviving the drive along the numerous dirt roads (somewhat more difficult). I’ve been playing it constantly for over a month now and I’m just to the point where I can experience the back half of the game.

This thing is one of the most immersive titles I’ve played since BioShock. Nothing else touches it. I’m thrilled that it’s sold over a million copies because with everything else hitting right now (Gears of War 2, CoD: World at War, Fallout 3, Rock Band 2, et. al) this is the gem that would absolutely be swallowed. I’m sure people bought this then dropped it after a day to play GoW2 or CoD and those sad souls are missing the winner of the bunch.

“Far Cry 2” is not interested in just throwing bigger and bigger guns at you and letting you wade through the bush nuking the hell out of everything in sight. There is a purpose here, but one that is not immediately evident. The purpose here is to literally live the events, and every single action happens through your character’s eyes. Walk up to a car and you watch as your character slides across the seat or climbs up into the gunners seat. Get into a gunfight with a crappy firearm and watch it jam, usually at the worst possible moment. Get shot up almost to the point of death and check it out as your character pops bullets out of his/her arm with their fingers (and no I’m not kidding about this).

At no point in the game does anything feel video gamey. Well, that’s not entirely true. Attacks on the roads are more frequent than they should be and enemies can hit you a mile away it seems with little effort and with crap weaponry. Also the dialogue coach at Ubisoft should be fired immediately because all the characters deliver their lines as if there was no punctuation used anywhere in the script.

Forgiving these minor grievances allows one to indulge in a game world so vast and rich and detailed that it’s stunning. During development, the designers took a trip to Kenya for a safari to see for themselves whether what they’d come up with was accurate. Upon returning, they tossed everything and started over. The resulting level of detail takes you across the planet to an honest rendition of Africa via the country of Kenya. I’m left stunned every time I play it.

So what haven’t I liked? Not much really. My gripes are pretty contained to the ones listed above and that’s about it. I hate having to go through so many checkpoints, i.e. guard stations, but off-roading cures that little hiccup. Ditto the random battles that happen quite frequently. The guns breaking or jamming infuriates me but just compare the rusted POS you pick up off some local thug to the nice shiny weapons available for purchase at the gun store and tell me which one looks more reliable. Running out of ammo in the middle of a firefight can happen, so dropping a gorgeous gun and picking up a rusted one for the sake of expediency adds to the tension. How many shots until this thing jams or worse, breaks completely? Your heart races as soon as the shooting starts.

Every. Single. Time.

As for the story, this is not a plot driven game so to speak. There is an overarching story, but the game is more about the experience and less about the tale being told. This isn’t “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.” Early on, the player is told by a journalist that he lost tapes of a conversation he recorded with the Jackal and when you start finding those tapes the lights will begin to turn on. The further you delve into the game, the more the tension builds and your understanding of the Jackal is fleshed out by these tapes. It’s a clever way to build anticipation towards your eventual show-down with him. You come to understand not only his philosophy on world events but also what he’s doing in this particular war-torn area of the world.

The buddy system is also pretty cool in that you stumble across people who will assist you. They don’t run with you all the time but if you get hurt, one usually shows up to get you out of the situation. I like the fact that even though they can take an inordinate amount of punishment, they can in fact die. If they do, then they are gone for good. Bonding with at least one or two is inevitable and when one of your close buddies dies, as happened to me, it genuinely hurts.

I can understand how this one seems to have been marginalized by the press in favor of Fallout 3, the latest Call of Duty, and so forth but this is an honest gem. If you have the chance to really check out Far Cry 2 then do so but be prepared to be swallowed whole.

No Need For An Alarm Clock

2008-12-16T13:01:00.000-06:00

I have my stomach! I was sound asleep this morning. Dead quiet throughout the house. All of a sudden I hear this:

Brrrrrrrp. Mmmmmmrrrrppppp. Repeat.

I snap awake. Angry. I roll over. That only muffled it slightly. Whatever else, my stomach was running on empty and apparently felt it was its solemn duty to inform me of its displeasure.

At 5:50 a.m.

I get up and scarf down a piece of bread. Lay back down. My stomach growls less and less until finally it’s quiet again. Some people hate their bodies for various reasons. I hate mine when it wakes me up. Self preservation takes a back seat to a good night’s sleep in my book.

But I’m weird like that.

Ixnay on the Raspberry-ay

2008-12-12T15:37:00.000-06:00

One thing I love about my office is the abundance of sweets that find their ways into our hands. Someone is always bringing cake or cookies up here and it rules on a number of levels. However, a co-worker offered me some cake recently and I had to decline.

“What’s in it?” I non-chalantly asked.

“Oh the good stuff. Vanilla, and raspberry, and…”

I cut her off with a stern head shake.

“Nope, can’t do it then. But thank you.”

Not sure if it’s a food allergy or just revulsion, but if I have a small taste of raspberry I get a migraine. More than a taste adds extreme nausea as a topper. Been that way my whole life but took me forever to figure out what the specifics were. My problem is an addiction to all things chocolate. Chefs the world over have the same problem: Thinking raspberry drizzled over chocolate is a good thing.

Now you understand my predicament.

I remain puzzled by people who love, love, love raspberry on chocolate. Everyone enjoys different flavors, but that one is just disgusting. Not to mention headache inducing.

Two Weeks Later...

2008-12-09T09:20:00.000-06:00

Max 0.05 entered our world on 11/20/08 and our lives remain uprooted. But in a good way. Sorta. Right from the start, evidence surfaced of him one day evolving into a clone of Yours Truly. This is both a good and bad thing. The good thing is I feel I’m a pretty level headed individual who could have been better were I less shy and more self confident when I was younger.

The bad is I was a holy terror as a child who only mellowed out when I was overtaken by extreme shyness. At 12.

Infants traditionally have three tasks:

1. Eat
2. Sleep
3. Poop

Not necessarily in that order, either. Or sometimes they manage the trifecta and accomplish all three at once, which is something no one outside of new parents should ever bear witness to.

A fourth dictum is conveniently left unspoken, lest skittish folks decide children are not for them:

4. Scream/cry like crazy

This last one manifested itself quicker than we suspected and continued through the holiday week while the in-laws camped out at Casa de Skim. Every night starting at about 8 p.m. and going through midnight, Max 0.05 would scream holy hell with only a slight respite occurring upon feeding. He would exhaust himself, we’d stressfully rock him and work to comfort him and it was all for naught. Frustrating doesn’t begin to convey the anxiety a new parent feels anyway, so when you add screaming fits as a capper, you find yourself frazzled beyond belief. During the day he was a gem, an affable baby boy with the biggest and most alert eyes you’ve ever seen. At night, he’d morph into Holy Screaming Fury™.

When you come to dread the sun going down, you’re either in a horror film or living with a newborn.

We worried we were overfeeding him at first. A newborn’s stomach is about the size of a small marble and he was packing a mean amount of acid reflux. Turns out this is entirely normal and goes away on it’s own after two weeks. Again, this is information that might have been useful AHEAD OF TIME. So we tried over-feeding him to see if that calmed him down.

8 p.m. came and went with no screaming. Ditto 9 p.m. Ditto 10 p.m. Then 11 p.m. and he started fussing, so we fed him again.

It was like someone flipped a light switch off and he sacked out until his next feeding at 2 a.m. It was the first night in literally two weeks that My Fair Lady and I got a solid amount of sleep. We actually felt human the next day.

In short it’s been incredibly stressful but surprisingly enough we’ve enjoyed it. Max 0.05 is a gem when he’s not crying. He has the biggest eyes and is so alert it’s scary. He knows both of us by now, or at least enjoys listening to our voices. He’s already developing a personality quirk that’s hilarious. When he stretches out and yawns, he goes all out. He has his arms down at his sides, he stretches his legs out, then he stretches his neck out and yawns as wide as his mouth will allow. It’ll be wild to see if he still does that later in life.

When we threw our list of questions at our pediatrician, she offered some sage advice about the first month – survive it. Doesn’t matter what you do, just survive it. After that, it all gets better.

We’ll see what happens.

P.S. For the last two nights, he’s been up and at ‘em every 15 or 20 minutes. I took the first shift last night and rocked him in a pouch until 2 a.m.-ish. My Fair Lady took over at that point and is, I believe, close to collapse. She’s a trooper but believe me when I say that watching a newborn would exhaust Patton’s 3rd Army. We’re almost through the first month and we are watching that calendar like a pair of hawks.

Deadman Switch

2008-12-09T09:13:00.000-06:00

A co-worker observed in the lunch room the other day that I got a haircut.

“No,” I replied, “I got a lot cut.”

“Well, it looks really good.”

“Thank you. I just wish they got the white ones too.”

I recently found three white hairs on my head. These were not gray, or pseudo-white. These were Anderson Cooper white.

“Why don’t you just pluck them?” my co-worker asked.

“Are you crazy? They plan for this. All white hairs come with a deadman switch attached. Pluck one, and it sends out a signal for reinforcements. I’ll be white haired by Christmas of next year. All I’ll need is 100 more pounds and a beard and I’ll have a line of kids demanding toys.”

"We've Got a Gusher!"

2008-11-26T09:38:00.000-06:00

I feel like I’ve aged 5 years from the last week.

We checked My Fair Lady into the hospital Tuesday night and she began the fluids necessary to initiate induction. The induction proper commenced at 6 a.m. Wednesday morning. When no progress had been made by noon, Doc burst the bag of waters (yes, with an ‘s’) and out flowed enough water to render My Fair Lady a tributary.

“Oh wow, we’ve got a gusher!” is not normally something you expect a doctor to say in a cheery tone of voice.

Six hours later, no progress. My Fair Lady had been under Pitocin (which induces labor, or more specifically, labor pains in a big, big way) for 12 hours by that point and only progressed to 2cm. This is what’s known as a bad thing. She of the iron cervix was apparently having nothing to do with delivering our child. But she would warily take the epidural, thank you very much. This may have made her feel significantly better but the baby still wasn’t coming. Nor was it about to, ever.

Then we had our second gusher of the night.

The epidural brings large scale pain relief to your lower half and based on the dosage you may or may not feel your toes for the next few hours. I feel sorry for women going through it because it literally looks like they're being plugged into the Matrix and have sit still and lean forward over their belly for roughly half an hour. All well and fine by itself if you're not pregnant and in labor. If that's the case, then you have to lean over and sit very still while in the throes of massive labor contractions so the joy adds up quickly. Once the drugs started it took about 10 minutes for her pain to subsist.

At one point, My Fair Lady tried to sit up and her elbow came back on the bed and broke one of the plastic vials on the IV line. We saw clear fluid spill (a small amount) onto the bed, so I left to get the nurse. I returned 30 seconds later to find My Fair Lady covered in blood, the baby monitor was going off the chart and she was clutching her arm while forlornly looking at me.

This is exactly the combination of look and circumstance you never, ever want to be in.

The nurse came in right behind me, saw what was going down, and sprang into action. She called in another nurse who in turn brought another doctor with her. The mighty trio sealed the wound, removed the broken IV, and replaced it all within two minutes give or take. Apparently this never happens, as one nurse kept repeating, and my guess is that for some reason the broken IV triggered a blow-back from the vein. But all was cleaned up and My Fair Lady and Pending were declared just fine.

Thirty seconds later Doc walked in from her rounds and asked if anything was going on. It was one of those sitcom moments life throws at you every now and then to break the tension.

Following another six hours of non-progress, a decision was made to schedule a c-section at 6 a.m. Thursday morning so I went home close to 1 a.m. to get some sleep. I’m laying down and not five minutes later the phone rings. I saw it was My Fair Lady. Now, take into account all that happened that day and tell me what you think she might want to tell me.

Good night? Sweet dreams? Oh no.

Apparently the baby’s heart rate had started dropping while they were administering a new batch of Pitocin right after I left and since Pending wasn’t engaging at all then Doc opted to release Pending a few hours in advance of his/her street date.

Fortunately we live literally five minutes from the hospital. I’ve timed it.

I get back just as they've finished prepping My Fair Lady for the surgery, and she's understandably terrified. It's been a day from hell and the capper is highly invasive surgery to remove a large parasite from her insides. I again gave thanks to the Creator for letting me be the cause of this chaos and not the recipient. As they wheeled her out, Doc tossed me some scrubs.

This proved interesting. I threw on the scrubs followed by the hairnet then looked at the blue shoe covers. I was assured they would fit just about anything. I compared them to the Merrill hiking boots I was wearing. If those fit over the shoes I was wearing, then I was a WWII fighter pilot (Ret.) So I opted instead for the white boot covers and when I stood up I looked like part of a hazmat team. Doc's assistant came to get me and after sanitizing up, into the OR we went.

Doc had me sit next to My Fair Lady’s head while the rest of her remained thankfully obscured by a large drape. I comforted her and told her everything was going to be fine. Meanwhile, all I hear is a giant vacuum going strong on the other side of the curtain. Suddenly an urge struck me. It was the urge to stand up and see what was going on. I just had to see it if only for the sheer novelty of...

I promptly stomped that urge into the ground then rolled over it like Kent did to Otto in “A Fish Called Wanda.”

All of a sudden we heard a loud cry. We stared at each other. Then Doc spoke:

“Oh! It’s a boy!”

Pending had officially hit Release Status. We welcomed Max 0.1 into this world on November 20, 2008, at 1:47 a.m. My Fair Lady was confined to quarters until Sunday when we brought him home to Casa de Skim. Thus far he’s doing well, but Sunday night and Monday night screamed and cried to all hours of the night pushing My Fair Lady to the verge of insanity. That’s how I wound up carrying him for an hour before collapsing onto the couch with him on my chest... a position we remained in for the next three hours. Repeat the following night.

Welcome to parenthood.

It's a boy!

2008-11-25T13:28:00.000-06:00

I've written up a much longer post than this but it's on a flash drive at the house so I'll have to post it later. But for the world of the internets, I now have a son named Max 0.1 and he's an absolute doll. Sort of like a Chatty Cathy only everytime you pull the string it screams bloody murder at you.

For the most part, he's pretty laid back considering he's only five days old at this point. When he gets worked up is at night which has resulted in a sum total of 6 hours sleep for Yours Truly out of the last 72. I'm having to type this slowly because I see three keyboards when I look down. Were I any groggier, the spell check would even say, "Sorry dude, I have no clue what word dfadhsfda is supposed to eb."

But he's a keeper. I understand now the sheer absolute panic only parents are capable of experiencing, and if you've heard the stories but blown them off then you have no clue what it feels like. The first night he was home, things were cool during the day. Then 8 p.m. rolled around and he started fussing. By midnight it was into full out crazy and by 3 a.m. we'd lost our minds. More specifically My Fair Lady actually had because she'd been in the hospital the previous five days and was already beyond exhausted. I wound up with Max 0.1 around 4:30 a.m. and he and I wound up on the couch where amazingly enough he slept like a champ in my arms.

Rinse-repeat last night only change my final location to my desk in the office. Whoo-hoo!

We're excited though and after his first pediatric appointment today are proud to note that he's regained most of the initial weight and is progressing quite nicely. He may also have his days and nights mixed up slightly which means this week and next should be filled with fun as we try to correct that. If we can get him to be on a three to four hour schedule at night we'll be in good shape.

In the meantime, I think My Fair Lady will actually hold a gun to my head should I be remiss in future blogging so I may be picking this back up on a more routine basis. I'm sure this week will also net itself plenty of stories worth relating via my skewed perception.

But we got the best present two people could ever hope for - a fully healthy baby that is a bundle of joy. We love him absolutely and I'm looking forward to warping him with my film library. I can hardly believe that I have a chance to see Star Wars and Monty Python through my son's eyes at some point and it should be interesting to see his reactions.

Then again, there's always Kung-fu Panda which I instinctively know he's going to go simply bonkers for.

I Drink From the Keg of Glory

2008-11-05T21:45:00.000-06:00

Note: This tale is from April, 2008. Enjoy.

This weekend, My Fair Lady and I drank from The Keg of Glory. Waaaaaay back in 2002, a race of sorts popped up in Dallas. It was called the "Urban Challenge" and it was a scavenger hunt of sorts. The point was to start the race with a set of clues which you would need to decipher in order to find certain locations scattered across the city. Only public transportation, i.e. DART buses and the rail) were allowed in terms of transportation. No bikes, no cars, no nothing. Just your feet and your DART pass. You could have friends standing by in their homes with Google at the ready, and both Crayola and Fireball proved invaluable. Once you arrived at your destinations, you had to take a picture of yourself and your teammate at those locations.

The challenge was not so much in the finding of the locations that year as it was surviving the heat. The organizers, who were clearly not native to the area, thought it a a great idea to hold it at the first of September which is still in the Texas summer. So it was that we journeyed forth in 100+ degree heat, all chipper and excited. Our pictures that year were hilarious because the first one showed us excited, the next one showed us to be a little less excited, then the third one showed us already sunburned but kinda gung-ho, and so on and so forth. The eighth picture, also the point where we gave up, shows us completely melting. Think the ending of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in t-shirts and backpacks and that's it.

Fireball was kind enough to answer his phone that year and not ask any questions when all he heard on the other end was "I'm melting.... MELTING...." I don't recall much after that but apparently in my incoherent ramblings (which come from having to hold the phone with one hand and paste your lips back onto your face with the other) I gave him the address we died at. He drove over, poured us into his car, and drove us back downtown where we crawled across the finish line along with another couple of teams in, believe it or not, worse shape than us. With only a few fatalities that year, the future looked bright for more races to come.

Fortunately, the weather the following year was fantastic and we placed 19th thus qualifying for the National Championships in New Orleans, which we had to forgo since that was right in the middle of My Fair Lady's law school exams. The next year, the contest mysteriously vanished.

Fast forward to this weekend...

The newly christened "The Urban Race" was upon us and of course My Fair Lady would not allow us to miss it. So it was that we arrived at Dick's Last Resort in the West End (i.e. the family-style party center of Dallas) and stood around looking at the other teams. This year, organizers thought to hold the contest in APRIL which proved a wise decision because the weather was in the high 60s, and it was a beautiful, cloudless day. The prices this year included an award for "Best Costume," the result of which was a high number of people wearing all manner of elaborate, and not so elaborate, crazy-wear. We spied a man and woman dressed as Mr. and Mrs. Rambo complete with war paint, inflatable weapons, and bullets wrapped around their chests. Another team was dressed in suits (yes, suits) while two others were dressed as ninjas. I was, frankly, surprised to see them so I assume they were training ninjas who had not yet received details on being covert.

The announcer called to us and gathered us in the square outside Dick's and assistants passed out envelopes containing clues. The good news this year was that we could team up with another couple, and our good friends M&L joined us. They had run in the previous races with us, so it was fun to have fellow veterans on our side. At high noon-ish, the buzzer sounded and all of us tore into our clues. We could do the clues in any order, and we could skip one of them. Two of the clues, however, were mandatory and skipping those was obviously not allowed. Should we miss or mess up on any of the clues, we could still finish and take a 30-minute penalty. The clues broke down as follows:

1) Find someone with an out of state drivers license
2) Find the number 225 on any building and yes, it could be part of an address (i.e. 12256 Somewhere Dr.)
3) Find a Mexican flag
4) Go to a specific carnival inflatable ride place, run their inflatable gauntlet and take a picture coming down the slide at the end (Mandatory)
5) Find a specific tae-kwan-do place and take a 5-10 minute lesson, noting that only groups of 10-20 would be accepted at a time
6) Find a place that made concentric circles in the sand every 24 hours
7) Get to a specific stall in the Farmer's Market, take a banana, then feed it to your teammate (Mandatory)
Cool Decipher an anagram to find a location, then arrive there and hold up the number of fingers that matched the Cowboy's win record last season
9) Get to Flag Pole Hill and take a shot of the flag pole while holding up the number of fingers of the surrounded picnic tables
10) Decipher clues to get an address, then once there high five one another over the address
11) Find a specific bronze cow and take a picture showing its hoofs
12) Do a crossword puzzle included with the clues

AND WE WERE OFF!!! Like the wind, some might say. I'd say more like a subtle breeze. We spent about half an hour or so cracking the clues and between the four of us we figured them out, locations and all. We recognized that the inflato-course and Flag Pole Hill were hell-and-gone from downtown Dallas, but that everything else was within walking distance of the finish line (also Dick's Last Resort). So we figured it would be wise to do the furthest ones out first, then come back downtown and knock out the rest. We headed down a thin alley towards the rail station when My Fair Lady was struck with inspiration. It occurred to her that while we were in the West End that we should start asking people if they were from out of state. So it was that we found this lovely lady right at the start:

We interrupted her lunch but she was gracious enough to be from Pennsylvania and to share that bit of geography with us for our first clue. While we were taking this shot, one of our cohorts ran inside only to come back out and let us know there was a Mexican flag hanging from the rafters. We checked with the gal at the front counter and she waved us through, already tired of our fellow racers hustling past people concerned only with their enchiladas. The result was our second clue:

Viva Mexico! After a quick pit stop, it was on to our next clue. We raced out of the restaurant ignoring the stares of people expecting to see a camera crew following us. We ran to the rail stop and patiently waited for the Blue Line to arrive. It's promptness did not disappoint for it pulled up alongside us and we elbowed our way on board. Roughly 15 minutes later, the train pulled to a stop near where Flag Pole Hill was, twenty or so teams hopped off, but M&L insisted we stay on to the next stop. The next one would put us in striking distance of the inflato-course, which was the same train of thought exhibited by three other teams. The Browns, Mr. & Mrs. Rambo, the Greens, and us all piled out of the train at the next stop and bolted. It was exactly like on the Amazing Race because every team ran full out... for about 30 yards. Then we all remembered we were in Texas, we were not racing for $1 million, and where we were headed was any one's guess.

We all knew vaguely where this inflato-course was, but not specifically. We all made it to the intersection of 635 and some random street which is where our paths diverged. The Browns turned south and opted to follow 635 all the way to the course. We, and the other teams, opted to go north to a major street where we would turn right then follow that around to our location.

While the Greens and Mr. & Mrs. Rambo went further north, we hooked a right and cut through the warehouse row to the far side. We arrived at the major street the inflato-course was off of well ahead of the others. The two teams were behind us and the Browns were no where in sight. Neither was the inflato-course, for the record. We headed south, and amongst much swearing and bickering (entirely from me) we finally came in sight of the cross street we'd all been looking for. My Fair Lady encountered a random piece of metal, cast off from a truck, that whacked her a good one on the shin. Her latest tetanus shot was, fortunately, just a few years back so we pressed on rather than amputate on the go. The other two teams were catching up to us because they'd decided it was a good time to run.

We booked it to the inflato-course where we were warmly greeted by the proprietor and his merry band of people. I yanked off my shoes, then dove headfirst into the course roughly 15 seconds after Mr. Commando had entered. I raced through the course, my years of gaming bringing to me the skill to make split-second decisions on how best to go over/under/through the course. Mr. Commando lacked for such awesome prowess, for I blew past him, scaled the final inflatable ladder, then heard My Fair Lady ask me if I was ready for my picture. The result is such:

I hurled myself out of the course, catching the camera in midair as My Fair Lady hurried off to begin the trial. Moments later she flew down the slide. We were then waylaid by M&L who struggled mightily to get "the perfect shot" of her coming down the slide. Finally, they finished the course (I think the fourth time) then just stood on the slide for the shot. Good enough, we thought and then moved it. With the generously provided lemonade slushies firmly in hand, we were then off and we were forced to make a decision - head back to the train or continue walking south to Flag Pole Hill. Our numbers crunchers did the math and found it to be six to one, half a dozen to the other. A half hour walk back to the train, only to wait for it followed by another 10 minutes south and then to walk over? Or should we just hike south?

We opted to hike south.

Along the way, we cut through a few neighborhoods and went off the beaten path. One team of racers ran past us as they headed from Flag Pole Hill up to the inflato-course. It should be noted here that we were walking downhill this whole time and they had been running up hill. Heh heh heh. After exiting the neighborhoods, we found the hill, counted the lone picnic table, and here was our victory shot:

It was then on to the train, and southward bound once more. As we arrived at the train, a few other racers were exiting and asked us directions. We were kind enough to share, knowing it had taken us roughly two hours to do this circuit that netted us exactly two shots. We figured we'd be in good shape if we could knock out the rest downtown. Once the train started south, we began to formulate our strategery.

Since we exited right next to the street of one clue, we worked to find the address. We stumbled onto it, lay down and high-fived one another as seen below:

We decided to head to the Farmer's Market next since the rest seemed to be grouped together near the finish line. We recalled a previous race where we spent a good hour and change looking for a stall with "Little John's" on a banner, and hoped this time it would be quicker. Fortune smiled upon us because we quickly tracked down the stall, which resulted in my favorite shot of the course:

Potassium firmly in our stomachs, it was off to the other side of downtown. At this point, the nagging sense of doubt began. Where the hell would we find 225 on a building, we all wondered? This part genuinely scared us, more so than finding someone with an out of state drivers license which we admit had been an awesome stroke of luck early on. We continued onward and past Dallas City Hall (aka OCP Headquarters) we came to the bronzed cattle drive. The clue told us to look for one cow with its eyes closed, its tail between its legs, and its hooves in a certain position. No trouble! Only about 30 of these suckers to look at. Between the four of us, we canvased many a cow that afternoon and when I look my grandkids in the eyes and relay this tale to them over hot cocoa many moons from now, I'll be able to tell them with perfect honesty that yes, granddad did spend too much time of his life looking at the underbellies of bronzed cattle.

"HEY!" shouted a female voice. It turned out to be some girls at a quinceanera. My Fair Lady waved frantically over the cows (how she expected me to hear her waving I don't know) and we all ran over to find the cow we'd been looking for. As seen below:

ONWARD! We hustled across a few streets to find the below image:

Apparently, this giant-ass screw makes perfect concentric circles in the sand every 24 hours. Basically, it's a Zen garden by way of Texas oilmen and it's hilarious to behold in person. Following this, we ran on to the next clue. The anagram we'd deciphered pointed us to the Old Red Courthouse, and the result was this picture:

13 wins by the 'Boys last year. Too bad the three loses were, you know, IMPORTANT games. PeteRock no doubt is snickering as he reads this part.

At this point we were down to our last clue - find 225 on a building. It was roughly 3:40 p.m. and we hadn't seen another team in some time so we had no idea what our place was. We scrambled, we talked to people on the streets, we even split up. Nothing. Then, My Fair Lady and I got a call from M&L who'd found it. We ran to where they were - right at the head of the tiny alley we'd walked through at the beginning of the race. The number 225 was scribbled on the wall right there as seen below:

If we'd looked to our right as we entered that at the very beginning, we wouldn't have experienced any panic. With the final shot snapped, we raced back to Dick's and landed on the finish line. We showed them our pics, and they told us we'd placed in the top 25 which meant automatic qualification into the Nationals. An hour later, we found out that My Fair Lady and I placed 16th on the list of north of a 100 teams. Hell yeah. Our final victory pose was with our medals at the finish line:

We have drunk from The Keg of Glory and damn if the taste isn't sweet.

Anatomy of a Scene

2008-09-17T20:14:00.000-05:00

I’m nearing completion on my feature (the first draft going out for review, any way) and I thought it might be time to do a quick run down of what exactly has transpired to bring it to this point. My Fair Lady has a tendency to underestimate the massive amount of work that goes into a feature screenplay, and my parents (good natured though they are) remain baffled that someone, let alone their eldest son, would voluntarily want to write for a living.

In hindsight, I think it may have been easier on them if I’d said I was gay. Instead, they’re stuck with a writer as their eldest, and an actress as their middle child. Brother G being the youngest seems to be the only responsible one since he went to work in The Vault.

I began the script back in my college days. It was my second semester as a Junior and my writing class was supposed to write a series of short scripts every week or so. No problem. I showcased how I could switch genres with each new script, regardless of what the topic was. Then the big semester grade hit – Write a short film, or a feature. Either way, it was due at the beginning of May (I think that’s when it was. This is 10 years removed.)

Naturally, I opted for the challenge of writing the feature. Why? Because I was an idiot.

So it gets to the Friday before it’s due. The table read for the two features was Monday starting at 7 p.m. I get back to my dorm from the house at around 8 p.m. I look up my script. Page 3. The blinking cursor flashed about halfway down the page.

Crap.

So I started writing. And writing. And writing some more. I think I managed to get 15 to 20 pages written that night. By the time I blacked out it was around 5 a.m. I woke up about 8 a.m. and realized exactly what I was going to be doing for the rest of the weekend. I phoned my girlfriend telling her not to call me. I contacted friends explaining to them that all trips and distractions were postponed through that weekend. Then I started writing.

I don’t recall much beyond that, and that’s not because it’s been 10 years. Well, partly it’s not. Primarily, it’s because I was on such a Coca-Cola-fueled bender of caffeine, terror, and creative energy for those 72 hours that a literal black spot exists in my memory where that weekend was. I get flashes every now and then, but nothing substantial. Oh, and I didn’t sleep again until some time Sunday night when I blacked out again for a few hours. My girlfriend told me I walked into the school cafeteria wearing my pajama pants at one point. I do recall talking briefly to her and her friend but do not remember wearing pajamas. That’s as specific a memory of the weekend I have.

I wrote the script (which clocked in around 120 pages), printed it, raced to Office Max and had several copies made and bound. Then I raced straight from there to the film school where I sat down as everyone else entered the room for the table read. That’s how close I cut it.

The read went okay and everyone seemed to like it. My professor even gave me an A on the project, but I think that was more on account of the size of the project I endured than on the quality of the script. From my point of view, I thought it nailed the skeleton of what I wanted to do and say with it but that was all. I put the excess copies in a bin and put it aside with the understanding that one day I’d rewrite it into something better.

Fast forward 10 years and I run into my professor at Brother G’s graduation. The professor recalled the script and the general subject matter, praised it, and was disappointed I never did anything with it. I sat there next to My Fair Lady and in front of my parents slack-jawed. How the hell did he recall that? Do you realize how many of these things he’s read over the years? What made mine stand out? HOLY CRAP!!!

We came home and I pulled out an old copy. I got three pages in before throwing it out. “Awful” would be a charitable way to describe it. My guess was the idea behind the script is what stuck out. You know how when something good happens to you and you kinda think you recall it well years later but are, in truth, romanticizing what happened? Yeah, something like that is what I chalk up to regarding his memory of my script.

But I thought about it. Then I thought about it some more.

I fired up my screenwriter program and started writing. I wrote an entirely new opening scene that not only nicely segued into the meat of the story, but established everything I wanted to say in the film. I have a knack for writing killer openers, then flailing about in the middle and the end. Which is why I’ve worked for years to hone my technique.

But you know what? In four months, I’ve turned out what I think is a pretty dang solid script. Not perfect, but a dang good read. It’s commercial as hell while still being funny and scary and entertaining and surprising. Ten years later I still recalled the basic story and with a lot of changes to it, I think it works. I think it really works now.

I’m even happier with it as I’m re-writing it now for essentially the third time. I wrote 15 pages in my screenwriter software, and then exported to Word to do notes in my spare time. I wound up writing the rest of it on the fly here and there even though I kept meaning to go back to my specialty software. Around page 65 I said screw it and just kept writing in Word. Once it was done, I figured I would transcribe it all back into my other software so as to accomplish both proper formatting along with another re-write to smooth out transitions, gaffes, plot holes, etc.

It worked. For example, I wasn’t satisfied with how the bad guy and the good guy met in the Word draft, but I rewrote the scene as I got to it and it works better now. Not great, but better. I’m still reworking that scene in my head because I know there are better ways to do it. I think, however, I’m going to let that go for right now and get another opinion once it’s done. See what notes I get, then apply those to the scene. I have another idea on how to do the scene but it would take far more research than I have time for.

The goal of this was to bang it out in the span of a month or so. It’s now gone over four. But the end is in sight. Honestly. I’m in the mid-40s on the re-re-write now and I’m going to blaze through as much as I can in the next few days. If I can finish it by the weekend and get it to my former professor before heading out on a road trip for the weekend, I’ll be one seriously happy camper. Even if he comes back with “this sucks” it will at least be more feedback on my script writing than I’ve had in the last few years. Not to mention it’ll be a solid monster movie script right around Halloween which is as good a time as any to bombard Hollywood agents with it.

I don’t know if this will sell. That’s less the point for me right now, to be honest. I want to have this completed and sent to my prof for review, then hopefully he’ll send it to his agent with a disclaimer of “Read this now!” at the top. That’s what I want: My work in front of an agent’s eyes for the first time ever.

Regarding money, let me state exactly why every writer in Hollywood is a bullshit artist. To a one, all of them say the same thing: “Write what you want. If it’s good enough, it’ll sell. Don’t write with money in mind. Never do that. Write from your heart.”

Meanwhile, you’re slogging through your personal life story in script form which they know will never sell and they’re cranking out “John Tucker Must Die 2.” Never, ever, ever listen to one of these clowns when they tell you not to worry about the sale. It’s ALL about the sale. This is a business that involves art. It may have been reversed at some point, but not anymore. Thank you, “Star Wars.”

Writing “The Godfather” today will get you no where unless your name is Steven Spielberg, Jerry Bruckheimer, Ridley Scott, James Cameron, or now Christopher Nolan. If you’re established with a proven track record, you can get anything you want done (for the most part). If, however, you’re an outsider like me that no one has ever heard of then your tragic tale of woe and redemption ain’t gonna cut it. Not at all. Hell, it may not even make the festival circuit. If you have personal visions, and I have plenty, write them but do not lead with them.

Hollywood wants what will make them plenty of money, first and foremost. Awards are nice too, but between an Oscar and the grosses of “The Dark Knight,” which do you think studio executives are going to choose every single time?

Is that a deeply cynical view? Nope. It’s a realistic one. Hollywood is a business. It invariably learns the wrong lessons from success but this is where people can capitalize. If a script is rock solid and appeals to a broad demographic, then it will sell. I genuinely believe that. And will continue to believe that until my script gets shot down by every studio in town. At which point my tune shall change.

To that end, what I’m writing should ultimately be pretty solid. Maybe even “Lost Boys” solid if I’m lucky. I’ll settle for “Transylvania 6-5000.”

I’ll let everyone know if it sells. That sound of someone screaming at the top of their lungs will be me. I will likely also be jumping up and down at that time. Worst case scenario, I get feedback on a script my professor enjoyed when he first read it. Hopefully this time he’ll genuinely have something worth loving.

Stay tuned...

Times Are A Changin'

2008-08-25T19:03:00.000-05:00

The Times They Are A Changin’ Come Nov.

My Fair Lady and I purchased our first house last July and closed mid-Sept. Right around one year later, we finally have improved it enough to where we’re satisfied with it. That’s not to say we didn’t like it to begin with. One thing everyone says who sets foot in the house is a variation on this sentence: “Wow, you’re place is so homey!”

It’s even more so now, baby.

We found out in March that we were expecting Holy Screaming Fury v.1 to release in November. Until we settle on an official title, I hath dubbed thee… Pending. We’re excited about Pending, but were more than a little nervous when we looked around Casa de Skim and realized how much work we had to do on the house prior to release. To wit:

• The designated nursery still had boxes in it from Sept.
• The office looked like Poland post Blitzkrieg, if the Nazis had used paper instead of tanks
• A grand total of four pictures were on our walls across the entire house. A large world map showing where we’ve been was hung in our main hallway when we first moved in. The other three were hung this year at my insistence. The remaining wall space was deafening in its emptiness.
• The fountain in the atrium remained hostile towards us. Whenever we plugged it in, it would grind and growl and call us names before allowing a bare trickle of water out. Said trickles would then fall over the edges and spill out onto the tile floor. Again, while the fountain would huff and puff and give me every reason in the world to kick its ass with a sledgehammer.
• The amount of empty space in our front and back yards bordered on ridiculous. After speaking with our neighbor, we learned that the previous tenant did not tend the yard as much as the tenant before them. The result was a series of gaping holes in our grass, branches from our SEVEN TREES in the front yard going every which way, and massive patches of dirt everywhere. This needed to be fixed, ASAP.
• Unwelcome boarders. We discovered in late fall of last year that several unruly squirrels in the neighborhood had long ago labeled our house a flop house. A hostel, if you will. Squirrels backpacking through North Texas were all welcome to crash at our pad for a while before moving on. I think I even saw a sign out once. Not only were they running across the ceiling through the night, but they weren’t even paying rent!

So what was the solution to all of these quandaries? Prioritizing.

That list may not be as long as my annual one to Santa (started a little early this year, Big Guy, so you may get two Fed Ex Overnights from me this year instead of just the one), but there are a load of subtleties per each line item. We have thus far fixed most every issue though, with the side benefit of my ongoing war against the bushy-tailed invaders inspiring notes for a new screenplay, and finished off the nursery and the office this weekend.

Then we figured it would be a smart thing to buy a chest of drawers from IKEA, one that would look nice and that we wouldn’t care about if Pending took up some red and yellow crayons and drew a mural devoted to Dora the Explorer on. Plus, the one we spotted a few weeks back was about half the cost of anything at genuine furniture stores. So we picked it up in the two boxes (we opted to go with the one made by the Poles instead of the Fins, a fact which I now find doubly amusing considering my earlier Poland reference was entirely off the cuff) and brought it home where I unpacked it last night.

My Fair Lady’s reaction was priceless. She walked in after I had everything unpacked and sorted accordingly, took one look and said, “Sweet merciful crap!”

I love a woman who can whip out appropriate “Simpsons” quotes.

“What? You were expecting something smaller?” I asked.

“I just wasn’t expecting so much… wow. Are you gonna be able to do all this?”

“Yeah,” I replied, “It looks fun.”

“FUN?!?!” Yes, she said it in all caps. “Do you know how many guys on The Nest would volunteer for something like this? No one.”

“Recall, dear, that I’m the freak who at five years of age complained that Santa was putting all my G.I. Joe toys together when that was something I wanted to do. My father, standing behind me unbeknownst to Yours Truly at the time, practically fainted from the combination of shock and joy at not having to work so hard every Christmas henceforth.”

What can I say? I like putting stuff together, though only to use. Models, with the exception of LEGOs, I consider a waste of my time. If I’m going to put something together, then I fully intend to use it on a daily basis for more than just a show piece. Toys, furniture, etc. all work for me. I also enjoy jigsaw puzzles, Scrabble, and long walks on the beach at night. Call me.

I managed to get about a third of the way through before sleep pimpslapped me upside the head. But on the whole it was a highly productive weekend. The office is done. The nursery itself is done, and all that’s left is furniture construction. This week will see the delivery of a genuine entertainment center with matching side tables, which will get all electronic cables off the ground and back behind locked doors so that Pending will not inadvertently strangle him/herself while gaming with Daddy.

This will be the culmination of the baby proofing necessary for Casa de Skim. We’ve been told repeatedly that nothing can prepare you for the changes in store. I disagree. I believe that the house can be as ready as humanly possible and once we throw the number of Poison Control and Dominos on the fridge, we will be set. The emotional journey is something entirely different, and one that I’m not focusing on at the moment. There are too many tangible issues on deck at present and the sooner those are knocked off the “To Do” list the better off we’ll be.

More stories to follow, especially once Pending hits release status.

PS – Regarding the fountain, the least it could have done is tell me its airway was constricted. I guess it was giving us a trial run for the last several months which we managed to fail spectacularly. “Is it supposed to sound like that?” “I don’t know, why don’t we dampen the sound in the room so it’ll quiet down.” Yeah, like that’s gonna fly with an infant. Upon taking it apart, draining it, then cleaning it out I found the water tube was bent in half. Fixed it, filled it up, works like a champ now. The fountain gave us failing grades across the board for taking so long to resolve its issues. We have filed an appeal, but the outlook is grim. More on this story as it develops.

Now Playing: Syriana

2008-08-19T20:12:00.000-05:00

I find it amazing when a film is heralded as one of the best of "Insert Year Here" yet it succeeds only in repeating a previous film from the writer. In this case, writer-director Stephen Gaghan ripped himself off by retooling his script for "Traffic" and replaced the international drug trade with the international oil trade. Change the character names and he was good to go.

Overall, "Syriana" isn't a bad film at all, but it is one that I've seen before to the point where I knew the ending about 30 minutes in. For a film proclaimed as deep, heady, and impossible to predict that's pretty sad. I also don't understand why Clooney won an Oscar for his role. He's good, don't get me wrong, but Oscar caliber?

The film takes several branching paths so run with me for a moment. Clooney plays a burned out CIA operative who specializes in Beirut and the Middle East at large. He's conflicted about a missile sale that goes wrong right at the start, and works to regain approval from his bosses to return to the Middle East as soon as possible.

Matt Damon plays an energy analyst based out of Geneva, Switzerland, who trumpets the company line regarding oil futures. He, his wife (played by Amanda Peet), and their two sons live well based on his predictions and he's given an opportunity to sell his firm's services to a reigning Saudi emir. While at the party, a tragic accident strikes their family resulting in Damon working hand-in-hand with the emir's eldest son, played by Alexander Siddig (Yup, Dr. Bashir for you "DS9" fans).

It seems the eldest son is worried about being usurped by his younger brother who has the attention of oil interests lead by Christopher Plummer's character, a grizzled industrialist concerned only with controlling as much of the world's oil supply as possible. Meanwhile, Siddig's character wants to become emir so he can begin to instigate genuine reform in his country, and the region at large.

Naturally, other forces in the CIA and the oil industry, which is holding its breath pending a government greenlight on a merger between two massive companies with control of an untapped field in Asia, wouldn't appreciate the emir's son reforming squat. Meanwhile, two oil workers laid off begin their inexorable drift towards becoming suicide bombers.

Still with me so far?

The short of it is that every step of the oil trade is corrupt and nothing will change unless the oil runs out, or if the men in charge willingly change their practices to allow for the Middle East to implement honest reforms. What are the odds of either happening in our lifetime?

"Syriana" has a lot on its mind and it is a message worth hearing if only for the debate, but it would have been more of a landmark film had it not been little more than a carbon copy of one of the best films of the 90's.

Is this thing on?

2008-08-11T21:24:00.000-05:00

Holy crap.

Talk about time flying and so forth once you get busy. It helps when your personal life spirals damn near out of control and by that I mean it totally consumes you. So let's hit a few highlights before moving on, shall we?

1) Last year I left my job on account of not getting paid for the three months prior. That would be too many pay periods by far, for those keeping score at home. A year later that account was settled up. Ahh, liens on deadbeat property enforced by the Texas Workforce Commission are a fun tool to keep in one's back pocket.

2) While out of work, attempted to make it as a professional writer. Quickly discovered that my lack of drive for the past year and change combined with my natural ADD tendencies meant I was not ideally suited to being my own boss. This resulted in...

3) Finding a temporary job as a substitute teacher at my old high school and middle school. The middle school I went to has long since been torn down and the shiny new one standing in its place made me resoundingly angry that I lacked such awesome tools when I was there. Back in my day we still had an abacus and WE LIKED IT, DAMMIT! This job resulted in pretty consistent work there on account of hitting it off with all the kids and knowing instinctively how to corral the anarchists among them. Finally, I got to deal with people on the same devious intellectual level as my own. Teachers kept calling me wanting me to cover for them, and the kids loved hanging with me. I now have a personal resume designed by two fifth grade girls hanging on my fridge because it's too adorable. More tales will follow.

4) My Fair Lady and I went through a pretty substantial personal loss last winter only to follow it up this spring by the discovery that Yours Truly packs a .44 Magnum that has six bullets in it, punk, and not five. Our little bundle of Holy Screaming Fury is slated to arrive on or about Thanksgiving of this year. Said spawn has already shown a predilection for chocolate brownie sundaes, hamburgers, and ice cream shakes. Definitely mine. Gender is unknown and will remain a mystery until the birth, and many names have been picked out. If you have thoughts or suggestions, feel free to throw them in the pot.

5) Yours Truly obtained a 9-5ish job as a writer this year. While it's in the industry of commercial real estate, something I plum knew nothing about, I know people and I know marketing and I know how to market to people. As such, I was slick enough in my interview to land the gig and have since been working steadily as a marketing guru designing brochures, documents, and the like until recently when I inherited the metrics project from Hell. I am not a spreadsheet guy but fatefully answered yes when El Jefe asked if I knew Excel. Subsequently, I found myself building an extensive database out of Excel which brings up thoughts of suicide roughly once every 45 minutes or so. This is actually down from once every 5 minutes when the project first started. Not sure if this is good or bad progress.

6) Script writing has been extensive to say the least. Wrote a script off and on all last year then finally finished it early this. I'm looking at it right now and it is desperate need of rewriting. Ran into my old college writing professor at school during Brother G's graduation in May and said prof recalled a script I'd written for his class, and expressed his disappointment that I'd never done anything with it. I returned home, pulled it out, skimmed it, threw it out, and started rewriting it from scratch. It's nearing the end and is 100X better than the crap I threw together in 72 hours 10 years ago. He is expecting to read it by the end of this month and shall, come Hell or high water. Ideally, he will pass this on to his agent who will reward me with a sale. Or a very nasty letter saying how much better this was when it was called "Titanic."

7) Also landed a scripting job two weeks ago for an animated short film. A former co-worker rang and wanted to adapt a children's book specifically targeted at cancer patients into an animated film. The idea was to script a short story from it (the book is a series of short stories told by animals to one another), have it professionally animated, then pitch it to possible investors. I turned in the script this past Thursday and my friend read it today and loved it top to bottom. I meet with her and the animator tomorrow and hopefully we'll get something going on this.

8) Also did a rewrite on another former co-worker's short film about spies and that was a lot of fun. He offered me a wordless part as a guy who gets sniped which of course I leaped at. Then his DP got a job working as the DP on Oliver Stone's future bomb W so obviously the short was put on hold. Expect it to resume sometime this fall. Said short is planned to be shopped to various festivals and no doubt my 15 second cameo will result in a sale.

9) The house My Fair Lady and Yours Truly bought last summer continues to take shape. The nursery has been finished save for the installation of new closet doors followed by furniture. But the room is painted, a new fan/ceiling light is installed, new blinds are hung, and the crib is built all courtesy of Yours Truly. Apparently, I know how to install lights on the quick which saves a ton on paying an electrician to do it. Next up is a new entry way fixture which we should pick up in the next few weeks.

10) The future of this blog remains in doubt. While I definitely need to blog more, I'm pondering changing the name to something else. Casa de Skim was funny for me, not so much for people actually looking for something which increasingly I see the value in. I guess it depends on whether I can actually post more than once every other year. Funny enough, I've actually kept up with blog posts but they remain on my flash drive. Call it laziness on my part but the more Word docs I see on that drive the less inclined I get to transferring them to this blog. I'll do it someday. Maybe.

And that brings us up to speed, pretty much. My primary focus now that the nursery is done is the completion of this full script. I'm currently in the 70s and the story continues on at full speed. The problem I hit with the script earlier in the year was that the story ran out around page 86. I know a subsequent rewrite will help that along, but the good news for the current script is that the story hasn't run its course at all. The way things look now it should blow past page 100 easily and in theory top out around pages 110 and 115. In theory.

More as it develops...

Oops, I've done it again

2008-02-05T23:12:00.000-06:00

Look at that. Not a single post in close to a month. At some point I honestly may stop trying to convince myself that I'll post with anything resembling frequency but until that day I'll do what I can to remember I have a blog in the first place. I'm working on what can only be described as life-changing work at the moment, hence my temporary departure from the land of the living. It may not seem like much to the non-writers of the world, but for me it is a major league event:

The completion of my first full screenplay.

Technically it would be my second since I banged one out in 72 hours in college because I was on page 10 on Friday night and 110 more pages of it was due that Monday. But the one was a feeble skeleton held together by cliche and rote whatever, not to mention the caffeine bender from hell, and I think the professor gave me an A on it out of sympathy more than quality. I'd tell you what the details were but I honestly can't recall that weekend. There's a giant blank spot where it was and I had to rely on my ex-girlfriend's account of me walking into the college lunch facility wearing my pajamas to assemble anything close to a full memory.

As it stands, this is one that I've been working on for close to a year off and on and since I've finally, finally, finally decided to stop being, well, an indecisive tosser and actually be a writer, then it helps to finish one project before moving on to the next. The result goes something like this: I finish this script in either by or during this coming weekend. I print the entire monster out (which should be between 110 and 130 pages) then I'm going to let it sit on my desk for one entire week. If I have thoughts about it, I'll make notes and stickie them to the script. But I ain't making a single edit until exactly 168 hours have passed me by.

At which point, comes the re-write. Followed shortly thereafter by the polish, then the re-polish. During the one week interim period, I intend to get cranking on fine-tuning two outlines I've played with on additional scripts. One is a detective thriller and the other is a horror film. God only knows why but these things pop into my head and won't let go, so I may as well give 'em a chance to run around and play.

During this time I've been working as a substitute teacher to bring in additional funds to the household and believe me when I say there is a gigantor post coming about those experiences. I've also been burning through movies and should start posting those reviews shortly. In the meantime, know that I'm still around, alive, and actually working on being a professional at all this which includes my current job search for full-time employment. I have some good leads, applied to one in particular tonight I'm anxious about, and here's hoping I'll have something by my birthday in a few weeks.

For now, it's off to sleep and tomorrow I'll keep writing.

Updates

2008-01-09T10:09:00.000-06:00

You know you're behind on your reviews when you have to pull up your Netflix queue history just to remind yourself of everything you watched in the last month. Plenty of reviews are coming over the next few weeks along with a some more stories and possible change of Blog title. "Casa de Skim" struck me as an amusing personal joke but not one any body outside of me is likely to find funny. As such, I will change the title of the blog soon once I decide on a better name for it.

Maybe then I might actually get some more traffic in addition to my parents. Hi mom!

Personal Best... ish

2008-01-09T10:03:00.000-06:00

My Fair Lady queued "The Talented Mr. Ripley" this weekend and decided to watch it yesterday. She made it a grand total of 13 minutes in before declaring, "This is stupid!" That beats my record of making it 25 minutes into the film before deciding it was awful.

Yet for some inexplicable reason both my mom and Diva enjoyed it. Go figure.

Happy New Year 2008

2008-01-09T09:54:00.000-06:00

Why not start off the New Year with a video that's just hilarious. And I mean that in the strangest possible way.

Terry Tate Compilation

2007-12-14T15:31:00.000-06:00

"The pain train's coming for you! Woo-woo! Woo-woo!"

Whoever came up with this ad campaign at Reebok is hopefully running the company now because it was nine kinds of genius. Terry Tate - Office Linebacker is iconic and the ads are so blasted funny it is physically impossible to keep a straight face through any of them. Each spot has is packed with quotable lines so picking one or two favorites is nigh impossible. Someone on the interwebs compiled most of the ads into one 10 minute spot on YouTube and here it is.

Behold, the genius that is Terry Tate - Office Linebacker:

The missing ones I know of explain how Terry was "discovered" and his "sensitivity training," both of which are absolutely hysterical. Sensitivity Training and the OSPN Terry Tate restrospective. Enjoy.

Now Playing: Hollywood Homicide

2007-12-14T09:12:00.000-06:00

Harrison Ford, why hast thou forsaken me?

This is Indiana Jones, Han Solo, and John Book. Anyone that grew up in the 1980s idolized him, yet his last genuine hit was the over-amped Air Force One 10 years ago (and I’m not counting the awful What Lies Beneath because that film, like this one, sucked). Instead of using his 30 years worth of clout to only work with the best, he apparently doesn’t care anymore.

I swear I don’t know what goes on in the man’s head when he goes out of his way to star in unfunny tripe like Hollywood Homicide when it is so clearly beneath him that even he doesn’t seem cognizant of which film he’s in.

Not helping matters is the fact that his partner is played by Mr. Lacking Personality himself, Josh Hartnett. This is another case of an undeserving actor having a career when no semblance of talent is ever on screen. His character, of course, wants to be an actor, which proves unintentionally ironic during his thespian displays of shouting “Stella!” at the top of his lungs. About the only time he’s convincing during the film is... wait, nope. I can’t finish that sentence with a straight face so let’s move on to what else fails.

The plot involves a rap group finding themselves on the wrong end of a machine gun at a club, and when the cops are called in to investigate they find their personal lives intertwined with the case. Think of a cop movie cliché and I guarantee you it makes an appearance somewhere, which is shocking considering the amount of talent both in front of and behind the camera. There are plenty of big names who sort of blow through their roles as though they’re just doing this for the paycheck and aren’t ashamed to let it show. Martin Landau has an Oscar, last I heard, yet he's playing a knock-off of Robert Evans who was better spoofed by Dustin Hoffman in Wag the Dog.

Just sayin'.

It's funny now to watch Isaiah Washington play the rage-filled music mogul behind everything, because of the hostility which bounced him from "Grey's Anatomy." The ultra-hot Lena Olin appears as Ford's psychic girlfriend and like Keith David as Ford's supervisor, is completely, utterly wasted. So much talent, so little script. The film is not serious enough to become emotionally involved with, funny enough to laugh at, or sleazy enough to revel in. It limps along to its conclusion, the least exciting car chase I think I've ever seen followed by equally unexciting show downs with the villains.

While I may have a glimmer of hope for the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, it has more to do with the combination of Lucas, Spielberg, Ford, and the return of Karen Allen than with Ford by himself. By this point, I think it’s obvious that the man doesn’t care anymore which is heartbreaking for fans. When Ford wants to, he proves time and again that he’s more than an actor. He’s an icon.

I sincerely wish he would care about something again, and soon.

Now Playing: Modern Romance

2007-12-13T09:45:00.000-06:00

"Petey... Carol... Petey... Carol..."

Albert Brooks walks a fine line for me. Sometimes he’s funny while others he comes off as annoying. I think it depends on how likable he is in his films. Witness Finding Nemo or Defending Your Life where his schtick works because the characters are genuinely heartfelt, sweet characters who try their best but are held back by their personal fears.

I bring up those examples because his work in Modern Romance falls on its face immediately after the opening. By the end of the film, literally nothing has changed for any of the characters and Brooks' neurosis fail to come off cute and register instead as stalker-ish.

He plays Robert, a film editor currently working on a sci-fi film starring George Kennedy, and is in a semi-continuous relationship with Mary, played by the luscious Kathryn Harrold. The opening scene is hilarious as he meets her for dinner then tries to break up with her. Robert demands she not call him, then Mary looks him straight in the eye and asks, “This time?”

It turns out they break up all the time, then get back together, only to break up later and Robert isn’t as much in love with Mary as he is with the pain and essential "rebirth" of the breakup-makeup process.

The film does have its moments like when Robert, post-breakup, is flying high on Quaaludes, but it has one note it hits repeatedly for 90 minutes and it’s not a good one. His first date after the breakup laid me out but afterwards the film simply wasn’t very funny.

Alright, the George Kennedy film was pretty funny as was the discussion with the director afterwards but that’s it. Certainly nothing funny happened after that. Oh Albert, why won’t you make me laugh more? You know I love you, don’t you?

Imagine a film like that and you have Modern Romance. I was hitting my head on the desk in frustration from the moment he finds the phone bill through to the credits, so thanks for the migraine, Al. I suspected based on the premise that My Fair Lady wouldn’t find any of the film funny and when I gave her a verbal highlight reel her response was succinct:

“That doesn’t sound very romantic. Or funny. Why would I watch that?”

Exactly.

This may come with the reputation of being Albert Brooks’ masterpiece but it says less about modern romance than it does about Brooks’ desire to be in a room where Harrold disrobes completely before climbing into bed with him.

If nothing else, you have to admire her willingness to show off her killer, and all-natural, body and for that alone I thank Albert Brooks. But the rest of the film could have been spent, I don’t know, maybe playing a character that actually funny. Or grows.

Then again, Brooks’ point is that that’s the joke. It’s too bad no one told him it wasn't a funny one.