Positively Cynical

Hell on Two Wheels, Part II

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 22:04:37 -0500

You should probably read this one first

My bike sat locked up in the storage locker in the parking garage of my office for a few days. I never wanted to look at it again unless it was in the company of someone buying it. Taking that further, I offered my coworkers a 10% commission if they were able to sell it for me, as it was conveniently located to show off to other employees.

Before that could turn into a serious proposition (although I maintain that if someone made an offer—any offer—on Saturday I probably would’ve sold it or even given it away on the spot), I was given a shot at redemption. Two of my fellow riders going in the same direction were going to ride to their respective homes together, and I was invited to tag along. I checked with them that they were aware of my harrowing journey the weekend prior, and that if I even made it out of the garage I’d slow them down if not break down in tears in the middle of Seattle.

With this in mind, and probably an assumption of a pretty entertaining outcome, they agreed still to take me along. We went down to the bike locker to gear up, and one friend, one with a bit more biking experience, began checking the air in his tires. The second asked to have his checked too. At this point I was curious and checked out my tires, which seemed to me like they were pretty full. After all, I had pumped the air myself on Saturday, and the gauge on it read a number that sounded appropriate and matched what I read online.

So I compared my tires to the other tires and noticed that mine were kind of squishy compared to the firmness of the ones newly and authoritatively checked. I asked to have mine checked. My friend grinned and noted that my tire was flat. As he noted they were both completely flat, I simultaneously was incredibly embarrassed and a bit relieved. I had ridden 2 miles on completely flat tires. I then tried to bike up a pretty steep incline with flat tires immediately following biking two miles on flat tires. This explained a lot. It also made me feel much better about my utter failure, even if it meant that I was quite clueless on this subject (which was already a given). Hopping off and walking two miles on multiple flat tires is actually a pretty smart idea in retrospect (riding two miles to begin with on flat tires, not so much).

We pumped up my tires, which were now positively bouncy, and we were off. While I still didn’t feel any sort of immediate freedom from a car-loving American society or the sort of zen sometimes achieved while jogging longer distances, I could clearly see that this was a marked improvement from the hell I had previously experienced. We rode about five miles, and while we had to stop a few times (mostly for traffic, once or twice because I needed a breather), the ride was without incident.

At the end of the day, I know nothing about gears or tires and should generally not be trusted around any machinery for the general safety of myself and others around me. While I have now decided that biking is somewhat of a neutral experience, the time gains are somewhat minimal compared to busing (pending the destination) unless I specifically build in a workout to my commute, which would require me to purchase more things. For the moment, biking will remain the distant second option and the punchline of what at least turned into a pretty good story.

Hell on Two Wheels

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 22:34:00 -0500

Last September (2012) I purchased a bicycle outside of Dallas for a pending move to Seattle, which I imagined was (and probably is) a relatively bike-friendly city. I rode it in circles in a suburban Dallas parking lot and felt somewhat comfortable on it, even if I was not eager to ride it around Texas. It was probably over 100F, after all, as it tends to be in the summer.

The bike sat in my living room for a few weeks there, then was placed on a moving truck, and eventually landed in my new apartment in Seattle. While I weighed my transportation options (bus = good, car = not necessary), the bike loomed large taking up space near my door. While I didn’t necessarily need to use it, I wanted to be able to ride if the need arose—perhaps a place too far to walk, too near to find a ride, and not near any bus lines. This led to me purchasing a number of accessories (a helmet, pump, lights, lock) to get myself ready for the big day. While I racked up the Amazon points buying these “necessities,” the bike became a lovely fixture. Its handlebars allowed me to hang two coats on it, and during the winter I was able to drape scarves and hats along its body as well. The weather in Seattle at that time is also not really conducive to riding, especially for somebody who has not realistically ridden in well over a decade.

As the weather dried up, the last remaining excuse was that I was terrified to ride in traffic. The most valuable route, the one to my office, is about five miles in length. Four or so of these miles are covered by two very rideable trails. However, there was at least half a mile to get to that trail which would require some legitimate city riding. There was also not any reasonable place that one could practice riding that was any more tame than the actual scenarios I’d have to face. (Seattle has no expansive parking lots.)

A coworker of mine who lives a few blocks away from me purchased a bike and began riding into work. Facing both this implicit challenge and the loss of my fellow bus commuter, I took it upon myself to re-acclimate myself with cycling on a demo route to work on an off-day. It did not go well.

If you can’t already tell, I don’t know much about bikes. I spent the night before doing some light reading on how gears work (the bike is a 24-speed) and that led me to believe I would be somewhat serviceable shifting around out on the street. A little after 11:30am on a Saturday, I loaded up my backpack, strapped on my helmet, and awkwardly carried/wheeled my bike into the elevator. I did not encounter any neighbors, which I think is a good thing because I was sort of scared that maybe I was supposed to be keeping a bike in the garage somewhere (which sounded like a hassle, but at the same time I was starting to question the alternative of having to get the bike up and down a few flights of stairs or get it into an elevator that the bike didn’t really fit into very well, especially if anybody else was ever in the elevator, so maybe if this panned out looking into bike storage wasn’t a bad idea. On the other hand, people kept stealing bikes from the garage so maybe I would just keep lugging it around).

By the time I ran through all of that, I was on the ground floor and I wheeled the bike outside (at this point I encountered some fellow renters but surely sometimes people bring their bikes up to their apartments to do oh-so-important repair work or something). I strapped my backpack at the chest and hopped on. The sidewalk outside of my building is somewhat accommodating and I figured I could get to the end of the block as a little bit of a warm-up before I decided how to best approach the next half-mile that sat between me and the trail.

As I began pedaling, I remembered that I wanted to start in a low gear. I looked down at my shifters and began questioning if high numbers or low numbers were the low gears, as the designations for each shifter were in a different order. As I began shifting rapidly in a panic, I soon found that I was spinning very quickly yet going nowhere. The sound accompanying this wasn’t great either. The little knowledge that I had was enough to understand that something was wrong. I hopped off the bike. Assessing the situation, my keen mechanical mind determined that the chain had fallen off the gear. The same mind assumed this was quite serious and I needed to reconvene with a computer to determine the next steps.

Across the street, there were 6-7 people* gathered in front of a neighboring building who I was hoping did not notice me. I quickly picked the bike up, turned it around, and wheeled it back toward the entrance. On this first attempt, I had made it about 100 feet.

(And a quick note, social judgment is a recurring theme here, and I just want to point out that the general wisdom that nobody is paying attention to your pitfalls is such bullshit. Seriously, if I was walking around and saw a guy clearly having issues riding a bike from a dead stop on a very wide sidewalk with no obstacles in his way at all, I’d be at best damn curious and at worse laughing my ass off. Just the other day I spent 10 minutes staring at a guy on a bus because I could not for the life of me figure out why he stood up from his seat to stand in the awkward spot where the two bus chasses connected and generally was an uncomfortable ride for 3 entire stops on a pretty empty bus.)

Back in the apartment, I tugged a bit on the chain to see if I could get some slack. While this was fruitless, my story, only just beginning, was becoming a hit on Facebook, so I couldn’t give up now. Tinkering with the bike a little more, I found a thing (I can’t describe it any better) attached to the chain near the gears that, when pulled, gave the chain some latitude to work with. I maneuvered the chain back onto the gear, and I was presumably back in business.

Because I am reasonably intelligent, I did not want to go right back outside to try again without doing a little bit of training to get more hands on with the gears. Also, I could see out my window that the same group of people across the street were still there, and if I went by again surely they’d catch onto my cycling ineptitude, which I assumed was anathema in Seattle.

Lifting the rear of the bike off the ground with my left hand, I began alternating between peddling and shifting with my right. This allowed me to see the machinations at work (“derailleur” seems to be the most accurate term for the whole system but that’s probably not technically accurate) and also get a feel for what the different gear designations meant. Putting together my previous research with the hands-on demonstration, I thought I sort of understood the basics of gears and shifting, even if I still didn’t get the real-world applications.

With a renewed sense of purpose (and a desire to nurse my pride), I went out the other way, down the stairs, to a little paved area next to my building, which evoked a sense that they had a little bit of extra land but not enough inspiration to do something nice with it, so they paved it and put some weird art installation that consisted of a bunch of metal chairs of different sizes. This seemed a safe place to ride around in circles a little bit, so I started doing that. After about 3 pedals, I wobbled to the point of losing my balance and hopped off the bike. A guy walking a few feet away on the sidewalk tried not to make eye contact while I tried to approximate body language that conveyed “I have no idea what I’m doing please pity me.”

I took a few more laps around this little park-type thing and I felt like I was ready to try venturing out. Seeing nobody in front of me, I stuck to the sidewalk on a not-very-main street for a few blocks. I swung a left over to the main road that was quite scary, and rode the sidewalk there. Thankfully, there was nobody else on these sidewalks that would make me feel inadequate or pressing on pedestrian rights-of-way. I made it to an impassable intersection and hopped off the bike. I waited for a walk signal and walked it for a few blocks. Then, with the trail in sight, I hopped back on the bike, hoping to make a swift transition to the trail life.

This was a mistake. As I was still frightened to ride on the road with cars, I attempted to snake through sidewalks and an assortment of parking spots next to a building. With about 5 feet between the building and those cement spot-marker things, I felt pressure to keep myself upright. This pressure got to me, and I began to wobble. Rather than go down potentially into peoples’ cars (or falling at all), I opted to lean right, up against the building. The building itself was some sort of rough cement, and while I was able to bring myself and the bike to a stop, I had to pay with a decent amount of skin off my elbow.

About three-quarters of a mile from home and unable to confirm if anybody saw my bodily sacrifice or not (and the trail is a block away, in easy sight), I decided to forge ahead. I walked the bike the last 2 blocks, trying not to call any attention to my incredibly minor abrasion. Reaching the beginning of the trail, I hopped on the bike and found that the pedals were perfectly out of sync where I would need them to be to ride. Awkwardly, I tried kicking them up to myself, which failed. A seasoned rider flew past me going the other way, probably shaking his head. I finally pedaled backward a bit until I could get my feet where I wanted them, and off I went.

The first mile or so of the trail was about the high point of the day and I covered it without much incident. “Incident” does not include: a realization that my lower body was not really in shape to ride for 5 consecutive miles, that the stock seat (“saddle”) was quite uncomfortable (seriously, why don’t they just sell the cushioned ones with the damn bike?), that I had forgotten to bring a water bottle even though I had paid to get the bottle holder installed when I first bought the bike, and that in general this was kind of exhausting and probably not the kind of thing I’d want to do every day, especially since the ride to work was supposed to be the easier way to go.

But I was going to finish this out. I got to a bridge I needed to cross, and not realizing that I should’ve made a few turns to approach it directly, needed to carry the bike up some stairs. This was actually not at all inconvenient, as I was already used to awkwardly toting the bike around from my earlier mishaps. This bridge happened to be a drawbridge, the crossing currently being up. I waited “in line” with some other riders. Most of them were dressed in proper attire. One had two bottles, one water, one probably some scientific-nutritional mixture. I took note of how much more comfortable everyone seemed to be.

The bridge came down and the car lane opened first. As traffic passed, a bell began to ring, signaling that the pedestrian/bike lane was about to open as well. However, to someone like me, it sounded like a race was about to start, and I realized that there were a number of riders behind me who were waiting for me to do something. I calculated that it was not feasible for me to drop back and walk my bike across, as there really wasn’t enough room to do so, and there was somewhat of a flow of bikes already. I hopped back on and went into the fire. (At this point I want to call out that I’ve been using “hop” as the verb to get on and off the bike. While normally this would be excessive usage, I have since determined that the bike is probably a bit too big for me and I literally need to lift myself off the ground to mount or dismount from riding position.)

This path was about 10 feet across, and I quickly realized that the traffic was two-way. To my immediate right (and my immediate was not close to the extreme, as I was giving myself plenty of room to account for the fears developed along with my earlier scrape, as well as my general lack of coordination and balance) was the water via a 4 foot high wall, and to my left were oncoming bikers and runners. I needed to go about 400 feet.

I accomplished this (mostly due to trying not to move at all and just go straight without overthinking the movements) and immediately veered right to coast into a parking lot. I knew that I needed to connect with another trail that was somewhere on my left. However, in my haste to not appear completely worthless, I followed some other riders going straight, figuring I’d pick up my path later. This led to my downfall, as the road I was currently on was a huge hill (although not by Seattle standards) and I quickly remembered how tapped my quads already were and that I still did not understand how gears worked. Adding to this, I had not exactly been booking it so far, and this road offered a full-on bike lane that I would endanger other riders to get into. Staying on the (thankfully generous) sidewalk, I futilely shifted up and down to try to figure out if it was the low or the high gear that was better suited for going uphill, while at the same time trying to understand how both ends of the spectrum made the ride seem impossible until the chain popped off again.

I disengaged once again to fix the chain. Being the first time in miles that I had stopped pedaling, the soreness in my legs overtook me, and I need to stop to rest. It dawned on me that biking was not going to be for me, and began walking the bike. I crossed the street, trying to figure out where I could reconnect with the flat, scenic trail I needed to take. After checking my phone and confirming that I had no shot of getting back on the trail without doubling back, and being pretty pissed off with my bike and myself, I vowed to walk the rest of the damn way.

Two miles and many angry text messages later, I arrived at my office. I had been instructed before I left by my cycler friends that the usual garage opening was not open on Saturdays, and that I needed to find a door in the alley to lead me to the bike cage. Seeing that construction earlier in the week had blocked access to this door with cones and caution tape, I resigned myself to wheeling the bike through the front door and lobby. When the security guard attempted to educate me on the proper etiquette, I gave him the day’s story in brief and explained that it was not actually possible to get into that door at the moment. Sensing that I was not having a great day and that he didn’t really care enough to argue when this was probably the most exciting thing to happen to him on his weekend shift, he let me pass.

I locked up my bike, went upstairs to my desk, told my story and offered my coworkers a 10% commission if they were able to sell the Seahawks-green Cannondale Quick 5 (size medium) that was now locked in the bike cage on Garage Level B in our office in downtown Seattle.

Film, 2012

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 17:26:00 -0600

As promised, here’s my film breakdown for the year. The end of January is usually where I give up on releases from the year before. I’ll probably still see a bunch but I will no longer count them toward 2012 and they will be thus ineligible for my top 10.¹

As usual, I’m just giving a quick summary of what I remember about all of these as I write these all up. That being said, I encourage you to find me online for deeper discussion. I’m also available for Oscars discussions and I’ll be around during that show (you’ll notice that most of the award favorites are not in my upper echelons).

1. Moonrise Kingdom

I am a sucker for Wes Anderson and Moonrise delivered. My first viewing of Moonrise in a theater this summer may well have been the happiest 94 minutes I spent this year.

2. Holy Motors

If you haven’t gotten to see this yet , it’s worth checking out, even if you’re not into pseudo-highbrow foreign films (it’s really not that deep though). Between all the vignettes there’s plenty for everyone, and this is my favorite scene of the year (if you’re looking for context, there really isn’t any).

3. Beasts of the Southern Wild

I struggled with Beasts for awhile after my first viewing but have surrendered to its simplicity, as the audio-visual experience was great enough for me to forgive some of the smaller problems with plot and such that I had. As someone that typically abhors child acting, Quvenzhané Wallis was really incredible.

4. Wreck-It Ralph

When the trailer for Ralph first debuted, I was very skeptical as a patron of video games. However, Ralph completely blew me away, appealing to my video gaming (and especially cart racing) proclivities. Disney could’ve made this a very kiddie affair, but they held way back which I respected a lot.

5. The Master

I saw Anderson’s latest in 65MM and, while it did not resonate with me with the immediacy of There Will Be Blood (an all-time favorite of mine), there was enough here for me to still enjoy it, with enough left to digest for many more viewings.

6. Amour

Amour could be classified, genre-wise, as Mostly People Talking (Foreign Edition), the same one that last year’s A Separation could be found. Amour It gets a bit slow (part of the appeal, to me) but there’s certainly a scene or two that will touch anybody embodying humanity pretty deeply.

7. Django Unchained

Tarantino let me down a little with this one, with a first half that seemed to move a little too slowly and carried a bit too little style for my idea of what his Western (“Southern”) might ideally look like. Don’t get me wrong, this is still fantastic and I will return to it in the future, but qualms about length (e.g. that it should’ve either been 30 minutes shorter or 30 minutes longer and broken into two parts a la Kill Bill) are legitimate.

8. Life of Pi

This (along with Ralph) is another film that bested my expectations. I never read the book (nor do I plan to), but I’m usually in for a good shipwrecked/survival story and this one was pretty good. Lee delivers incredible visuals and a compelling case for 3D.

9. Magic Mike

Haters gonna hate. I’m buying what Soderbergh is selling, and McConaughey is more deserving of Best Supporting Actor over any of the actual nominees. While topical (recession, etc.), I admit gets a little heavy handed with itself. However, given the subject matter, it kind of works.

10. The Raid: Redemption

This was my action movie of the year, hands down. An Indonesian, kind-of-reverse-Die Hard with seeming takes on video game tropes as well as the best martial arts I’ve seen in a few years.

Others notables: The Intouchables, Searching for Sugar Man, Argo, Zero Dark Thirty

Here are the Academy Award-eligible films I watched in 2012:

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN

AMOUR

ARBITRAGE

ARGO

BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD

BERNIE

THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL

BRAVE

THE CABIN IN THE WOODS

CHRONICLE

CLOUD ATLAS

COMPLIANCE

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES

DJANGO UNCHAINED

FLIGHT

THE GREY

THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY

HOLY MOTORS

THE INTOUCHABLES

JEFF, WHO LIVES AT HOME

KILLER JOE

KILLING THEM SOFTLY

LES MISERABLES

LIFE OF PI

LINCOLN

LOOPER

MAGIC MIKE

THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS

MARVEL’S THE AVENGERS

THE MASTER

MOONRISE KINGDOM

PARANORMAN

THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER

PITCH PERFECT

PROMETHEUS

THE RAID: REDEMPTION

RUBY SPARKS

SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED

SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN

THE SESSIONS

SIDE BY SIDE

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK

SKYFALL

TAKEN 2

THIS IS 40

21 JUMP STREET

WRECK-IT RALPH

ZERO DARK THIRTY

This leads to some orphans, since the movies will not be in my “Seen in 2012” spreadsheet (although, nothing I watched in January counted toward this either) but they are also not tallied here. They’ll count toward “Seen in 2013.” ↩

Year in review, 2012

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 21:52:00 -0600

This year, I kept a spreadsheet of every movie I watched and every book that I read. I thought it would be an interesting experiment to keep some basic metrics on my own time, and I’m sort of intrigued enough to keep this¹ going in 2013. Next year, I will begin tracking albums that I listen to and TV shows that I watch² as well. I’ll also try to track video games in some way.

Some Numbers

I set an ambitious goal of 20 books. I finished 15, with a page average of 412.53 (6188 total pages). The list is below. I may lower my expectations down to 10 books next year, as I have some very long works I’d like to read, and trying to hit a number this year had me sometimes picking shorter books just to juke the stats.
I watched 65 films. 46 were 2012 releases, by some metric³, and 27 were seen in a theater.
I read at least 60% of every issue of The New Yorker, and probably closer to 80-90% just between features and fiction.
I also read roughly 650 other longform newspaper, magazine, and web articles, as tracked through Instapaper. A list of these could be made available upon demand.
I kept up on what was probably 20-25 TV shows every week throughout the year. I also did a binge over the summer to finally watch The Shield. I will not be doing a year-end television list because I barely remember what happened in the spring at this point, and most television lists are extremely derivative anyway, with only a few hundred shows on per year (and serious contenders numbering closer to a range of a few dozen).
I have no hard stats on my music, but this was the first year of my life that I put in an effort to listen to a large number of new album releases as well as making an effort to listen to full albums released in past years (a total number that I estimate to be in the low hundreds). Eventually (hopefully next year), I will have matured my taste enough to gain a confidence to release at least a top 10 or something, if not the full list.
I played what must’ve been in the order of several dozen video games across several platforms. I am not a completionist⁴ which makes it difficult to fairly quantify my experiences. The large majority of my gaming was done on PC and iOS; I have yet to unbox my PS3 since moving this year. I’ve included a short list of my favorites in this post.

Books

I’m trying to read more books, and I’m caught in a place where I realize that there’s hundreds of years of literature to catch up on but newer stuff that’s popular (and being made into shows and movies right now) sometimes gets priority even if it’s not very good reading (and the same could be said for film, I guess). I’m doing my best. This list is in chronological order by finish date.

The Trial, Franz Kafka
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
A Feast for Crows, George R.R. Martin
A Dance with Dragons, George R.R. Martin
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins
Dubliners, James Joyce
Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins
Foundation, Isaac Asimov
Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace, D.T. Max
The Stranger, Albert Camus
The Revolution Was Televised, Alan Sepinwall
The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking, Oliver Burkeman

Pinterest form: http://pinterest.com/davidlubell/2012-books/

Video Games

I skew heavily toward indie releases, which are typically more in line with what I enjoy playing, and are almost always under 20 dollars. Most of my gaming time this year was probably spent on old releases or games that are still in beta. This list is alphabetical.

FTL: Faster Than Light, Subset Games (PC)
Guild Wars 2, ArenaNet (PC)
Hotline Miami, Dennaton Games (PC)
Journey, Thatgamecompany (PS3)
Letterpress, Atebits (iOS)
Mark of the Ninja, Klei Entertainment (PC)
Super Hexagon, Terry Cavanagh (iOS)

Sort of inspired (but ultimately, dwarfed) by this guy. ↩
I could probably do this for 2012 actually, but not authoritatively, as I began and dropped multiple shows on top of catchups and rewatches (which maybe don’t count anyway), and also I don’t feel like trying to work that out right now ↩
This is different than my “Oscar-eligible list,” and I’ll follow up separately with my recap on movies once I see more of them. I’ll have it done by February or so, probably. ↩
Competionism is meaningless in the modern age of a multiplayer experience carrying many titles. Regardless, I’ll stop playing a game within an hour if I don’t find anything enjoyable about its gameplay. ↩

Guns sometimes kill people. People with guns who have played video games sometimes kill people.

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 22:51:00 -0600

I finished the game Hotline Miami this week and quite enjoyed it. You can get a quick look at it here. Basically, you’re a guy in 80’s Miami who goes around killing a bunch of (probably-drug-running-because-it’s-80’s-Miami) guys because it’s your job, or something. That’s not really why it’s interesting, nor is the discussion around free will that it tries to confront.

Hotline Miami begins to break down around halfway through the game. Our incredibly unreliable character—the whole game is some sort of neon and techno-drenched flashback—starts seeing friends show up dead and replaced by pseudo-zombies of people that he killed himself (or some sort of vision of such). The violence that he sought (granted, against some sort of criminal enterprise) has escalated into everyday life and maybe even into his very psyche. What’s most interesting about Hotline Miami, to me, is that its core gameplay is not that of a shooter, but that of a puzzle game. For each level, you need to essentially figure out the optimal path to the goal at the end. Hotline Miami takes this and wraps it up in a sheen of hyper-violence.

Most of today’s big budget, best-selling violent (usually shooter) titles—basically, Call of Duty—have watered down their core gameplay to be nothing but an arcade recreation of violence. You can kill so simply and with so little remorse that it becomes mostly mindless, turning killing people with guns into simple efficiency. Run into a new room. Kill all the guys. Repeat. Multiplayer is boiled down to who can do this the best and the most repetitively.

Older games of what would have been the same genre—again, the shooter (or first person shooter in more specific terms)—were more about subtlety, teamwork, and strategy. Both cases have their outliers: Call of Duty games have tried to introduce plot points where you acknowledge yourself as a killer, but they never seem to go far enough to seem as though they really want you to think about that in reality. The “classic” games I attempted to generalize certainly allowed you to just go crazy and shoot as well, but they were never as popular.

But it seems as though now, more than ever, the way games are marketed and played veer away from any semblance of tastefulness (or, god forbid, art) and into the depths of male badass fantasy. This is problematic given news of late.

This is a pretty exhaustive collection of stories tying video games back together with the Newtown shooting. It’s pleasing to see some grassroots efforts from the gamer side of things acknowledge that, yes, video games are part of a larger equation, fostering a culture which makes violence look commonplace and trite. In the same way that a great football community will crumble as its dangers are realized, I hope that this is the beginning of a movement that will quash the way that violence is currently portrayed in games. And yes, I absolutely do track parallels between the way that I cannot stomach the (admittedly different kind) of violence in football and the gun-happy ways of gaming.

However, I for one do not plan on putting down video games in some sort of solidarity. That’s not me being angry or selfish (and to be fair, the day already passed and I can’t even recall what I did that day—I don’t actually game a ton lately though) or defensive. I get the anti-violence argument and most are speaking of voluntary movements (and not laws) which is great. Games are still speech and it’s more of the way they are marketed and played than the content itself (granted, plenty of the content is miserably, unabashedly pro-violence itself). While I’m made grossly uncomfortable by many violent games, I can usually appreciate this fact. Violence for its own sake should never be fun. As part of some greater message, though, I think violence is still part of reality that should not be completely shunned from entertainment.

There is a huge market for violent games (and other entertainments). Developers and publishers just need to approach this knowingly and with a point of making the violence either downright uncomfortable or surreal to the point that it makes people realize it’s not something to be mimicked. Games don’t hurt anybody (at least, in the way that a gun can hurt somebody), but taken the wrong way, they do add to said culture of violence that the media, and probably killers, absolutely feed on. I hope that others begin to look at games the same way that I have, and don’t buy a violent game to gleefully kill people in realistic environments, but instead drive the market toward more nuanced takes. Honestly, the games I’ve enjoyed most the last 1 or 2 years have been less violent, or at the very least, not remotely associated with reality.

Video games are not the only media form that deserves any semblance of scapegoating, but it is a completely fair point that no other form glorifies violence to the point that you are given points for killing people quickly and accurately. Django Unchained is brutally violent, but it serves to depict realities of slavery in a way that very few games have done for “war.” At the very least, none have done so recently. Everyone is responsible, and I’d love to see less violent TV and film as well, but I think games—with the power to simulate getting closer to reality—need to lead the way.

I got a new job and I live in Seattle now.

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 20:52:39 -0500

I got a new job and I live in Seattle now.

The Dark Knight With a Vengeance

Sat, 21 Jul 2012 20:24:49 -0500

When I first saw Batman Begins in 2005, I absolutely loved it. The sites I read liked it, and it seemed to click with whatever mindset I had at 16 years old. I watched it anew this week in preparation for The Dark Knight Rises, and while Begins is not a bad movie by any means, it certainly falls flat of my teenaged aspirations for any sort of lasting status as a classic.

Contrast: I didn’t care much for The Dark Knight in particular when I first saw it, trying both to defend my already waning love for Begins, as well as being firmly in the camp that claimed undeserved martyrdom around Ledger’s performance. I can today claim that I was crazy, and Ledger is certainly fantastic in role and holds up what is otherwise a pretty messy movie which was maybe a little better than it’s predecessor.

Both Begins and Knight are wrought with enough exposition to make it obvious that this was The Peoples’ dark and gritty reboot as well as an overabundance of throwaway one-liners which damage said pseudo-seriousness. Nolan’s a good director from my standpoint of: “I’ve seen all of his films and don’t really know much about the technical details of directing and also Memento was really cool—why don’t more directors play with narrative structure?” Aside from owning a certain tone and some pretty great action set pieces, I think this Batman trilogy is still short of any kind of high praise.

Yes, Nolan’s Batman is probably still the best comic book series we’ll see for awhile, but too much of it is spent setting up perfect coincidences—the kind you don’t notice when you’re ridiculously entertained by the big ticket scenes—in between the MEGA-CHAOS that we’ve spent billions of dollars to go see in theaters. Here is a somewhat-take-down of the hallmark chase sequence in Knight, and while I couldn’t have come up with this myself, it’s a good expert take on the chaotic sequence that Nolan has thrived on.

With Rises specifically, I didn’t really go in with very high expectations. Bane’s voice was as ridiculous as advertised and his eventual fate made him seem like a waste of so much marketing focus and screen time. There were a certain number of plot holes—most of which were again covered up by Nolan’s seeming gift of polishing up all the huge pieces he keeps in motion. Sure, the ironic dialog was a bit toned down, but the exposition is worse than ever, with full footage from Begins and Knight repeatedly spliced in as unnecessarily stark reminders of events past. I spent a good part of the 165 minutes thinking about how Die Hard With a Vengeance was really the ultimate relative-of-vanquished-villain-returns flick.

Considering that I also didn’t much care for The Avengers (or any of it’s preceding character films for that matter) or The Amazing Spider-Man, I remain interested (but maybe not so optimistic) in Man of Steel. I’m actually all for constant series reboots with new directors, but my caveat is that the new franchise has to try to innovate on the material. There were a ton of problems with Amazing Spider-Man, but the biggest one to me was that it followed Raimi’s so closely at times that it made it hardly seem worth the effort of rebooting the whole thing. New actors are great, and it’s become clear that the villains end up driving the individual films—one reason why Avengers fell flat for me. But I hope that studios can dig through the canon and find some unique stories or at least write something fresh. If you’re not going to iterate on the origin, just leave it alone and get to the good stuff. And that’s from somebody who loves origin stories.

The superhero genre is here to stay. It has a huge fanbase in the right demographics and can sustain large franchises. I was never much into comics, but as an Internet denizen and someone who sees a lot of movies anyway, I’m probably going to keep seeing them as long as they remain culturally relevant and aren’t completely panned by critics. Nolan had the right idea, but the “realism” that his series is touted for ended up being a bit hyper-realistic in retrospect. One thing I will give Webb’s Spider-Man is that a number of its scenes captured what I imagine would be a truer reality of what a teenager with superpowers might look and act like. I hope that future superhero films can try to zero in on this aspect and spend a little time with the alter-ego and the hero’s toll on it.

Obviously, the status quo doesn’t seem like it will be a box office loser any time soon. My preference notwithstanding, I just hope the studios don’t completely cave to the safest possible denominator of Iron Man very dryly defeating irredeemable aliens.

21st Century Omnipotence

Tue, 08 May 2012 21:15:00 -0500

Many lament the present day’s lack of flying cars and other tell-tale signs of the archetypical science fiction future. Some may not realize it, but we’re already living in such a future. For example, I know everything. Seriously, you can ask me any question and you will receive an accurate answer or an explanation for your paltry attempt at a (not very) clever ruse to trip up my initial statement. For 13ish hours a day, I’m sitting in front of a computer with a passable Internet connection. Any other waking hours are covered by two—yes, I carry two phones—LTE capable devices which can search the metaphorical web absurdly quickly, even by today’s standards. I continue to read articles and hear people talk about getting away from such connectivity. Society continues to pine for the future, yet complains about it when it finally arrives.

For some extraordinary amount of time, all answers were contained in minds—spectacularly unreliable, usually difficult to corral—which sounds absolutely dreadful for anybody interested in learning something above “wilderness survival.” If you—and this is you in what I’m imagining as some prehistoric period, but I’m not a history major so bear with me—just ate poison berries, the odds of finding the guy who can a) identify the berries and b) can, well, save you are really low, probably because you died already while you tried to remember which series of grunts made up the doctor’s name, and where you saw him last, which might not be near where he lives. Life expectancy was obviously low, but so was breadth of knowledge. You basically did all you could to learn about the stuff that was going to kill you, and then spent most of your mental efforts avoiding all of that. There was no time, nor much of a benefit to learning anything above sustenance.

The advent of written word brought scrolls and books, which are generally flammable, and are generally stuck in fixed locations across larger, more useful quantities of knowledge storage (I’m going for libraries). For most of the modern era, civil arguments, e.g. the year Beethoven’s 9th Symphony first premiered, which I’m just going to assume was high pop culture trivia in the 19th century, were settled by finding a written account about it, or asking that old guy with a really good memory who you should really get to write a memoir or something because he’s not going to be around much longer. (The answer is 1824 by the way.) I can’t imagine trivial learning was much of a concern for most of this period either, as I can’t really picture the people of this period writing notes to themselves for days before they could get to a library and spend hours looking stuff up, which is what I’d probably be trying to do.

I don’t think I would’ve done too well in any previous period. One of my more (assumedly) charming qualities is some strange innate thirst for broad knowledge. Often in conversation, this thirst amounts to nothing more than needing to check the name of that guy in that movie that I was reminded of while somebody was mentioning something else that’s not at all related by any common standards, but some connection was triggered in my mind that I needed to verify. Other times it’s fact-checking something crazy somebody is trying to sell others on in order to save them from propagating naive ignorance, validating my own haphazard memories of history, or sometimes even looking up useful information like “where the hell are we right now” while driving. Granted, I’m sure I would’ve adapted to the olden times in some way, but I can’t help but think that right now, alive in today’s swirl of information, is ideal—outside of any foreseeable, non-dystopian future for which I would sign up to travel to in a heartbeat.

In almost any setting, if there is any doubt by anybody about anything, or I think of something totally off-base (happens often) that I need to look up, the phone is coming out. In certain circles I am looked to instinctively to check on things. All the world’s collective wisdom is available in my hand at any time during the day. This behavior is often shunned or prompts many eyes to be rolled. I see two possible reasons for this: either the action of pulling a phone out to check on something, thus breaking some sort of eye contact or other cultural convention, or something deeper about keeping some mystery. I think (and hope) that this latter case, which is essentially willful ignorance, is a minority stance and has no bearing on reality.

I was raised in a home during a time of technological upheaval—the 90s. Neither of my parents were necessarily tech-savvy, but my constant use of a computer was never discouraged. While the computer was still possibly a little misunderstood, I think both of my parents recognized that this not only represented my own wishes, which they were trying to respect, but that it was truly going to be an education for a future world where this was the norm, and I acknowledge their incredible foresight in this regard. They were also admittedly a little out of their element and were assuming that I wasn’t getting into too much trouble (I really wasn’t) and they sort of just let me be.

The result of this digital nativity is a mind that is fully augmented by technology. To those who say my own mind is being weakened, I contend that, even unaided, I’m still somewhat of a trivia powerhouse. With my phone, I’m truly omnipotent—which is absolutely thrilling and everything I’ve ever wanted, even if strangely terrifying in the context of science fiction and generally uncomfortable tales of quests for ultimate knowledge.

The net social gains of universalizing this practice are astronomical. Everybody will get smarter every time they ask a question. Ignorant statements will not go unchecked. Poor trivial knowledge will vanish, prompting both more creative discussions and trivia nights. The trick is that people can’t ignorantly look things up and just blurt out what the top result says. They need to understand the context, decipher the question at hand, construct a competent search query, absorb the results, and prepare to either distill this knowledge back into the conversation or leave it banked internally. Our own minds will become cache for the search queries we perform most routinely. The true, icing-on-the-cake bonus here will be that as this becomes even more standard for the next generation, the ones who will know of nothing but smartphones, these kids will be so used to having their everyday curiosities satiated that they will want to go further, to discover the things that we have no answers to yet—or at the very least make us even cooler phones.

While the future is certainly bright, our current generations still have hope. Gen Xers and Boomers are slowly adjusting to a world that they’re not comfortable in, but their already-waning influence over our technological culture will not last much longer. As Generation Y approaches parenthood, they must be the stewards of a futuristic attitude and allow their children to explore all of the knowledge that their developing minds can and wish to consume. Current parents can help too. Let the kids have their phones out. Sure, formal occasions should be off-limits, and Angry Birds isn’t really super productive at the dinner table, but why can’t the day’s news be discussed with the actual articles available? Why can’t the family go over a school lesson with the subject material on a tablet, right there?

To those who say that this will just result in everybody staring at their phones and not talking to each other, you’re missing the point. This does not take the place of human interaction: it simply supplements it. If it’s the act of the phone itself that bothers you, this will be alleviated within the decade as things like Google’s Project Glass and other post-phone devices are developed. For now, you’re going to have to trust me that when I look down at my phone. I’m not ignoring you. I’m just enhancing the conversation. I encourage you to do the same.

2011 in film

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 19:38:00 -0600

I’m giving up on my 2011 film push. I did okay.

Movies are always annoying because the “best” ones typically all come out in limited release at the end of the year, meaning that a non-critic (like me and I’m assuming probably you) usually can’t see them before the last week of the year or so. I have a theater about 30 minutes away that’s been pretty good about limited releases — which is somewhat far for a regular outing but otherwise not a terrible experience — so that’s helped a bit.

Since this post, as it has in the past, somewhat coincides with the Academy Awards, I’m going by official eligibility rather than when I actually saw it. This results in my my movie year running about two months behind the calendar (i.e. starts in March since nothing worth seeing is released before March anyway for the most part). In previous years, I have run down the Best Picture nominees, but this year they’re not very good and I think I’ve seen enough of the overall landscape to just give my own rankings.

Based on this list, I’ve seen 47* of the eligible movies this year. Most of them are pretty good since for the most part I don’t watch movies that I don’t think I’d enjoy. Given this, there were 9 or so movies that I thought were some degree better than the rest in some way and that I’d probably like to see again at some point. These are in a rough order of preference:

THE TREE OF LIFE

Seems to be pretty love-it-or-hate-it, and THE TREE OF LIFE is one that I might go back to next year and not really love, but was one of those great theater experiences in my initial viewing and I’m sticking with it for now.

A SEPARATION

A SEPARATION is Iranian which makes some people think I’ve dug up some obscure gem, but this is Ebert’s top film of the year so it’s not really like I’m going out on any limbs. It’s a really great drama piece and I’m always enamored by stuff that can elicit a strong response out of what’s mostly just people talking.

DRIVE

I really loved DRIVE when I saw it on somewhat of a whim this summer and I was happy to see it gain some more popularity as the year wore on. Very cool and oozing with elements destined to be iconic.

THE ARTIST

I’ve tried to read myself out of liking THE ARTIST so much since it’s basically just a concept piece (black and white, mostly silent), but I really did enjoy it. I hope its success at least inspires people to try finance some different things.

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

I’m kind of a sucker for Fincher at this point, but the overall product has me looking past a few problems I had with plot pieces (which could have easily been in the book too, I have no idea). Much like The Social Network the fantastic Reznor/Ross soundtrack drives the whole thing and alone would be worth your time.

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY

I was a big fan of the original, Swedish Let the Right One In, and I love the tone throughout TINKER TAILOR as well. I’ll admit the plot didn’t completely come together for me until the end, but I liked it much more than I thought I was going to.

CERTIFIED COPY

CERTIFIED COPY was a very interesting, low key movie and most importantly felt very fresh for what really amounts to a relationship drama.

SHAME

Obviously SHAME turned into mostly shock factor for me in a theater watching an NC-17 movie with other — mostly older and perhaps unaware — patrons, but I think through the whole sex addiction thing there’s some good messages about addiction at large without the usual guise of drugs/crime.

YOUNG ADULT

I thought I’d like YOUNG ADULT a lot more being the moved-away, independent soul that I have become, but the Theron character turned out to be kind of too ridiculous for me in the end. It still spoke to me enough (and was thoroughly entertaining enough) for inclusion here.

So yeah, feel free to discuss these with me, or whatever.

*Movies I actually see are based on some combination of interest, availability, nominations (e.g. I would not have touched ELIC for any other reason), and in some cases just going along with what other people want to see. At one point I was trying to get my number of eligible movies watched as high as possible, and then eventually gave up and realized I could just cheat and watch a bunch of crappy movies. So! I stopped and just focused on stuff I thought I’d like or people were more excited about. Anyway, here was my list:

THE ARTIST

BEATS, RHYMES & LIFE: THE TRAVELS OF A TRIBE CALLED QUEST

BEGINNERS

BRIDESMAIDS

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER

CARNAGE

CERTIFIED COPY

CONTAGION

COWBOYS & ALIENS

CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE.

A DANGEROUS METHOD

THE DESCENDANTS

DRIVE

EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE

50/50

THE FUTURE

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

HANNA

HAPPYTHANKYOUMOREPLEASE

THE HELP

HUGO

THE IDES OF MARCH

LIKE CRAZY

MARGIN CALL

MEEK’S CUTOFF

MELANCHOLIA

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - GHOST PROTOCOL

MONEYBALL

THE MUPPETS

TYRANNOSAUR

RANGO

A SEPARATION

SHAME

SOURCE CODE

SUCKER PUNCH

SUPER 8

TAKE SHELTER

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY

THE TREE OF LIFE

TYRANNOSAUR

UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES

WAR HORSE

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN

WIN WIN

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS

YOUNG ADULT

Final Fantasy (Sports)

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 21:54:00 -0600

I have been playing fantasy sports for over a decade, and as an early side note it’s weird to finally reach an age where I can call back an entire decade of sentience of something. But thanks to Yahoo!’s full fantasy sports backlog, I can relive a rich history of poor finishes and terrible puns as team names. I joined my first fantasy football league in 2001, where I naturally entered a league with my brother and even used a variant of his team name.

As the years progressed, I can see myself mature as my team names grow from jokes I don’t understand to more modern spins on athlete names, as well as some middle period where my team names were simply athlete names, (e.g. “The Eli Mannings” in what appears to be Eli’s rookie year) My fantasy performances improve as well, leading me to become a perennial contender, if not champion, in at least one league per sport per season as I began dabbling in basketball, hockey, and baseball. I gradually pared down my participation to strictly football and baseball, which is where I stand now.

As of Sunday (1/1/2012), with two championship finishes, which I bring up not to brag but simply to counter any arguments of “oh you’re probably just bad at fantasy,” I hereby retire from fantasy sports. I don’t think I’ve become too good for them or anything, and I will continue to defend them to some degree against detractors, but at this point in time I no longer see the imminent value in them or don’t really have a place for them in my life or something in the spirit of one of those two things.

There is a tremendous amount of value to fantasy for certain people. First, there’s the abstraction of sports betting. While pure gambling/betting is something I’ve never really gotten into and will try to continue to avoid (save one March Madness bracket entry if you want to call out hypocrisy), I can see that fantasy sports allows one to make a wager (or not, obviously) across an entire season based on a large number of owner decisions instead of general bets that may lay further outside of the locus of control of the bettor that he or she might be nearer to in the fantasy sports realm. I never really played to prove some sort of knowledge of the game, as it’s usually more about exploiting your league’s rules and less knowledgeable (or less timely) players (plus a healthy dose of luck) than it does knowing Player X is about to break out.

I can’t really recall why I started doing fantasy football back in 2001 (but this is an-eerie-or-maybe-not reminder that my first weeks in competition were right around 9/11), but I suppose I’ve continued doing it out of some sort of tradition or cultural pull that kept me closer to friends or family or the society of sports fans that I felt I wanted to belong to.

I do remember that I started doing fantasy baseball, or at least refocusing on it in an obsessive-serious manner, just a few years ago as a mechanism to get me to follow baseball more closely. This actually worked extremely well, and I spent many hours at a summer job glued to statistics trying to make moves ahead of the other players. As a bonus, I’m pretty sure this also kept me away from the brink of insanity that I was fast approaching at that job. I pretty much proved that someone with unlimited time can completely abuse a more relaxed fantasy baseball league.

However, with both sports, I think I’ve reached the point where I am a mature enough fan to be able to appreciate the game without anything extra riding on it, be it money or fantasy performance, which I guess would also be some sort of surrogate pride. On top of the age old “nobody cares about someone else’s fantasy team,” I think that even personally it’s annoying to be looking for something so specific in any given game, like being pained to see my specific player, who has no attachment to me whatsoever (or his other millions of fantasy owners) ignored once again by his quarterback or coach. There is also a small part of me, regardless of what I wrote further up the page, that doesn’t necessarily want to be the guy whose entire life revolves around sports, and this is but a small step to try to realize that goal.

With baseball, following the Mets is an adventure in itself, and watching national games, any exciting looking matchups, and simply checking in on stats from time to time will more than suffice. Football, however, is a bit of a different beast. Indoctrinated from a young age by my father, I’ve ritualized the idea of a Football Sunday so much that I had somewhat come to organize my life around it. In college, I would try to schedule 6am flights back to school after Thanksgiving, much to the displeasure of whichever parent had to get up to drive me to the airport, lest I miss game action. This was especially true if the Giants had a 1pm game that day and/or was my trip returning after winter break which usually landed on the first week of playoffs, leaving me seemingly, at the time, without a choice.

This season, I spent nearly every Sunday, from noon (as I’m on Central Time) through the Sunday Night game (I cut out early on this if it was a blowout) in more or less lockdown inside my apartment. Between a TV hooked up to cable, a monitor set up next to it hooked up to a computer, my desktop with 2 monitors and any given laptop, I was well equipped to see every game, simultaneously, while keeping tabs on scoring plays (RedZone) and fantasy performance. I had long shunned watching games with others because they just didn’t “get it,” and I needed to be in my “command center.”

(I kind of still hold this view for Giants and Syracuse basketball games, for which I remain pretty strongly emotionally attached, and generally feel a) more comfortable in my own setting and b) have the freedom to check on stats and other things without fear of interruption or channel changing, malevolent or otherwise. As I said, small steps.)

Opponents of fantasy will claim its downright silliness or the oft-repeated connection to Dungeons & Dragons (but in this case for jocks instead of nerds). While there is in fact a loose parallel here, the truth is that fantasy sports are rooted in reality in a way that such games are not, in that the results depend on actual occurrences in sporting events, and also really don’t go into the kind of depth that such roleplaying games do (in my experiences at least, I’m sure some hardcore football or especially baseball leagues can get absolutely absurd). It is this casualness that most fantasy leagues display (a generalization of most people in most leagues) that I do not think I can quite grasp.

I realize that there’s probably some sort of middle ground here, and that most people are not this obsessive over fantasy sports, and can draft their players (or miss the draft) and just check briefly week to week (or not) and be fully content with that level of participation. However, as one who typically overcommits to, well, everything, as well as somebody who can appreciate the game without any fringe rooting interest, I’d rather just not deal with it at all. Clean break. This way, I can enjoy a game or two without feeling like I need to see every single play in one way or another and have some misplaced hatred of players who are underperforming for me.

I’ll probably still possess a passive interest in fantasy numbers simply to be able to converse with others about it, but I think this can be accomplished without poring over stats for what turns into hours every week.

I also reserve the right to completely Favre this decision and play again next year, but right now I don’t see it happening. I’ve also reached a breaking point in my interest in the sport of football in general, due to a bunch of different reasons, but I think that might need to be addressed in a future post. Until then, I will enjoy basketball season.

Mediocrity as ethos

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 19:04:00 -0600

With the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, everyone is going crazy (6.5 million copies sold on day one crazy) over something that is, at best, a wholly decent, albeit extremely broad and average video game. I could spend thousands of words railing on it and its subsequent release for a number of things, most notably serial sequelization (the game is essentially Call of Duty 8), hype culture, and what seems like a critical ennui towards very safe blockbusters.

I originally wrote this as a straight rant including pretty much all of those things, but my attitude has shifted somewhat. While I began the month pretty anti-Modern Warfare, I ended up buying it (for PC) on launch day. My attitude changed when I realized that pretty much every person I talk to regularly would be playing it. It was almost strictly peer pressure, but I probably would’ve caved and bought it eventually anyway, so I figured better to do it on day one and get it over with. After owning the game for about a week now, I do have to admit I have enjoyed playing it, mostly with a group of friends. This proves nothing, really, as even the worst game (or any experience really) can be made better with company. Even given this, I have to admit that Modern Warfare 3 isn’t a bad game by any means. It’s just not remarkable in any way whatsoever.

Modern Warfare 3 is the latest in a sort of cross-form genre that I guess you could call “popcorn media.” This is a movie, television show or game (etc., it really could be anything) that, like a popcorn movie, is extremely easy to experience without really being intellectually stimulating in any way. There is nothing wrong with enjoying time spent in this genre. It allows you to turn off your mind, which I can appreciate, take part in, and encourage it from time to time. Yet, much like the snack, too much of it can be a bad thing.

I see two problems with the genre’s new found prevalence (ok it’s not really new but the modern Internet has vastly inflated its worth). First is rampant exceptionalism, combined with opinion as objectivity. Everything you watch or do or see or play (and enjoy) is not the best. There is an important distinction to the definition of “best” to prevent multiple entries (or, in reality, more than a very small number). Once you winnow your list down a little, pay mind to the fact that “favorite” is not the same as “best.”

Second is, and this is debatable but is probably the biggest feeder into my first point, spending all of one’s time within this genre. While it is cliché to rail on people who like consensus popular things, it’s mostly deserved, as it makes people extremely boring. People should be more willing to challenge themselves. Read that 1300 page book that sounds like something you’d be kind of into. Watch that boring looking movie that critics say is really good. Play that game that requires you to think about what you’re doing.

My other and final take on all of this is that we should sometimes be satisfied with mediocrity, and maybe even embrace it. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is not a great game by any means, but I play it while extremely aware of this fact. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to enjoy it for a few hours a week when I want to shoot things without thinking about anything at all, or more likely, while doing something else. I’m content with the fact that I’m spending a little time on something underwhelming, because I have found some (although unusual) value in it. I think everyone else should evaluate their own pursuits and return to the reality where their hobbies are simply average.

To accomplish this, most people just need to reframe how they view what they enjoy. Chances are, most of the stuff you like isn’t that great. As long as you’re happy with that, more power to you. But consider that having exclusively mediocre interests might reflect back on mediocre people. To become more interesting, it couldn’t hurt to try something different or more daring. The sequels will always be there later.

And to the guy who posted “No game will beat MW3 —- BEST GAME EVER !!!” on Facebook, you may have successfully trolled me into writing this, but I can assure you that we are no longer Facebook friends.

Problems with Moneyball

Sat, 24 Sep 2011 20:10:00 -0500

I really should’ve liked Moneyball. I like baseball and Brad Pitt, I’m a fan of the theories exhibited by Billy Beane that were described in the movie, and stories that try to capture the larger significance of small revolutions or events are typically very intriguing to me.

I believe that a combination of events led me to not enjoy the movie as much as I should have.

First, the theatergoers I watched with weren’t exactly the greatest audience and 3 different people were pretty annoying in unique ways:

Directly in front of me: phone ringing constantly (an ESPN sound clip leading me to believe that he was receiving football scores)
Front left of the theater: unnecessarily misplaced and elongated laughter
I forgot what the last person was doing, but I remember that she was behind me and was assuredly being annoying.

In terms of the baseball results, I already knew exactly what would happen, which killed a lot of the drama for me. I did find it interesting to hear people around me as we exited the theater sound very surprised by the turn of events, which made me feel like I did myself a disservice by knowing the small bit of baseball history that I have retained over the years.

The most significant lines, both funny and dramatic, seemed to have all been used in the trailers, and the rest of the writing wasn’t really that great. I’d be interested to see which parts of the script that ended up being shot were written by Sorkin and which by Zaillian, as I usually skew more Sorkin.

I’m not sure what I was expecting exactly, but considering how much of the movie seemed to stress how they were changing baseball, a huge chunk of time was actually spent watching Brad Pitt drive his truck around (admittedly unappealing looking) parts of greater Oakland. I wasn’t really captured at all by his personal story, i.e., his history as a failed prospect and whatever they were trying to explain by giving his daughter enough scenes to seem important but not enough to actually matter.

It seemed like given how much real game footage, scenes presented as real game footage, and both real and presumably similarly faked TV/radio commentary was used, this movie could have just as easily been made into a documentary in the spirit of an ESPN 30 for 30 episode.

As is usual with my mixed reviews, this all is not to say that I disliked the movie or that it was necessarily bad, but given my somewhat high expectations, bolstered by positive critical reviews, I left the theater today a little disappointed.

About Tumblr

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 10:28:34 -0500

I’m also getting the feeling that I’m not really “using” Tumblr correctly, as I see most people just post pictures and a comment or something. That’s cool, but I’m using it as a blogging platform so feel free to unfollow or hide or ignore or whatever you’d do to my content here.

The Emmys

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 10:26:44 -0500

I was considering doing a full post on the Emmys in the style of my annual Oscars post. Then I looked at the list of nominees again and realized it wasn’t worth my time to just rant for several hundred words.

However, I’ll say two things:

Modern Family is quite overrated by the voters just to get that many nominations.
I’ll probably be paying more attention to football tonight regardless.

With the Fall television season upon us, I’ve got the notion to start a new project on keeping...

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 20:15:38 -0500

With the Fall television season upon us, I’ve got the notion to start a new project on keeping track of every cultural reference I make on a daily basis. This might turn into a separate feed.

I’m going to start off just charting it myself and seeing if it’s maintainable/worth my time/worth anyone else’s time. Then I’ll beta test it with some closer friends. If they still talk to me the next day, it might go live soon after.

Thoughts?

In business

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 18:03:29 -0500

So this is the first post I’m going to publicly send out, but note well that this is my third post overall on Tumblr.

As my last major blog entry was in May, I’ll sum up my life for the past few months:

I’m living in Texas and I work for Microsoft. Both of these details were available from numerous online profiles I keep, or you could have just talked to me and I probably would’ve told you.

More to come soon.

Also, I still regularly utilize Twitter in case you’re not following me on there. It’s my main means of communication as I don’t actively post to Facebook much.

That didn't last long

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 17:54:47 -0500

This will be known as Positively Cynical as well until further notice. I’m going to shut down or somehow migrate the Wordpress eventually…

And these are the names...

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 16:32:00 -0500

As astute readers might be able to tell, I haven’t really paid much attention to my blog lately. In an attempt to shake things up, I’m pointing my fancy new domain at this here Tumblr page and seeing what happens. Wordpress, which is what powers Davelubell.com at the moment, is kind of a behemoth and, although it didn’t really get in my way at all, Tumblr is kind of trendier, or at least will be for a few more months.

So we’ll give this a shot. I’ll try to post more, shorter entries* on this one. I’m also going to think hard on a name, and will probably just use Positively Cynical again because it kind of works.

*I’ve made this promise before and didn’t keep it, so the key word here is “try.”