Because I'm an Audiolog Fanatic

Since moving into a new place where we actually get a cell signal, I've been shopping around for a new phone as well as a new carrier. I was looking in the AT&T store and found myself trying out an iPhone. It's not the first time I tried one, but I only felt compelled to give it another go because I was waiting for a sales rep to finish with another customer. Without this turning into an anti-mac rant, I'll sum up my sentiments toward Apple in a single sentence: I've always maintained that Apple is a fitting name for the company because if there's one thing it excels at above all, it's polish.
Anyway...
I tried out the voice recorder application, the default one that comes with the device, as opposed to a third-party one like Night Recorder (which is actually kind of cute), so I wasn't expecting anything beyond what my current phone has. The interface consisted of an image of an old studio microphone, complete with a VU meter. On other side of the meter were two buttons, one for recording and pausing, the other to stop. When I first tried to make a recording, I wondered if the needle on the VU meter would move along with my voice. It didn't, but here's the part I don't get: when I tap the screen, the needle jumps.

The programmer made the VU meter touch-sensitive, but not sound-sensitive.

Why?

I mean, sure, the "Oscilloscope" image that appears on my phone when I press record is just a looped animation, but at least it only plays when I press record; it's not linked to another function or other part of the interface. However, making the VU meter only respond to tapping really just made me think at first that I wasn't being loud enough to get a rise out of the needle, which was preposterous given the noise level of the store in general.

It just strikes me as bad programming (not lazy programming, wherein the needle wouldn't have done anything at all) to go to the length of programming a VU meter's needle to respond to tapping a microphone (an image of a microphone, but one nonetheless) but be unaffected by the sound said "microphone" would hear.

Return of the Tech Weblog

A recent incident involving a hacker on Deviantart (and the journal entry I wrote regarding that matter) has got me thinking about computers, so I just want to give a brief overview of computers as they pertain to me, my daily life, and my various creative activities.

*I hate computers. I really do. I'm not even being ironic. It may seem ironic given I use one near-daily, I've built at least two and performed upgrades on at least two others, not to mention also learning the three main operating systems of Mac, Windows, and Debian-based Linux. My favorite line from the Patrick Troughton era of Doctor Who is always, "I hate computers and refuse to be bullied by them!" hence my apparent immersion and relatively extensive know-how of them.

*I do not own a laptop, and I probably never will. The biggest reason for this is essentially two-fold: the cost and what I get for said cost. Desktops can be upgraded essentially forever; every component can be swapped out and upgraded, the only major headache being either the processor (which typically requires swapping out the whole motherboard) or the case (in which everything gets moved around). In the end, laptops sacrifice viability for portability, which is a bit detrimental to me because of the video and audio editing I like to do. I have edited a few short films on my Dad's old Vaio in the past, but it doesn't exactly suit them all the same.

*Another reason I won't get a laptop is, because of said lack of versatility and viability, the things I would do with a laptop can (and have been) approximated by the various mobile devices I've used, especially my old Blackberry. Reading e-mails, Instant Messaging, simple web-browsing, and updating weblogs can all be done with any decent smartphone capable of running a mobile version of Opera. Hell, I even used to use my PSP's wi-fi to update my old Yahoo!360 page once upon a time. I get a little sickened by people's dependency on their laptops, the way they take them virtually everywhere and ask it to do damn near everything for them. I figure, "I've already got an assortment of devices like a cell phone, a few cameras, and quite a few digital voice recorders that a laptop would be bulky and inefficient versus a few dedicated devices." It's a meditation on the whole philosophy of never doing two things at once because one will never do justice to either. Why learn Audacity or Pro Tools when Tascam makes the PortaStudio?

*The cost thing is a bit of a lie because I currently have two desktops with a third in a kind of limbo. It's a bit of a long story, the short version of which is I have a computer I bought when I graduated college in 2005 (named Pres), a computer I built last year as a project to build a small, cheap computer (named Sophia), and a computer a friend of the family gave to my roommate to use while I built her a gaming rig. The temporary computer (named Big Black) used while I selected parts for the gaming rig (named Big Blue) is presently in pieces on an entertainment center's lower shelf due to what can best be described as a "cursed case," one that ventilates poorly and holds up to being turned off and on about half as well. Still, it's light-years ahead of Pres (which has recently developed a weird habit of randomly resetting itself for no apparent reason), and all it really needs is a good case, which I'm still shopping for. I've got a thing against towers and wanted to get one of those Home Theater PC cases that lies flat and looks like something you put on an entertainment center next to your various game consoles. The one I got, unfortunately, did not allow me to use the original power supply and the graphics card at the same time, which went totally against my intention, so the case had to be sent back and the parts returned to the shelf.

*I am platform agnostic, though I predominantly use Windows. I grew up in a Mac household, however, and used an iMac all through college. I learned to use Windows machines through school and my Dad's office. I got used to how both systems work and learned Linux about a year ago by dual-booting Ubuntu on Pres and equipping Sophia with Linux Mint exclusively. Despite these various exposures, I have ultimately found myself leaning towards the Windows side of things for a small handful of reasons:
1) Windows XP fixed every complaint I ever had about 95/98.
2) Mac OS is a good operating system with a lot of really good applications. The problem is it's wedded to the hardware and the hardware is overpriced, over-engineered, and borderline inaccessible to even the most skilled modder.
3) Linux is good, but fundamentally flawed in that, because everything is produced gratis by volunteers outside the big businesses, there's no quality assurance of any kind and, despite Linux being around for over 20 years, it has yet to offer a video editing application that can rise to the level of iMovie or MovieMaker.
Of course, there have been a few changes, but nothing particularly optimistic:
A) Vista and 7 are a joke and unnecessary, respectively, and I'm almost convinced Microsoft is sabotaging XP through updates as part of some planned obsolescence paradigm.
B) I've been reading more and more about Hackintoshes and companies like Psystar, but everything is a gamble and Apple is defending its "hardware/software" marriage with a rabid fervor that betrays their otherwise friendly image.
C) I did learn recently that Blender, a 3D animation program, actually has a rather good video editing component that's gone strangely unheralded by Linux users who otherwise insist on programs like KinoDV or KDEnLive.

I've probably re-tread more old ground than new, but hopefully it's shed some light on some of my computer habits, especially regarding laptops, which quite a few people like to ask me about as they think it's rather strange I've never owned one and don't care all that much for them.

Okay, now it's time for bed. I'm not going to bother reading over this again, so it's probably full of typos and run-on sentences and maybe even a few fragments.

Old YouTube Wound Re-Opened... and then some

So, apparently America's Got Talent is in season. I don't watch television and I'm not really one to keep up with trends, but I know the show is on because YouTube is once again flooded with everyone and their dog's favorite clips, nevermind that NBC has a YouTube channel in addition to streaming available through NBC.com and Hulu. I've always found this very annoying, and for a time I thought it was simply because it leads to my roommate tapping me on the shoulder every few minutes to get me to look at something. However, I've come to realize this time around that my problem with the whole affair isn't so much with people reposting clips, effectively wasting bandwidth with redundant data, but with the show's format. Reality television, in general, is well-known for hardly living up to its name; between casting and editing, the producers of the show are showing the audience exactly what they are intended to see, regardless of the entrants' actual talents. It's almost a perfect echo of the old MTV criticism of having to look good without necessarily sounding good. Finding talent and creating an entertaining television show are not always one in the same goal. Bad acts get to go on to further performances for their audacity and good acts get the ax for their banality.

*Prince Poppycock is a very good opera singer (in fact, he's probably my favorite act), but I can't help but feel like he wouldn't have even gotten past the cattle calls (the auditions that take place before they get to perform for the celebrity judges) without his flamboyancy.

*At times, it feels like the judges want the contestants to beg for their own audition. Q: Why should we give you a place? A: (through tears) This means everything to us.

*The show sidelines its own contestants by occasionally cutting to their host in the wings. Showing the other contestants at least offers something of interest. Either way, it's upstaging, whether the contestants-in-the-wings are the type or not.

*I know these performers aren't necessarily actors, but between their pre-show interviews and backstage chatter, I'm convinced they couldn't sound more rehearsed if they had a dialogue coach who specialized in "Ham."

Conclusion: Cruelty. The entire show is a grand, epic-scale lesson, study, experiment, and meditation on cruelty. I don't want to elaborate on what exactly I mean by cruelty, except to say that I feel like a lofty and pretentious wastrel for every critical thought that passes through my mind as I watch these people be manipulated for the vague promise of fame that is just as likely to backfire as it is to bear no fruit. I really and truly hope each and every one of those contestants thinks it is all worth it, because I don't think I would.

A Fiction Revisited (from Gamespot weblog)

Back in the eighth grade (circa 1995), my favorite part of English class was "sensory imagery." Best described as "Tell, don't show" sensory imagery is an exercise in presenting the visceral entirely by way of text, that is embellishing the plot with all the tedious little details that actually tend to get in the way of most otherwise good reads. Being an angst-and-hormone-ridden boy of early teens, I had a rather dark imagination, and took this new section of the course as a chance to "tell all." What followed were about ten little short pieces I ended up calling "nameless beast stories." They were drivel, but they were fun to write and they always got a positive response (except from my teacher, but only after the first two). A typical structure for one of these stories is 1)present main character and describe what they're doing, 2)introduce monster and describe its physical appearance down to the points on its teeth (if it had them, that is), and 3)describe monster eating, or otherwise dispatching, aforementioned human character. This wasn't always the pattern, but it was typical. I did eventually grow tired of it, and left the concept alone for nearly four years. Then, I found myself wondering if I was afraid of "letting the humans triumph" because it would make me seem soft or gushy. It can be rather unnerving to create a character and then try to convince a classroom full of people to care about them, so killing them off always seemed like an easy way out. I decided to confront this frivolous inner demon by writing what would be, in effect, the last nameless beast story. I only ever showed the story to two people, and they both liked it. I liked it at first, but looking back at it now over ten years later just makes me cringe. Quite a few of my writings have that effect on me. Every once in a while, I find the resolve to do something about it, for better or for worse. That story's rewrite is presented here: 

  

The Sacrifice: The girl saw no logic or reason in the glorification of death that had been made an integral part of her township's daily life. In the years following the war's end, the people began to doubt the very leaders they had themselves elected, leading to the spiritual guides taking the place of the previous authority. Their stories of guilt and indemnity painted the grim future that was to beset every man, woman, and child in the town unless various acts of expiation were performed. These acts took the form of human sacrifices to the priests' newfound god, a dark yet fair entity, who would spare the masses pain and punishment as reward for their noble offerings. It seemed to the girl that nearly everyone except her own family had succumbed to the propaganda concerning what an honor it was to offer a sacrifice to the god and what an even greater honor it was to actually be the sacrifice. All of her friends would not stop talking about how envious they were of those girls carted off to the shrines to be offered to the new god. She, however, did not envy them, saw no honor in these acts, and hoped her parents felt the same as she. 

They did not. 

One fateful morning, the girl awoke to the sound of the priests rapping on her family's door. After hastily dressing and entering the main room of the house, she came upon her parents sitting at the dinner table with the priests, all smiles and laughter while the head priest told them that they would be rewarded and honored with fame and gifts beyond their wildest dreams for their "contribution," as he put it. She learned, to her horror, that they had made arrangements the previous night for her to be taken as the next offering. She begged and pleaded with her parents to reconsider their decision as she was dragged away and hoisted into a cart, urgently reaching out her hands to them. They only waved and smiled. 

As the cart proceeded through the village, the girl endured the envious looks of her friends as they watched from the doorways and windows of their homes. She called out to them, imploring them to help her, only for her pleas to be answered with the same waves and smiles her parents had given her. The cart reached the shrine by midday, and the girl was taken to a small chamber beside of the main hall, where preparations would be made for the night's activities. 

In the hours that passed from midday to night, the girl underwent a transformation. She had been cleansed and anointed by the shrine's priestesses. Peasant rags had been replaced with flowing white robes and brass bangles about her ankles and wrists. Lulled into a tired daze by the perfumes and various nonsensical mantras chanted by the priestesses, the girl was led into the main hall, where the head priest was reciting the final verses of the litany that signaled the start of the ritual. When finished, he turned to her and placed upon her gently bowed head a lavishly decorated tiara which seemed to glow in the light of the torches. He then looked to two priests standing at a stone slab behind the altar. He clapped his hands, his signal to them snapping the girl to attention and out of her daze. She looked up to see the slab being pushed aside with great effort and she found herself being suddenly and forcefully pushed forward into the opening behind it. Once through, the slab was replaced. She did not turn around. She only heard the grinding of stone and saw the light around her fade away, followed by silence and darkness. 

She sat with her back against the stone slab, letting her eyes grow accustomed to the darkness. When the imprints of the torches finally left her sight, she rose slowly and put out her arms, feeling for a wall along which to guide herself forward, the only direction open to her now. After a few twists and turns, the girl's tiring endeavor was rewarded with a simple sensation, that of a gentle breeze on her face. She stopped for a moment, as if struck; she never thought that something as subtle and mundane as a breeze would cut through the deprivation which had been eating away at her spirit and serve as a new source of strength to keep moving despite uncertainty. Pressing onward, the girl saw a light up ahead, and ran towards it. She came at last to the end of the tunnel, which opened into a large room that appeared to be a colosseum, sunken and dilapidated. The light was coming from a small opening in the roof, from which a long length of chain reached all the way down to the colosseum's floor. The girl slowed her pace, taking in her surroundings, suddenly suspicious of this seemingly good fortune. She saw that the chain dangled over a large, circular pit covered by an iron grating. She stopped at its edge and looked down, the pit revealing nothing but absolute darkness. The bars of the grating were flat and just wide enough for her to walk along. She would have to be careful, lest she fall into that vast abyss below. Holding out her arms for balance and carefully placing one foot in front of the other, the girl began walking toward the chain that would serve as her means of escape. The iron was cold against her feet, but the girl kept the cold as far from her mind as she could, focusing only on the chain directly in front of her. Halfway across, she heard a sound that seemed to originate from the pit below. She dared not look down for fear of losing her balance, but found herself trying to decipher the noise. It sounded like wind, but seemed to have almost a rhythm to it. It reminded her of breathing. 

She at last reached the chain and clasped it in relief with both hands. When she pulled herself up enough to lift her feet off the grating, there was a moment of panic as the chain gave slightly. The girl heard the clanking of metal and noticed out the corner of her eye that the grating was sliding out from over the pit. She resumed her upward climb, ignoring the goings-on beneath her. She was halfway up the chain when the grating had completely uncovered the pit and the clanking stopped. The rhythmic wind from before returned, only this time it seemed to be faster and louder than before. She would have thought it only her imagination playing upon her fear if the noise had not just then risen briefly into a piercing roar. She stopped and dared a glance downward. 

The god was beneath her. 

The thing was enormous enough to nearly fill the pit. Its skin was solid black, making it blend perfectly with the darkness of the pit. The only parts of its form that set it apart from the darkness were its large, purple, reptilian eyes and huge, gaping maw. She felt its hot breath against her body as it lifted its head and began to close its mouth around the chain. She froze as its teeth closed on the chain, missing her feet by inches.The creature pulled down on the chain and the girl feared it giving way completely, sending her falling into the huge mouth. Fortunately, the bite had severed the chain completely and the beast fell awkwardly onto the edge of the pit. Sense returned to the girl in this moment and she frantically made her way to the top. She pulled herself up and was just over the edge when she suddenly felt the ground beneath her rise up and send her tumbling forward. The monster had lunged upward, its snout punching through the narrow opening, again narrowly missing the girl. The snout disappeared from sight, and she could hear the beast once again falling against the edge of the pit below. As she rose to her feet, she realized the beast had taken the rest of the chain down with it, and knew it would leap again. She turned to run and saw, at the edge of the newly widened hole, a statue resembling the creature, in front of which was a heavy, wooden lever with the last few feet of the chain attached to it. She ran over to it and noticed a series of gears and pulleys behind the statue that seemed to lead down into the ground to the colosseum below. The lever was leaning forward, and she realized that, when she put her weight on the chain, it activated the mechanism which pulled away the grating. An angry roar from behind her snapped her out of her thoughts and, summoning up all her strength, the girl threw herself against the lever, pushing it back toward the statue. The gears began to turn and the pulleys paid out and pulled in lengths of chain and rope. She heard the clanking of metal, and imagined the grate should be moving back into place. The gears then stopped briefly and the sound of the grate moving was replaced with a shrill cry from the colosseum below. The gears and pulleys slowed to almost a complete stop until the cry died out and they resumed their turning. When the sound of the grate stopped, the girl cautiously walked back toward the edge of the hole and looked down into the colosseum. The grate had completely severed the beast's head from its body. Its eyes were wide open, as was the maw, suggesting the incredible pain it endured as the grating closed on it. 

As relief washed over her in a warm wave, the girl slumped to the floor, breathing heavily. She looked down at her hands, which lay limp with exhaustion in her lap, still adorned with the brass bangles. She lifted her hands to get a better look at their curious designs and realized that, in spite of all that happened, the tiara the priest had given her was still on her head. She removed the tiara and looked at it. She had not been able to examine it before, and only now noticed that, like the statue, it had been made in the image of the god, complete with two purple gems for its eyes. She stood up, holding the tiara in both hands. She looked down into the colosseum at the head of the fallen god and threw the tiara down into the hole.She watched it fall through the grating and into the abyss below. 

:The End (c)1998, 2010

No such thing as invisible thread (Legion)

Just a little thought on sophistication.

My roommate and I just finished watching Legion. I didn't have much desire to see it, but she did because she likes Christian imagery and films that pertain to the Biblical apocalypse. I like Dogma, which she's never seen, and she likes Gabriel, which I haven't seen, so those are our viewpoints going into this thing.

She likes it. I hate it.

I hate it to such a degree that it now has a place in the number three slot of worst movies ever made (second is Wanted and third is Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li). It has the exact same problem that Wanted has, it's a moronic, dumb-as-a-brick action roller-coaster that tries desperately to convince you otherwise but has absolutely nothing with which to back its claims.
I don't have any problem with action movies, and I certainly don't hold something like Shanghai Noon or Indiana Jones to the same standards as I do something like 2001: A Space Odyssey or Rashomon. However, the makers of action movies have to learn to either be content with being what they are, or rise to the challenge that comes from trying to be more sophisticated. Imagine a scale of action movies and their level of relative sophistication. On one end of the spectrum is something like Rumble in the Bronx, by no means a bad movie (it's one of my favorites, really), it's just slightly silly and doesn't hold up to much scrutiny in the way of physics, logic, depth, or anything along those lines. It never takes itself seriously, but doesn't try to get you to, either, because it knows it has nothing to offer apart from a spectacle. On the other end of the spectrum is True Lies, also by no means a bad movie (a favorite, as well), but it's a very clever and deep movie with multi-layered characters and a tonally-consistent approach to its own plot. It takes itself seriously when it needs to, and laughs at itself when it wants to, and makes it very clear when the audience is supposed to laugh along and when they're supposed to care.

More movies on the Rumble in the Bronx side:
Shanghai Noon
Enter the Dragon
Street Fighter

More movies on the True Lies side:
Hero
Watchmen
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

These two relative extremes work, they're not outside of the gray area, but they're not dead center, which is where movies like Wanted and Legion are. They'd be outclassed at the sports bar with Watchmen, Kingdom of Heaven, and Curse of the Golden Flower, but they think too highly of themselves to kick back on the couch with 300, Temple of Doom, and Enter the Dragon.
The chief reason why Legion is in the dead zone, its key failing, is its plot and story. At the end of the day, Legion is half a movie, and not just because of its "cliffhanger" ending (this movie makes the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie look self-contained); half of the plot points and concepts it introduces are never followed through with or resolved. Furthermore, many of these concepts and plot points are introduced very late in the film's progression. This is also quite possibly the first film I've ever seen to employ both Chekov's Gun and a Deus Ex Machina (a very literal Deus Ex Machina).

My roommate says my problem is that I was putting more thought into the film than the average viewer. Granted, that's probably true, but like I said, I would never apply the same level of cerebration to this film as I do to American Psycho or 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould. Apparently, even my most average of criteria is too much for this film to handle. It's entirely possible for an action film to have a deep narrative and well-rounded characters. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of examples to go by, so even if you just want to sell a lot of theater seats, you don't have to insult your audience's collective intelligence to do so. Legion bombards you with Christian imagery and lore in the vain hope that people's general ignorance of some of the deeper meanings presented in the Bible will earn the film some kind of revere.

The emperor isn't wearing new clothes, though, he's just naked.

Psst! Sensei, it's the kettle.... (The Sensei)

There are many factors to a film which help determine its genre: action sequences, romantic elements, humor, adult situations, suggestive dialogue, and innumerable others. Genres in general bother me because films (like any other sort of media) can be very difficult to classify and run the risk of being pigeonholed unfairly. Should a martial arts drama be classified (by Netflix, among others) under "Gay and Lesbian" because one of its central characters is homosexual? Granted, I'm not saying "Gay and Lesbian" is any sort of stigma for a film, or anyone the film might appeal to or be targeted at for that matter.

I love women too much to be gay, and I lack the necessary anatomy to be considered lesbian, but I'm not homophobic, either. On the whole, my only real "issue" with those films filed under "Gay & Lesbian" is that they tend to be a bit preachy, but preachiness is as much a common theme of those films as gunfights are for Westerns or spaceflight is for Science Fiction or farce is for Romantic Comedies. So, when I say that I'm not a fan of those films, it's only because I'm neither the choir nor the heretic; I'm more the Good Samaritan. Speaking of which...

The story of 2008's The Sensei (a film my roommate got from Netflix and recommended to me after viewing) centers around McClain, a homosexual teenager who recently lost his lover to a lynch mob in a small, rural town in Colorado. Afraid for his life, he frequently tries to enlist in martial arts classes at a local dojo, only to have his applications mysteriously (read: deliberately) vanish. To further matters, the local minister turns the sermon at an Easter mass from the passion and resurrection of Christ to matters of Sodom and Gomorrah at the very sight of McClain and his mother entering the church to join in the ceremony.
In the dojo's defense, they turn young McClain away not directly because of his sexual orientation, but because they fear losing their students over the matter. In fact, the family that runs the dojo has had some acceptance issues of their own to deal with, not just because of being Asian, but actually because of being multi-ethnic, with Irish, Asian, and even Filipino members and relatives. They're also of mixed faiths, with the grandparents devout Buddhists and one of their sons a Christian actively involved with the local church. The family has a very proud tradition of teaching the martial arts throughout the generations, a tradition that sadly is not open to the women of the family, as we learn when we are introduced to Karen O'Neil (played by the film's director D. Lee Inosanto), a black sheep of the family who returns to town to settle a small matter which is revealed later on in the film.
McClain is cornered in the locker room after gym class and savagely beaten by the school bully, recently suspended from the football team (a move that lost him his scholarship, and the respect of his ex-convict brother). Desperate, McClain's mother approaches Karen and asks him to teach her son some fighting moves, in the hope he might have a fighting chance at defending himself. Karen is reluctant at first, but agrees to private lessons (emphasis on private, as Karen was denied her black belt thanks to the family's proud traditions), wherein she forms a strong and lasting bond with McClain. The lessons are put to the test when a fight breaks out in the school cafeteria, instigated by the bully (out on bail and awaiting a court hearing). McClain is able to subdue the attack, only to earn the scorn of the bully's older brother, who blames McClain for his brother's now-repeated incarceration. Things go south for Karen when her family finds out she's been teaching McClain, with her older brother the most (and, it turns out, only) disapproving, and she considers leaving town. McClain is devastated by her decision, and his attempts to outrun the pain sets him in the sights of the bully's intoxicated brother and his motley crew of hicks and hillbillies. Karen manages to come to the rescue in time, and the two just barely manage to hold their own against the brutes. As a result, everyone is hospitalized, but a small misunderstanding about bleeding wounds drives a wedge between McClain and Karen, leading him to think she's just as homophobic as everyone else. Karen's family arrives (even her disapproving older brother, now mellowed a bit) and Karen reveals the reason she came back has to do with her husband's death. She tells McClain that her husband, a boxer she'd previously said died of cancer, in reality had AIDS and passed it on to her (hence her concern over getting too close to McClain after she's severely wounded in the fight).
What follows in the rest of the film is the reconciling of all these revelations and the effects they have on the community as a whole. It's preachy in places and doesn't leave all loose threads tied up, but still offers strong and powerful dramatics and lots of poignant moments to hit home the reality of the film's message.

On the whole, there's only one real point of contention with this film, but it's a rather large and noticeable one. Following McClain's release from the hospital, he and his mother are visited by Karen's grandmother at an unusual hour of the night. The grandmother explains that she's there to ask a favor of McClain's mom to help Karen. After assurance by the mother that nothing is unreasonable, the grandmother utters a single word:

Pot.

There is, as one might expect, a moment of uncomfortable silence, followed by a hurried explanation that they are, in fact, referring to "the kind of pot that gets you high and not the kind you cook in."

Obvious question: What the Hell?
Obvious follow-up questions: Why would they think McClain's mother would have any or know where to get some? When did we ever have an indication that McClain's mother had access to marijuana? Why do they think this will help Karen's condition where years of medical treatment and a healthy, pro-active lifestyle have failed?
Obvious and appropriate summation of previous questions: What the Hell?

The scene that follows (and undertows the fielding of the aforementioned question, follow-ups, and summation) is two of Karen's brothers arguing how to prepare a joint, with the grandmother (the one who asked for it in the first place and even knew the gesture to indicate it) asking how they know to do this in the first place. The camera then cuts away to McClain sitting next to Karen in bed looking through some old books (with nary a doobie in sight), technically ending the joint-rolling sequence. For that matter, it ends any further mention or discussion of the sudden appearance of cannabis.

It truly is an enigma as to why a film that has so far tackled issues of homosexuality, racial diversity, misguided religious piety, AIDS awareness, and sexism would suddenly throw in a recreational drug reference without stating any kind of viewpoint on it. My roommate offered the explanation that, being an Asian family, they would try to find something equivalent to opium to ease the pain of the illness. Admittedly, she still thought the sequence was weak at best and out of place at worst, not to mention racist. In the end, the only real explanation that works is one of comedy. Put simply, the makers of the film thought it would be funny to have pot jokes because they needed to inject some comedic elements to lighten the mood following the film's dramatic climax. One can just imagine the conversation leading to its inclusion:

1: We need something to lighten the mood of the film a bit after all those deep revelations and intense characterization.
2: But what's funny? What kind of joke could we throw in?
1: I don't know, what's a good comedy out there?
2: Um, well, there's those Harold and Kumar movies, they're pretty funny.
1: Oh, what are they about?
2: They're about two pot smokers who go on a series of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby-inspired misadventures on their way to a fast food restaurant, among them an escaped zoo animal, a nymphomaniacal Christian couple, a pesky raccoon, a racist police officer, and a sexually ravenous Neil Patrick Harris.
1: ... what was that about pot?

Maybe I'm making too big a deal out of this, and I certainly wouldn't go so far as to say that scene is the reason why this film hasn't achieved a widespread release or much critical attention, but when questions like that come up, every facet of a film's content and character must be considered. For all the good this film does, and all the positive messages it teaches, it practically shoots itself in the foot because of a moment of sheer ineptitude regarding humor.

So, what do we have? We have a solid, well-made, and inspirational drama with a singular blemish that is tragically the size of the moon and twice as heavy.

Space Marines in Japan? (Halo Legends)

Once upon a time, there was a little game called Marathon. It was a first-person shooter available for the Apple Macintosh, of all things. I absolutely adored it, mostly because Vectorman on the Genesis can only entertain for so long and I'd played through Myst about three times. By the time Marathon 2 came out, though, I was beginning to get a little weary of the FPS to the point that I stopped playing them until Maken X came out for Dreamcast. I was, however, intrigued when Bungie first started showing off stuff from Halo, but when they announced that Halo was going to be an XBox/PC exclusive, I was one of those arrogant little jerks who cried, "Traitor!" and swore off all things Bungie for the next several years. So, I never gave Halo a chance, even after I bought a PC in 2005. In fact, what drew me to Red vs. Blue was that it poked fun at the game (and I couldn't tell you for the life of me why I bought the Halo Graphic Novel). I didn't actually play Halo until about 2008, when a friend gave me his old XBox so I could show Fable to my roommate. As it turned out, I couldn't really get into the first game, but I loved Halo 2, albeit I've still never really gotten back my taste for first-person shooters. On the whole, though, I'm only a Halo fan in a vicarious manner. The "canon proper" as it might be called (what's in the games) is virtually inconsequential to me, but its ancillary items of lore (Red Vs. Blue, the comics, art books, marketing websites) I find myself hopelessly drawn to, almost to the point of compulsive hoarding. That's not to say all these items are good; if anything, I actually feel kind of bad for Halo fans that they have to settle for such mediocre merchandise. I've got drafts of a review for some of the Halo comics in the works, namely the original Graphic Novel anthology and Uprising by Bendis and Maleev, but for now I'm going to be focusing on the recent DVD release Halo Legends. I was initially reluctant to pick it up because I was first going to rent it from Red Box, but found out that Warner Bros. was boycotting Red Box because, according to them, overly-convenience rental options like Red Box are hurting their DVD sales.

Granted, I was going to probably buy it anyway, but if there's one thing I truly hate, it's being played. Of course, it's not fair to take out my frustrations on a movie because the studio backing it is run by howler monkeys with brain damage (seriously, that's like blaming Hertz for GM's current financial state), so I relented, but I'd still really love to see the proof Time Warner can offer proving that rentals hurt sales. Anyway...

Legends completes a kind of unofficial trilogy of Warner-produced anthologies of animated shorts based on major franchises. It began with The Animatrix back in 2003 and Batman: Gotham Knight in 2008. They're worth checking out, but ultimately suffer the same basic problem that all anthologies do, which is the simple fact that "you can't please everyone all the time."

In other words, there are some shorts you're going to love:
Beyond (Animatrix)
Working Through Pain (Batman: Gotham Knight)

others, you'll think are rather good:
Detective Story (Matrix)
World Record (Matrix)
Field Test (Batman)
Have I Got A Story for You (Batman)

and others, well, you'll hate:
Matriculated (Ani)

Origins I Batman: Gotham Knight never really had an "origin" piece (unless you count Working Through Pain) because that part of his story is not only well-known, but infinitely interpretable. That is, his origin has been told and re-told so many times that putting forth that kind of exposition would be pointless. For The Matrix, however, the backstory was only vaguely hinted at in the first film, so there were still quite a few gaps to fill in, hence Second Renaissance. For Halo, the backstory is fully fleshed-out, but not actually that well-known to people who haven't played through the games. Over 100 hours of gameplay, across 3 main titles and a handful of spin-offs get condensed into two pithy chapters. Helmed by the same crew that put together Second Renaissance for The Animatrix, fans of that little collection will feel a distinct sensation of deja vu, right down to the fact that the story is being told by an intelligent computer program. In this case, it's the ever-lovely Cortana who fills us in on the epic mystery of the Forerunners and the events that led them to the construction of the Halo ringworlds. The visual style is patterned after the story "Second Sunrise Over New Mombasa" from the Halo Graphic Novel, illustrated by the iconic sci-fi artist Moebius. In my draft of the review of the Halo Graphic Novel, I make the statement that the only people I feel more sorry for in terms of product quality than Halo fans are Moebius fans. I mean, everyone keeps going on and on about what a great artist Jean Giraud is, but when I look over his work, there's a lot to be disappointment to be found (the manga Icaro and the game Samurai 20XX, for starters). These two shorts I find almost beyond criticism; they're equally competent in their premise, direction, and execution. They ultimately serve more as primers than standalone pieces meant to be appreciated on the same level as the subsequent stories in the anthology. That said, this is ultimately the stronger of the two (by a small margin, both earn serious kudos with me for prominently featuring the wonderful aforementioned Cortana) with its striking art style.

Origins II Copy and Paste previous, minus all that stuff about Moebius. The art direction takes a turn for the less stylized and goes for a more realistic style and focuses on the progression of humanity in the Halo Universe instead of focusing on the Forerunners and their battle with the parasitic Flood. Did I mention I've got a major geek-crush on Cortana ?

Homecoming I'm not going to rank these shorts or anything like that, but while this one may not be my favorite, it's practically a close second. Sadly, this one doesn't seem to get the appreciation it deserves, mostly because a lot of the hardcore Halo fans have deemed it the metaphorical "Castration" of the Halo franchise, as evidenced by their summary of the piece as "the lame-ass one with the f***ing teddy bears." The reality is that the teddy bear is featured only once or twice and is hardly central to the plot, as you might be otherwise led to believe. Furthermore, the bear stands as a great counterpoint to the surprisingly dark and ominous tone that underpins the whole work. The story centers around the Spartan super-soldier program's more dubious protocols, chiefly the kidnapping of six year-old children from their homes who are then hastily replaced with "flash clones," duplicates in every way like their natural-born counterparts, save for a weaker constitution and ultimately shorter lifespan (hence answering the question, "why don't they just send the clones into battle?").

The Duel As much as I'm an odd one out (no pun intended) amongst Halo fans for not avidly following the games as much as the comics and various videos, I seem equally alienated by fans of Halo Legends because I seem to dislike all the shorts on this collection that others absolutely adore. Many reviews have cited this as being the strongest piece, mostly for its unusual art style and unique approach to the inner workings of an alien society. The art direction claims to be based on that of Japanese inkwash paintings, though I'd seriously contest that it looks more like gouache or wet-on-wet acrylic or at least watercolor more than sumi-e. At least, it doesn't look like any inkwash paintings I've ever seen. On the whole, there's not much to say about this one apart from that it's a Japanese animation studio reinterpreting an American science fiction franchise as a Japanese legend, and it works about as well as you might imagine.

Odd One Out just as Odd One Out goes off on a tangent from proper Halo continuity, I'm going to go on a tangent to talk about Dragonball for a bit, to help clear up any confusion regarding my stance on all things Toriyama. The fact is, he's got a solid design philosophy and I do like his work. Back in teh day, I even followed DBZ, but I'm not going to pretend every second was pure gold. DBZ had a lot of issues as a television series, namely in the pacing and length departments. Officially, Toriyama is not involved with Halo Legends, but Daisuke Nishio is, and between him and Katsuyoshi Nakatsuru, it's the next best thing. Nishio is a known pacifist and has very strong feelings against guns (yet strangely has no problem with people beating the tar out of each other), so space marines might not seem like a great subject for him to tackle, so he doesn't. Instead of focusing on the UNSC's war with the Covenant, his story centers on a small family of orphans descended from the survivors of a ship crash. For an off-canon story meant to explore the bounds of just what will and won't fly in the Halo universe, it's strangely respectful to the franchise. If there's ever a second volume of Halo Legends, I'd really like Frank O'Connor (project supervisor and the man with the final word on all that has to do with Halo) to go forth with his idea to expand on the daily life and history of this family that has managed to fight off everything from bird-headed space pirates to a genetically-enhanced Brute.

The Babysitter this story centers around the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, stars of the recent Halo 3: ODST game for the XBox 360 and the Helljumper comic by Peter David and Eric Nguyen. The ODST game has gotten quite a bit of buzz from both ends of the spectrum, though with most of the criticism centering on the game's release and marketing than the content itself. Along with Homecoming, this is the most visually straightforward with traditional, hand-drawn 2D animation only barely supplemented by CGI, mostly for the vehicles and a few of the backgrounds. The story revolves around a young Helljumper named O'Brien, who's just been demoted to "back-up" on a sniper mission. The task of pulling the trigger is given to a Spartan, who ends up saving his bacon at least twice on the mission, much to his chagrin. It's a bit predictable, but overall one of the strongest chapters in the collection.

The Prototype or, as I like to call it and to crib a phrase from The Simpsons, Battling Seizure Robots. There are two very important words to bear in mind before you go watching this: Muzzle Flash. There are honestly times when I had to look away because I thought I was going to be sick, and I'm not even epileptic. Strobe lights notwithstanding, this really is the weakest short of the bunch, not as much for what it is or even what it lacks as much as what it fails to do, which is let its own premise breathe. The dialogue is simple and straightforward (as is the premise), but repeated ad nauseum, pounding the premise into our heads, as though we'll lose sight of the theme amidst all the gunfire, explosions, and flickering computer displays. This could have been a brilliant one, maybe even my favorite, but it just fails on so many levels.

The Package I really cannot understand why they couldn't get Steve Downes in to voice Master Chief in this or Odd One Out. It doesn't help matters that the voice-over work in this piece is the weakest by leaps and bounds. It's as if no one in the cast (or the ADR director, for that matter) could make up their minds as to whether these characters should be portrayed as cold, calculating marines or as real, relatable people and then phoned the whole thing in at the last minute. As for the animation style (and the short, in general), I'm totally on the fence about it. I neither love it nor totally despise it. If I hate anything about it, I hate what it represents. It's got what I hate most about CGI in spades: the overdone fluidity and weightlessness of movements and objects. It's got what nearly everyone hates about modern action films in equal spades: shaky camera work and staccato editing. In short, imagine if George Lucas let Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay handle the opening sequence to Revenge of the Sith.

Voices of a Virtual Career Fair

I just had what may quite possibly be the worst online experience of my entire life. It was a virtual job fair for USCellular. I heard about it from a friend and went to register that very day on the company's job site. I'd been to USCellular's site to look for jobs before, but I liked the idea of this virtual job fair, since it allowed the opportunity to talk with members of the staff and administration. The whole site was set up to look like a convention center, with sections like "Exhibitors' Booths," "Career Resources," and "Networking Lounge." All you have to do is fill out a profile (which includes a resume and cover letter), go to the right booth for your location, and then you'll initiate chats with members of staff.

In the exhibitor's booth for the MO/STL Metro area, I got invited to a chat with one of the staff members right off the bat.

V******* M***** has joined the chat.
V******* M*****: Hey Matthew --what position are you looking for?
Matthew Andrews: Well, my most recent experience was in customer service, but in total the bulk of my work life has been in retail, and I do kind of miss meeting customers
V******* M*****: We have Retail Wireles Consultant positions open in the St. Louis/Metro area and you can apply at USCellular.Jobs and a recruiter will review your resume and reach out. Thx!
Matthew Andrews: USCellular.Jobs here in the career fair? Or is that a different website?
Matthew Andrews: I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I don't understand where you're directing me to; USCellular.Jobs isn't a URL and I don't see a section here called that. Can you be more specific?

Total chat time, 13 minutes, with ten of it devoted to waiting for an answer to what I thought was an honest question.

Later, at the "Networking Lounge" a kind of general chat area for staff and guests, I posted this:

Matthew Andrews (05/11/2010 12:47:01 PM):After meeting with a representative V******* M***** regarding retail positions in the STL area, she told me to go to USCelluar.Jobs ... but I don't understand where she's referring to as it is not a proper URL and I can't find a section anywhere at this fair that looks like that. I asked her for more information, but she did not answer.

L****** S******* (05/11/2010 12:53:48 PM):Hi Matthew, the site is www.uscellular.jobs. If you follow this link it should guide you there.

Matthew Andrews (05/11/2010 12:55:18 PM):L******, my browser simply says BAD REQUEST (invalid hostname) when I click on that link.

Matthew Andrews (05/11/2010 1:06:09 PM):I still keep getting BAD REQUEST (Invalid Hostname) when I click on www.uscellular.jobs . Also, I didn't even get to ask anyone at the exhibit booth any other questions, they simply left the chat session after giving me the URL. She didn't even stick around to let me ask about the work environment or the clientele or anything else along those lines.
D***** W******* (05/11/2010 1:07:09 PM):Please join a private chat with me....

Promptly then, in a new chat window:

D***** W******* has joined the chat.
D***** W*******: Matt I am sorry this happened.I am not sure I can answer the questions that you had but I can try ... what were they..
Matthew Andrews: Well, I was just curious about the retail positions in the STL area, namely what sort of clientele or demographic that location tends to get.

Total chat time, 23 minutes, with less than three of those minutes devoted to the actual discussion. Suddenly, I get an invite from one of the other guests. A****** P***** has been unable to login to the career site that each of us keeps getting referred to. Eventually, she is able to login, and I realize why I'm getting the "Bad Request" error message. The link that L****** gave me was at the end of a sentence, so it counted the "." as part of the URL, throwing off the browser. So, I remove the offending punctuation mark, only to find it's just their default career search page. In other words, the company set up this huge website and real-time chat server all so they could refer us back to the site where we first registered found out about this fair in the first place.

Am I missing something here?

Faux Audiolog Finale

Part The Last of this series of bogus audiologs for a game that never was.

Ugh, don't get me started on this one. I did so many re-takes I lost count. The biggest problem of all was fitting my own arbitrary time-length. Originally, when I thought this would be three parts, each one was going to be successively longer, 30 seconds for the first, 60 for the second, and 90 on the third. That ended up not really working out, so now it's four parts, each approximately 30 seconds with the last being just below 90. I couldn't let it go over because, in addition to DevART, YouTube, DailyMotion, and others, I've been uploading these to Flickr, which has a very strict 90-second limit.

In terms of the story, now that it's essentially finished (I did have an idea for a sort of "side-story" centering around the loader going haywire, just as a little throwaway), I wanted to give a few more details about what happened, but still leave it relatively ambiguous.

In terms of the technical side of these four little productions, they were all recorded the same way: on a cell-phone, specifically a Motorola ZN5, which, it turns out, has a really good little voice notes feature, with alarmingly good quality. Unfortunately, the format this little wonder records in is AMR, which is okay for playing back on phones, but it has to be converted into something else if you're going to do anything else with it. Luckily, I found a little freeware program that converts AMR to either WAV or MP3. What's funny about the AMR format is that its sampling rate is around 8kHz (to give you an idea, your voice on the phone is about 11kHz, and a CD is 44kHz) with heavy compression, but the artifacts created as a result are barely noticeable. Compared to an MP3 recording (on one of my more sophisticated devices) at 11kHz, the 8kHz AMR recording sounds leaps and bounds better.

There you have it: simple and readily-available recording devices and as little editing as possible. Hopefully, that "less is more" approach has paid off.

Faux Audiolog 3

The third (but not final) installment in a series of faux audiologs for a game that never was.

I'm not all that happy with this one, and it may be as good a time as any to delve a bit into my "methods" for acting.

I'd been planning on doing something like this for a while, so the idea was always mulling about in my head, but never fully sure when to start. Then, one day, I woke up and decided that now (operative word: now) was as good a time as any, so I recorded, right then and there, the first episode. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how I made myself sound like I'd been hiding in a storage locker for three days with absolute hell breaking loose outside; by the simple virtue of not being a morning person. At first, I was worried about being able to recreate those circumstances for episode two, but I realized there would be a sort of natural progression in terms of composure anyway, hence the line in part two, "I'm a little better now." In any case, I recorded part two lying down, just like before. For the third one, I just did a dry read-through to determine the length. I re-recorded a few times, but albeit it was rough, the first take really sounded the best. That is to say, I disliked it the least. I knew as well that if I kept re-recording, 1) I'd never be happy with it and 2) I'd get far too comfortable with the lines so it would lose its naturalistic quality.

I don't know if the fourth one will be the last (for this particular character/story arc), but if it is, it'll probably be the longest. At first, when I thought this would be exactly three parts, they were going to be increasingly longer with the first being around 30 seconds, the second around 60, and the final nearly a full 90 seconds.