Because I've only got seven at the moment and have no wish to rank them, I'm going to roll out my list of Awesome Films that Inadvertently Ruined the Movies in a pretty much random order. First up is The Matrix.
What it was:
An epic adventure/mind screw with enough cod-theology to justify the use of the vaunted "multi-layered" label.
What it gave the hacks:
Bullet time. Also the idea that "stoic acting," i.e, "no facial expression whatsoever" is acceptable in a Western action film (er, that's Western in the "not-Asia" sense, not Western in the "cowboys and indi- Native Americans" sense). It also spawned The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, which would be enough to condemn any lesser film to Hell for all eternity on that basis alone.
Face it, if it's a science-fiction or action flick or tv show, and it's set on present-day Earth or the very near future, and it was made after 1999, it owes something to The Matrix. Buffy did a "Dodge this" gag that very fall, for crying out loud!
The (biggest) problem is, bullet time was created to visually show that yes, you can have superpowers in an unreal world. It's a disconnect that breaks the cardinal rule of camera work; you notice it. Putting bullet time in any film set in "the real world" and using it when mere mortals duke it out (God DAMN it, Watchmen!) cheapens the original intended effect and breaks the audience's suspension of disbelief. So nice job breaking it, every single hack who didn't get it.
(At this point I feel the need to direct your attention to the 1996 film Star Trek: First Contact. Even though it's Aliens meets Moby-Dick, the music during the big pull-out from Picard's eye at the beginning is very, very similar to the music that plays when Neo wakes up in the power plant. And look at the implants on the back of the Borg Queen's neck. Just saying.)
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Quotes from the rest of Inside Out
We have one very specific advantage over the majority of touring bands. The total inability of us to moonwalk, duckwalk, set fire to our hair or play guitars with our teeth means that the audience to not need a constant video monitor to show what we are doing on stage.
[When voting on which songs would appear on the final album, The Division Bell, Richard Wright voted his material 10 points and everyone else's zero], and it took David and me a while to work out why this new album was rapidly becoming a Rick Wright magnum opus. The voting system was placed under review, as we came up with various systems of electoral colleges and second preference votes that would hace graced any mayoral contest.
[When picking the list for the compilation album Echoes] we had to deal with the fact that Roger, like Rick before him, would only vote for his own tracks. God bless democracy.
At dinner one night, we agreed with Douglas [Adams] that if he came up with a name for the album that we liked, we would make a payment to the charity of his choice. He cogitated for a while and suggested The Division Bell. The real irritation was that it was a phrase contained within the existing lyrics: we really should have read them more carefully.
[On Live at Pompeii:] We later learnt that a lot of the paperwork relating to the film had been lost in a fire, proof, as I have learnt over the years, that offices of those handling such matters are prone to levels of self-immolation, flooding and invasion by locusts that even Old Testament prophets would have found unbelievable.
Brian [Humphries, Animals producer] never totally realised that among a band noted for their left-of-centre sensibilities, it was wiser to keep his own somewhat more right-wing views to himself, especially when Roger was in earshot.
While Brian was on a break, Roger and I had assumed engineering duties, and successfully erased David's recently completed guitar solo. This was a perfect moment for me to recognise Roger's seniority.
We were all aware of the arrival of punk - even anyone who didn't listen to the music could not have failed to notice the Sex Pistols' explosion into the media spotlight. Just in in case we had missed this, locked in our Britannia Row bunker, Johnny Rotten kindly sported a particularly fetching 'I hate Pink Floyd' T-shirt.
Although we could sympathise with [punk's sentiments towards the record industry's concentration on "dinosaur" legacy acts over new talent], we were, however, on the wrong side of the divide, as far as the punk generation were concerned. 'Of course, you don't want the world populated only with dinosaurs,' I said at the time, 'but it's a terribly good thing to keep some of them alive.'
[Nick got asked to produce a punk album by the Damned.] We finished the album, and mixed it in the time Pink Floyd would have taken to set up the microphones.
[When voting on which songs would appear on the final album, The Division Bell, Richard Wright voted his material 10 points and everyone else's zero], and it took David and me a while to work out why this new album was rapidly becoming a Rick Wright magnum opus. The voting system was placed under review, as we came up with various systems of electoral colleges and second preference votes that would hace graced any mayoral contest.
[When picking the list for the compilation album Echoes] we had to deal with the fact that Roger, like Rick before him, would only vote for his own tracks. God bless democracy.
At dinner one night, we agreed with Douglas [Adams] that if he came up with a name for the album that we liked, we would make a payment to the charity of his choice. He cogitated for a while and suggested The Division Bell. The real irritation was that it was a phrase contained within the existing lyrics: we really should have read them more carefully.
[On Live at Pompeii:] We later learnt that a lot of the paperwork relating to the film had been lost in a fire, proof, as I have learnt over the years, that offices of those handling such matters are prone to levels of self-immolation, flooding and invasion by locusts that even Old Testament prophets would have found unbelievable.
Brian [Humphries, Animals producer] never totally realised that among a band noted for their left-of-centre sensibilities, it was wiser to keep his own somewhat more right-wing views to himself, especially when Roger was in earshot.
While Brian was on a break, Roger and I had assumed engineering duties, and successfully erased David's recently completed guitar solo. This was a perfect moment for me to recognise Roger's seniority.
We were all aware of the arrival of punk - even anyone who didn't listen to the music could not have failed to notice the Sex Pistols' explosion into the media spotlight. Just in in case we had missed this, locked in our Britannia Row bunker, Johnny Rotten kindly sported a particularly fetching 'I hate Pink Floyd' T-shirt.
Although we could sympathise with [punk's sentiments towards the record industry's concentration on "dinosaur" legacy acts over new talent], we were, however, on the wrong side of the divide, as far as the punk generation were concerned. 'Of course, you don't want the world populated only with dinosaurs,' I said at the time, 'but it's a terribly good thing to keep some of them alive.'
[Nick got asked to produce a punk album by the Damned.] We finished the album, and mixed it in the time Pink Floyd would have taken to set up the microphones.
Friday, March 26, 2010
My week - a brief overview
In general I've tried to keep this blog updated at least once a day, even if those posts are stupid short. There was that thing at the beginning of the month where I was on vacation and didn't really feel like trying to access the internet in the land of modems that make snails look like cheetahs.
And then there was this week.
You saw some of the fruits of those labors in the travel story, terrible and totally draft-quality though it was. You will never ever see my Philosophy paper on Free Will because it's just that supremely horrible.
I've been constantly tired because I'm not getting enough sleep, and my throat is sore from some sort of nasty seasonal allergy I'm only just becoming aware of. And speaking of medical ailments...
Nah. Not going there today.
On the plus side I did get through the rest of Inside Out and I'll have a post tomorrow about all the other awesome quotes in that book.
And then there was this week.
You saw some of the fruits of those labors in the travel story, terrible and totally draft-quality though it was. You will never ever see my Philosophy paper on Free Will because it's just that supremely horrible.
I've been constantly tired because I'm not getting enough sleep, and my throat is sore from some sort of nasty seasonal allergy I'm only just becoming aware of. And speaking of medical ailments...
Nah. Not going there today.
On the plus side I did get through the rest of Inside Out and I'll have a post tomorrow about all the other awesome quotes in that book.
Black Sabbath ruined metal?!
Not buying it. The reasoning is "they created it; they're the reason metal is what it is today." That's crap. That's like saying George Washington is responsible for the mess we find ourselves in today.
In other news, coming soon to this site: 10 Great Films that (Inadvertenty) Ruined Movies.
In other news, coming soon to this site: 10 Great Films that (Inadvertenty) Ruined Movies.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Shortest Post Evah!
Called it.
Edit 1:
Best part of the article:
Money men could wave a copy of the Black Album at metal bands young and old, and with a smirk drawl the words “Sound like this or be poor. The rules have changed.”
Edit 2:
So what's going to be Band #1? I was expecing Metallica to end up in that spot because let's face it, the Black Album killed metal. The MS guys said so themselves. I've offered up a few alternative culprits (G'n'R, Bruce Dickinson's horrible decision to leave Maiden right when grunge took off), but I sincerely doubut G'n'R or Maiden will crop up in spot #1. Ozzy might, for being a zombie-farce of himself, but that's a long shot. AC/DC aren't metal and even if they were, Back in Black begat Def Leppard, who, though they aren't really my cup of tea, aren't terrible either.
You know what? I'm going to guess Iron Maiden. The Number of the Beast proved that all you needed to generate controversy (read: media coverage, read: free publicity) is a reference to the Dark Prince. That alone unleashed a deluge of Satanic noise, and their decision to go synthy in 86 was comically ill-timed (yes, let's do a lighter album right when Master of Puppets, Peace Sells, and Reign in Blood are about to be unleashed). Did Seventh Son introduce concept albums to metal? I doubt it, but maybe they made them more mainstream. And Bruce leaving in 93 just when metal needed him most was a terrible mistake.
But in all honesty all of these reasons don't come close to what Metallica did. Whatever MS's choice is, I want to see them try to defend it.
Edit 1:
Best part of the article:
Money men could wave a copy of the Black Album at metal bands young and old, and with a smirk drawl the words “Sound like this or be poor. The rules have changed.”
Edit 2:
So what's going to be Band #1? I was expecing Metallica to end up in that spot because let's face it, the Black Album killed metal. The MS guys said so themselves. I've offered up a few alternative culprits (G'n'R, Bruce Dickinson's horrible decision to leave Maiden right when grunge took off), but I sincerely doubut G'n'R or Maiden will crop up in spot #1. Ozzy might, for being a zombie-farce of himself, but that's a long shot. AC/DC aren't metal and even if they were, Back in Black begat Def Leppard, who, though they aren't really my cup of tea, aren't terrible either.
You know what? I'm going to guess Iron Maiden. The Number of the Beast proved that all you needed to generate controversy (read: media coverage, read: free publicity) is a reference to the Dark Prince. That alone unleashed a deluge of Satanic noise, and their decision to go synthy in 86 was comically ill-timed (yes, let's do a lighter album right when Master of Puppets, Peace Sells, and Reign in Blood are about to be unleashed). Did Seventh Son introduce concept albums to metal? I doubt it, but maybe they made them more mainstream. And Bruce leaving in 93 just when metal needed him most was a terrible mistake.
But in all honesty all of these reasons don't come close to what Metallica did. Whatever MS's choice is, I want to see them try to defend it.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
On Air Travel
I haven't been yakking nearly as much as I want to because of school. I've decided to adapt (read: shamelessly recycle and partially censor) an essay I had to write earlier this week and share it with all one of you. All censorship has been bolded. Fill it in with the madlib of your choice. -James
Airports, as Douglas Adams once (in a book I read mostly in various airports, subsequently loaned to a friend, and haven’t seen in three years) put it much better than I can ever hope to, are generally ugly things. They really don’t want you to spend much time in them; get on your flight as quickly as possible, so that an arriving plane can then use that gate. You’d think the airlines would be a bit more cooperative, but no: delays and cancellations are still alarmingly commonplace. Once you’re through the security checkpoint and find out that your flight has been delayed, there are only so many options available to you.
What is an airport? A portmanteau of the word “air” and “port,” I suppose, much like seaport before it; a place where one gets on or off a vessel traveling through the air. It’s a far more accurate term for the age of zeppelins, but that’s the resiliency of the English language for you. Airports have basic features. There’s a check-in counter where you tell the agent who you are and they give you a ticket if you’ve bought one in advance. This process is being phased out, replaced by computers that spit out either your ticket or error messages telling you to go see the very gate agent whose job has been threatened by this new computer. If you haven’t bought a ticket in advance, you tell the agent where you want to go and the agent prints off a ticket after taking your money (I don’t believe the computers can do this yet; they can print tickets and take your money, to be sure, but they can’t seem to plan your route for you). If you’re carrying more than two bags, you’ll have to leave some of them with the agent, who will ensure that the bags get loaded onto the plane. And by that I mean the agent will put your bag on a conveyor belt and you’ll be happy if it lands where you’re going on the same day you do. There was an Italian airport I got stuck in at one point some years ago because the carrier cancelled our flight after taking our bags and refusing to give them back. They gave us accommodations for the night – an awful Italian hotel in the middle of a full-scale soccer riot with a thermostat even more uncooperative than the ones in my college’s dorms. What I’m trying to say here is that it’s a fantastically bad idea to check a bag.
After that, you go to the security checkpoint, which on average consists of fifteen minutes of standing in line, two minutes of hastily dragging your computer out of its bag and removing your shoes and belt and “any metallic objects you might be carrying,” five seconds of nervous anticipation as you step through the metal detector (now being replaced by what a friend of mine refers to as a “nudie scanner”), another minute of waiting for the guy behind the x-ray machine to stop staring at your bag – or worse, the bag right behind yours – so you can retrieve it, and one last minute of re-tying your shoelaces (I’ve since discovered the joys of loafers) and putting your keys back in your pocket and your computer back in your bag before you can be on your way.
It is vitally important to step into the scanner the moment your bags go into the x-ray machine. Usually one scanner will service two lines, and it’s entirely possible for well-coordinated thieves to rob you at the security checkpoint; one of them will wait for you to put your bags on the belt before entering the scanner. They’ll have lots of metallic objects in their pockets and set the thing off. While you’re waiting for them to empty their pockets, their accomplice will make off with your bags on the other side. This scam may not continue to work with the advent of the nudie scanners, and that’s the only good thing I can say about them. At any rate, once you’re past security, it’s invariably at least an hour until your flight, and you have no distractions except what the airport has to offer.
Before I get to what the airport has to offer (spoiler alert: very little), a word on the ideal dress code for travelers; unless it’s the middle of winter, my advice is a polo shirt, khakis, loafers, and a sweater you can stick in your bag as soon as you get on the plane (for men; I’m unqualified to give fashion advice to women). I’ve already mentioned that the loafers will save you time at security. Khaki pants have deeper pockets than jeans, so if you’re not wearing a sport coat with deep pockets, you’ll have somewhere to put your ticket without folding it up. Airports and airplanes tend to be clean enough that you shouldn’t worry about getting some fairly nice clothes dirty, but I wouldn’t advise wearing a suit unless you’re on your way to a meeting.
The airport I’ve spent the most time in, by virtue of having parents who like scheduling flights into and out of it, is Chicago’s own O’Hare International Airport, named after a World War Two pilot who got shot down after taking out five German stukas. Before that, the airport was called Orchard Field, and the luggage tags still read ORD. The airport is named after a guy whose plane went down. To me, that seems like tempting fate. O’Hare has got some of the best distractions in the airport business, including a Brachiosaur fossil they had to take out of the Field Museum of Natural History to make room for Sue the T-rex. Unfortunately, they put the skeleton directly behind the security checkpoint, which is an awful place for a decoration that old; people are eager to put their shoes back on and bustle off to their gates, not look up at the remains of the ancient beast.
There’s an impressive light show above the moving walkways used to ferry passengers underneath the tarmac to another terminal. In fact, somewhat appropriately, O’Hare’s entire theme when it comes to décor appears to be “look up!” There’s not another airport I can name that actually puts interesting displays on or near its ceiling. Elsewhere in the airport, you can find a massive globe suspended in the air (it gets decorated with a wreath when Christmas comes around), and a corridor with ceiling tiles that slowly go through the entire rainbow as you get further away from the security checkpoint. I wonder why the airport was built with ceiling heights more appropriate for a cathedral. Again, a general “look up” theme appears to be the answer. The airport is large enough that it took several trips for me to deem it sufficiently explored.
Airport food is uniformly miserable. They have McDonald’s and the like, and they also have more formal restaurants, but it could just be the stale air that makes everything taste like travel food, and that’s really no fun. The bottled water always tastes like tap water, whereas no-one will bat an eye if you fill up an empty water bottle using a drinking fountain. The Cyril E. King airport in island recently removed the drinking fountain inside their terminal and jacked up the price of bottled water; someone’s catching on. Also, it’s often difficult to find a spot to sit at any of these restaurants, because they’re all full of people who are, like you, waiting for their delayed flight to finally board.
Actually, compared to the alternative, waiting for a delayed flight isn’t all that bad. I was once on a trip from island to Chicago, with a layover in Orlando. The first leg of the flight got delayed; the plane that was supposed to take me from Orlando to Chicago was boarding at the same time that the plane taking me from island to Orlando was touching down. I ran, watching the gate numbers slowly march towards 35, my gate… except that I was suddenly looking at 34, 33, 32. My mind wasn’t exactly functioning, but that airport’s layout doesn’t seem particularly sensible either. I got as far as 28 before I realized that I’d made a mistake. There’s a dark and poorly-marked corridor leading to gates 35 and 36 that I completely missed. The map of the terminal that I’d studied before the first flight had landed displayed nothing like this. I can’t say that the airport in Orlando has particularly endeared itself to me. Nor have the people responsible for printing accurate diagrams of the airports in the back of the airline’s magazines. I did make that flight, but only just barely.
Getting to the gate has only been a problem for me only that once, and there were extenuating circumstances. Usually, the issue has nothing to do with me getting to the gate on time. Once I get to the gate, I routinely discover that the flight’s departure time has been pushed back fifteen minutes, then thirty minutes, then an hour. Joseph Daniel argues that these delays are due to airport congestion; there aren’t enough gates to accommodate the busy schedules of modern airlines. But this proposal is incomplete. Airport congestion has very little to do with delays caused by random equipment failure that the airline staff always seems to be completely incapable of fixing on their own.
One of the most idiotic situations I’ve ever found myself in involves United Airlines, or as I have taken to calling them, Blighted United. We were coming back from visiting a family member in some state on the East Coast, and our flight was delayed for an hour. Then it was cancelled. The reason for this cancellation? Some part of the plane we were to use had malfunctioned, and a replacement part would need to be flown in from San Francisco. This was United Airlines, a major travel industry, not some dime-store company that only owns twenty planes; was it unreasonable of me to expect them to have replacement parts less than five hours away? As it happened, a Southwest flight to Chicago was leaving from the gate across the aisle. We got the last seats. Congestion had nothing to do with this debacle.
More grating is the way United handled the crisis. By watching the gate agent carefully, my father was able to predict that the flight would be cancelled more than twenty minutes before it was officially announced. The agent was always either conversing with an engineer or calling his superiors. Said superiors naturally decided to take a “the buck stops over there” approach to solving the problem, and the agent began calling hotels, because that was the last flight of the evening and it is against United’s policy to re-book its passengers on other airlines. This guy knew, for a good twenty minutes, that our flight wasn’t going to leave and if his bosses had anything to say about it, we wouldn’t go anywhere that night. There were two flights to Chicago that started boarding in that first one-hour window; if he’d announced the flight was cancelled earlier, more people other than just the clever and observant ones could have gotten home that day. But no. This situation had nothing to do with any congestion anywhere down the line. Number-crunchers like Joseph Daniel fail to account for the general incompetence that can at times seem to pervade the airline industry. Instead, a simple JSTOR search of the terms “airport” and “waiting” reveal essay after essay discussing ways to relieve the bottleneck of passengers with pricing schemes and other and other options aimed at “fixing” the passengers, when in fact the airline is at fault.
That was an example of the rare occasion when I was able to follow the drama behind a flight delay. Most of the time, I, like all my fellow travelers, get left to my own devices. In the section on the security checkpoint I mentioned taking a laptop out of my bag, and indeed the archaic instrument on which I’m typing this essay has been my one constant companion on all my travels for the past eight years. My computer’s batteries stopped holding a charge in an airport. I turned it on and started working on an essay (this was back in high school; it is not my intention to imply that I’ve maintained the habit of doing any schoolwork on vacation, because this is supposed to be a nonfiction class). I’d made sure the charge was full before I left, but it was still only about five minutes before the computer informed me that it had about five minutes of battery life left, so maybe it would be a good idea to save my work and shut it down. Without a computer to sustain my nearly-ADD-like demands for constant entertainment, I found myself investigating the airport’s library. I can count on one hand the number of books I’ve bought in an airport bookstore and actually finished. Once that plane finally lands and I get home, the book gets buried. Nevertheless, when a flight gets delayed, the bookstore’s usually the first place I go. My philosophy is that anything’s better than just sitting around, staring at an ugly airport wall.
At one point when I was in grade school, my family took a trip down to island with a layover in other island, where we found that our flight to island was cancelled. We wound up splitting our party up and taking three separate planes for the last thirty minutes of the trip. The layover ended up being something like five hours. I was, thankfully, still in my Pokemon phase (I cannot believe I just wrote that), and so, with a copious supply of batteries and yet another virtual cave to navigate, I passed the time continually stumbling down the same dead-end corridors.
These days when my plane gets delayed, I find myself wandering down real-life dead end corridors instead of virtual ones (there are far fewer bats in real life). There’s usually something worth finding, somewhere. My sister now attends college in Tennessee, and when our flight back from there was delayed, I wandered around looking at all the guitars in display cases. They have an obsession with Telecasters and Les Pauls, which makes sense given the country music scene in Nashville. In Heathrow, London, undeniably the worst airport I’ve ever been in, wandering is the only option; rarely are there even seats at the gate. The American Airlines terminal at Bradley International in Connecticut is a horribly boring affair; the gates are all arrayed around a large square room just after security, so there’s nowhere to wander. The upside is that you can get a nice view of the airplanes out on the tarmac going about their business, which evidently involves anything except taking you home.
So other than play video games, read a book, or wander around, what options are available to the traveler with too much time on his or her hands? Sleep is always an option. Jet-lag can kill more vacation plans than anything else except sickness (and it does a very good job of exacerbating that). Yes, the chairs in the gates are incredibly uncomfortable, which does make sleeping difficult. Talking to random strangers is always an option. After all, if they’re on your flight then they’re putting up with the exact same nonsense as you are. Of course, they might just complain that they’re horribly bored and stuck in an airport for the next two hours.
Airports, as Douglas Adams once (in a book I read mostly in various airports, subsequently loaned to a friend, and haven’t seen in three years) put it much better than I can ever hope to, are generally ugly things. They really don’t want you to spend much time in them; get on your flight as quickly as possible, so that an arriving plane can then use that gate. You’d think the airlines would be a bit more cooperative, but no: delays and cancellations are still alarmingly commonplace. Once you’re through the security checkpoint and find out that your flight has been delayed, there are only so many options available to you.
What is an airport? A portmanteau of the word “air” and “port,” I suppose, much like seaport before it; a place where one gets on or off a vessel traveling through the air. It’s a far more accurate term for the age of zeppelins, but that’s the resiliency of the English language for you. Airports have basic features. There’s a check-in counter where you tell the agent who you are and they give you a ticket if you’ve bought one in advance. This process is being phased out, replaced by computers that spit out either your ticket or error messages telling you to go see the very gate agent whose job has been threatened by this new computer. If you haven’t bought a ticket in advance, you tell the agent where you want to go and the agent prints off a ticket after taking your money (I don’t believe the computers can do this yet; they can print tickets and take your money, to be sure, but they can’t seem to plan your route for you). If you’re carrying more than two bags, you’ll have to leave some of them with the agent, who will ensure that the bags get loaded onto the plane. And by that I mean the agent will put your bag on a conveyor belt and you’ll be happy if it lands where you’re going on the same day you do. There was an Italian airport I got stuck in at one point some years ago because the carrier cancelled our flight after taking our bags and refusing to give them back. They gave us accommodations for the night – an awful Italian hotel in the middle of a full-scale soccer riot with a thermostat even more uncooperative than the ones in my college’s dorms. What I’m trying to say here is that it’s a fantastically bad idea to check a bag.
After that, you go to the security checkpoint, which on average consists of fifteen minutes of standing in line, two minutes of hastily dragging your computer out of its bag and removing your shoes and belt and “any metallic objects you might be carrying,” five seconds of nervous anticipation as you step through the metal detector (now being replaced by what a friend of mine refers to as a “nudie scanner”), another minute of waiting for the guy behind the x-ray machine to stop staring at your bag – or worse, the bag right behind yours – so you can retrieve it, and one last minute of re-tying your shoelaces (I’ve since discovered the joys of loafers) and putting your keys back in your pocket and your computer back in your bag before you can be on your way.
It is vitally important to step into the scanner the moment your bags go into the x-ray machine. Usually one scanner will service two lines, and it’s entirely possible for well-coordinated thieves to rob you at the security checkpoint; one of them will wait for you to put your bags on the belt before entering the scanner. They’ll have lots of metallic objects in their pockets and set the thing off. While you’re waiting for them to empty their pockets, their accomplice will make off with your bags on the other side. This scam may not continue to work with the advent of the nudie scanners, and that’s the only good thing I can say about them. At any rate, once you’re past security, it’s invariably at least an hour until your flight, and you have no distractions except what the airport has to offer.
Before I get to what the airport has to offer (spoiler alert: very little), a word on the ideal dress code for travelers; unless it’s the middle of winter, my advice is a polo shirt, khakis, loafers, and a sweater you can stick in your bag as soon as you get on the plane (for men; I’m unqualified to give fashion advice to women). I’ve already mentioned that the loafers will save you time at security. Khaki pants have deeper pockets than jeans, so if you’re not wearing a sport coat with deep pockets, you’ll have somewhere to put your ticket without folding it up. Airports and airplanes tend to be clean enough that you shouldn’t worry about getting some fairly nice clothes dirty, but I wouldn’t advise wearing a suit unless you’re on your way to a meeting.
The airport I’ve spent the most time in, by virtue of having parents who like scheduling flights into and out of it, is Chicago’s own O’Hare International Airport, named after a World War Two pilot who got shot down after taking out five German stukas. Before that, the airport was called Orchard Field, and the luggage tags still read ORD. The airport is named after a guy whose plane went down. To me, that seems like tempting fate. O’Hare has got some of the best distractions in the airport business, including a Brachiosaur fossil they had to take out of the Field Museum of Natural History to make room for Sue the T-rex. Unfortunately, they put the skeleton directly behind the security checkpoint, which is an awful place for a decoration that old; people are eager to put their shoes back on and bustle off to their gates, not look up at the remains of the ancient beast.
There’s an impressive light show above the moving walkways used to ferry passengers underneath the tarmac to another terminal. In fact, somewhat appropriately, O’Hare’s entire theme when it comes to décor appears to be “look up!” There’s not another airport I can name that actually puts interesting displays on or near its ceiling. Elsewhere in the airport, you can find a massive globe suspended in the air (it gets decorated with a wreath when Christmas comes around), and a corridor with ceiling tiles that slowly go through the entire rainbow as you get further away from the security checkpoint. I wonder why the airport was built with ceiling heights more appropriate for a cathedral. Again, a general “look up” theme appears to be the answer. The airport is large enough that it took several trips for me to deem it sufficiently explored.
Airport food is uniformly miserable. They have McDonald’s and the like, and they also have more formal restaurants, but it could just be the stale air that makes everything taste like travel food, and that’s really no fun. The bottled water always tastes like tap water, whereas no-one will bat an eye if you fill up an empty water bottle using a drinking fountain. The Cyril E. King airport in island recently removed the drinking fountain inside their terminal and jacked up the price of bottled water; someone’s catching on. Also, it’s often difficult to find a spot to sit at any of these restaurants, because they’re all full of people who are, like you, waiting for their delayed flight to finally board.
Actually, compared to the alternative, waiting for a delayed flight isn’t all that bad. I was once on a trip from island to Chicago, with a layover in Orlando. The first leg of the flight got delayed; the plane that was supposed to take me from Orlando to Chicago was boarding at the same time that the plane taking me from island to Orlando was touching down. I ran, watching the gate numbers slowly march towards 35, my gate… except that I was suddenly looking at 34, 33, 32. My mind wasn’t exactly functioning, but that airport’s layout doesn’t seem particularly sensible either. I got as far as 28 before I realized that I’d made a mistake. There’s a dark and poorly-marked corridor leading to gates 35 and 36 that I completely missed. The map of the terminal that I’d studied before the first flight had landed displayed nothing like this. I can’t say that the airport in Orlando has particularly endeared itself to me. Nor have the people responsible for printing accurate diagrams of the airports in the back of the airline’s magazines. I did make that flight, but only just barely.
Getting to the gate has only been a problem for me only that once, and there were extenuating circumstances. Usually, the issue has nothing to do with me getting to the gate on time. Once I get to the gate, I routinely discover that the flight’s departure time has been pushed back fifteen minutes, then thirty minutes, then an hour. Joseph Daniel argues that these delays are due to airport congestion; there aren’t enough gates to accommodate the busy schedules of modern airlines. But this proposal is incomplete. Airport congestion has very little to do with delays caused by random equipment failure that the airline staff always seems to be completely incapable of fixing on their own.
One of the most idiotic situations I’ve ever found myself in involves United Airlines, or as I have taken to calling them, Blighted United. We were coming back from visiting a family member in some state on the East Coast, and our flight was delayed for an hour. Then it was cancelled. The reason for this cancellation? Some part of the plane we were to use had malfunctioned, and a replacement part would need to be flown in from San Francisco. This was United Airlines, a major travel industry, not some dime-store company that only owns twenty planes; was it unreasonable of me to expect them to have replacement parts less than five hours away? As it happened, a Southwest flight to Chicago was leaving from the gate across the aisle. We got the last seats. Congestion had nothing to do with this debacle.
More grating is the way United handled the crisis. By watching the gate agent carefully, my father was able to predict that the flight would be cancelled more than twenty minutes before it was officially announced. The agent was always either conversing with an engineer or calling his superiors. Said superiors naturally decided to take a “the buck stops over there” approach to solving the problem, and the agent began calling hotels, because that was the last flight of the evening and it is against United’s policy to re-book its passengers on other airlines. This guy knew, for a good twenty minutes, that our flight wasn’t going to leave and if his bosses had anything to say about it, we wouldn’t go anywhere that night. There were two flights to Chicago that started boarding in that first one-hour window; if he’d announced the flight was cancelled earlier, more people other than just the clever and observant ones could have gotten home that day. But no. This situation had nothing to do with any congestion anywhere down the line. Number-crunchers like Joseph Daniel fail to account for the general incompetence that can at times seem to pervade the airline industry. Instead, a simple JSTOR search of the terms “airport” and “waiting” reveal essay after essay discussing ways to relieve the bottleneck of passengers with pricing schemes and other and other options aimed at “fixing” the passengers, when in fact the airline is at fault.
That was an example of the rare occasion when I was able to follow the drama behind a flight delay. Most of the time, I, like all my fellow travelers, get left to my own devices. In the section on the security checkpoint I mentioned taking a laptop out of my bag, and indeed the archaic instrument on which I’m typing this essay has been my one constant companion on all my travels for the past eight years. My computer’s batteries stopped holding a charge in an airport. I turned it on and started working on an essay (this was back in high school; it is not my intention to imply that I’ve maintained the habit of doing any schoolwork on vacation, because this is supposed to be a nonfiction class). I’d made sure the charge was full before I left, but it was still only about five minutes before the computer informed me that it had about five minutes of battery life left, so maybe it would be a good idea to save my work and shut it down. Without a computer to sustain my nearly-ADD-like demands for constant entertainment, I found myself investigating the airport’s library. I can count on one hand the number of books I’ve bought in an airport bookstore and actually finished. Once that plane finally lands and I get home, the book gets buried. Nevertheless, when a flight gets delayed, the bookstore’s usually the first place I go. My philosophy is that anything’s better than just sitting around, staring at an ugly airport wall.
At one point when I was in grade school, my family took a trip down to island with a layover in other island, where we found that our flight to island was cancelled. We wound up splitting our party up and taking three separate planes for the last thirty minutes of the trip. The layover ended up being something like five hours. I was, thankfully, still in my Pokemon phase (I cannot believe I just wrote that), and so, with a copious supply of batteries and yet another virtual cave to navigate, I passed the time continually stumbling down the same dead-end corridors.
These days when my plane gets delayed, I find myself wandering down real-life dead end corridors instead of virtual ones (there are far fewer bats in real life). There’s usually something worth finding, somewhere. My sister now attends college in Tennessee, and when our flight back from there was delayed, I wandered around looking at all the guitars in display cases. They have an obsession with Telecasters and Les Pauls, which makes sense given the country music scene in Nashville. In Heathrow, London, undeniably the worst airport I’ve ever been in, wandering is the only option; rarely are there even seats at the gate. The American Airlines terminal at Bradley International in Connecticut is a horribly boring affair; the gates are all arrayed around a large square room just after security, so there’s nowhere to wander. The upside is that you can get a nice view of the airplanes out on the tarmac going about their business, which evidently involves anything except taking you home.
So other than play video games, read a book, or wander around, what options are available to the traveler with too much time on his or her hands? Sleep is always an option. Jet-lag can kill more vacation plans than anything else except sickness (and it does a very good job of exacerbating that). Yes, the chairs in the gates are incredibly uncomfortable, which does make sleeping difficult. Talking to random strangers is always an option. After all, if they’re on your flight then they’re putting up with the exact same nonsense as you are. Of course, they might just complain that they’re horribly bored and stuck in an airport for the next two hours.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Great quotes from the first 70 pages of Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd by Nick Mason
"Although he had studiously ignored my existence up until that moment, Roger [Waters] had finally recognized in me a kindred musical sprity trapped within a budding architect's body. The star-crossed paths of Virgo and Aquarius had dictated our destiny, and were compelling Roger to seek a way to unite our minds in a great creative adventure.
No, no, no. I'm trying to keep the invention to a minimum. The only reason Roger had bothered to approach me was that he wanted to borrow my car."
"The fact that none of us [Mason's first band, the Hotrods] knew how to play was only a minor setback, since we didn't have any instruments."
"Although we [the Hotrods again] had access to some amps, these were so shameful that when we posed for a group photo, we felt obliged to mock up a Vox cabinent using a cardboard box and a biro."
"In a period when everyone was being cool in a very adolescent, self-conscious way, Syd [Barrett] was unfashionably outgoing; my enduring memory of our first encounter is the fact that he bothered to come up and introduce himself to me."
"The wallflowers, who had been left out of all the fun in the Sixties, got their own back during the 1980s by gaining control of the country and vandalizing the health service, education, libraries and any other cultural institutions they could get their hands on."
"Acquiring a van represented by far the biggest capital outlay - yet had none of the glamor of spending a student grant on a new guitar or bass drum."
No, no, no. I'm trying to keep the invention to a minimum. The only reason Roger had bothered to approach me was that he wanted to borrow my car."
"The fact that none of us [Mason's first band, the Hotrods] knew how to play was only a minor setback, since we didn't have any instruments."
"Although we [the Hotrods again] had access to some amps, these were so shameful that when we posed for a group photo, we felt obliged to mock up a Vox cabinent using a cardboard box and a biro."
"In a period when everyone was being cool in a very adolescent, self-conscious way, Syd [Barrett] was unfashionably outgoing; my enduring memory of our first encounter is the fact that he bothered to come up and introduce himself to me."
"The wallflowers, who had been left out of all the fun in the Sixties, got their own back during the 1980s by gaining control of the country and vandalizing the health service, education, libraries and any other cultural institutions they could get their hands on."
"Acquiring a van represented by far the biggest capital outlay - yet had none of the glamor of spending a student grant on a new guitar or bass drum."
Sunday, March 21, 2010
A penny for my thoughts, adjusted for inflation
Back on November 4, 2008, I wrote an essay about how the lyrics to a 20-year-old metal song had never seemed more appropriate. I really should find it, because I'm sure it's still somewhere on my hard drive, and post it here one of these days, because I'm still convinced that I am being and will be vindicated.
But I was wrong. Metallica's "...And Justice For All" was certainly appropriate then, but it's even more appropriate now. All you need to do is chance the title to "...And Healthcare For All."
Some of the lyrics are on the painfully juvenile side (whenever I think about it, Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here," with its line about trading cold comfort for change, best sums up current political events), but "Justice" is still more relevant today than it ever was in 88. Lines like "Halls of justice painted green, money talking" and "seeking no truth, winning is all," and "the ultimate in vanity/exploiting their supremacy" still ring true today.
Some questions:
1) Does Bart Stupak honestly believe that the most pro-abortion president in history will do everything in his power to make sure our tax dollars don't fund abortions?
2) Does the government really have the right to force its citizens to purchase a good or service?
3) Does any Democrat understand what "insurance" actually is? What's next, forcing fire insurance companies to sell insurance coverage to people whose houses are already on fire?
This thing is an albatross around the Democrats' neck for the next few election cycles, but it's concrete sneakers for America in general.
I can't believe the things you say. I can't believe the price you'll pay.
But I was wrong. Metallica's "...And Justice For All" was certainly appropriate then, but it's even more appropriate now. All you need to do is chance the title to "...And Healthcare For All."
Some of the lyrics are on the painfully juvenile side (whenever I think about it, Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here," with its line about trading cold comfort for change, best sums up current political events), but "Justice" is still more relevant today than it ever was in 88. Lines like "Halls of justice painted green, money talking" and "seeking no truth, winning is all," and "the ultimate in vanity/exploiting their supremacy" still ring true today.
Some questions:
1) Does Bart Stupak honestly believe that the most pro-abortion president in history will do everything in his power to make sure our tax dollars don't fund abortions?
2) Does the government really have the right to force its citizens to purchase a good or service?
3) Does any Democrat understand what "insurance" actually is? What's next, forcing fire insurance companies to sell insurance coverage to people whose houses are already on fire?
This thing is an albatross around the Democrats' neck for the next few election cycles, but it's concrete sneakers for America in general.
I can't believe the things you say. I can't believe the price you'll pay.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
It's just a rock band.
"It's just natural. It's not a great disaster. People keep talking about it as if it's the end of the Earth. It's only a rock group that split up. It's nothing important. You know, you have all the old records there if you want to reminisce."
-John Lennon
Yeah, that pretty much covers it. Over and out.
-John Lennon
Yeah, that pretty much covers it. Over and out.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Why AC/DC Aren't Metal (And Furthermore Never Were)
The liner notes to Back in Black, written by some journalist, say "Heavy metal nation knows these riffs by heart." True, Metalheads everywhere were at one point eager to point to the #2 biggest selling album of all time and say "Yes, that's a metal album." Who wouldn't?
Anyway, let's take a look at some of the things that define metal:
1) Satan (or Cthulhu). Unless you think "Highway to Hell" and "Hell Ain't A Bad Place to Be" are meant to be taken literally, the Prince of Darkness is rather absent from the AC/DC canon. Oh, he's mentioned in "Hells Bells," true. But come on, "The Number of the Beast" is more satanic than "Hells Bells," and "Beast" is about a Nathaniel Hawthorne story.
2) Leather. Big no (Bon had a leather outfit in the early days, but that was gone by Let There Be Rock). Angus Young has somehow managed to look more dignified in a school suit than anybody who man wore leather pants, with the possible exception of Jim Morrison.
3) Lyrics: AC/DC have never written a song that wasn't about sex, drugs, or rock & roll except for the few that are about Bon's death. That's not to say that metal bands can't cover those topics, but those that do tend to wear leather. See entry #2 on this list.
3a) Songs about war or violence: Er, aside from "War Machine" on their latest album, I'm going with zero. "Hells Bells" is a maybe.
4) Technical perfection. Going back to Back in Black for a moment, the second-biggest-selling album of all time, listen carefully to Malcolm's guitar during the intro to "Hells Bells" and Angus flubbing the very first note of "Shoot to Thrill." No metal band (especially no metal band hinging their entire career on that album) would leave those mistakes in.
Anyway, let's take a look at some of the things that define metal:
1) Satan (or Cthulhu). Unless you think "Highway to Hell" and "Hell Ain't A Bad Place to Be" are meant to be taken literally, the Prince of Darkness is rather absent from the AC/DC canon. Oh, he's mentioned in "Hells Bells," true. But come on, "The Number of the Beast" is more satanic than "Hells Bells," and "Beast" is about a Nathaniel Hawthorne story.
2) Leather. Big no (Bon had a leather outfit in the early days, but that was gone by Let There Be Rock). Angus Young has somehow managed to look more dignified in a school suit than anybody who man wore leather pants, with the possible exception of Jim Morrison.
3) Lyrics: AC/DC have never written a song that wasn't about sex, drugs, or rock & roll except for the few that are about Bon's death. That's not to say that metal bands can't cover those topics, but those that do tend to wear leather. See entry #2 on this list.
3a) Songs about war or violence: Er, aside from "War Machine" on their latest album, I'm going with zero. "Hells Bells" is a maybe.
4) Technical perfection. Going back to Back in Black for a moment, the second-biggest-selling album of all time, listen carefully to Malcolm's guitar during the intro to "Hells Bells" and Angus flubbing the very first note of "Shoot to Thrill." No metal band (especially no metal band hinging their entire career on that album) would leave those mistakes in.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
That's what I'm talking about!
This is excellent. I wholeheartedly approve. A rock album is a work of art, especially in Pink Floyd's case, and I certainly wouldn't want to listen to just one piece of the whole (this, I think, is why parts of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" I-V and VI-IX are stuck together like that).
"We made an album. We didn't make singles, we didn't make ten singles, we made a good album."
-Angus Young, on Highway to Hell
He's got a point. An album is a musical work created and recorded in a band in one place and one time and one mindset (with one producer, etc). Splitting it up denigrates the work.
"We made an album. We didn't make singles, we didn't make ten singles, we made a good album."
-Angus Young, on Highway to Hell
He's got a point. An album is a musical work created and recorded in a band in one place and one time and one mindset (with one producer, etc). Splitting it up denigrates the work.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Best News All Day
If Obama really won't campaign for any Democrat who votes against ObamaCare, then that's truly awesome news. That's an excellent incentive for every Democrat to vote against it, because thus far the President has been abysmal at campaigning for other people.
Nonsense pt 9573
This looks interesting, though I have never heard of a band called "Pink Flod."
Tom Baker writing a Big Finish Doctor Who audio?? (No, it's not guaranteed to happen, but) THAT WOULD BE FREAKING AWESOME!!!!
Re-watching DS9 on DVD. I've mentioned the surprisingly clunky dialogue before, but what with all the terrorism and "If you're not with us, you're against us," there's no way the show could be made that way today.
DWO WhoCast episode 173 - Tom Baker mentioned Christoph Waltz in Inglorious Basterds. Awesome.
Carthage must be destroyed.
Tom Baker writing a Big Finish Doctor Who audio?? (No, it's not guaranteed to happen, but) THAT WOULD BE FREAKING AWESOME!!!!
Re-watching DS9 on DVD. I've mentioned the surprisingly clunky dialogue before, but what with all the terrorism and "If you're not with us, you're against us," there's no way the show could be made that way today.
DWO WhoCast episode 173 - Tom Baker mentioned Christoph Waltz in Inglorious Basterds. Awesome.
Carthage must be destroyed.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Stuff
I could not have said this better myself, aside from the fact that I don't like Cannibal Corpse, boo hoo me.
Anyway, I applaud what the MS guys are doing, and of course there's no doubt in my mind that Metallica is going to show up somewhere on that list. It got me thinking. The "Here's how (band) killed (genre)" madlib can't be very hard to work out: (band) did (style) so well and so originally, and none of their sucessors get that. All they want to do is imitate (band) without realizing that (band) took (genre) and made it, well, one hesitates to use the word "mainstream." Popular, then, and overly so.
But you can't take a "mainstream" genre and do that much more with it, sadly, because all the sheeple zombie chart people want are watered down three-minute cookie-cutter verse-verse-chorus songs with no originality whatsoever.
And the flip side to that, which is what every metalhead who's not selling out is doing, is downtuning more and more and making their lyrics more and more offensive, because every time someone crosses the line it's not "go back to the sane side of the line," it's "let's redraw the line a little further away now."
See, every single person out there making music today thinks of music simply on one axis: a "mainstream" vs "indie" axis. There are more axes to consider: "original" vs "pathetic clone" and "bad" vs "good." Now, it sickens me that a guy who couldn't cope with his problems and blew his brains out has become the icon of 90s music, and I've written enough about that. What about the 00s? What song made in the last 10 years is still going to be on the radio 30 years from now?
I really should put together a formula, something like (frequency of airplay)/(number of good songs they have) X (number of clones you hear on top 40 stations)/(originality)= how much I hate any given band, except of course that AC/DC would score rather highly on this, and that is highly unfortunate because I unabashedly love their no-nonsense three-chord anthems that they keep rerecording and putting on new albums under different names. Metallica would come out fairly close to 1, intriguingly. Pink Floyd would be near zero because the second fraction would be so fantastically low.
Hrm. I'm going to keep this model until I realize it doesn't work for someone other than AC/DC.
Anyway, I applaud what the MS guys are doing, and of course there's no doubt in my mind that Metallica is going to show up somewhere on that list. It got me thinking. The "Here's how (band) killed (genre)" madlib can't be very hard to work out: (band) did (style) so well and so originally, and none of their sucessors get that. All they want to do is imitate (band) without realizing that (band) took (genre) and made it, well, one hesitates to use the word "mainstream." Popular, then, and overly so.
But you can't take a "mainstream" genre and do that much more with it, sadly, because all the sheeple zombie chart people want are watered down three-minute cookie-cutter verse-verse-chorus songs with no originality whatsoever.
And the flip side to that, which is what every metalhead who's not selling out is doing, is downtuning more and more and making their lyrics more and more offensive, because every time someone crosses the line it's not "go back to the sane side of the line," it's "let's redraw the line a little further away now."
See, every single person out there making music today thinks of music simply on one axis: a "mainstream" vs "indie" axis. There are more axes to consider: "original" vs "pathetic clone" and "bad" vs "good." Now, it sickens me that a guy who couldn't cope with his problems and blew his brains out has become the icon of 90s music, and I've written enough about that. What about the 00s? What song made in the last 10 years is still going to be on the radio 30 years from now?
I really should put together a formula, something like (frequency of airplay)/(number of good songs they have) X (number of clones you hear on top 40 stations)/(originality)= how much I hate any given band, except of course that AC/DC would score rather highly on this, and that is highly unfortunate because I unabashedly love their no-nonsense three-chord anthems that they keep rerecording and putting on new albums under different names. Metallica would come out fairly close to 1, intriguingly. Pink Floyd would be near zero because the second fraction would be so fantastically low.
Hrm. I'm going to keep this model until I realize it doesn't work for someone other than AC/DC.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Fake News 1
Funnyfarm, WI - Students at Funnyfarm University have resorted to burning their computers to protest the college's notoriously slow internet connection. "We have historical precedent for doing this," says Ellen Strick, '10. "For example, in the 80s, religious folks would burn their metal albums to protest the satanic lyrics. In the 90s, anarchists burned corporate headquarters to protest employment. We're just continuing the trend."
Meanwhile, Bobby Davis, '11, says, "Look, I never thought much of the Oscars, but that's not to say I burn them, I just don't watch them. True art doesn't even make it to the screen, man. But I got sidetracked. Violence is not the answer, man."
"That's precisely your problem!" shouts Alexander Smith, '09 (courses incomplete), a fraternity member. "You'll never get their attention if you just shut up! We must burn our computers and modems and then, when the administration gets faster ones, everyone will be happier. And we can make the pledges pay for the upgrades, of course."
Bobby Davis said something else at this point, but Smith made "Baa baa" noises that completely drowned out any insight Davis may have had about the back of his hand.
Jennifer Drake, '12, suggests that once all the computers are burned, "we will be able to commune with nature once again." Campus security asked her to please put her clothes back on, but they were drowned out by Smith and his frat brothers, who were whistling loudly.
"This is all nonsense anyway," says Professor Hank Ferguson. "Once they burn down their dorms, we'll have to ask for even more federal subsidies to re-build them. God forbid I ever take a pay cut just because all the students of my political science class are deluded, violent anarchists."
Meanwhile, Bobby Davis, '11, says, "Look, I never thought much of the Oscars, but that's not to say I burn them, I just don't watch them. True art doesn't even make it to the screen, man. But I got sidetracked. Violence is not the answer, man."
"That's precisely your problem!" shouts Alexander Smith, '09 (courses incomplete), a fraternity member. "You'll never get their attention if you just shut up! We must burn our computers and modems and then, when the administration gets faster ones, everyone will be happier. And we can make the pledges pay for the upgrades, of course."
Bobby Davis said something else at this point, but Smith made "Baa baa" noises that completely drowned out any insight Davis may have had about the back of his hand.
Jennifer Drake, '12, suggests that once all the computers are burned, "we will be able to commune with nature once again." Campus security asked her to please put her clothes back on, but they were drowned out by Smith and his frat brothers, who were whistling loudly.
"This is all nonsense anyway," says Professor Hank Ferguson. "Once they burn down their dorms, we'll have to ask for even more federal subsidies to re-build them. God forbid I ever take a pay cut just because all the students of my political science class are deluded, violent anarchists."
The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time
In my bored adventures of Desperately Staving Off Boredom in a Non-Homework Related Way, I stumbled across a list Time Magazine compiled 4 years ago of the... well, read the title.
And it's wrong. It's so hilariously wrong it's not even funny despite the use of the word "hilarious" just 5 words before the word "funny." Which means of course that I get to use this as a springboard for a massive, epic, and entirely too self-referential rant.
First off, this is wrong. No, I'm not saying Master of Puppets shouldn't be on there, but look at the first sentence. "Their next album would be the glossy, gazillion-selling breakthrough..." would have to read "Their next album would be a tragically undermixed, bass-less retread of everything one of their rivals did, and the next album after that would be a glossy, gazillion-selling sellout..." in order to be accurate.
Also Pink Floyd isn't on it. I'm sorry, but any list of great albums that does not contain a Pink Floyd album is simply wrong. What, did you have a quota? A set number of albums that had to go to rap "music" or crappy pop bands? I know music taste is subjective, but you put some criminally overhyped and undersold albums on there and couldn't find room for a legitimate masterpiece like The Dark Side of the Moon, which only stayed on the charts for a measly 14 years? I know rock critics must by definition have a love affair with the Beatles and Bob Dylan, and must genuflect at the altar of "Stairway to Heaven," but come on.
It's people like you that cause hype backlash against artists like the Beatles and Dylan. By overhyping them at the expense of undeniably better albums, you're not winning any friends among the classic rock snobs... and by putting stupid cookie-cutter pop albums on the list and overlooking albums like Dark Side, you're still alienating the classic rock snobs. What, not a single member of your staff was born in the late 50s? I don't understand how your interpretation of music history could go "Everything the Beatles did was holy and awesome, and then after they broke up there was a musical black hole broken up only by sporadic blips on the radar like 'Stairway to Heaven' before the Sex Pistols destroyed the concept of production quality, Michael Jackson destroyed the concept of musical sanity, and Slayer destroyed the concept of 'heavy enough.' Oh, and then Nirvana destroyed the concept of good music except they didn't." Well, of course it doesn't. You've somehow deluded yourselves into thinking that Nevermind is more important than Dark Side, but I maintain that the only reason anyone actually remembers that album today is a) because self-indulgent trendsetters like you have a skewed music taste and b) because Cobain's dead.
So you're not doing him any favors by promoting his album of whining over a legitimate masterpiece (The Wall was whining too, but at least it yielded a truly epic guitar solo). I don't care because I don't like him. I do like the Beatles, which makes your overhyping of them annoying, because you're not doing them any favors. Revolver, Rubber Soul, Sgt. Pepper, White Album, and Abbey Road? What, did each editor get to pick their favorite Beatles album? Under what definition except "legacy act" is the album that gave us "Wild Honey Pie" a better album than the one that gave us "Highway to Hell?"
Full disclosure: Highway to Hell is not on the list and that's as it should be, because the title track is really the only thing anyone remembers off that album. Nevertheless, I would be willing to bet you money that "Highway to Hell" gets more radio play each day (and is known by more guitarists) than all the songs off The White Album combined. Perhaps a better question would be why five Beatles albums made the list but only one Zeppelin album did.
Perhaps what the next "journalist" who wants to "compile" a list of the "greatest" albums of all time should limit himself to no more than one album per artist. After all, one of the most interesting things I found about that list was that The Black Album wasn't on it. That's as it should be. Metallica were perfectly represented by the far superior Master of Puppets. AC/DC got Back in Black, which does them a perfect service.
In fact, I would like to see a list of great albums, again only one per band, that deliberately excludes the stuff you always hear on the radio. Metallica would be represented by Ride the Lightning, Led Zeppelin by Presence (I cannot be the only person who absolutely loves that album), Pink Floyd by Wish You Were Here, Iron Maiden by Powerslave, and AC/DC by If You Want Blood. Some may say it's a live album and therefore cheating. I say it's still infinitely better than anything made in my lifetime.
Also, shame on you, the reader, for not noticing that in the second paragraph I said "It's so hilariously wrong" and then said I used the word "hilarious." Well done.
And it's wrong. It's so hilariously wrong it's not even funny despite the use of the word "hilarious" just 5 words before the word "funny." Which means of course that I get to use this as a springboard for a massive, epic, and entirely too self-referential rant.
First off, this is wrong. No, I'm not saying Master of Puppets shouldn't be on there, but look at the first sentence. "Their next album would be the glossy, gazillion-selling breakthrough..." would have to read "Their next album would be a tragically undermixed, bass-less retread of everything one of their rivals did, and the next album after that would be a glossy, gazillion-selling sellout..." in order to be accurate.
Also Pink Floyd isn't on it. I'm sorry, but any list of great albums that does not contain a Pink Floyd album is simply wrong. What, did you have a quota? A set number of albums that had to go to rap "music" or crappy pop bands? I know music taste is subjective, but you put some criminally overhyped and undersold albums on there and couldn't find room for a legitimate masterpiece like The Dark Side of the Moon, which only stayed on the charts for a measly 14 years? I know rock critics must by definition have a love affair with the Beatles and Bob Dylan, and must genuflect at the altar of "Stairway to Heaven," but come on.
It's people like you that cause hype backlash against artists like the Beatles and Dylan. By overhyping them at the expense of undeniably better albums, you're not winning any friends among the classic rock snobs... and by putting stupid cookie-cutter pop albums on the list and overlooking albums like Dark Side, you're still alienating the classic rock snobs. What, not a single member of your staff was born in the late 50s? I don't understand how your interpretation of music history could go "Everything the Beatles did was holy and awesome, and then after they broke up there was a musical black hole broken up only by sporadic blips on the radar like 'Stairway to Heaven' before the Sex Pistols destroyed the concept of production quality, Michael Jackson destroyed the concept of musical sanity, and Slayer destroyed the concept of 'heavy enough.' Oh, and then Nirvana destroyed the concept of good music except they didn't." Well, of course it doesn't. You've somehow deluded yourselves into thinking that Nevermind is more important than Dark Side, but I maintain that the only reason anyone actually remembers that album today is a) because self-indulgent trendsetters like you have a skewed music taste and b) because Cobain's dead.
So you're not doing him any favors by promoting his album of whining over a legitimate masterpiece (The Wall was whining too, but at least it yielded a truly epic guitar solo). I don't care because I don't like him. I do like the Beatles, which makes your overhyping of them annoying, because you're not doing them any favors. Revolver, Rubber Soul, Sgt. Pepper, White Album, and Abbey Road? What, did each editor get to pick their favorite Beatles album? Under what definition except "legacy act" is the album that gave us "Wild Honey Pie" a better album than the one that gave us "Highway to Hell?"
Full disclosure: Highway to Hell is not on the list and that's as it should be, because the title track is really the only thing anyone remembers off that album. Nevertheless, I would be willing to bet you money that "Highway to Hell" gets more radio play each day (and is known by more guitarists) than all the songs off The White Album combined. Perhaps a better question would be why five Beatles albums made the list but only one Zeppelin album did.
Perhaps what the next "journalist" who wants to "compile" a list of the "greatest" albums of all time should limit himself to no more than one album per artist. After all, one of the most interesting things I found about that list was that The Black Album wasn't on it. That's as it should be. Metallica were perfectly represented by the far superior Master of Puppets. AC/DC got Back in Black, which does them a perfect service.
In fact, I would like to see a list of great albums, again only one per band, that deliberately excludes the stuff you always hear on the radio. Metallica would be represented by Ride the Lightning, Led Zeppelin by Presence (I cannot be the only person who absolutely loves that album), Pink Floyd by Wish You Were Here, Iron Maiden by Powerslave, and AC/DC by If You Want Blood. Some may say it's a live album and therefore cheating. I say it's still infinitely better than anything made in my lifetime.
Also, shame on you, the reader, for not noticing that in the second paragraph I said "It's so hilariously wrong" and then said I used the word "hilarious." Well done.
Friday, March 12, 2010
War Games retrospective
One thing I absolutely want to touch on is The War Games, which I've probably gotten more material out of than should be legal (but then again it's a freakin 4-hour long story). The last episode of that serial changed everything blah blah blah, and everyone thinks that that's the important one. To the series, yes it is, just like, say, "Innocence" is a very important episode for Buffy. But take "Hush," for example, a Buffy episode that's very good and very famous, and what happened in the overall story arc? Buffy and Riley found out each other were demon-fighters. Given that Riley is, well, not the most well-remembered of Buffy's love interests, I think it's safe to say that history has judged the episode awesome due to its own individual merit ("Nobody can talk!") rather than what it contributed to the overall story.
Likewise, The War Games 1-9 is a pretty awesome run of episodes on their own merit. The slow reveal of information (and yes, I have my gripes about the pacing) means that this serial actually evolves over the three months it was on the air. All too often the cliffhangers are solved within five seconds of the next episode and then don't contribute significantly to the plot. The best serials tend to get around this. Even the weaker cliffhangers in The War Games aren't completely worthless: yes, they run away from the Romans easily enough, but the fact that there are Romans there is just as much of a cliffhanger as the threat that they pose.
It's not The Caves of Androzani, of course; in some ways it's the exact opposite of Caves. The Fifth Doctor dies running away from a bloodbath that he can't stop, whereas the Second Doctor dies because he's willing to stay behind and clean up a problem he already solved. In fact, there are some interesting ties between The War Games and The Talons of Weng-Chiang; human pawns of alien monsters kill lots of innocents, and one of the villains is a time-traveller.
Ultimately I think the problem with The War Games is that it's at least 4 episodes too long. While one episode of running around after the Doctor and the War Chief recognize each other might be acceptable just to keep the tension up, the fact of the matter is that they pretty much dance around each other for almost half the serial before an actual conversation takes place.
The best parts of The Time Meddler were the ones where Hartnell and Butterworth squared off directly. My biggest question is why Troughton and Brayshaw got so few scenes together, considering this.
Likewise, The War Games 1-9 is a pretty awesome run of episodes on their own merit. The slow reveal of information (and yes, I have my gripes about the pacing) means that this serial actually evolves over the three months it was on the air. All too often the cliffhangers are solved within five seconds of the next episode and then don't contribute significantly to the plot. The best serials tend to get around this. Even the weaker cliffhangers in The War Games aren't completely worthless: yes, they run away from the Romans easily enough, but the fact that there are Romans there is just as much of a cliffhanger as the threat that they pose.
It's not The Caves of Androzani, of course; in some ways it's the exact opposite of Caves. The Fifth Doctor dies running away from a bloodbath that he can't stop, whereas the Second Doctor dies because he's willing to stay behind and clean up a problem he already solved. In fact, there are some interesting ties between The War Games and The Talons of Weng-Chiang; human pawns of alien monsters kill lots of innocents, and one of the villains is a time-traveller.
Ultimately I think the problem with The War Games is that it's at least 4 episodes too long. While one episode of running around after the Doctor and the War Chief recognize each other might be acceptable just to keep the tension up, the fact of the matter is that they pretty much dance around each other for almost half the serial before an actual conversation takes place.
The best parts of The Time Meddler were the ones where Hartnell and Butterworth squared off directly. My biggest question is why Troughton and Brayshaw got so few scenes together, considering this.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Me vs Windows 7 round 3
Me: Right, open this file, which is clearly marked as an Excel spreadsheet.
W7: Microsoft Word cannot read this file.
Me: That's because it's an Excel spreadsheet.
W7: Please select an appropriate translation thingy blah blah.
Me: From Excel spreadsheet, then.
W7: 2356720y5 i9tyh w9ohg 304fh0hf0 34hf 30u0gh 0wgj03gh3hge
Me: I hear the Mac in the next room calling.
Bottom line: Windows 7 is horrible.
W7: Microsoft Word cannot read this file.
Me: That's because it's an Excel spreadsheet.
W7: Please select an appropriate translation thingy blah blah.
Me: From Excel spreadsheet, then.
W7: 2356720y5 i9tyh w9ohg 304fh0hf0 34hf 30u0gh 0wgj03gh3hge
Me: I hear the Mac in the next room calling.
Bottom line: Windows 7 is horrible.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
My second encounter with Windows 7
Me: Righto, copy and past this text from an e-mail file into a Word Document.
W7: You got it!
Me: Okay, let's see, I want to put the page number on every page, so view header and footer... wait, what the hell?
W7: Yeah, all the formatting stuff is completely rearranged. For clarity!
Me: This would be the Drunk Goggles sort of clarity, yes?
W7: Dude, it's really simple and not complicated at all.
Me: No, the old way was simple. You are nothing but a needless upgrade to created specifically to line the pockets of one of the already-wealthiest men on the planet.
W7: I can't hear you over how obvious my formatting system works. There's your header and footer.
Me: Oh, hideous mutation, let's peruse the rest of this essay... Why are the line breaks so strange?
W7: Dur, what?
Me: Why is there a blank line between my paragraphs?
W7: You wanted it that way.
Me: Not really.
W7: Okay.
Me: But I do want separate paragraphs!
W7: What?
Me: I want this paragraph to start on the next line after that one.
W7: That was how I had it!
Me: No it's not. You had a line in the middle.
W7: Well it doesn't matter because you can't print here. The printer has no ink in it. You'll have to use a printer in a different lab. You know, the one with the Macs in it.
Me: Yeah, after you, I care so much less about the Mac's obfuscating interface.
W7: You got it!
Me: Okay, let's see, I want to put the page number on every page, so view header and footer... wait, what the hell?
W7: Yeah, all the formatting stuff is completely rearranged. For clarity!
Me: This would be the Drunk Goggles sort of clarity, yes?
W7: Dude, it's really simple and not complicated at all.
Me: No, the old way was simple. You are nothing but a needless upgrade to created specifically to line the pockets of one of the already-wealthiest men on the planet.
W7: I can't hear you over how obvious my formatting system works. There's your header and footer.
Me: Oh, hideous mutation, let's peruse the rest of this essay... Why are the line breaks so strange?
W7: Dur, what?
Me: Why is there a blank line between my paragraphs?
W7: You wanted it that way.
Me: Not really.
W7: Okay.
Me: But I do want separate paragraphs!
W7: What?
Me: I want this paragraph to start on the next line after that one.
W7: That was how I had it!
Me: No it's not. You had a line in the middle.
W7: Well it doesn't matter because you can't print here. The printer has no ink in it. You'll have to use a printer in a different lab. You know, the one with the Macs in it.
Me: Yeah, after you, I care so much less about the Mac's obfuscating interface.
The essays are done and the guitar has been played (badly). The thermostat is still too high and there is still nothing I can do about it. I'm going to try to avoid doing anything at all for the rest of the week that isn't "have fun." But I'm sure to fail at that because, well, the world isn't exactly sunshine and roses 24/7.
Anyway, the one person who reads this blog wants some sort of content. Bugger.
Oooh, I know. I'm rereading Ender's Game, a novel that I picked up back when I was in maybe 8th grade because someone said it was about kids playing games in space. Nothing about the rampant swearing or the naked shower fight, intriguingly. And one thing I wind up asking myself, because I'm an ends-justify-the-means kind of guy, is "Would you do all that to Ender if you were Graff?"
I mean, think about it. Rip a 6-year-old away from his family and make the kid's life a living hell for several years in order to save the entire planet from aliens that are actually just waiting to be killed. Give the kid a planet-killing weapon and pretend it's all just a game. This is how psychopaths are made, not victorious leaders. And would you also let the decidedly psychopathic older brother of your genius run around on Earth collating power?
Hey, it was either that or get eaten by aliens/invaded by Russia.
It's been ten minutes and nothing's exploded. I'm out of here.
Anyway, the one person who reads this blog wants some sort of content. Bugger.
Oooh, I know. I'm rereading Ender's Game, a novel that I picked up back when I was in maybe 8th grade because someone said it was about kids playing games in space. Nothing about the rampant swearing or the naked shower fight, intriguingly. And one thing I wind up asking myself, because I'm an ends-justify-the-means kind of guy, is "Would you do all that to Ender if you were Graff?"
I mean, think about it. Rip a 6-year-old away from his family and make the kid's life a living hell for several years in order to save the entire planet from aliens that are actually just waiting to be killed. Give the kid a planet-killing weapon and pretend it's all just a game. This is how psychopaths are made, not victorious leaders. And would you also let the decidedly psychopathic older brother of your genius run around on Earth collating power?
Hey, it was either that or get eaten by aliens/invaded by Russia.
It's been ten minutes and nothing's exploded. I'm out of here.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
My Top 10 Sci-Fi Movies
For the purposes of blah blah (really to keep Lord of the Rings from completely owning this list) I've decided not to put any "Fantasy" movies here and keep the list limited strictly to science fiction. That means: aliens or some sort of future tech.
1. Aliens
Why? Because it’s quite literally the only good pre-Buffy science-fiction or fantasy film where the heroine kicks major ass. Barring that, the line “Get Away From Her You Bitch” is awesome, the power loader fight is awesome, James Horner’s score is so damn awesome other movies kept using it for trailers for something like ten years. Also, it’s the closest we’ll ever get to a StarCraft movie, unless you took Starship Troopers seriously.
2. Serenity
Why? I will explain using only quotes from the movie. “Well, unfortunately, I forgot to bring a sword.” “We’re gonna explode? I don’t wanna explode!” “Do you know what the definition of a hero is? Someone who gets other people killed.” “And that’s not incense.” “And if I’m wrong, you’d best shoot me now- …or we could talk more.” “A year from now, ten, they’ll swing back to the belief that they can make people…better. And I do not hold to that. So no more running. I aim to misbehave.” “They’re not gonna see this coming.” “I am a leaf on the wind.” “I’m going to show you a world without sin.”
3. The Empire Strikes Back
Why? Where to start. This was the movie where George Lucas got enough to do without going overboard. The asteroid chase was beautiful, but what was arguably even more impressive was the Hoth battle. Also, a Muppet bossed around the main character for half the film and it actually worked. And then there was That Lightsaber Duel, which is the only time in the entire classic series where Vader uses his Force powers against a good guy, telekinetically slamming crates into Luke.
4. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Why? It’s the first time, really, that the “space navy” theme really works. Wrath of Khan is an ageing Horatio Hornblower versus Captain Ahab in space, and it is suitably awesome. Also: another James Horner score. And the three-dimensional thinking at the end was, in 1982, long overdue.
5. The Terminator
Why? Its sheer confidence, if nothing else. The story is about one soldier trying to protect the other soldier’s target. The twist is, they’re both from the future and the hunter is an unstoppable robot. Its consistent undermining of our expectations and perceptions rivals the very best of Doctor Who.
6. Blade Runner
Why? Harrison Ford is a robot. Rutger Hauer is the king of death speeches. The atmosphere of the film is incredible. Just for fun, watch the film from Roy’s perspective instead of Deckard’s. All Roy really wants to do is live longer. He just goes about it horribly wrong.
7. The Matrix
Why? The less you know going into this movie (and yes, I know that’s hard today), the more you’ll appreciate. I went in knowing virtual reality was involved and that it more or less invented bullet time, and I still found myself asking “what the hell?” every ten minutes or so. Its sequels are awful, its imitators are awful, but this film is brilliant.
8. Starship Troopers
Why? Aliens with a budget, that’s why. Who missed what point is irrelevant when you consider the film’s plusses: monsters get shot and people get chomped. What’s not to love?
9. 2001: A Space Odyssey
Why? Because the acid-inspired stargate sequence is freakin trippy, man. Watch it while listening to Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” for an extra buzz! Realistically, it’s the only film on this list that actually takes things like weightlessness seriously, and just like Blade Runner, the computer is more human than the humans. It was written by the sci-fi master Arthur C. Clarke, and directed by Stanley “Dr. Strangelove” Kubrick, and neither of them are ever better. It’s so low on this list because the pacing is bloody atrocious, though.
10. Return of the Jedi
Why? Two words: metal bikini.
1. Aliens
Why? Because it’s quite literally the only good pre-Buffy science-fiction or fantasy film where the heroine kicks major ass. Barring that, the line “Get Away From Her You Bitch” is awesome, the power loader fight is awesome, James Horner’s score is so damn awesome other movies kept using it for trailers for something like ten years. Also, it’s the closest we’ll ever get to a StarCraft movie, unless you took Starship Troopers seriously.
2. Serenity
Why? I will explain using only quotes from the movie. “Well, unfortunately, I forgot to bring a sword.” “We’re gonna explode? I don’t wanna explode!” “Do you know what the definition of a hero is? Someone who gets other people killed.” “And that’s not incense.” “And if I’m wrong, you’d best shoot me now- …or we could talk more.” “A year from now, ten, they’ll swing back to the belief that they can make people…better. And I do not hold to that. So no more running. I aim to misbehave.” “They’re not gonna see this coming.” “I am a leaf on the wind.” “I’m going to show you a world without sin.”
3. The Empire Strikes Back
Why? Where to start. This was the movie where George Lucas got enough to do without going overboard. The asteroid chase was beautiful, but what was arguably even more impressive was the Hoth battle. Also, a Muppet bossed around the main character for half the film and it actually worked. And then there was That Lightsaber Duel, which is the only time in the entire classic series where Vader uses his Force powers against a good guy, telekinetically slamming crates into Luke.
4. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Why? It’s the first time, really, that the “space navy” theme really works. Wrath of Khan is an ageing Horatio Hornblower versus Captain Ahab in space, and it is suitably awesome. Also: another James Horner score. And the three-dimensional thinking at the end was, in 1982, long overdue.
5. The Terminator
Why? Its sheer confidence, if nothing else. The story is about one soldier trying to protect the other soldier’s target. The twist is, they’re both from the future and the hunter is an unstoppable robot. Its consistent undermining of our expectations and perceptions rivals the very best of Doctor Who.
6. Blade Runner
Why? Harrison Ford is a robot. Rutger Hauer is the king of death speeches. The atmosphere of the film is incredible. Just for fun, watch the film from Roy’s perspective instead of Deckard’s. All Roy really wants to do is live longer. He just goes about it horribly wrong.
7. The Matrix
Why? The less you know going into this movie (and yes, I know that’s hard today), the more you’ll appreciate. I went in knowing virtual reality was involved and that it more or less invented bullet time, and I still found myself asking “what the hell?” every ten minutes or so. Its sequels are awful, its imitators are awful, but this film is brilliant.
8. Starship Troopers
Why? Aliens with a budget, that’s why. Who missed what point is irrelevant when you consider the film’s plusses: monsters get shot and people get chomped. What’s not to love?
9. 2001: A Space Odyssey
Why? Because the acid-inspired stargate sequence is freakin trippy, man. Watch it while listening to Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” for an extra buzz! Realistically, it’s the only film on this list that actually takes things like weightlessness seriously, and just like Blade Runner, the computer is more human than the humans. It was written by the sci-fi master Arthur C. Clarke, and directed by Stanley “Dr. Strangelove” Kubrick, and neither of them are ever better. It’s so low on this list because the pacing is bloody atrocious, though.
10. Return of the Jedi
Why? Two words: metal bikini.
Monday, March 8, 2010
March 8th post-with-a-number-at-the-end-of-the-title 4
I have figured out why the Star Wars prequels were so bad.
The Empire Strikes Back had a perfect bit of dialogue to sum up Han/Leia:
"I love you."
"I know."
And Harrison Ford ad-libbed it.
Meanwhile Attack of the Clones is all about Anakin complaining about sand, and then killing some sand people, and then fighting monsters in the sand, and then watching his love interest fall out of a gunship and land on some sand. And George Lucas wrote it. Stick with letting your actors write your best lines for you, George.
The Empire Strikes Back had a perfect bit of dialogue to sum up Han/Leia:
"I love you."
"I know."
And Harrison Ford ad-libbed it.
Meanwhile Attack of the Clones is all about Anakin complaining about sand, and then killing some sand people, and then fighting monsters in the sand, and then watching his love interest fall out of a gunship and land on some sand. And George Lucas wrote it. Stick with letting your actors write your best lines for you, George.
Parking 101
Both my previous posts today had numbers in them, so I'll continue the trend for today's last rant.
I got back to college yesterday. I thought I would be able to get the last parking spot out in front of my dorm... nope, wait, some jerk double-parked. And yet if I scratch his car getting into the spot, I'm somehow the bad guy?
In conclusion, this should be done to every single person who thinks they don't need to park correctly.
I got back to college yesterday. I thought I would be able to get the last parking spot out in front of my dorm... nope, wait, some jerk double-parked. And yet if I scratch his car getting into the spot, I'm somehow the bad guy?
In conclusion, this should be done to every single person who thinks they don't need to park correctly.
Windows 7
Windows XP was the culmination of years of hard work striving towards total perfection. There is not a single thing about that operating system that I'd change, partly because I've been using it every day for something like eight years, and partly because I honestly can't think of a single flaw.
Having completed the masterpiece that is Windows XP, Bill Gates and friends must have busted out the booze and never put it away because their subsequent efforts have been jokes. I spent five minutes with Windows 7 today and I already hate the thing.
Me: So, I'd like to open this picture file and then print it.
Windows 7: Sure thing! I'll just open that picture and a few others that were recently opened using this program you've never heard of.
Me: Fair enough, my laptop is something like eight years old and there's bound to be a few technology changes since then to make things easier. I still don't have a lightsaber, for example. I'll just click on the picture now so you know I want to deal with my picture and not the others you randomly opened.
W7: 'kay! Did it! Look how the picture now fills most of the screen!
Me: That's nice. I'd like to see some controls so I can, y'know, print the thing.
W7: They're all down there, at the bottom.
Me: What, those unlabeled things?
W7: Did you notice how there are more pictures you can open, and how the thumbnails to open those pictures are right behind some of the buttons?
Me: I don't care about the other pictures. Where's the print button?
W7: Oh, it's over here, under "other options."
Me: Let me get this straight. You expect me to resize, rotate, and crop pictures using what was on XP primarily a program for printing pictures, but you don't expect printing said pictures to be a priority?
W7: Funny you should mention pictures! There are some nice ones over here!
Me: Just print the damn thing.
W7: Okay! Now, I'm going to assume you want your picture as big as possible, margins be damned.
Me: Er, no, please make the picture as big as you can while still printing all of it and keeping the proportions right.
W7: Spoilsport. How many copies would you like?
Me: 30.
W7: 2, 3, 4, 5...
Me: What are you doing?
W7: I don't have a field for you to type in the number of copies. You have to manually push this button here to increase the number of copies.
Me: That's bloody stupid.
W7: I know it's the greatest idea ever! That way people don't type in extra zeroes by mistake and waste paper!
Me: Yes, they can use that paper instead to write an instruction manual for you. I'm twenty-one years old and you're making me feel like a senile old fart!
W7: Well, I've finally reached 30, but since you kept pushing the button while I was marching slowly forward, I'm going to keep increasing that number until it equals the number of clicks!
Me: I assumed-
W7: Well you're an idiot.
Me: Clearly.
W7: All right. I will now print 30 copies.
Me: Hang on, some girl wants to print off her paper. Since the printer's going so slowly and because I'd expect the same in her position, why don't we cancel that print job?
W7: ...
Me: Wait, where the hell's the printer thingy? Why the hell would you move the printer thingy from the bottom-right corner! Wait a minute... unclear buttons, obfuscating interface, nothing where you expect it to be... you're a goddamn Mac, aren't you?
W7: What? No! Of course not! Look, here's where you find the printer control.
Me: That makes perfect sense... on a Mac.
W7: Don't leave me! I can change! I can be anything you want!
Me: I already have that, thanks. Granted, it only has 2 gigs of free space left on its drive, but at least I know where the goddamn printer thingy is.
Having completed the masterpiece that is Windows XP, Bill Gates and friends must have busted out the booze and never put it away because their subsequent efforts have been jokes. I spent five minutes with Windows 7 today and I already hate the thing.
Me: So, I'd like to open this picture file and then print it.
Windows 7: Sure thing! I'll just open that picture and a few others that were recently opened using this program you've never heard of.
Me: Fair enough, my laptop is something like eight years old and there's bound to be a few technology changes since then to make things easier. I still don't have a lightsaber, for example. I'll just click on the picture now so you know I want to deal with my picture and not the others you randomly opened.
W7: 'kay! Did it! Look how the picture now fills most of the screen!
Me: That's nice. I'd like to see some controls so I can, y'know, print the thing.
W7: They're all down there, at the bottom.
Me: What, those unlabeled things?
W7: Did you notice how there are more pictures you can open, and how the thumbnails to open those pictures are right behind some of the buttons?
Me: I don't care about the other pictures. Where's the print button?
W7: Oh, it's over here, under "other options."
Me: Let me get this straight. You expect me to resize, rotate, and crop pictures using what was on XP primarily a program for printing pictures, but you don't expect printing said pictures to be a priority?
W7: Funny you should mention pictures! There are some nice ones over here!
Me: Just print the damn thing.
W7: Okay! Now, I'm going to assume you want your picture as big as possible, margins be damned.
Me: Er, no, please make the picture as big as you can while still printing all of it and keeping the proportions right.
W7: Spoilsport. How many copies would you like?
Me: 30.
W7: 2, 3, 4, 5...
Me: What are you doing?
W7: I don't have a field for you to type in the number of copies. You have to manually push this button here to increase the number of copies.
Me: That's bloody stupid.
W7: I know it's the greatest idea ever! That way people don't type in extra zeroes by mistake and waste paper!
Me: Yes, they can use that paper instead to write an instruction manual for you. I'm twenty-one years old and you're making me feel like a senile old fart!
W7: Well, I've finally reached 30, but since you kept pushing the button while I was marching slowly forward, I'm going to keep increasing that number until it equals the number of clicks!
Me: I assumed-
W7: Well you're an idiot.
Me: Clearly.
W7: All right. I will now print 30 copies.
Me: Hang on, some girl wants to print off her paper. Since the printer's going so slowly and because I'd expect the same in her position, why don't we cancel that print job?
W7: ...
Me: Wait, where the hell's the printer thingy? Why the hell would you move the printer thingy from the bottom-right corner! Wait a minute... unclear buttons, obfuscating interface, nothing where you expect it to be... you're a goddamn Mac, aren't you?
W7: What? No! Of course not! Look, here's where you find the printer control.
Me: That makes perfect sense... on a Mac.
W7: Don't leave me! I can change! I can be anything you want!
Me: I already have that, thanks. Granted, it only has 2 gigs of free space left on its drive, but at least I know where the goddamn printer thingy is.
War Games 10
There's something delightfully appropriate about the Second Doctor, who more than anyone else was constantly fighting unambiguously evil monsters, meeting his end at the hands of a bunch of apathetic suits who care more about their vaunted godhood than actually using their power for good.
Which is not to say that it's the ending a hero deserves, but rather a wonderful storytelling twist, because of course Troughton's on his way out. What's more disturbing is the way Jamie and Zoe are disposed of. Their memories are wiped, and the Doctor doesn't seem overly concerned about the fact that the people he knew don't really exist anymore. Well, alien and so on.
So, what do I think of the last-ever black-and-white episode of Doctor Who, the episode that more than any other one before or since (The Armageddon Factor part Five notwithstanding) answered the question posed by the title? I found it very interesting that the Doctor wound up giving his life to aid the clean-up process, something the Nu Doctor never would (hell, "Bad Wolf," "The Christmas Invasion," and "The Stolen Earth" all deal with the Doctor's persistence on saving the day and then blowing out of town before anyone can hand him a shovel).
This is also the last episode where we see the real Second Doctor, and not a scene-stealing Victorian clown who can actually pilot the TARDIS and works for the Time Lords. Perhaps the fact that there are only 5 complete Troughton serials left is because subsequent producers didn't want us to see how far they'd strayed in the Second Doctor's character...
On a more serious note, the best and most heartwrenching moment of the episode was when Zoe returns home and says something along the lines of "I thought I'd forgotten something important, but it's nothing." We won't see the producers doing this sort of thing, this casual cruelty to genuninely beloved characters, until... um... Ace gets unceremoniously dropped off somewhere between Survival and Doctor Who? The best example I can think of comes, of course, from Buffy: what happens to Vamp Willow at the end of "Doppelgangland."
Which is not to say that it's the ending a hero deserves, but rather a wonderful storytelling twist, because of course Troughton's on his way out. What's more disturbing is the way Jamie and Zoe are disposed of. Their memories are wiped, and the Doctor doesn't seem overly concerned about the fact that the people he knew don't really exist anymore. Well, alien and so on.
So, what do I think of the last-ever black-and-white episode of Doctor Who, the episode that more than any other one before or since (The Armageddon Factor part Five notwithstanding) answered the question posed by the title? I found it very interesting that the Doctor wound up giving his life to aid the clean-up process, something the Nu Doctor never would (hell, "Bad Wolf," "The Christmas Invasion," and "The Stolen Earth" all deal with the Doctor's persistence on saving the day and then blowing out of town before anyone can hand him a shovel).
This is also the last episode where we see the real Second Doctor, and not a scene-stealing Victorian clown who can actually pilot the TARDIS and works for the Time Lords. Perhaps the fact that there are only 5 complete Troughton serials left is because subsequent producers didn't want us to see how far they'd strayed in the Second Doctor's character...
On a more serious note, the best and most heartwrenching moment of the episode was when Zoe returns home and says something along the lines of "I thought I'd forgotten something important, but it's nothing." We won't see the producers doing this sort of thing, this casual cruelty to genuninely beloved characters, until... um... Ace gets unceremoniously dropped off somewhere between Survival and Doctor Who? The best example I can think of comes, of course, from Buffy: what happens to Vamp Willow at the end of "Doppelgangland."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Image of the Week: Pearl Harbor and the Fog of War
I follow a lot of naval history accounts, so this "Japanese map showing their assessment of the damage done to the United States flee...
