Richard Dansky's Blog, page 15
June 7, 2012
Things You Do Not Want To See On A Plane
I had a cross-country flight last week, Charlotte to Phoenix. Window seat, which was good; next to last row of the plane, which was potentially not as good. Normally I don't mind, as that section tends to be a little less crowded, and engine noise is white noise to me because I can't sleep on planes anyway. On the other hand, if there's a tight connection to make (like there was this time) or someone made the wrong choice at the airport food court before boarding (which there thankfully wasn't this time), then it can be a long and fragrant trip indeed.
What there was this time, however, were a couple of small kids. Behind me was a mother and a wee one. The flight attendant asked the woman sharing their row if she'd take an upgrade to a first class window seat, which would allow the dad-unit to sit with his family. She, however, refused, stating that she'd reserved an aisle seat and, by God, she was staying in her aisle seat. This was her right; there's nothing forcing you to take an upgrade, and maybe she had a very good reason for preferring an aisle seat. On the other hand, the small child did not agree with her logic, and this made said child unhappy. Very unhappy.
There was also another small child two rows up. This one was apparently with the whole family, but was not fond of either air travel, apple juice, or some combination of the two. So mid-flight, his apple juice ended up on his parents, on the ceiling, and on me. Somehow, he managed to angle it right to completely avoid the folks in the row in front of me, which impressed me to no end; most toddlers don't get bank shots until they're at least 4. But this one, definitely an apple juice prodigy.
Meanwhile, kid behind me was definitely missing dad. This meant upset, and it meant loud. It also meant bored, which meant squirming around in and around his seat.
And under the seat in front of him. Mine.
Which meant that at one point I felt something brush my foot. I looked down, and I saw small child-sized body parts that were not mine. For an instant I thought I was in a J-horror film, before sanity took over and I realized it was just the magnificently lunged chair kicker from the seat behind me. After a minute, he got bored and slid back up, and things went back to loud, which was to say normal.
And I thought about it for a while, and I realized a few things. One, I do not blame small children for making noise, fidgeting or otherwise doing things small children do while they are on planes. They are small children, after all, and they are trapped in a single seat for what must be an eternity with a whole bunch of strangers, none of whom want to play. They can't move around, they can't really play, half the time they can't see Mommy or Daddy, and they're no doubt bored senseless. A little squirming and noise is about par for the course.
Two, unless things are particularly egregious, I don't blame the parents if a kid starts fussing. Airfares being what they are, nobody's saying to their spouse, "Hey, honey, let's pack up the toddler and go ruin someone else's plane trip for shits and grins." They're not bringing kids on board for the express purpose of having them fuss. Air travel is annoying enough by itself; adding a small child or two to the mix has to make it a helluva lot harder. So no, I don't think that the parents in row 14 are deliberately goading their kid to caterwaul for the sheer sadism of it; I'm thinking they probably wish they could get a nap, too.
And three, bearing all this in mind, having small kids on the plane can potentially make for a less enjoyable travel experience. I prefer my flights to not produce unexpected intersections with apple juice. I prefer not to look down and see parts of people who are not me under my chair. I prefer not to hear "BLAWWW!" every five minutes or so to hearing it. None of this makes me a bad person, or anti-child, or whatever. Travel with additional complications is generally less fun than travel without; that's all. What I can do without, however, are the missing middle fanatics who instantly assume that because I don't like getting randomly juiced, I hate all children. I can also use fewer of their equivalents on the other side, who, at the slightest unapproved peep from a small child mid-flight instantly start decrying the parents as ignorant slatterns who never should have been allowed to breed, or to come out in public once they had spawned because they had done so simply to inconvenience the rest of us.
To both groups, I say a gentle "get over yourselves". Sometimes stuff simply...is, without the need for a moral stance or outrage or a big production number attached. Sometimes you can appreciate that a situation's less pleasant than it might be without it being malicious or soul-threatening, and without thinking that it's all about you. Sometimes you can accept that not everything a stranger's kid does is wonderful and darling to everyone, and that's just fine, too. Sometimes a bag of airline pretzels is just a bag of airline pretzels. You get the idea.
And in the meantime, if I fly US Air again, I'm definitely requesting the "no random body parts underneath me" section.
What there was this time, however, were a couple of small kids. Behind me was a mother and a wee one. The flight attendant asked the woman sharing their row if she'd take an upgrade to a first class window seat, which would allow the dad-unit to sit with his family. She, however, refused, stating that she'd reserved an aisle seat and, by God, she was staying in her aisle seat. This was her right; there's nothing forcing you to take an upgrade, and maybe she had a very good reason for preferring an aisle seat. On the other hand, the small child did not agree with her logic, and this made said child unhappy. Very unhappy.
There was also another small child two rows up. This one was apparently with the whole family, but was not fond of either air travel, apple juice, or some combination of the two. So mid-flight, his apple juice ended up on his parents, on the ceiling, and on me. Somehow, he managed to angle it right to completely avoid the folks in the row in front of me, which impressed me to no end; most toddlers don't get bank shots until they're at least 4. But this one, definitely an apple juice prodigy.
Meanwhile, kid behind me was definitely missing dad. This meant upset, and it meant loud. It also meant bored, which meant squirming around in and around his seat.
And under the seat in front of him. Mine.
Which meant that at one point I felt something brush my foot. I looked down, and I saw small child-sized body parts that were not mine. For an instant I thought I was in a J-horror film, before sanity took over and I realized it was just the magnificently lunged chair kicker from the seat behind me. After a minute, he got bored and slid back up, and things went back to loud, which was to say normal.
And I thought about it for a while, and I realized a few things. One, I do not blame small children for making noise, fidgeting or otherwise doing things small children do while they are on planes. They are small children, after all, and they are trapped in a single seat for what must be an eternity with a whole bunch of strangers, none of whom want to play. They can't move around, they can't really play, half the time they can't see Mommy or Daddy, and they're no doubt bored senseless. A little squirming and noise is about par for the course.
Two, unless things are particularly egregious, I don't blame the parents if a kid starts fussing. Airfares being what they are, nobody's saying to their spouse, "Hey, honey, let's pack up the toddler and go ruin someone else's plane trip for shits and grins." They're not bringing kids on board for the express purpose of having them fuss. Air travel is annoying enough by itself; adding a small child or two to the mix has to make it a helluva lot harder. So no, I don't think that the parents in row 14 are deliberately goading their kid to caterwaul for the sheer sadism of it; I'm thinking they probably wish they could get a nap, too.
And three, bearing all this in mind, having small kids on the plane can potentially make for a less enjoyable travel experience. I prefer my flights to not produce unexpected intersections with apple juice. I prefer not to look down and see parts of people who are not me under my chair. I prefer not to hear "BLAWWW!" every five minutes or so to hearing it. None of this makes me a bad person, or anti-child, or whatever. Travel with additional complications is generally less fun than travel without; that's all. What I can do without, however, are the missing middle fanatics who instantly assume that because I don't like getting randomly juiced, I hate all children. I can also use fewer of their equivalents on the other side, who, at the slightest unapproved peep from a small child mid-flight instantly start decrying the parents as ignorant slatterns who never should have been allowed to breed, or to come out in public once they had spawned because they had done so simply to inconvenience the rest of us.
To both groups, I say a gentle "get over yourselves". Sometimes stuff simply...is, without the need for a moral stance or outrage or a big production number attached. Sometimes you can appreciate that a situation's less pleasant than it might be without it being malicious or soul-threatening, and without thinking that it's all about you. Sometimes you can accept that not everything a stranger's kid does is wonderful and darling to everyone, and that's just fine, too. Sometimes a bag of airline pretzels is just a bag of airline pretzels. You get the idea.
And in the meantime, if I fly US Air again, I'm definitely requesting the "no random body parts underneath me" section.
June 5, 2012
Swimming In It
So here is a simple question: If you are buying a property, do you want access to the best information about the property, or do you want to be limited to certain types of information allowed to you by the builder?
The answer, I think, would be obvious. Caveat emptor, yes, but part of emptor-ing is getting the best information possible. And if that information isn't available - if it has been legally prevented from being given to you - then you're probably going to be unhappy. Especially if, say, that information is about how likely your home is to be underwater in a decade or two, which might have some impact on the value of your investment.
Needless to say, I'm talking about the idiotic legislation rammed through by a group called NC-20, which claims to be "a partnership of the people, local governments, and businesses of the 20 coastal (CAMA) Counties in North Carolina dedicated to economic development of the member counties." It makes sense, of course, for them to drive legislation that's helpful to new development, even at the cost of consumer protections; the group's run by a builder. You can charge a lot for beachfront property, at least you can if you ignore the inconvenient possibility of that property being knee-deep in kelp in thirty years. Builders don't want to give up that cash cow because of what might happen in a decade, or two, or six. Counties don't want to give it up because construction means jobs and tax revenue, and new houses means new tax revenue and customers for local businesses, and money money money all around. It's all very practical, then, to drive for legislation to prohibit any looks at sea level rise that might possibly endanger those profits. It's just good business, right?
Except, of course, that it's bad business. Because if the waters do rise - and they will - then all of a sudden a lot of people who are stuck with houses they can't sell because they're sitting ten feet offshore are going to look at the circumstances under which they were sold those houses, and they're going to reach for their lawyers. There's going to be the mother of all class action suits, and it's going to cost those twenty counties - and the state - an obscene amount of money. But the builders, the ones who made out like bandits on this? They'll be long gone, leaving the rest of Carolina holding the bag.
There's some vague effort on NC-20's site to claim that they are concerned about the environment. There's also linkage to various bits of climate science denial, including the ever popular "Newsweek said in 1975 it was going to get cold, so there's no reason to believe anything anyone says about climate now. Look, kids, in 1975 we thought the Bay City Rollers were cool. We had computers that wouldn't be able to handle Zaxxon. People wore corduroy, and the Oakland A's were a good baseball team. In other words, a hell of a lot has changed, and doing a false equivalency between a Newsweek article from then and a helluva lot of peer reviewed scientific research now is just plain silly. There are some other links to some other papers, all of which seem to be mutually contradictory and one of which has comments sections full of evolution-deniers and fluoride conspiracy theorists and suchlike, and, well, let's put it this way: if you're going to argue against anthropogenic global warming, these may not be the guys you want doing it for you.
And even if, for whatever reason, you don't buy into the same data that 97% of scientists working in the field do, you should be appalled at business writing the rules about science for the rest of us. The repercussions of that are, if you'll excuse the term, chilling. I don't want tobacco companies lobbying to eliminate certain cancer statistics because it might cut into their profits. I don't want natural gas companies writing the laws on groundwater pollution if they're going to be engaged in pumping chemicals into my aquifer. And I don't want real estate developers trying to dictate what science can or can't be used to protect their bottom line.
So, even if you've got no truck with the so-called "Warmists" you've got to ask yourself, is this a precedent you're really comfortable with? I'm guessing probably not.
The answer, I think, would be obvious. Caveat emptor, yes, but part of emptor-ing is getting the best information possible. And if that information isn't available - if it has been legally prevented from being given to you - then you're probably going to be unhappy. Especially if, say, that information is about how likely your home is to be underwater in a decade or two, which might have some impact on the value of your investment.
Needless to say, I'm talking about the idiotic legislation rammed through by a group called NC-20, which claims to be "a partnership of the people, local governments, and businesses of the 20 coastal (CAMA) Counties in North Carolina dedicated to economic development of the member counties." It makes sense, of course, for them to drive legislation that's helpful to new development, even at the cost of consumer protections; the group's run by a builder. You can charge a lot for beachfront property, at least you can if you ignore the inconvenient possibility of that property being knee-deep in kelp in thirty years. Builders don't want to give up that cash cow because of what might happen in a decade, or two, or six. Counties don't want to give it up because construction means jobs and tax revenue, and new houses means new tax revenue and customers for local businesses, and money money money all around. It's all very practical, then, to drive for legislation to prohibit any looks at sea level rise that might possibly endanger those profits. It's just good business, right?
Except, of course, that it's bad business. Because if the waters do rise - and they will - then all of a sudden a lot of people who are stuck with houses they can't sell because they're sitting ten feet offshore are going to look at the circumstances under which they were sold those houses, and they're going to reach for their lawyers. There's going to be the mother of all class action suits, and it's going to cost those twenty counties - and the state - an obscene amount of money. But the builders, the ones who made out like bandits on this? They'll be long gone, leaving the rest of Carolina holding the bag.
There's some vague effort on NC-20's site to claim that they are concerned about the environment. There's also linkage to various bits of climate science denial, including the ever popular "Newsweek said in 1975 it was going to get cold, so there's no reason to believe anything anyone says about climate now. Look, kids, in 1975 we thought the Bay City Rollers were cool. We had computers that wouldn't be able to handle Zaxxon. People wore corduroy, and the Oakland A's were a good baseball team. In other words, a hell of a lot has changed, and doing a false equivalency between a Newsweek article from then and a helluva lot of peer reviewed scientific research now is just plain silly. There are some other links to some other papers, all of which seem to be mutually contradictory and one of which has comments sections full of evolution-deniers and fluoride conspiracy theorists and suchlike, and, well, let's put it this way: if you're going to argue against anthropogenic global warming, these may not be the guys you want doing it for you.
And even if, for whatever reason, you don't buy into the same data that 97% of scientists working in the field do, you should be appalled at business writing the rules about science for the rest of us. The repercussions of that are, if you'll excuse the term, chilling. I don't want tobacco companies lobbying to eliminate certain cancer statistics because it might cut into their profits. I don't want natural gas companies writing the laws on groundwater pollution if they're going to be engaged in pumping chemicals into my aquifer. And I don't want real estate developers trying to dictate what science can or can't be used to protect their bottom line.
So, even if you've got no truck with the so-called "Warmists" you've got to ask yourself, is this a precedent you're really comfortable with? I'm guessing probably not.
May 28, 2012
Oh. Hey. Stuff.
A new book review is up over at Green Man. This one's for Robert Kroese's
Mercury Rises
, which hovers in roughly the same neighborhood as Good Omens.
Ghost Recon: Future Soldier is out. You should go play it, as it is massively shootery goodness.
You can still get the super-dooper all-editions version of Don't Read This Book , edited by Chuck Wendig and featuring my story "Don't Be Your Father". And of course, there's still the award-winning Haunted: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror, with "The Man Who Built Haunted Houses".
And that's about all I'm allowed to talk about this week. Next week, maybe something a little different...
Ghost Recon: Future Soldier is out. You should go play it, as it is massively shootery goodness.
You can still get the super-dooper all-editions version of Don't Read This Book , edited by Chuck Wendig and featuring my story "Don't Be Your Father". And of course, there's still the award-winning Haunted: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror, with "The Man Who Built Haunted Houses".
And that's about all I'm allowed to talk about this week. Next week, maybe something a little different...
May 22, 2012
GRFS GRFS GRFS
Tonight, we had midnight launch events for Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. Various Red Storm folk went to various local Gamestops and hung out, signed autographs, talked to folks and generally celebrated the fact that GR:FS was, as they say, a thing.
Me, I went to the store closest to my home, which is to say the Brier Creek one. I've spent a lot of money there over the years, gotten to know some of the folks who work there, and so it was a cool thing to share. I'd never done a midnight launch, you see. They were always kind of for other people. Various games I've worked on have had various degrees of launch pomp and circumstance - anything from massive star-studded launch parties in Hollywood to "wait, that came out? Really?"
So tonight was kind of special. This game has been a long time coming, and there's a lot of blood and sweat and tears and other, possibly less identifiable fluids that went into it (OK, there was a memorable trip to Harry's New York Bar in Paris, where the fluid in question was an absinthe cocktail served up by the greatest bartender in the history of humanity, but I digress), and to see it finally real - and to see folks that eager to play it, well that meant a lot.
And the best part was, as we signed posters and game cases and discs and bandannas, that so many of the folks who were there thanked us for making the game."We know you worked hard." "I appreciate how hard you guys must have worked." "Ghost Recon was the first game I ever played online - thanks for that." "I came here straight from work." Yeah, I know it sounds corny, but that really did mean something. The understanding that a lot of people - actual people, who busted their butts for a long time to make this thing happen and deserve recognition for the long hours and late nights they put in - made this, instead of a faceless company, well, I like to think that's a good thing.
Which leads me to say this: thank you, to the folks who showed up tonight, and to the folks who are excited to play the game. It doesn't happen without you, either.
Me, I went to the store closest to my home, which is to say the Brier Creek one. I've spent a lot of money there over the years, gotten to know some of the folks who work there, and so it was a cool thing to share. I'd never done a midnight launch, you see. They were always kind of for other people. Various games I've worked on have had various degrees of launch pomp and circumstance - anything from massive star-studded launch parties in Hollywood to "wait, that came out? Really?"
So tonight was kind of special. This game has been a long time coming, and there's a lot of blood and sweat and tears and other, possibly less identifiable fluids that went into it (OK, there was a memorable trip to Harry's New York Bar in Paris, where the fluid in question was an absinthe cocktail served up by the greatest bartender in the history of humanity, but I digress), and to see it finally real - and to see folks that eager to play it, well that meant a lot.
And the best part was, as we signed posters and game cases and discs and bandannas, that so many of the folks who were there thanked us for making the game."We know you worked hard." "I appreciate how hard you guys must have worked." "Ghost Recon was the first game I ever played online - thanks for that." "I came here straight from work." Yeah, I know it sounds corny, but that really did mean something. The understanding that a lot of people - actual people, who busted their butts for a long time to make this thing happen and deserve recognition for the long hours and late nights they put in - made this, instead of a faceless company, well, I like to think that's a good thing.
Which leads me to say this: thank you, to the folks who showed up tonight, and to the folks who are excited to play the game. It doesn't happen without you, either.
May 7, 2012
A Thought on Amendment One
Dear Friends:
If you live in North Carolina, I would humbly request that you exercise your right as a citizen tomorrow and vote, and that when you do so, you vote against Amendment One. Regardless of your stance on gay marriage and civil unions - and I am not going to attempt to change anyone's mind to my way of thinking, because, frankly, that trick never works - you should vote against this thing. You should vote against it because it is bad for North Carolina.
It drives off potential skill workers who might exist in "non-traditional" civil unions. Drive off the talent, and you make North Carolina a less appealing place for employers. Make North Carolina a less appealing place for employers, and companies leave. And when companies leave, jobs leave.
So.
Vote against the job-killing legislation. Even if you don't support the right of two consenting adults to get married because of their particular biology, this thing's bad for you. And for all of us.
If you live in North Carolina, I would humbly request that you exercise your right as a citizen tomorrow and vote, and that when you do so, you vote against Amendment One. Regardless of your stance on gay marriage and civil unions - and I am not going to attempt to change anyone's mind to my way of thinking, because, frankly, that trick never works - you should vote against this thing. You should vote against it because it is bad for North Carolina.
It drives off potential skill workers who might exist in "non-traditional" civil unions. Drive off the talent, and you make North Carolina a less appealing place for employers. Make North Carolina a less appealing place for employers, and companies leave. And when companies leave, jobs leave.
So.
Vote against the job-killing legislation. Even if you don't support the right of two consenting adults to get married because of their particular biology, this thing's bad for you. And for all of us.
May 1, 2012
The Stages of Response to Bad Books
The idea that a book is somehow sacred because it is, well, a book, is hooey. There are plenty of crappy books out there, and anyone who says they haven't encountered one is either lying, sheltered, or possessed of such generous taste that they'd call Tarnsman of Gor a "sensitive coming of age story". Reactions to lousy books differ, but they tend to come in a few broad categories:
Resignation - Commonly expressed by readers who haven't yet figured out that you don't have to finish every book you start, much in the same way you don't actually have to clean your plate. In economics, they call this a sunk cost; in the real world, it's called throwing good money, time, and brain space after bad. But no matter how bad a book is, there are those who will grimly slog to the finish, just to say they finished. At that point, they will take it as a badge of honor that they managed to do so, under the mistaken impression that someone gives a damn, or that they've unlocked some sort of book-based XBox Live achievement. Fortunately, most readers grow out of this stage.
Indignation - Also known as "I can do better than this crap", this is the inspirational response that causes the reader to put down a bad book and actually try to write. Whether it actually produces writing that is, on average, better than the stuff that inspired it is debatable, but at least it means fewer people reading crap books on airplanes.
Rage - The penultimate stage of reaction, this occurs when the reader comes to the conclusion that not only is the book they're reading bad, but they've also wasted some combination of both time and money, i.e. part of their life they will never get back, engaging with it. The realization that they have spent time on, oh, let's say a science fiction novel that features loving descriptions of how the heroine saves the galaxy by repeatedly flashing her rack at space aliens who fire AK-47s that they could have spent doing literally anything else is enough to bring out a Hulk-like rage, often punctuated by the book in question going airborne. While counterproductive, it's quite cathartic.
Peace - Eventually, one comes to the place where one can simply realize a book is bad, put it down, and never bother with it again. If one has truly achieved bad book enlightenment, one can discern which of one's friends might actually enjoy said book and gift it to them, without judgment or commentary. This is the ideal to which many of us achieve - the wisdom to choose the right book, the confidence to put the wrong book down, and the grace to let it find its audience.
For my part, I'm perfectly content to stick with Rage, which is one of the reasons I haven't migrated my reading to any electronic platform. There's always the chance that I'll let fly before realizing that, oops, that was the surprisingly aerodynamic iPad that just went across the office, and nobody wants that.
Resignation - Commonly expressed by readers who haven't yet figured out that you don't have to finish every book you start, much in the same way you don't actually have to clean your plate. In economics, they call this a sunk cost; in the real world, it's called throwing good money, time, and brain space after bad. But no matter how bad a book is, there are those who will grimly slog to the finish, just to say they finished. At that point, they will take it as a badge of honor that they managed to do so, under the mistaken impression that someone gives a damn, or that they've unlocked some sort of book-based XBox Live achievement. Fortunately, most readers grow out of this stage.
Indignation - Also known as "I can do better than this crap", this is the inspirational response that causes the reader to put down a bad book and actually try to write. Whether it actually produces writing that is, on average, better than the stuff that inspired it is debatable, but at least it means fewer people reading crap books on airplanes.
Rage - The penultimate stage of reaction, this occurs when the reader comes to the conclusion that not only is the book they're reading bad, but they've also wasted some combination of both time and money, i.e. part of their life they will never get back, engaging with it. The realization that they have spent time on, oh, let's say a science fiction novel that features loving descriptions of how the heroine saves the galaxy by repeatedly flashing her rack at space aliens who fire AK-47s that they could have spent doing literally anything else is enough to bring out a Hulk-like rage, often punctuated by the book in question going airborne. While counterproductive, it's quite cathartic.
Peace - Eventually, one comes to the place where one can simply realize a book is bad, put it down, and never bother with it again. If one has truly achieved bad book enlightenment, one can discern which of one's friends might actually enjoy said book and gift it to them, without judgment or commentary. This is the ideal to which many of us achieve - the wisdom to choose the right book, the confidence to put the wrong book down, and the grace to let it find its audience.
For my part, I'm perfectly content to stick with Rage, which is one of the reasons I haven't migrated my reading to any electronic platform. There's always the chance that I'll let fly before realizing that, oops, that was the surprisingly aerodynamic iPad that just went across the office, and nobody wants that.
April 29, 2012
Submit!
Hey, folks - just want to send out a quick reminder about two upcoming submissions deadlines.
The first is the 30th of April, and it's the deadline for the issue of Wily Writers I'll be guest editing. The guidelines are here, and the topic is Cryptofiction. What is Cryptofiction, you ask? It's fiction about sasquatches, yeti, Mongolian Death Worms, Nessie, and more - about critters that just might exist for real. If you've got a story about a skunk ape, I want to see it.
The second is on the 2nd of May - it's the deadline for getting in submissions for the Game Narrative Summit at GDC Online in Austin this October. The guidelines are here; the conference is, in my humble opinion, a superb place to hobnob with those who care about writing and narrative in games, as well as being located in Austin. So, in short, if you think you have something to say about narrative in games, pitch a talk. And pitch it quickly :-)
The first is the 30th of April, and it's the deadline for the issue of Wily Writers I'll be guest editing. The guidelines are here, and the topic is Cryptofiction. What is Cryptofiction, you ask? It's fiction about sasquatches, yeti, Mongolian Death Worms, Nessie, and more - about critters that just might exist for real. If you've got a story about a skunk ape, I want to see it.
The second is on the 2nd of May - it's the deadline for getting in submissions for the Game Narrative Summit at GDC Online in Austin this October. The guidelines are here; the conference is, in my humble opinion, a superb place to hobnob with those who care about writing and narrative in games, as well as being located in Austin. So, in short, if you think you have something to say about narrative in games, pitch a talk. And pitch it quickly :-)
April 26, 2012
Ne'er More
The Raven
is not the worst movie I have ever seen in a theater.
When I was 12 years old, a bunch of friends and I biked down to the GCC Orleans 8 at Roosevelt Mall in Philly and paid hard-earned cash for Treasure of the Four Crowns (in 3D) . That movie was so bad, I have blocked out everything about it except the final shot, wherein a snake shoots out of a skull's eye socket, directly at the audience. It was the 80s, and it was 3D.
When I lived in Atlanta, I spent a rainy evening sitting in a theater watching Lawnmower Man 2: Jobe's War . I would like to take this opportunity to apologize profusely to the young lady who went with me; to be fair, the other choices that evening weren't any better, and I had these vague hopes that the presence of Matt Frewer would at least render the film tolerable. I was wrong, and that was the second-worst movie I'd ever seen in a theater.
The third-worst movie I ever saw in a theater was Doogal , a re-dubbed version of a CGI movie based on a European kid's show. It featured the vocal talents of both Jon Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen, which meant that for my wife, it was the equivalent of porn. Three minutes in, she leaned over and whispered, "Honey, I'm so sorry".
Which means, despite stiff competition from Fantastic Four 2 and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Date Movie , The Raven is probably the fourth-worst movie I've ever seen in a theater.
Now, I am sure of a couple of things. I am sure that there are those among you who will go see it and feel that I'm way off base. That's your right; if you can find enjoyment in it, you have my heartfelt blessing. I'm also sure that even if you do like it, you will find laughing out loud at the closing credits sequence, which looks to have wandered in from an entirely different movie, one which possibly starred Matt Damon, or Daniel Craig. And I am absolutely certain that you will agree that, receding hairline or no, John Cusack looks nothing like Edgar Allan Poe.
Cusack's just part of the problem with the film. He's at least energetic at points, though he walks into every scene with his face in an "o" of surprise. Most of the rest of the acting is so wooden that they should spray the theater for termites. I'm guessing that was director James McTeigue's take on "period" - everyone's so stiff they sound like they've already been embalmed. Then again, that may be the fault of the script, which manages to hit the sweet spot of nearly limitless exposition - this thing lays more pipe than the Keystone XL - with still leaving plot points major and minor unexplained.
The internal logic of the film is spotty, too. The villain demands that our hero, the occasionally alcoholic Poe, perform a specific task, and then goes about making it impossible for him to perform it (he somehow does it anyway, largely offscreen). A lantern that's blown out in one shot is lit in the next; the richest man in Baltimore apparently belongs to a parish church miles from civilization. And of course, the plot is set up that the villain is yet another supervillain serial killer, capable of performing astonishing acts of butchery, carpentry, mechanical engineering and masonry on a timeframe that would make The Flash blush.
In a nutshell, this film lives at the intersection of Sherlock Holmes 2 and Saw 4 : a famous period detective-type, mixed up with moments of torture porn. If that's your thing, go for it. It certainly wasn't mine.
When I was 12 years old, a bunch of friends and I biked down to the GCC Orleans 8 at Roosevelt Mall in Philly and paid hard-earned cash for Treasure of the Four Crowns (in 3D) . That movie was so bad, I have blocked out everything about it except the final shot, wherein a snake shoots out of a skull's eye socket, directly at the audience. It was the 80s, and it was 3D.
When I lived in Atlanta, I spent a rainy evening sitting in a theater watching Lawnmower Man 2: Jobe's War . I would like to take this opportunity to apologize profusely to the young lady who went with me; to be fair, the other choices that evening weren't any better, and I had these vague hopes that the presence of Matt Frewer would at least render the film tolerable. I was wrong, and that was the second-worst movie I'd ever seen in a theater.
The third-worst movie I ever saw in a theater was Doogal , a re-dubbed version of a CGI movie based on a European kid's show. It featured the vocal talents of both Jon Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen, which meant that for my wife, it was the equivalent of porn. Three minutes in, she leaned over and whispered, "Honey, I'm so sorry".
Which means, despite stiff competition from Fantastic Four 2 and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Date Movie , The Raven is probably the fourth-worst movie I've ever seen in a theater.
Now, I am sure of a couple of things. I am sure that there are those among you who will go see it and feel that I'm way off base. That's your right; if you can find enjoyment in it, you have my heartfelt blessing. I'm also sure that even if you do like it, you will find laughing out loud at the closing credits sequence, which looks to have wandered in from an entirely different movie, one which possibly starred Matt Damon, or Daniel Craig. And I am absolutely certain that you will agree that, receding hairline or no, John Cusack looks nothing like Edgar Allan Poe.
Cusack's just part of the problem with the film. He's at least energetic at points, though he walks into every scene with his face in an "o" of surprise. Most of the rest of the acting is so wooden that they should spray the theater for termites. I'm guessing that was director James McTeigue's take on "period" - everyone's so stiff they sound like they've already been embalmed. Then again, that may be the fault of the script, which manages to hit the sweet spot of nearly limitless exposition - this thing lays more pipe than the Keystone XL - with still leaving plot points major and minor unexplained.
The internal logic of the film is spotty, too. The villain demands that our hero, the occasionally alcoholic Poe, perform a specific task, and then goes about making it impossible for him to perform it (he somehow does it anyway, largely offscreen). A lantern that's blown out in one shot is lit in the next; the richest man in Baltimore apparently belongs to a parish church miles from civilization. And of course, the plot is set up that the villain is yet another supervillain serial killer, capable of performing astonishing acts of butchery, carpentry, mechanical engineering and masonry on a timeframe that would make The Flash blush.
In a nutshell, this film lives at the intersection of Sherlock Holmes 2 and Saw 4 : a famous period detective-type, mixed up with moments of torture porn. If that's your thing, go for it. It certainly wasn't mine.
April 23, 2012
Oh. Look. A Book Review.
Over at Sleeping Hedgehog, actually - not one of the more positive ones I've written, I'm afraid.
April 19, 2012
A Guy Walks Into A Bar In Elkridge...
Monday was not a good day.
We buried my Aunt Sheila that morning. She was a lovely lady who always lived life to the fullest, and whose struggles with the disease that killed her were heartbreaking.
And, just like in a bad comedy, other things went wrong. Directional snafus. An incident with the rented van. Clothing getting caught on said carnivorous van and getting torn. Other stuff. Like I said, not a good day.
We headed out of Long Island after the post-funeral reception, after the hugs had been given and the stories been told and the pictures shared. The family had driven all the way up from NC the night before, myself and my parents and my sister and her two children (who did their uncle's heart good by singing along with the Muppets playlist he'd queued up, and who successfully retold one of Fozzie Bear's best jokes). We'd started at 9:30 in the morning, hit the hotel at nearly midnight, and were still shaking off road dust the morning of. So everyone was tired and drawn when we piled back into the rented van to head south, slaloming along the Belt and over the Verrazano, and across the arch of the Goethals Bridge into Jersey and points south.
It had been decided by mutual consent that we wouldn't go all the way back that night. No doubt we could have done it if we'd pushed, but really, we were in no shape. So I got us a couple of hotel rooms at a Best Western just south of Baltimore, and we pulled in at a reasonable hour and unloaded. Mom and the kids went up to one room, where my nephew insisted on watching the dying minutes of the Bruins-Caps playoff game. Dad went up to the other, took off his shoes, and settled in to watch a little TV and relax. And my sister and I went over to the bar next door to grab a beer, because, by God, we each needed one.
(Note: My sister, while I stepped out for a minute to deal with something, also bought me a couple of fingers' worth of Glenlivet. I like my sister.)
And we sat, and we talked, and we sipped our beers - Blue Moon for her, Sam Adams Alpine for me, both draft. She also chatted with the woman on the stool next to her, who was chowing down on a bowl of chowder, and both of us talked to the bartender, a striking woman who'd apparently played soccer at the University of Maryland and who discussed the minutiae of breaking down a bar at the end of the evening with my sister, who's a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and thus knows such things.
Eventually, my sister wandered off to bed. I'm one of the all-time great drink nursers, a trick I learned from my dad, and so my scotch levels tend to go down slowly. So I sat, and I talked with the soccer-playing bartender some more - when she learned I lived in Durham, she began going off about how the soccer pitches at Duke are oddly shaped, and how she'd gotten this close to scoring a goal there once, and how she was glad I wasn't a Duke fan because, really, well, Duke fans - and I sipped scotch.
After a while a couple came in and sat down, and ordered drinks made with Malibu. They'd just gotten in from San Diego, where the weather was apparently terrible, and they were in town to pitch the Navy on the green products their company manufactured. They were friendly, and we chatted, and they chatted with the bartender, and they talked about tungsten coating on light bulbs that would oxidize and disinfect the air, and I talked a little bit about video games, and the bartender took a picture of my business card and passed it along to a friend of hers who wanted to make games.
And then, in a friendly way, one of the folks from San Diego asked me if I believed in the Bible. Now, there are three things you don't talk about in bars with strangers: politics, religion, and sex. (It used to be taxes, but let's face it, taxes are politics these days). Our bartender had reminded us of just that fact as a guy on the other side of the bar spent the entire evening going off about various political topics, loudly enough to drive away the entire UMBC Women's Volleyball team, who'd come in earlier to watch the tail end of the Orioles-White Sox game. (Orioles came back from down 3 and won in extra innings, in case you're interested. Which you're probably not). But here I was, being asked if I believed in the Bible.
I thought about it for a second, and I took a sip of the Glenlivet - the Sam Adams was long gone - and I said, "I believe in the laws of the physics, man's inhumanity to man, and the inability of two Philadelphia sports franchises to ever win a game on the same day."
There was a second, and then they laughed, and I laughed, and the bartender laughed, and we were on to something else. We swapped business cards, and I finished my drink, and then I went back to the hotel to grab a couple of hours of sleep before the alarm went off.
The laws of physics. Man's inhumanity to man. The inability of, well, never mind. Doesn't matter if that's what I actually believe or not. It was the right thing to say in that time and in that place, and it led us out of a place that might not have had as many laughs. For that night, and I think for a lot of nights, that's more than enough.
We buried my Aunt Sheila that morning. She was a lovely lady who always lived life to the fullest, and whose struggles with the disease that killed her were heartbreaking.
And, just like in a bad comedy, other things went wrong. Directional snafus. An incident with the rented van. Clothing getting caught on said carnivorous van and getting torn. Other stuff. Like I said, not a good day.
We headed out of Long Island after the post-funeral reception, after the hugs had been given and the stories been told and the pictures shared. The family had driven all the way up from NC the night before, myself and my parents and my sister and her two children (who did their uncle's heart good by singing along with the Muppets playlist he'd queued up, and who successfully retold one of Fozzie Bear's best jokes). We'd started at 9:30 in the morning, hit the hotel at nearly midnight, and were still shaking off road dust the morning of. So everyone was tired and drawn when we piled back into the rented van to head south, slaloming along the Belt and over the Verrazano, and across the arch of the Goethals Bridge into Jersey and points south.
It had been decided by mutual consent that we wouldn't go all the way back that night. No doubt we could have done it if we'd pushed, but really, we were in no shape. So I got us a couple of hotel rooms at a Best Western just south of Baltimore, and we pulled in at a reasonable hour and unloaded. Mom and the kids went up to one room, where my nephew insisted on watching the dying minutes of the Bruins-Caps playoff game. Dad went up to the other, took off his shoes, and settled in to watch a little TV and relax. And my sister and I went over to the bar next door to grab a beer, because, by God, we each needed one.
(Note: My sister, while I stepped out for a minute to deal with something, also bought me a couple of fingers' worth of Glenlivet. I like my sister.)
And we sat, and we talked, and we sipped our beers - Blue Moon for her, Sam Adams Alpine for me, both draft. She also chatted with the woman on the stool next to her, who was chowing down on a bowl of chowder, and both of us talked to the bartender, a striking woman who'd apparently played soccer at the University of Maryland and who discussed the minutiae of breaking down a bar at the end of the evening with my sister, who's a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and thus knows such things.
Eventually, my sister wandered off to bed. I'm one of the all-time great drink nursers, a trick I learned from my dad, and so my scotch levels tend to go down slowly. So I sat, and I talked with the soccer-playing bartender some more - when she learned I lived in Durham, she began going off about how the soccer pitches at Duke are oddly shaped, and how she'd gotten this close to scoring a goal there once, and how she was glad I wasn't a Duke fan because, really, well, Duke fans - and I sipped scotch.
After a while a couple came in and sat down, and ordered drinks made with Malibu. They'd just gotten in from San Diego, where the weather was apparently terrible, and they were in town to pitch the Navy on the green products their company manufactured. They were friendly, and we chatted, and they chatted with the bartender, and they talked about tungsten coating on light bulbs that would oxidize and disinfect the air, and I talked a little bit about video games, and the bartender took a picture of my business card and passed it along to a friend of hers who wanted to make games.
And then, in a friendly way, one of the folks from San Diego asked me if I believed in the Bible. Now, there are three things you don't talk about in bars with strangers: politics, religion, and sex. (It used to be taxes, but let's face it, taxes are politics these days). Our bartender had reminded us of just that fact as a guy on the other side of the bar spent the entire evening going off about various political topics, loudly enough to drive away the entire UMBC Women's Volleyball team, who'd come in earlier to watch the tail end of the Orioles-White Sox game. (Orioles came back from down 3 and won in extra innings, in case you're interested. Which you're probably not). But here I was, being asked if I believed in the Bible.
I thought about it for a second, and I took a sip of the Glenlivet - the Sam Adams was long gone - and I said, "I believe in the laws of the physics, man's inhumanity to man, and the inability of two Philadelphia sports franchises to ever win a game on the same day."
There was a second, and then they laughed, and I laughed, and the bartender laughed, and we were on to something else. We swapped business cards, and I finished my drink, and then I went back to the hotel to grab a couple of hours of sleep before the alarm went off.
The laws of physics. Man's inhumanity to man. The inability of, well, never mind. Doesn't matter if that's what I actually believe or not. It was the right thing to say in that time and in that place, and it led us out of a place that might not have had as many laughs. For that night, and I think for a lot of nights, that's more than enough.
