Oh, Not Funny When It's You

So, some time ago, Star Wars Kinect was released for the XBox360, and it was met with what could charitably be described as mixed feelings, with most of the negative feelings strangely centered on a rhythm and dance portion of the game wherein much-beloved characters dance in well-known locales to popular songs made into parodies by a slight tweaking of key lyrics. "Princess in a battle" instead of "genie in a bottle" is one example.
As to why this has many fans outraged, there's no official answer, but if one were to be culled from the general consensus of the gaming community, it's that Star Wars Kinect is an officially licensed Lucasfilm product. In other words, Star Wars fans can make fun of their beloved franchise to their heart's content, but heaven forbid the people behind it have a sense of humor as well.
I could get into the psycho-socio-cultural underpinnings of this phenomenon, but The Escapist's MovieBob already did, and in reading his analysis, I remembered something from my own childhood that perfectly exemplifies the situation.

It was really hard for me to make friends after I moved to New Mexico in 1991. There's a lot of reasons for this I won't go into, but probably the most important one was that my sense of humor didn't gel with everyone else's. I understand that friends take digs at each other, call each other names, and even play mean little tricks on each other. Really, I get it; it's part of the trust, it's something you can do because of the comfort zone. The thing is, where I saw it as being "part" of the whole "friendship" paradigm, some people saw it as "the whole" and that struck me as just downright conceited. I kid you not when I say that I actually lost a really good friend because I told him to stop calling me a certain name because it genuinely bothered me. For years afterward, I thought there was something wrong with me because I just couldn't take a joke, I couldn't separate "laughing with" from "laughing at." Years later, I got a second opinion. The good news is that there wasn't really anything wrong with me, that sometimes people were just jerks. The bad news is that the number of jerks turned out to be higher than I'd thought.
My 7th grade history class had some class clowns in it. Trouble was, it was a de facto role as they weren't very good at it, as most of their jokes relied on me to be their punchline, whether I wanted to be or not. How exactly they made fun of me or laughed at me or generally had fun at my expense varied and changed almost daily. For about two or three days, though, the fixation was on the fact that I was the only boy in the class who wore glasses. Right away, I thought, "they're really desperate for a laugh." Seriously, the last months 7th grade, a year between us and high school, and I felt like I was living out an uninspired episode of Full House.
Anyway, we were all doing some sort of art project that I don't remember any details of, except that we'd have to stop about five minutes before the bell so we could all go wash up in the bathrooms. So, here's the scenario: everyone walks a little faster than me so they can get there first. When I step in, everyone turns away from the sinks and starts flicking their hands at me so water beads on my glasses, carrying on until I literally can't see and have to take them off to wipe them clean, and the process repeats when I put them back on until I get out of the bathroom, my hair wet enough that I can slick it back.

This goes on for two days. I don't get angry. I don't lash out. I don't confront anybody about it. I don't say a word.  I just stand there and seethe quietly to myself, because it's the seventh bloody grade, we're in our early teens, and flicking water at my glasses to where I can't see is the funniest damn thing in the world to these guys. On the third day, I figure that maybe I'm taking this too seriously, that I'm not having fun with the whole thing. So, I decide to give this "laughing with you" idea a shot. Again, everyone walks a little faster than me to get to the bathroom first. Before I step in, though, I take my glasses off and put them in my pocket. I make sure not to squint, because that would just give them something to laugh about. I walk in, knowing what's going to happen next, and I'm smiling. It's not a toothy, ear-to-ear grin, it's more like a Mona Lisa, at the risk of sounding pretentious. The funny thing is, I'd never felt more confident in my life at that moment. The sad thing is, no one else found it funny, made apparent when they turned away from the sinks with hands at the ready.

Awkward silence.

I'd see some turn away from the sink and watch a smile disappear almost like someone flipped a switch. Instead of knowing nods, playful shrugs, or even indifference, I saw, despite the blur, frowns and eye rolls. I hadn't gotten in on the joke, I'd ruined it. I'd ruined it by not ignoring them or getting angry or annoyed or anything like that. I'd ruined it by wanting in on it and playing along. They weren't making fun of me to be friendly or chummy, they were making fun of me because they were that desperate for a laugh. How dare I, apparently.

Maybe I should have grabbed a fire extinguisher before going in instead.

Frightened, but Brave

Just got back from Snow White and the Huntsman, and I'm not even going to make a comment about Mirror Mirror leaving bad taste in my mouth and this being the cleansing swig because it's an unfair comparison.

In short, loved it. Awesome. Highly recommended.

In the interest of full disclosure, let's address the elephant in the room: I have never seen the Twilight movies. Actually, that's a lie; I've seen five minutes of a scene with two groups of vampires comparing notes on feeding habits and it pretty much told me all I need to know about what I'd be in for if I stayed and watched the rest. I bring this up because my roommate has seen the Twilight films and as such her biggest hangup about seeing the film was Kristen Stewart, fearing a wooden performance.

I think she gets a bit of a bum rap. Granted, the only thing I've seen her in prior to this was Zathura, where she played the older sister of the two boys. Not much meat to the role, but I liked her in it.

Something most people will probably notice right away regarding performances, hers as well as others, is that dialogue is rather sparse, and given that Stewart has a fair amount of screen time in the first act, people might be led to believe that her part was toned back because of fear about her ability to deliver dialogue. This really isn't the case; overall, it's a very visual film with very long passages of silence. I think that's one of the film's greatest assets, not feeling like it has to hold the audience's hand or keep spouting little throwaway lines of expository dialogue. What little dialogue there actually is serves almost as padding. Seriously, this would make a dandy silent film.

At the risk of sounding like I'm gushing, and going back to what I was saying about Kristen's performance, I think she's one of the best female leads I've seen in a fantasy film. She's got a very rare quality that I first heard leveled at the late Elisabeth Sladen by former Doctor Who producer Barry Letts. He said of her:

"She could be frightened and brave at the same time. Most actresses can only do one or the other."

This is also how I felt about Naomi Watts in the Peter Jackson remake of King Kong, someone who has a confidence and inner strength, but is also a human being with a full emotional palette. On that note, I think my favorite scene in the film (stop reading if you don't want any spoilers) is one where she stares down a monstrous troll that's just made a rag doll of the Huntsman and sets its sights on her. Admittedly, it waxes incredibly silly, but it made me smile and, frankly, if I made a fantasy film, you bet I'd have a scene like this. It's Dorothy slapping the Cowardly Lion, but done better. It speaks to her character, saying, "Look, I'm cold, tired, and terrified, but damned if I'm going to run now!"

Sure, not a terribly deep review, more just first impressions, but it's a very good first impression. Again, highly recommend it.

This Is What I'm On About...

I've been called a Grammar Nazi, but I'd rather think I'm more like a Grammar Sheriff or Constable. In other words, my bar is actually set very low as far as what a typical person's grammatical skill should be, more "move along" than "no soup for you!" In the interest of full disclosure, if you'd seen me in second grade and bore witness to the spectacle of me trying to keep "woman" vs "women" straight in my head, you might laugh your head off. In my defense, while I wasn't personally aware of it, this was around the time when "womyn" was becoming an acceptable spelling in certain circles, which would have probably cut the hassle I was having in half. Also in my defense, this was second grade. I was 7, maybe 8. Of course, I don't expect perfection at that age; the English language is full of little idiosyncrasies and inconsistencies that, for a young mind, are hard to comprehend.
The Escapist, meanwhile, requires its users to be a minimum of 10 years old. Yes, that's only 2 or 3 years from the age I was at when I was confusing plural pronouns for the fairer sex, but there's a world of difference between words that are spelled one way and pronounced another, and a mark of punctuation used to shorten the overall quantity of words.
The point is, in the end, I've taken a quality vs. quantity approach to how people write. When I read a novel, even one from a big name publisher and well-established author, I expect a typo or two. When I read a weblog entry that's more than a paragraph, again, I expect a few run-ons and "teh"s and the like.

When the title is misspelled, however... that's just pathetic.

The title, the damned title, is only two words, yet made three by an extra vowel and punctuation mark that changes the very nature of the pronoun its attached to.

Many years ago, on YouTube, there was a video circulating around called, "Get Want You Want." it was about self-manifestation, and quite a few others copied the title for their own respective takes on the subject. The sad thing is, people must have just copied and pasted the title from the original video using a mouse and key commands, because I swear I saw more "want"s than "what"s to the point of utter infuriation. I genuinely started writing a message to one of the video makers trying my best not to berate them for not even double-checking their text before hitting "submit." Luckily, it was eventually changed.

Yes, there are people with learning disabilities that make simple confusions like that into debilitating obstacles, and there are people for whom English is not their first language, but I'd argue those instances to be much fewer and farther between than politically correct types would have you believe. More often than not, it's just someone not thinking, not taking that extra half-second to give what they've written a once-over before hitting the "send" key. Sure, I've made my mistakes here and there, but to bring the second grade reference full circle and use school as an analogy, I'd say I generally averaged out a B student. Most people out there on the internet, though, most likely wouldn't even get F's. Rather, they'd get "See Me," which, if you ever got one, you know is far worse than simply a failing mark. It's essentially saying, "Not only did you completely fail this very simple task, but you failed so miserably that you need to be told in person."

Look, to all you out there who make these kinds of "See Me" gaffs and wig out when people point them out to you, it's not about following rules, it's about presentation and making an impression. When you see someone writing this way, what are your first thoughts? Are they positive? No, you probably think they're a damn moron and you're just waiting for your dialogue with them to reach the point when you can bring up their inability to keep possessives and contractions straight, even though you've probably got the same problem most of the time. That's right, Pot, Kettle, you're both black.

Qomics Quintology IV: What If? No. 83

We take a look at one of What If...?'s boldest and most experimental "alterniverses."

Something about my current editing process:
As I'm using Linux, my video editing options are somewhere between slim and nil. For a time, I used a program called OpenShot, which I was very impressed with to the point of calling it the Linux equivalent to iMovie or Windows Movie Maker. The trouble is that I went from using a small form-factor Linux computer that I built to a Dell Optiplex that some law firm my roommate's nephew worked for didn't want anymore. It ran Windows XP, but was locked with a password and had no recovery disk, which prompted me to just running Linux Mint on it. All seemed well and good, but somehow Openshot decided it didn't want to work anymore. The first time I used OpenShot, I got an error message telling me I needed some codecs so it could properly export the video. Luckily, all I had to do was enter the names of the codecs and the error message in a search and I got a solution right away. Later, when I got the Dell, I ran into a similar problem, but when I downloaded and installed the right components (and a few others) just like before, absolutely nothing happened. OpenShot just didn't want to work at all.
This meant I had to use YouTube's built-in video editor, which is serviceable but has two important problems. The first problem is that I basically have to upload all my raw footage, edit each clip individually (namely trimming), and then open a new project in YouTube's editor. This takes hours. One of the great advantages of recording to SD cards or an internal memory is that all I have to do is drag and drop the clips into the editor, which works almost instantly. With using YouTube's editor, it's akin to using tapes, where you have to sit and watch it download in real time. The second and most irritating problem is that, if I use multiple cameras, the video's overall resolution defaults to the lowest.
The Nokia Nuron, which could well be my favorite video camera ever, has the ability to shoot with colored filters, trim and merge clips, and even allow me to dub over the soundtrack. It's surprisingly robust for a feature that's essentially an afterthought on a phone. The catch is that not only is it not a high definition video, it's barely standard definition.
Without getting into a whole mathematical mess of aspect ratios and resolutions, the key point is that my Sony Cybershot shoots HD video, which means each frame is 720 pixels tall. A DVD, by comparison, is 480 pixels tall (that's standard definition). The Nuron's widescreen mode is 360 pixels tall. Since I'm recording the introductions to most of these videos on the Nuron, that means I'm asking YouTube's editor to merge a 720 image with a 360 image. In the end, the maximum resolution of the completed video project is only 360 pixels tall. No high definition, not even standard definition. It's still 120 lines more than a VHS tape, but it basically means I'm not getting the best image possible.
On the whole, though, while shooting in HD is appealing, I care far more about my videos being widescreen, so it's a small loss and really just irritates me because HD video eats memory card space.
In short, I really should just upgrade my system to something that can handle a more practical and versatile editing program such as Sony Vegas, but two things: 1) I can't afford that kind of upgrade (got a bit eaten alive on my taxes thanks to something from my past coming back to haunt me) and 2) In the end, I don't make videos all that often. It's only rarely that I get the bug to film something and it often goes as quickly as it arrives. About the only reason I put as much effort into it as I do is because apart from sales of my prints on DeviantART, my videos are one of the few things I produce that can generate money via ad revenue. Granted, it's not going to supplant my day job anytime soon, if ever at all, but it'd be nice for a few embellishments and frivolities, so anything that can help get me a return on my investment (even for a hobby) is worth pursuing.

An Open Letter to the Marijuana Community

South Park put it best, that more than likely the worst thing that's going to happen to anyone smoking pot is absolutely nothing, that its worst effect is making you alright with being bored. On the whole, I don't care if people want to get high by way of the cannabis; it's no different than any other vice or addiction, be it liquor, tobacco, caffeine, sex, roller coasters, or videogames to name a few. What matters is whether you're in control of your habit, or it's in control of you. Either way, those on the pro-marijuana side of the issue, we need to have a talk.

Here's an encounter I had with a neighbor some years back as I was on my way to work.

Him: Hey.
Me: Howdy.
Him: Say, do you know where I can get some pot?
Me: No, I don't.
Him: You don't?
Me: Nope.
Him: Why not?!
Me: Because I don't do pot.
Him: But you have long hair!
Me: That doesn't mean anything.
Him: Whatever.

The funny part of that story is that he had a crew cut. The really funny part is that I was clean-shaven, wearing a dress shirt, and spoke without a hint of a slur. The sad part is he asked me again a few weeks later. The sadder part is that in the meantime, he would condescendingly yell, "Hippie!" at me from his balcony as I walked out to my car. The worst part is that I have to live in the same building as this guy, this guy who now harbors an irrational resentment toward me because he believes I lied to him and then added insult to injury by pointing out the fault in his ability to sort people out by appearance. As I've implied, I think the illegal status of marijuana is an arbitrary double standard, but situations like what I've described haven't exactly endeared me to stand by you guys in your campaign.

I know you don't keep any sort of census or roster and it's utterly unfair of me to hold you all accountable for the actions of a few bad eggs. That said, it's no use playing dumb, either. It's also not going to do you any good to see your campaign as a black-and-white issue. Look, I don't like being lumped in with those pro-active/social anti-drug people with their lame slogans and ineffective ad campaigns, and I know you probably don't like being lumped in with the people I'm describing, the ones who can't comprehend that people who choose not to get high aren't always looking down their noses at them. I have no problem taking that step to seeing that the stereotypical "stoner" is archaic, sensationalized, and largely inaccurate, that correlation is not causation. So, why are you holding onto it? Why am I being profiled by way of only-partially fitting an image you know doesn't fully or properly represent you?

Seriously, at the risk of sounding like I'm making fun of you, with all the colors you can smell and music you can see, if you're still seeing things in black-and-white, then maybe you should lay off the pot; clearly, it's not expanding your consciousness or broadening your mind as much as you want other people to believe. Just because I'm not a help to you doesn't mean I'm a hindrance by default.

I don't want "NO means NO!" to become the new "Just say NO!" and I doubt any of you do, either.

So, like I said, I don't want to write off the Cannabis Community as a wastrels and a cancer upon civilization, but you need to respect a few ground rules if you want to be treated like responsible adults that can usher in a change in policy, namely that, even if I did partake in recreational drugs, I'm under no obligation to keep you appraised of this fact and that your habits are ultimately your responsibility and yours alone. If you do have to ask, and the answer is no, take the hint.

Happy 420, and to crib a phrase from a wise man,

Just go forward in all your beliefs, and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine.

P.S. Oh, one more "ground rule" before we part: Would you please stop using famous artists like The Beatles, The Doors, Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and others as "case studies" for why marijuana should be legalized? Creativity isn't a substance you can breath in as smoke or bake into a brownie or inject into your veins or put under your tongue, and last time I looked, no one in any of those bands ever said otherwise. Besides, if that were the case, there'd be a lot more White Albums out there.

Peace and bacon grease.

Qomics Quintology Part IIIb: Nadesico

I make a startling discovery about one of my favorite writers... and I'm driven to drink because of it.

Qomics Quintology III: Manga Formats

Probably a little more personal than previous installments, if only because I'm working with an existing collection instead of the one I'm building now.

Qomics Quintology Part II: Swords of the Swashbucklers number 2

This has left me feeling just a little bit morose. My attempt to make quality video projects using only what I've got at my disposal (and a little less) hasn't really yielded the results I'd like. Still, I intend to finish what I started, and I can say that because I actually finished part 3 before I started part 2 (even shot an introduction for part 4).

Qomics Quintology I: Dracula No. 11

First video in a five part series.

Alesis Videotrack (Build Quality & Accessories)

Follow up to my Camera Complaint video, wherein I explain
the rather poor audio quality. Interestingly, it's not because
the microphones were of poor quality, but rather because I
was standing on the wrong side of the camera.