April 13, 2008
Midnight Madness: Back to Basics
Last weekend was the latest Bay area Game, Midnight Madness: Back to Basics, and possibly the final one to be run by Snout now that team captain Curtis is moving to Portland (although a Portland-based Game would be many kinds of awesome). As with their last Game, Hogwarts and the Draconian Prophecy, Snout hit the ball out of the park on theme and story. Midnight Madness was a cheesetastic Disney film from 1980, notably mainly for the screen debuts of Michael J. Fox and Pee-Wee Herman and the scene-chewing performances of virtually everyone else in the cast. There's little to recommend the film otherwise, except that the plot revolves around a puzzle-filled road rally and inspired Joe Belfiore to create the first incarnation of what we now call The Game at Stanford, and later again in Seattle.
This Game followed the basic plot of the film, and as with The Apprentice: Zorg which aped The Fifth Element, this proved to be a tremendous amount of fun. The route of the Game echoed that of the movie as much as possible (given that the former took place in the Bay area and the latter was set in Los Angeles), and many of the clues themselves took their cues from the film. It was fun to know that our next stop should be a mini-golf course, a diner, or a brewery, and sure enough, we wound up at one. The one-to-one mapping of Game to film has multiple side effects. It creates a narrative without one being explicitly laid out within the Game itself. It increases the payoff to some clues, their alignment with the movie increasing the sense of elegance and craftmanship of the overall event. It centers the player, giving them a sense of progress and advancement. Briny Deep has already decided to follow this model for our next Game, whenever that might be (and we know the film that will form our template).
It's unfortunate, then, that so many of the clues themselves were disappointments in one way or another. Many felt arbitrary. Some flat-out misled us unfairly. At least one was broken. If the Game's artistic program scored a 10, its technical merit only rated half that. There were few brilliant aha moments, no clues that felt revelatory, no intriguing handouts or manipulatives, and nothing that felt truly fresh. Snout used completely standard, off-the-shelf puzzle forms more than once. The clues often felt like afterthoughts, rushed together because something was needed rather than crafted for their own sake.
The game began with a delightful a cappella rendition of the Midnight Madness theme song, but instead of a tear-open-the-clue high-energy start, Snout opted for a Midnight Madness pub quiz. Teams were called at random-- some getting called multiple times before other teams got called at all (which, while "fair" in a mathematically pure random-is-random sense, was not a great experience for teams waiting to be called). No team waited too long, and the gap was unlikely to mean much overall, but it was kind of a downer to be all geared up and ready to go only to stall out and have to wait our turn to answer a question correctly and earn the starting clue.
Start clue: The opening clue, just as in the movie, was a card with a few cryptic lines and a row of numbers at the bottom. The text was straightforward wordplay, and the numbers a simple decimal-to-hex-to-calculator-spelling conversion (if I remember right, the card read "249973 ==> 773d5", nicely suggesting what to do). We were gone in no time. We liked this clue-- it was easy, everyone contributed to cracking it, it mapped directly to the corresponding movie clue, and gave us good positive energy to lead off with. All of which got sapped at the next location.
Binoculars: The idea for part one of this clue was terrific. At this point in the film, teams went to an observatory and looked through the telescope to find the next clue. A bratty kid was using the telescope before them, however, to spy on women as they got undressed. This location was atop a hill with a panoramic 360 view for miles. Forewarned to bring binoculars (thanks to an eagle-eyed teammate who saw the information hidden in the Captain's Meeting presentation), we were able to use them to find two female silhouettes and accompanying data posted in the windows of far-off buildings. The problem was, nobody could find the third. And the GC members staffing the location didn't seem to know anything about the clue. I specifically asked one of them if we could see everything we needed to see from that spot at the top of the hill, and she said we could. I later found out that the third was only visible from a location below and to the side of the hilltop. The way the clue was set up, with a box (bearing a combination lock) at the summit, there was no reason to think we had to venture off the hilltop. Time passed. Team after team arrived, and none left. If I'm GC, at this point I make some kind of announcement about the general vicinity of the third data set. Maybe a 60-120 degree arc to narrow it down for teams. Perhaps a nudge, at least, that we'd have to leave the hilltop. But GC remained mum and allowed teams to collect there, shivering in the cold, frustration mounting. Finally, sunlight gone, they distributed tubes (simulated telescopes) with the data embedded.
About that data. Each set consisted of three equations, one atop another, along the lines of X-X-X, (X^X)/X, X*X+X, and so forth. Each set had a total of nine exes. We got excited at the idea of replacing each X with a different digit from 1 to 9, so that each equation solved to the same value. But that was wrong. Instead, we were supposed to replace the X with a single digit-- the same digit for every X in every data set. Then we were supposed to solve each equation and sum the results within each set. That would give us the correct values to use on the combination lock. There was nothing to indicate what the correct value of X was, or that we needed to sum the equations. With no way to confirm either the value or the approach, the puzzle was essentially intractable. It could have been solved with minor changes to the notation they used, adding a horizontal line below each stack of three equations to suggest a sum. Instead, most teams needed guidance from GC to hit upon the right approach. By the time we left this site, we were testy and disheartened. We didn't understand why GC hadn't provided help on the hilltop when NO teams were able to make progress, and we were crushed when the puzzle itself proved so arbitrary and unsatisfying.
Pianos: The film brought teams to a piano museum where the clue was the Pabst Blue Ribbon jingle painted on a tiny piano. We arrived at a GC member's home filled with pianos and were handed a bundle of strips on which musical scores were inscribed. Immediately Andrew, our resident musical prodigy, perked up as the rest of the team shrunk back. But as he played one of the scores and looked at us quizzically, the rest of the team brightened as we realized it was a commerical jingle. And so we set to, Andrew playing the music and the rest of us identifying the products. We made short work of it and were puzzling over what to do next, when Andrew noted that each of the scores had a mistake. Aha! I'd already sorted the music alphabetically by product, so it was quick work to copy the wrong notes onto a blank staff in that order and identify the Klondike bar jingle. What would we do for a Klondike bar? Apparently, we'd hop around like kangaroos while singing an incredibly bad version of the Friends theme. This was a great clue for us-- we destroyed it in record time, leaving well ahead of all other teams, thanks entirely to Andrew's musical ability. I shudder to think about what this clue would have been like for teams without musical aptitude. But for us, this was a fun, high-energy clue that tied in to the movie beautifully.
Brewery Nonograms: This was just a clue drop at a brewery, but even so the location was a little wonky-- instead of finding it behind the brewery as advertised, we instead found it in the alley beside the brewery. A small detail, perhaps, but when you're told to find the clue behind the brewery, you expect to find it behind the brewery. I was expecting some kind of block assembly puzzle (in the film, the (very lame) clue was on the side of cartons of beer, revealed as a forklift moved them into place), but instead we got a trio of completely standard Paint By Numbers puzzles. We divided and conquered. I got about halfway through one and knew it was going to resolve to a NULL symbol. When another puzzle solved to a CARD, I put them together to make CARDINAL. Then I looked at the partially-solved last puzzle and saw it was a coffee cup. "Is there a CARDINAL COFFEE in the area?" Sure enough. This clue worked perfectly well, but was nothing special. We were shocked to get standard nonograms, and explicitly opted to solve them by hand even though plugging them into a solver might have been faster. The rebus aspect seemed out of place, since the visual rebus in the movie came much later in the story.
Melons: Another great thematic fit. At this point in the film, teams are sent to a diner and told to look between the giant melons. A large-breasted waitress wore a necklace with a HUG ME charm, which anagrammed into HUGE M and sent teams to a minigolf course. when we arrived at the diner, we saw a large-breasted woman at the back of the restaurant. Upon closer examination [ahem], we saw she wore a necklace that said "HOT METER", which anagrammed into THE METRO. Tucked inside copies of The Metro newspaper in the diner's vestibule were a completely standard word search puzzle which, when all words were found, provided a message in the grid's unused letters. Once again, an off-the-shelf puzzle form with no twists. To their credit, however, the content of the puzzle was both thematic and fun-- a list of dozens of euphemisms for "breasts". There was much mirth in the van as we solved, with cries like, "I can't find PAWPATTIES!" Nevertheless, it was disappointing to find no hidden layer or extra depth to the puzzle. We also heard that at least one team found the Metro puzzles without ever going further into the diner to find the necklace, which is a shame.
Hitchhiking: At this point in the film the protagonists separate, and two of them hitch a ride with an extremely slow-moving elderly couple. Upon arriving at our next destination, we were met by a convertible driven by a pair of GC members dressed as old people. They invited us to go for a ride with them, and once two of us got in, proceeded to drive around the parking lot VERY slowly, while the rest of the team walked alongside the car. The two of them rambled on and on in that stereotypical old person way, getting tripped up on certain words that we needed to fill in for them. Totally fun and thematic way to gather the data, and the GC actors were terrific. Shame about the puzzle. One of the fifteen words in the list was SCRABBLE, and the narrative made a point of mentioning how RATTLESNAKE hit multiple triple word score spaces. So we immediately tried to reconstruct a Scrabble game with these words. But a little analysis showed that the letter distribution was completely wrong, and the first word in the list was too long to be an opening Scrabble play. Even so, the Scrabble vibe was strong enough that we kept looking for a way to make the puzzle Scrabble-related. No luck. The puzzle was much simpler and weaker. Completely unclued, we were supposed to notice that the first letter of each word appeared somewhere in the following word. Aligning the repeated letters in a single column revealed a message spelled in the next column. Huh? How exactly were we supposed to notice that? There was no context, nothing to guide us to that observation amid so many other potentially interesting properties of the words individually or the list as a whole. The first letters of the words weren't unusual-- there was nothing noteworthy about the first letter of EMBEZZLED reappearing in the next word. Start the list with ZERO, and populate the rest of the list with XYLOPHONE, QUESTION, JOURNAL, and the like. Make me notice the repeated letters. They certainly didn't pop from words like RATTLESNAKE, SCRABBLE, ALOE, and PITCHFORK. The Scrabble puzzle we invented as we solved seemed far more interesting than the puzzle we actually had.
Minigolf: Another location that tracked perfectly to the film, in which teams had to play through a minigolf course to discover a message hidden on the drawbridge on the 14th hole. Merely skipping to the end or browsing through the course wasn't enough to get the clue. So too for this clue. Each hole had a picture on it which, thanks to the iPhone, we gathered quickly and translated into a list of words. But then what? Nothing leapt out at us, so-- mindful of the corresponding clue in the movie-- we went back to the course. Two holes stood out. In one hole, as the ball passed underneath the lighthouse a recorded voice shouted "Fore!" In the other, upon entering the windmill a recorded voice said, "How about a game of air hockey after this round of golf?" Both seemed reasonable in context, but a trip to the air hockey tables still seemed in order. Eureka-- taped to the side of the table was a solving grid. But none of our words seemed to fit-- each was smaller than their corresponding grid row. We had to be missing something. What if there usually wasn't any recording at the windmill at all, and instead of changing an existing recording GC had added it? That suggested that they did the same thing at the lighthouse, which meant "Fore!" was important. Bingo. Each of the words in our list could be prepended with FORE to form a new word that fit the grid. This was a terrific puzzle from start to finish. We loved that the snack bar was open and we could grab some food. The fact that, as in the movie, you had to play through the course to get the information you needed was fantastic. The insights were very satisfying. My only criticism would be that once the place got more crowded, it would be very hard for teams to get the info from the air hockey tables without giving it away to other teams, and having that aha spoiled for us would have been a bummer. This was my favorite clue in the Game.
Radio Station: The next clue in the movie came from going to LAX and tuning in to the AM radio station that normally provides airport information. The times we live in make it impractical to put any clues near a major airport, so a train station filled in. Incongruously, the pointer to the clue was hidden on a lone Obama '08 sign on the lawn in front of the station. We might never have found it without calling GC, and I'm not sure why they chose that form, which was so unlike how we found clues in the rest of the Game. Regardless, we dutifully tuned our radio to the far end of the FM dial and identified a series of song pairs playing simultaneously in the left and right channels. The on-air bumper made a point of saying "It's Midnight Madness-- as in the movie, not the band," so we ignored the bands believing they didn't matter. Wrong! Every team we talked to were likewise mislead by this. Fortunately we called GC to verify our data and specifically asked for confirmation that the artists were irrelevant, so we didn't spend too long looking at the wrong data. Since the songs were presented in pairs, we knew we needed to combine info from the left song with info from the right. The proper way to do so was arbitrary and unclued. For each pair, we had to notice that one syllable of the song title on one side was the same as one syllable of the artist from the other (eg, Adam SANdler and SANta Claus is Comin' to Town). Even when someone suggested it, it sounded wrong to me because it was so arbitrary and messy. The other half of the data-- the other artist and song title-- was completely unused. The overlapping syllables weren't in consistent places, such as the last syllable of the left title and the first syllable of the right artist-- they were random. The whole effect was deeply unsatisfying, not so much a puzzle as "guess what we're thinking."
Hare Krishnas: In the movie, the next clue was disguised as the literature distributed by Hare Krishnas in the airport. Here, a couple of GC members costumed as Hare Krishnas pressed their literature on us as well. We later found out that only three teams were given this clue (the rest were skipped over it), which was probably a good thing-- it required a high level of attention to detail which wasn't easy to apply at that time of night. We received multiple copies of a religious screed full of typos. Close examination revealed that the copies weren't identical-- while some typos were shared, others were not. We had to find all the unique typos and highlight their locations on a master sheet. Those highlights formed a very good rendition of the Greyhound logo-- our next stop. This was a grind-- once we knew what we had to do, it took quite a while to actually do it. On the bright side, it lent itself well to parallelization and cooperation, so it was at least a good team puzzle. But shorter would have been better.LOLCats: At the Greyhound station we found a stack of LOLCat photos with edit marks in the margins. Obeying the edit marks allowed us to extract certain letters from the LOLCat text to get our next destination. I say "we", but I checked out on this puzzle and grabbed a few Zs while other pirates huddled in the back and forced an answer out of the LOLCats.
Pinball City: In the movie, Michael J. Fox plays a Star Fire videogame until he "beats" the game (which wasn't really possible), triggering a custom video telling them where the finish line was (also not possible). The house of a GC member stood in for Pinball City. No pinball machines, but three computers were set up running Star Fire via MAME. The ROM had been hacked to produce some incongruous sound effects under certain conditions. We needed to identify the videogames those sounds came from and, by observing the scores when those sounds got triggered, put them in the proper order and enter their initials into the high score screen. A for faithfulness to the film (although achieving a certain score would have been more accurate and, frankly, more fun), but much lower marks for the clue itself. Again, this felt arbitrary, and a long way to go for "name these three videogames". What if nobody on the team recognized them? Worse, entering the correct answer triggered a video that everyone in the room could see. This puzzle was only solved by a couple of teams-- everyone else just rode the solvers' coattails and eavesdropped on the video. Blech. Our team saw the video when another team solved the puzzle, but some of us felt dirty about leaving the site without having "earned" it. We had a little internal debate about it, but ultimately we decided to stick around until we figured out the right approach and solution ourselves. Making solvers wear headsets and providing key info through audio would have been one way around this problem, although there was no real way to prevent players from seeing the correct letters get entered into the high score board. Ultimately, the free ride was a better solution than some kind of turn-taking system would have been, but redesigning the puzzle to remove the problem would have been even better.
Hissy Fit: To reflect Michael J. Fox's character jumping out of his brother's Jeep and running away when he felt unwanted, we had to send our whiniest team member away, then try to entice him back via a cell phone game of Mastermind. We could only talk in 4 word sentences, and our teammate's response was dictated by the number of "correct" words we used. The magic phrase was "Jeff, you are special." You'd think that with an almost infinite domain space it would be exceptionally hard to zero in on the right words to say, but we locked on the "Jeff, you are" within about 5 minutes. Some fun playing around with filling in that fourth blank ensued, until someone hit on the right word. Amazingly, three teams-- none within earshot-- solved this puzzle within about 5 seconds of each other. We've had Mastermind puzzles before, but this was a fun twist.
Don't Get Hammered: This was a perfectly good puzzle wrapped in a frustrating form factor. Each of six inflated balls had about 14 pieces of data on them. Only two players from each team were allowed on the field at once, to gather the data or bat the balls toward the sidelines so teammates could read them. Meanwhile, GC members wielded inflatable hammers; when tagged, a player had to leave the field and tag in a teammate. Sounds chaotic and fun in theory, but was more chaotic and frustrating in practice. For starters, most of the balls were quickly punctured and deflated. There was a huge amount of data to gather, and strategy only got you so far amidst the chaos. Once we had the data, we completely blew the analysis phase by using the Post-Its GC provided instead of doing the smart thing and going directly to Excel, which is what we ultimately converted to. Once the spreadsheet was fired up, sorting the data into sets and putting each set in the right order fell out quickly-- hooray for the iPhone! The puzzle would certainly have been too simple had we just been given all the data, but this particular method of gathering the data was, I think, just a little too wild for my taste.
So where does that leave us? Overall the clues were disappointing-- there was too much unclued arbitrariness, too many instances where, in the course of solving, we created a more interesting puzzle than what we were given. There were too many opportunities for teams to skip their own ahas and get spoiled by the progress of other teams. On the other hand, the tight binding to the film made Midnight Madness: Back to Basics a lot of fun and solidified my belief in that model of Game structure. Snout has a lot of talent in acting, performance, and theatrics that was showcased quite well in this Game, and I'm glad I got the opportunity to play.
March 26, 2008
Bet They'll Still Show Ads Before the Film
An Australian company believes that affluent couples in Redmond are so tired of being forced to sit among the hoi polloi that they'll be willing to shell out $35 a ticket at the new Village Roadshow Gold Class Theater opening in Redmond Town Center. Each of the complex's eight theaters has only forty seats, arranged in pairs and equipped with call buttons for service from the theater's gourmet restaurant and bar. Valet parking is, of course, included.
The division of the world into coach / first class continues.
March 24, 2008
Eli's Big Adventure
Bill Harris, author of the videogame-focused blog Dubious Quality, gets my Father of the Year award.
His 6.7-year-old son Eli mentioned off-handedly one day that he wished he could go on a big adventure. So Bill created one. He created a fake will from a fake pirate describing how to get to his buried treasure. He put the will on heavy, weathered paper, had it delivered "from an old friend" via FedEx, and led his son on a grand adventure that culminated with Eli digging up a buried treasure chest with authentic-looking pirate coins inside.
That alone is fantastic. But the coda to the story is what happened afterwards, as Eli's enthusiasm and joy made Bill feel guilty for selling his son a lie. He handled it beautifully, and I find the whole story enchanting and inspirational. Eli himself sounds like a great kid-- I should be so lucky when my time comes. The way Bill manufactured not just a single experience for his son, but a whole future relationship based on creativity and shared play fills me with warmth, and the hope that I can accomplish the same thing with my own future children.
Perhaps those years behind the Dungeon Master's screen will turn out to be more valuable than I thought.
March 09, 2008
Petards, and Getting Hoisted Thereon
I was literally giggling with glee at the result of this week's Survivor tribal council, as Joel reaped what he had sown. The beauty of it is that even though he recognized the poetic justice of the situation a priori, once the axe came down on his head his final remarks indicated he could dish it out but couldn't take it. "How could they vote to keep someone like Chet?" he asked. He should know the answer to that, because he did it twice himself!. Joel went about the game all wrong from the start. The Fans should have banded together from the outset under the theory that the advantage would be with the Favorites' greater experience, and so they needed to remain united to have any chance. Instead Joel began by picking off the greatest threats to him personally, ignoring the larger needs of his team. Good riddance to bad rubbish, says I.
But let's talk about Cirie, who looked like she'd swallowed the canary during tribal council. That woman is playing the game harder than anyone else on the island, and none of the other players even know it. If they realized how crafty she's being, they'd bounce her in a heartbeat. She's doing all the right things. To stay alive, she has to band together with other "weaker" players and pick off the strong ones until the merge. While it's a team game, the physically weak are vulnerable, but once it becomes an individual game the equation inverts and the physical threats need to watch their backs while the weak cruise forward. Her game is all about surviving to the merge. I'm a little surpised Ozzy and Amanda agreed to oust Joel-- I'd have thought they'd have been confident enough to keep him around for the sake of a stronger tribe. All they have to do is make it to the merge and get reunited with James and Parvati, and the four of them are in a potentially great position.
I can't wait to see the faces of the other tribe when they learn that Joel was voted out. I'm predicting slack-jawed shock all around.
That was a brutal reward challenge. I suspect the producers had no idea it would become such an injury factory. But really-- Joel and Chet? How either of them agreed to that pairing is a mystery. I hope Jonathan isn't removed from the game because of his injury. That's just a horrible way to leave Survivor, not knowing if you'd have been able to make it to the end. But that wound looked nasty, and a choice between staying in the game and risking death is no choice at all.
March 06, 2008
The Wall
Sorry I've been inactive lately. Moving into a new house, unpacking, and generally making the place livable and homey has left little spare time for blogging. I've been too busy at work to slack off and write entries there, either-- a situation likely to be the norm for a while (which, frankly, isn't a bad thing). But I figure loyal Zombies deserve something, so here's a photo of the new Wall O' Games in the new game room. The other three walls are almost entirely windows, from two feet off the ground to a foot from the 9' high ceiling. Big windows = great light, but not a lot of room for storage. So all the games have to go on the front wall, as does the brand-spanking-new 52" HD LCD screen (we considered a projector, but then we'd have to mount a drop-down screen to the ceiling, and did I mention all the windows?). That's seventeen of the wall's eighteen feet, solid games from the floor right up to the ceiling, except for the space in the middle carved out for the television.
The shelving is one of the ubiquitous mount-a-rail-to-the-drywall-then-hang-uprights-from-it systems, in this case from Storables, custom cut to our measurements. We actually have two extra shelves, because we thought we'd space them closer together and fit another one on each side of the TV, but in practice it made more sense to make each shelf taller. We originally thought we'd also hang a track in front of the shelves and put up sliding doors, fabric panels, or shoji panels, but I have to admit I like the open display of gaming goodness-- it makes the room feel comfortably casual to me. We'll see how the fiancee feels over time.
And yes, that's all my games. Well, except for one small box of party games that are in my office right now. When those come back, they'll simply replace a few games whose borrowed time would have long ago expired if I didn't hate the hassle of selling and trading crap online. I'm looking at you, Proverbial Wisdom. And all the small-box card games, which are in an Ikea CD tower across the room which, its former purpose now obsolete in the age of MP3s, has been repurposed to a higher calling.
The room also holds my Addams Family pinball machine, Boccerball set, a couch and a game table, and the ceiling has built-in Dolby 7.1 surround speakers. It's a vast improvement on the old gaming space. We had our first game night here this week, and I can't speak for the rest of the group but I really dug it. The vibe was just much cosier and more adult, whereas the previous space was definitely collegiate / early bachelor. Unfortunately it's a longer commute for everyone-- only time will tell if they stick with it or if we break up the band.
March 03, 2008
Survivor: Fans vs Favorites
I'm not sure why they bothered with the "Micronesia" subtitle this season. Even Jeff Probst has dispensed with the tribe name malarky, just calling them Fans and Favorites.
Palau winner Tom Westman was the only previous winner invited to participate in this mini-All-Stars season, and he wisely declined with sage reasoning. He won his season without ever having a single vote cast against him. He has nothing left to prove, and playing again would only result in tarnishing that achievement. The rest of the Favorites are eager for a second shot at the million dollar brass ring. Except for Fairplay, who only deepened my disaste for him by taking up one of the coveted spots in the cast and then asking to be voted out (and had the gall to insist at tribal council that it wasn't a "quit"). Here's Osten's phone number. Have some drinks.
Jonathan continues to get a bad rap. As I remember it, the man never lied or backstabbed anyone during his season. He was simply tagged as being untrustworthy, likely because of his accent and pushiness, and it stuck. He's certainly shown more leadership and loyalty toward his alliance this season than others have.
I don't understand why the Yau-Man stick got so far up Cirie's butt as to impair her judgment. Yau-Man is definitely a weaker player physically, and from that standpoint a reasonable candidate for eviction. But Cirie wasn't playing that angle. She was so terrified of likable yet weak, one-dimensional Yau-Man getting the immunity idol, she sided with two couples to evict him. No alliance is a bigger threat than a couple. With only one other person to be loyal to, couple alliances don't fall prey to internal squabbling or playing one member off another. They're dangerous. When one member of the couple is one of the strongest physical players in the history of the game, that alliance is terrifying. When TWO such alliances exist, only a fool would pass up the chance-- the imperative-- to break them up. The possibility of that move paying off for her in the long run doesn't change the fact that strategically, it was beyond stupid.
I'd love to know how Ozzy managed to get everyone to agree to send him to Exile Island. If I were a Favorite, the LAST person I'd put within reach of an immunity idol is Ozzy. What the hell were they thinking? I really hope the guy wins-- he's a phenomenal physical player, and it's been a little while since we've seen one of those win the day. Taking a page from Yau-Man's book by creating a fake immunity idol is genius. I just hope someone falls for it!
Meanwhile, over at the Fans' camp, we have the biggest egomaniac ever to play the game. Joel was so bothered by the idea of someone else on the tribe calling the shots-- or thinking he was calling the shots-- that he twice opted to weaken the tribe rather than let that slight against his manhood go unchecked. Major props to Tracy, Yoyo-Ma to Joel's testosterone-riddled cello. Brilliantly played. Fear her.
Kathy, meanwhile, is so starstruck at meeting past players that she's blown the major advantage of being on Exile Island three times by completely bailing on the quest for the idol. When she gets voted out, she'll have nobody to blame but herself. That idol had her name written all over it.
Next week's shuffling of the tribes should change everything, depending on who winds up where. I'm quite enjoying this season. The mix of new and old faces struck a perfect balance, and all it cost was a tiny bit more of Mark Burnett's soul.
February 16, 2008
Rock and Roll Doctors
Ways Foreigner Misrepresented Having a Fever of 103
February 10, 2008
Found: I Can't Read!
Thanks to Amos, who posted a link to the classic Beggin' Strips commercial on You Tube in the comments to my original post on the subject.
Only one thing smells like bacon, and that's BACON!
January 29, 2008
The Wedding's Off
The fiancee and I closed on a new house this past weekend (thank you, Meredith). We moved all her stuff over on Saturday, and my stuff follows this Saturday. And by "we", I mean "the packers and movers we hired."
You learn a lot about a person when you
She owns a Milli Vanilli CD.
How can there be trust after this?
Now if you'll excuse me, I must go and quietly dispose of my carton of Star Trek novels.
January 25, 2008
"Awesome Blog"
I'd like to think that it's not anal-retentive to expect people to use proper grammar and punctuation, especially on professionally printed materials-- signs, packaging, etc. Improper use is one of my pet peeves.
Yes, anal-retentive. Already covered that.
Turns out I'm not the only one. This is a brilliant blog.
January 22, 2008
Torchwood
When the BBC brought back longtime favorite Doctor Who a few years ago, they made some very smart changes. Instead of a serial format where stories extend over multiple half-hours, stories became self-contained one-hour episodes. Production values were upgraded from what can only be called laughable to something much more in tune with what modern viewers expect-- ie, CGI instead of rubber masks. The baggage of thirty years of mythology was largely pitched, with key elements slowly reintroduced for modern viewers. But fundamentally, Doctor Who remained a family program suitable for early evening viewing.
Enter Torchwood. If you live in the United States and don't get BBC America, you've been missing out on the best new science fiction series since Battlestar Galactica. Torchwood spins off both a guest character and its name from Doctor Who (the two titles are anagrams), but ventures into darker, sexier territory than the Tardis ever explored. I like to describe Torchwood as Britain's answer to The X-Files, but without the endlessly strung-out government conspiracy / alien invasion hoo-ha dragging it down.
An impressive feat, since Torchwood itself is a secret government conspiracy. It's an agency established by Queen Victoria who, upon meeting The Doctor, realized that aliens could pose a threat to the world (and by extension, Britain). Torchwood exists "outside government" (much like the Bush administration) to monitor alien threats, recover alien technology, and prepare humanity for the 21st century when, according to the show's intro, "everything changes." The Cardiff branch of Torchwood is led by Captain Jack Harkness, an openly bisexual man with a mysterious past who, thanks to some shenanigans in the first season of Doctor Who, cannot die. His support team includes medical officer Owen, computer specialist Tosh, and admin Ianto. Police officer Gwen joins up in episode one and becomes the viewer's point-of-view character.
Torchwood isn't as cerebral or philosophical as Battlestar Galactica, nor as juvenile as Doctor Who-- it's a more mature detective-adventure romp with sophisticated storylines and character development. Even the sophomoric premise of episode two-- alien sex-fiend possesses humans and anyone copulating with it dissolves into dust-- is treated with surprising style and depth.
The good news is, the complete first season of Torchwood has just been released on DVD, and season two begins on BBC America this week-- so now's the time to jump aboard and see what you've been missing.
January 14, 2008
January 12, 2008
Alarmed
I've been in England on business all week, and something's not right in London. Since when do London police sirens sound just like American ones? According to years of British television, London sirens should have a two-note "eeeeeeeeeeOOOOOOOOOeeeeeeeeeeeOOOOOOOOO" sound, not a rising-falling thing going. Look, London, I'm paying twice as much for everything here as I would in the States. I demand you get your sound effects correct, or I'm afraid I'll have to speak to the manager.
January 04, 2008
Going to Eleven
Christmas arrived a little late at our house last night, in the form of the fiancee's gift to me: Rock Band: Special Edition for the 360. Having saved no money for presents in the wake of our pact, however, I'd been forced to sell the 360 to get her a hair comb. An ironic chuckle was had by all, you can be sure.
For those of you unfamiliar with the game (hi, Mom!), a brief explanation is in order. Rock Band is the successor to a series of games called Guitar Hero which allowed players to simulate the experience of being a rock guitarist in much the same way as Dance Dance Revolution simulates dancing. Equipped with a special controller the size and shape of a real electric guitar, players pushed colored buttons on the neck of the guitar to "play" notes that moved down the screen. When a note reached the bottom, players had to press the corresponding button and "strum" a lever on the body of the guitar. By doing so in rhythm to the song, players scored points and were ultimately rated on their accuracy and consistency. The game used rock songs from the 60's through the modern era, so many players had emotional connections to the music and were able to immerse themselves in the fantasy of being a rock star. Guitar Hero became something of a phenomenon and a remarkably successful party game, with many people as content to watch others play as to play themselves. Players could purchase a second guitar for two-player play, with one playing lead and the other bass.
Rock Band, by the original creators of Guitar Hero, ups the ante by enabling not just guitar and bass, but also drums and vocals. The game ships with a guitar (only one-- you still need to buy a second guitar separately), a drum kit with four "drums" and a foot pedal, and a hand-held vocalist microphone. And all four of these instruments can be played simultaneously, supporting up to 4-player experiences. Players create avatars for themselves and, with "money" earned by playing successful gigs, can purchase for their avatars new hairstyles, tattoos, clothing, and make-up to customize their look. It's way more fun than it has any right to be, and it's supplemented by a very smart marketing plan which releases new songs for purchase every week, so there's a constant flow of new material to keep things fresh.
So. Rock Band arrived in my living room last night, and I can see that this game will figure prominently in my recreational schedule for quite some time. Having played both Guitar Hero and Karaoke Revolution before, I was most curious about the drums. It turns out that playing them is super fun. As long as you're on EASY. Bumping up to medium demanded a level of coordination that I don't profess to possess, and I was soundly trounced by the game for my hubris. The source of my downfall is the foot pedal.
The first order of business is figuring out how to position myself so that the foot pedal becomes part of a musical instrument and not a cruel medieval instrument of torture. I have a similar problem with the gas and brake pedals in my car-- holding my foot off the pedal is painful. The proper rest position involves a delicate balance where my foot muscles are relaxed and supported, yet not exerting sufficient downward pressure to activate the pedal. I'm still working out that balance in my living room. I can already see why bands don't put a comfy couch on stage for their drummer. I don't think I need to go so far as some players have and purchase a drum stooI-- an adjustable office chair should do the trick nicely-- but clearly the furniture currently deployed for TV-viewing and conversation is inadequate.
I can handle 4 drum pads easily. I can handle using the foot pedal. I get flummoxed when simultaneous foot pedal / drum pad combos start popping up. Isolated combos aren't a problem-- it's when they come in groups, and the color of the pad changes, that I get into trouble. Or the walk-and-chew-gum sensation of RED-and-YELLOW, YELLOW-and-PEDAL, YELLOW, repeat. Ack! In seconds I go from drum impresario to utter spaz.
I'll also be testing out Electronic Arts' free guitar replacement program, since about three songs into my ownership of the game the tilt sensor in the guitar stopped working. That doesn't render the guitar useless-- you can still activate the overdrive function with the BACK button-- but tilting the guitar is both easier and more fun, and there's no excuse for the guitar not working as expected from the get-go. Supposedly a new guitar is on its way via second day air, so bully for EA. In the interim I will embark on a solo tour until the next time members of my band, Contestants' Row, get together.