From a miniatures gaming mailing list I’m on:
...it's everything you want in a con... The only downside is the lack of buxom RPG playing girls running around in... revealing costumes!
If you have been using gaming conventions as your prime babe marketing venue, you might want to rethink your base line strategy...
Having had some time over the weekend to catch up on a bit of TiVo, I have more initial impressions of the new shows from this season. I can feel you holding your breath in rapt anticipation. I assure you, it is perfectly safe to exhale.
A hurricane hits a Florida town, which may have been a cover for an alien invasion. Or it might have been a cover for William Fichtner. Possibly a little girl’s cat is involved. Ooh, look! Glowy lights!
Where Surface‘s pilot suffered from trying to do too much in the pilot, Invasion goes the polar opposite route and has an hour where practically nothing happens. The very convoluted relationships among the main characters needed more time to get straight than anything else. Ready? Main studmuffin Russell (Eddie Cibrian) is a park ranger dating/living with local news reporter Larkin (Lisa Sheridan) and her laid-off conspiracy-nut brother, Dave (Tyler Labine). They watch after Russell’s kids (Evan Peters and Ariel Gade) on weekends and return them to their mother, Dr. Mariel (Kari Matchett), the rest of the time to stay with her creepy Sheriff husband (Finchter) and his daughter from somewhere else, Kira (Alexis Dziena).
Yeah, that’s what I thought, too.
The big tense moment is when the young daughter wanders off as the hurricane is hitting and sees some lights (which aren’t effectively shown on screen) which gets Dave’s conspiracy-sense tingling as she recounts the experience. There is a car crash, a missing persons search resulting the the discovery of Dr. Mariel’s unclothed body (she pulls through, with some creepy help from the creepy Sheriff who stares creepily off camera for several seconds any time he gets on-screen), two boat rides, unidentified bodies dragged from a bayou and stuffed into a car trunk and a glowing manta ray under the water’s surface which maybe tries to eat Dave’s legs.
If this sounds exciting, rest assured it is not. Despite the “action” going on, everyone kind of walks around the whole show looking vaguely surprised to be on a set, much less on camera. The dialogue is cheesy and the suspense is played more like unintentional comedy, utterly failing to deliver anything remotely resembling a thrill. The special effects are not even effects, including the big “discovery” moment where the little girl sees… something, we presume since we’re not really allowed to share the awe. She does recount the story later in some detail but by then we don’t really care. The episode’s closing shocker (complete with thunderously ominous synthesizer music) is another half-shown look at some kind of unspecific something-or-other which may have something to do with Dr. Mariel but we can’t really tell since it looks more like someone may have dropped some Tide with Bleach into the swamp. However, the bubbling detergent sure makes William Finchter look creepy, so we must be shocked and appalled. Right? Right?
As per my rule I’ll give this one an episode beyond the pilot to straighten things out, but I can hardly wait to dump this Season Pass.
A petty thieving redneck with a two-timing wife and a blubbery brother/sidekick wins the lottery but loses the ticket. He learns about the concept of Karma in the hospital (from Carson Daily-hah!) and decides he needs to make amends for his life in order to get back the lottery winnings, so he makes a list and sets out to atone for his transgressions.
The show has promise. That’s the best compliment I can offer it. The semi-original setup deserves some mild acknowledgment and the show looks and plays like a movie comedy (which, after the raucous but wildly inappropriate canned laughter from How I Met Your Mother is so welcome as to get me all misty-eyed). Beyond that, the pilot felt pretty flat. Most of the jokes were Office-style “discomfort” humor—his wife gave birth to a black baby! How hilarious! But I didn’t laugh, because I didn’t laugh at the Office that much, either. The plot finally kicks in late in the episode with the guy who used to pretend to be the CEO of Del Taco playing a picked-on kid from Earl’s formative years as a lonely gay man in a small rural community.
ATTENTION: This is a public service announcement for all TV executives and movie producers. PLEASE NOTE: Gay jokes are done. Finito. Not funny any more. Seriously, we’ve heard them all. After Ellen, Will and Grace, Queer Eye, roughly 52,000 movies and Mythbusters you must surely know by now that it stopped being funny a long, long time ago. How many more “Oh my gosh! A straight guy dances with a gay dude!” jokes can you do? Find a different well because this one is dry. SERIOUSLY. KTHX.
Anyway, aside from the lame side plot, the pilot mostly just suffers from not being funny. Jason Lee seems a bit bored with the role, his accent comes and goes in a manner reminiscent of Kevin Costner. The only amusing part is when the squirrelly gay guy sprays mace in his own eyes then runs face first into a wall. And they showed that on the promos.
I want to say this show has potential. The premise is interesting enough that with some much tighter writing it could end up being a quirky little gem. Or, since this is network TV after all, it will probably end up a tedious little dingleberry. I’ll give it two more episodes to win me over, but another short leash is in order.
A young woman is gifted with the ability to see and talk to earthbound spirits that haven’t passed into “the light” who come asking for her help. Also, people cry. A lot.
I’m not exactly sure what I expected with this show. I know I didn’t expect quite as much Touched by an Angel. I think I was hoping for more The Sixth Sense.
Silly me.
Jennifer Love Hewitt gives it a decent go as the wearily afflicted/gifted young woman (Melinda) who kind of wishes she didn’t have to deal with all these ghosts and their problems. In an interesting twist we get a young lead character who is actually happily married (or at least newly married as of the pilot) which gives the series a different direction than the old and haggard “will they or won’t they” cliche, a move I kind of appreciated. Aisha Tyler isn’t even thrown a bone to nibble on as the best friend and co-shop owner? Co-worker? Like I said, calling her character sketchy would be generous. Melinda’s husband Jim (David Conrad) is a paramedic/EMT who throws himself into his job to try and lighten Melinda’s load which sparks a lot more tearful conversations about life and death.
The pilot’s plot involves a Vietnam soldier who died in a helicopter crash and the search for his son, now soon to be a father as well. Let me be clear here, there isn’t anything particularly wrong with the show, the performances or the execution of all of the above. The problem is with the relentless schmaltz and puddle-eyed sentiment gushing from every scene. The actors are certainly given plenty of chances to emote, and they do so admirably, but the bottom line is I just don’t care.
I was more hoping for some kind of explanation about how the mechanics of Melinda’s gift worked; some sort of internal consistency or set of rules about how it worked would have been nice. How did the compass get there? How much can the ghosts influence the real world? How does she know if what she’s seeing is a ghost or not? What is the point of the dreams if she can see them when she’s awake? Do their physical bodies have something to do with their spiritual experience? And most importantly, why the heck isn’t this show scary?
One more to meet my minimum requirements, and that’s all. Seriously.
A “deviant crime” detective comes back from a leave of absence after his partner (and maybe more?) is killed in the line of duty. He’s assigned a new (young, female, attractive, natch) partner and they start searching for a serial killer who uses venomous spiders to paralyze and kill his victims so he can rape them.
As a standard cop show in the CSI (x3), Law & Order (x3), Cold Case, Without a Trace era, Killer Instinct has very little to offer. Deviant crime? Huh? But somewhere in the middle of the pilot (which TV Guide claimed was “disturbing” or “ghastly” or something like that but apparently I’m the only one who’s been watching CSI for the last five years if they think spiders are grotesque… sheesh) I found myself intrigued. The new partner to Detective Hale (Johnny Messner) seems to be a little too interested in him as she (played with off-kilter charm by Marguerite Moreau) drags info out of his files and stalks him all over the place.
The spider storyline was kind of shrug-worthy, but the closing sequence with the anti-toxin was intriguing from a character establishment standpoint and impressed me enough to redeem even some of the slower moments in the show. I also confess a soft spot for the show being set in San Francisco (and shot with impressive visual style that mercifully does not bite off CSI for once) but it’s hard to tell if that’s because I know and like the biggest city closest to me or because I’m just sick of seeing New York City as the setting for every other show.
I was a bit confused by the “Coming Next Week” promos which show a completely different character than Moreau’s. I’ve since confirmed that she was replaced by Kristin Lehman, which I can’t judge as a good or bad move but I thought Moreau was fine in the role. Either way, color me intrigued. I do however think this show has close to zero chance of survival and will likely be cancelled at the earliest opportunity; the limited fan buzz I have seen has been deafeningly apathetic which doesn’t bode well. I’ll watch it as long as it’s given a chance, I think.
Stay tuned for a round-up of the returning shows’ season premieres in part three…
Brevity: A new direction?
It seems the new TV season is upon us. I don’t exactly understand why the enigmatic “Television Executives” deem that we should have these artificial seasons for our entertainment; between the wash of reruns and the glut of expensively loud movies between May and August, I’m not certain what these individuals believe we are doing while the ambient temperatures rise. The gluttonously wealthy puppet masters who control the entertainment viaducts (a group of people I always imagine look like Kingpin from Daredevil comic books, or possibly this 80’s album cover) must have some strange vision of America streaming in hordes to the beach for three months at a time, leaving their television sets to collect a thick blanket of dust until the winds pick up and the trees begin to shake free of their leaves at which point everyone packs up the beach towels, surfboards, water wings and fishing poles and settles back into their couches for a long winter of frequently interrupted by words from our sponsors programming.
Regardless, the illogical wait is over and a crop of new shows have arrived. I certainly haven’t seen them all, nor do I plan to, and not all of them have even aired yet. However, thanks to the success of Lost, there is a heavy dose of suspenseful SF-tinged flava this year which at least bears investigation from your humble geek-in-waiting.
Since there are enough new shows I’m interested in this year, I won’t even bother covering returning shows here, just the hopeful fresh faces. Of course, like the march of the baby turtles to the sea, only a few will survive and those by sheer luck, force of will and overwhelming odds. To say nothing of which may actually deserve it.
So a freaky alien thing shows up and people start flipping out. A kind of worst case scenario management specialist wrote a set of protocols to handle such a situation and assembles her team to combat the threat.
First of all, the premise is as old as the hills but there are enough twists and turns to give it a pretty long leash. I’d guess I’m invested for at least a half dozen episodes already (the two-hour pilot episode helped avoid some of the pitfalls other shows in this genre have this fall which is trying to introduce too much in too little time). The show is kind of like watching the beginnings of the conspiracy from the X-Files unfold, from the perspective of characters like Deep Throat and the Cigarette Smoking Man. Only these guys are less shadowy puppet masters and more smarmy oddballs.
Brent “Data” Spiner basically reprises his role from Independence Day as the paranoid/reluctant lab geek microbiologist; Peter Dinklage is probably the best actor of the bunch (and kudos to the writers for not even tossing in a passing joke about his dwarfism) playing a cryptographic analyst, mathematician and linguist; Robert Patrick Benedict is the sketchy Marshall-from-Alias-like physicist and Carla “Son-in-Law” Gugino plays the “contingency analyst” lead passably but certainly not remarkably. I’ll forgive some of the performances since starting a series usually means actors don’t quite have a grip on their characters yet. (Don’t believe me? Go back and watch the pilot for CSI and witness Marg Helgenberger’s “King Kong on Steroids” scene and try not to cringe.)
Some of the science-y elements were vaguely intriguing (four-dimensional beings, the “downloading” instructions via DNA, etc.) although the triple-helix DNA thing sounded hokey to me. The show’s ubiquitous logo was also poorly incorporated (fractal patterns “burned” onto the electromagnetic equipment?) and seemed more like a “hook” than an actual plot device. Kind of like marketing wanted something cool to slap all over posters and stuff so the writers kind of stuffed it in.
It was curious that Lost‘s deceased antagonist from season 1, Ethan, makes a sort of return in the competition as the alien-controlled first mate from the initial contact ship but is played with identical intensity by William Mapother as he brought to Lost. In fact, it really broke the fourth wall for me to see him acting this way because for a minute I thought Threshold might be some kind of prequel to Lost before I realized they’re on different networks. But in any case the weakest link on the show is Brian Van Holt’s massive yawn-inducing performance as a shadowy “special agent” and laughably bad chemistry with series lead Gugino. Here’s hoping something knocks his character off in a sweeps stunt. November sweeps.
Threshold manages one thing quite right and that is they go ahead and show most of the mysterious stuff right up front and let the “hows” and “whys” and “what exactlys” build the suspense. Unlike Lost which managed enough of that to not be lame (see Surface, below… ha!) but still got into the trap with the jungle monster thing where at some point you’re going to have to show this thing, and when you do it had better be good. The closest we got was the season finale on Lost and it looked laaaaame. So props to Threshold for not leaving me hanging on much more than the plot instead of the special effects.
Two brothers lost their mom in a freakish unnatural fire (on the ceiling!) and now fight spooks and things that go bump in the night trying to figure out what really happened.
Despite the incredibly lame premise, this was actually one of my favorite premieres this season. Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles create interesting if unoriginal characters out of Sam and Dean Winchester (and manage to do it in the one-hour pilot as well), plus they do a nice spin on the classic “Ghost Hitchhiker” campfire story and deliver some genuinely creepy moments throughout.
I have a feeling the cast is bound to expand past the two leads (although I wouldn’t be particularly upset if it didn’t get all serialized and managed to just stay a “monster of the week” kind of show) and while of all the new suspense-style shows this was the one I cared the least about what happens next, it was the one I cared the most about what happened within the one episode.
Despite it being high quality cheese, it’s on a crummy network and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it fade quietly from the lineup in January, a victim of being lost in the shuffle of other, higher-profile but ultimately lesser shows. Don’t get too attached to this one, but you might as well enjoy it while you can.
Weird stuff starts happening in all sorts of bodies of water and people race around trying to figure out what they are. Maybe they’re… aliens!
Surface really, really needed to go the Threshold route and do a two-hour pilot. Or at least air the first two episodes back to back because there was just too much stuff going on to possibly follow. Although Lake Bell (get it?) gives a decent performance and some of the effects worked on a basic level (I admit the show was quite a bit more freaky to me than it was probably even intended due to it hitting my phobic buttons; sort of like someone with an irrational fear of spiders watching Arachnophobia) I don’t think this show has much of a future.
The problem here is that most of the suspense relies on the audience not knowing what the creatures are, or even really what they look like. But at some point they’re going to have to show the creatures, and once they do, where’s the suspense? What’s left then? Are they aliens, aren’t they aliens? That’s really a very secondary issue behind what are they, what do they look like/do and what do they want? It won’t take long to answer those questions… at least, it shouldn’t, but I guess if that was actually the case there wouldn’t be much of a show.
Come to think of it, there isn’t much of a show here. This will probably be the first of the new TiVo season passes that I dump.
A forensic anthropologist and a G-Man flirt their way through cases where the majority of the evidence lies in small bits of bodies.
I’ll give David Boreanaz this: He can separate himself from the character he played for so long on Buffy and then the eponymous Angel. He shows a pretty solid sense of comic timing and while his co-star, Emily Deschanel—ehm, how do I say this? Sucks, she manages to not suck so bad as to ruin the show. So I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to pilot episode syndrome.
The first episode actually kind of bored me once it settled into a fictionalized Chandra Levy plot, but there were a few moments (the opening scene in the airport was surprising and amusing) where the show displayed enough promise. One thing that gets me is how they’re going to make an entire show out of this: CSI barely works because they give the labrats a liberal dose of creative license by having them present in the interrogations, pulling guns, and serving warrants. Real crime scene techs process crime scenes, do evidence procedures in the crime lab and testify in court. That’s it. Now we’ve narrowed it down even further to the point where we have a forensic anthropologist going out and doing police work? Uh-huh.
I’ll give this one another try or two, but I’m keeping it on a short leash.
This is the only comedy I’ve tried so far this year, and I admit I was extremely skeptical when I hadn’t even cracked a smile by the first commercial break. But the show picked up pace and managed (once they let Neil Patrick Harris’ character to get in some lines) to be laugh-out-loud funny in parts. I’m surprised that this was the first time I’d heard a “This is so going in my blog!” joke. It even sounds like a catchphrase to me.
The twist at the end of the episode was a nice touch and the narration/flashback angle was interesting (although ultimately unnecessary). I just wish they’d try something else for once with TV comedies. The only other comedy I watch is Scrubs because it seems like a real comedy to me and not some corny canned-laughter-laden rehash. The best comedies are dramas with funny writing anyway: Buffy was a great example of a show with smart, funny writing that didn’t have to rely on gag-a-minute tedium. Alias, in its heyday, did this well also.
How I Met Your Mother is perhaps worth a half dozen episodes of cheesy chuckles, but I seriously don’t see how they can make an entire series out of this: At least not without it grinding into even worse sentimental muck than Friends did starting, oh around halfway through its run.
To be continued after I watch more shows…
ST. LOUIS, MO — Schick (owned by Energizer Holdings, Inc.) announced their newest product line today in direct response to yesterday’s announcement regarding Gillette’s new Fusion five-bladed razor. A spokesperson for EHI stated, “Those frenchie chowderheads think they can out-blade us? When they see our new Dectuple Brand Shaving System ™, they’re going to shoot wine right out their noses and all over their clean, white flags.”
When informed that Gillette Co. was an American company, the Schick spokesperson declined to give his name, an unusual request for a press release. “Whatever,” the anonymous spokesperson added, “those guys are going to feel French when they see this thing. They won’t believe it. Consumers won’t believe it, either! Ten blades! It shaves so close, it takes the freakin’ skin clean off! It’s a killer! I mean, look at this thing, you need two hands just to lift it!”
Schick and Gillette have been playing a game of one-upsmanship for the past few years starting with the triple-bladed Mach-3 razor introduced by Gillette and combatted by Schick with their introduction of the Quattro four-bladed razors last year. After Gillette announced the five-bladed Fusion, Schick wanted to strike back quickly. “We’ve been working on this ever since we perfected the Quattro. I mean at first we were like, ‘Let’s start on six blades,’ but then we were all, ‘Why keep adding one at a time? Those pansies at Gillette are just going to keep putting one more on there.’ So we jumped the gun. Our first attempts were fifty blades, but after a lot of trial and some pretty messy errors, we’ve discovered that ten blades is that maximum number of blades possible on a safety razor. I mean what are they going to say, ‘Ours goes to eleven?’ Who’d buy an eleven-bladed razor?”
The new Dectuple razors will be in stores in time for Christmas.
They’re not just pants. They’re space pants.
Wait, it gets better.
They’re not just space pants. They’re space monkey pants.
Mmmm… disturbing, intriguing. Viral marketing is to creativity as regular marketing is to projectile vomit.
Also, I just thought I’d let you know (on a totally different subject) that I’m the worst early adopter ever. I know about things long before they get huge, but I never try them out until after they’re huge. Witness Flickr and Del.icio.us, both of which are sweet, both of which I heard about eons ago and both of which I’m just now finally getting around to messing with. I’m a freak.
Observe my swarthy links and scintillating commentary!
As if to suggest that my days were not already completely packed with both things I want to do and things I am forced to do, skimming the Internets in an effort to cull the interesting, newsworthy and thought-provoking has become even more exasperating because people keep writing and linking to these really long-winded but worthy of note pieces that take the better part of two days to read. It’s not even the kind of thing in every case where I’m like, “Hey, I should share this with both ironSoap readers,” it’s more something I personally find intriguing and may perhaps pass to a few select individuals via IM.
Filtering information for people you know and communicate with via electronic means is an interesting task/skill/phenomenon that, if I hadn’t wasted so much time already today reading and thinking about I might have time to discuss. But the nutshell version (not even like a Brazil nut… more like a sunflower seed) is that I have a collection of information sources that I rely on to feed me stuff that is likely to be of interest. But as I consume this information, I’m constantly thinking, “Okay, this is something I need to post on ironSoap” or “Dr. Mac would be interested in this,” etc. Likewise I’ll be sitting here doing whatever and an IM will show up from Ryan with some random link or another or I’ll catch a passed link on IRC from someone and I know that those people are doing the same thing I am.
It just trips me out to think how much stuff is flying around, being posted, getting submitted, published, mulled over, debated and commented upon and all those things are leading to more postings, submissions, publications and so on through an endless network of communication. I sometimes wonder if all this extra communication is actually making us better at understanding or if we’re just getting better at talking.
Or whatever.
After almost a year and a half I’ve gotten tired of the old style so I whipped up a new, not quite completely different one. Feel free to offer your comments, but don’t expect much. It was kind of an ordeal.
I’ve also replaced some of the mismashed links and buttons with consistent badges, which is a minor revision but kind of nice, I think.
The one other meta-thought I’ve been having is I’m considering moving back to the old server (monolith) from the newer colocated one. On one hand it would be so much nicer to have root access on the server again (wherefore art thou, rsync?) and the archives would be back. On the other hand, that’s a lot of work and I’d be back to subject to occasional drop-offs whenever someone sneezed to loudly near the DSL line. So I dunno. But it was a thought I had. And I’m all about sharing thoughts, even the dumb ones.
Especially the dumb ones.
The plane banked slightly to the left, and the man with the wandering elbows sitting next to me shifted for what seemed like the ten thousandth time since we took off. I grumpily rearranged myself in my center seat and tried to turn my attention back to my book. Since the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince two months ago, I had been trying to push through the confusing opening chapters which referenced the previous installment constantly. Eventually I resigned myself to the fact that I had read the earlier book too long ago and too quickly to have retained enough of the detail; facing two lengthy traveling days, I decided I’d be better off re-reading it before starting on the new book.
As it turns out I was able to tear through The Order of the Phoenix and The Half-Blood Prince between the two flights and was glad I’d decided to re-read the fifth book first. I lifted my eyes from the page and peered over Nik’s shoulder and out across the Midwestern landscape, noting the dimming afternoon light. Traveling west to east is always a strange proposition because the time changes make days feel brief, almost ethereal, like the time that passes in dreams. We’d left home early, around seven and had merely driven to the airport, boarded a plane, rushed from one terminal to another during a layover in Phoenix and now approached our destination, having only a couple of Diet Cokes and a handful of salty snacks to show for the trip.
Night had fallen completely by the time we rolled into our destination town, iPod cranking static-y tunes through the rental car’s miserable excuse for speakers and while the clock showed something after nine in the evening, it still felt like the day was young. We were greeted with expected enthusiasm by my family as we entered my parent’s home. Hugs and smiles and cries of welcome passed around, but it didn’t take long for the star of the show to absorb everyone’s attention. Joel is, if you haven’t been following Scott’s site, my nephew.
Ignoring the fact that he’s far cuter than any other child I’ve encountered for a moment, he is also a lot of fun. He’s wiggly, energetic and curious as he loves to stand (at only five months) with help, and dislikes hanging around in one place for too long. In fact, he gets downright grouchy if you try to just sit around with him as he is much more interested in observing things, touching stuff, practicing his grasping technique and promptly shoving everything he gets his little hands on into his mouth.
After Scott, Sara and Joel departed, Nik and I played a new game with my folks called Chrononauts which, aside from being a bit complex to start with, is pretty enjoyable. Being two hours behind the time indicated by the clocks in my parent’s house, I stayed up after everyone else had retired for the night. I read The Order of the Phoenix some more and reflected on the curious nature of home. I’ve never lived in Missouri, never stayed more than a few nights at my parent’s house there and they’ve even replaced most of the furniture and possessions we had when they were still back in California. Somehow, it still feels comfortable there… it’s like a curious familiarity that is undeserved except in the hands that put it together. Eventually I succumbed to the day’s travels and fell asleep myself.
Thursday my brother, my dad and I went out for some golf.
You must understand the significance this event had for me because I have been a staunch opponent of the game of golf for a long time. My problem with golf is not the game itself. Games are, as has been well established here, a sort of passion of mine. Considering that golf is less a game of skill (not unlike bowling, darts or pool which technically qualify as sports under Dr. Mac‘s Sporting Definition but are hardly among the more athletic examples of qualifying activities) it may seem odd that I have had to endure probably fifteen years of occasional raised eyebrows and up through outright badgering from other golf-afflicted friends and acquaintances. It’s probably not so odd then to hear that my problem is more with golfers than golf itself.
I’ve had this notion—perhaps deserved, perhaps not—of golfers and therefore golf itself as an arrogant, pretentious pastime that smacks of elitism, decadence and cronyism. The occasional cry of sexism or racism directed at clubs whose primary purpose is the pursuit of golf has done little to help. Yet I’ve been evaluating this notion for quite some time now, especially as I’ve renewed my interest in tabletop, board and role-playing gaming. Role-playing in particular has also suffered from a bad reputation perpetuated by ignorance of the actual mechanics and poor research into the actual execution of a game. A few bad apples have also poisoned the well, so to speak, for those who neither warrant nor deserve the scorn, prejudgment and occasional fear sparked by being branded a “role-player.”
I figured it was just as bad, if not worse, to perpetuate the same injustices toward something else, especially considering my firsthand experience on the other side of the fence. The fact of the matter in terms of games is simply this: They are what you make them. If one chooses to be an elitist golf jerk, wafting reeking racism, class-ism or sexist piggishness chances are one could just as easily do so with tennis or bridge or (ahem) iPod ownership. Golf is not the problem. People are the problem.
Anyway, there was little chance of me turning into a snooty prig considering our “Discount Golf” course of nine 3-par holes in which I scored a 66 (that’s 39 over par for the math-impaired) and the fact that I have a marked habit of tipping off the top of the ball and skipping it bouncing across the ground as though I were skipping a stone over a lake’s surface. In spite of my ineptitude, I found the game (and the driving of the golf carts, especially the manic power slides my brother and I practiced at each and every hole) quite enjoyable—to the extent that I would certainly like to go back and try playing some more, perhaps with a few trips to a driving range prior with someone who knows a thing or two and might teach me not to be an embarrassment. While there was little shame in a small course in a state I don’t reside in on a Thursday afternoon where the only witnesses were my close relatives, I would not care to subject myself to the shame of playing that way around people who are, no matter how you look at it, probably protective of their chosen hobby and essentially armed with blunt implements.
Friday Scott and Sara dropped Joel off with his grandparents and the four of us set out for a day together. I’ve met Sara on several occasions during her fairly lengthy courtship with Scott but it struck me later that this last week was probably the first time Nik and I have really gotten a chance to know her as a person rather than a sort of abstract concept (“My brother’s wife,” for example). I’m pleased to report that she is an exceptionally kind, funny and warm person which is not something that particularly surprises me—my brother may be a bit spacey at times (although I noted with some alarm that fatherhood has drastically enhanced his maturity level) but no one can reasonably accuse him of being dim nor a poor judge of character.
We went to lunch at a Mexican restaurant where, much later I realized, they served me something that was not remotely close to what I had ordered. I’m pretty positive that I ordered a chalupa and enchilada combination plate but what they served me was a tostada and a chicken quesadilla. Obviously since I didn’t notice until we were out of the state entirely, it wasn’t a big deal and the food was good in spite of the miscue, but it was a little odd. After lunch we went bowling where I broke 100 (105) in the first game and barely cleared my golf score in the second game.
Bowling, golf, pool and darts are all examples of games that I’m terrible at. I’ve even managed to pinpoint the cause which is that they all rely on a certain ability to adjust some mechanical motion and maintain consistency through that motion over repeated attempts. Consistent motion is not my strong suit. I never hit the cue ball the same way twice, I don’t throw a bowling ball with anything that resembles proper form even though I’ve been taught how to bowl “the right way” by at least a dozen people since I was rather young. Games that feature speed and reflexes are much more suited to my particular set of physical (cough) skills which is why I am better at ping-pong, volleyball and raquetball and the like than I’ll probably ever be at the others. It’s not really a complaint, just an observation.
For dinner Scott, Sara, Nik and I went to a restaurant located near the University of Missouri (Mizzou if you please) which features the most unique but delectable appetizer I’ve encountered in a very long time. Envision thinly sliced green bell peppers, lightly battered and fried with generous amounts of black pepper and piled on a plate. Then sprinkle powdered sugar over the rings and serve. Odd? Absolutely. Delicious? You’d better believe it.
I had an Ahi Tuna and Pesto sandwich which was also very tasty and afterward we retreated to Applebee’s for dessert where Nik and I shared one of my favorites, Apple Cheesecake Chimichangas. If you haven’t tried these, I urge to stop reading right now and go find your local Applebee’s restaurant and order one. Now. The remarkable thing is that Applebee’s doesn’t make much else that I particularly like, dessert or otherwise. This one dish almost makes up for the incredibly average rest of the menu. Almost.
On Saturday Scott and his family had to go up north for his weekend job leading worship service at a church up there. We met them at a country-style restaurant for breakfast (real mid-Western biscuits and gravy are something everyone should try at least once before they die) and some more time and pictures with Joel. We sadly said good-bye to them and headed back to my parent’s place. My dad and I lounged in front of a parade of college football games, including the amusingly pathetic loss by Oklahoma to Texas Christian University. We spent the afternoon remarking in a rather smarmy manner about various things including how lame it is for teams to play these gimme games (USC versus Hawaii? Cal versus Sacramento State? Come on now…) and why Florida International (which I could have sworn was an airport) was playing. I postulated that it might be the airline worker’s pickup league or something. Shock of all shocks, it wasn’t televised so we never got a chance to find out.
Later in the evening my aunt and uncle stopped by with my cousin’s baby boy who is slightly older than Joel. He’s a cute little guy and being somewhat older he is close to talking and walking and his activity is a little more focused on task accomplishment (versus Joel’s sort of spastic motor skill experimentation). As the night wore on and they packed little Levi up to go home, the typical air of resigned melancholy settled over the house. We played Tripoley for a few hours (a fine game that blends poker and rummy, by the way) but with a long day including church in the morning and the day o’ traveling approaching, one by one people drifted off to bed.
I stayed up a little later, as usual, reading distractedly and trying to find some comfort in a house that, while oddly familiar, is still not “home.” My sleeping issues are typically exacerbated by changes in environment so I lay on the couch and listened to the night. I thought about my brother’s lament that he sometimes finds it hard to connect with people he meets that are his age, wishing abstractly that Nik and I lived closer to where he and Sara were. It’s strange how when we were growing up we were constant playmates, spending endless hours setting up our toys, pretending to be space pirates or whatever, playing sports and getting on each other’s nerves. Yet there was a long period of time where that was just what happened because we were brothers but at least I never sat down and gave much thought to the idea that he might be one of my best friends, too. Despite being similar enough in disposition and personality to have a lot in common it was always an abstract concept that brotherhood is frequently equated with close bonds. As I stared at the ceiling and finally felt the weariness of the week weigh on me, pulling my eyes closed and drifting into that in-between state that isn’t quite sleep and isn’t quite waking, I decided that it was lamentable that we ended up living far away.
My dreams were odd and scattered, and I woke confused as Nikki was up very early, sick with unexpected cramps. I never quite got all the way back to sleep, and with a long day of travel ahead of us, I said my sad farewells to my parents in the parking lot after church. I often grouse that they complain about how little we see them considering they were the ones that all moved away. Somehow I felt this time that there was something else going on. Perhaps it feels again like change is on the way, and things aren’t going to be the same forever. Whatever it is, I think people just do what they feel they have to do, go where they feel led, and hope that somehow the end result is enough caring and supportive people surrounding them to make them feel human and connected. Sometimes you have to give up some things to gain others. It’s not ideal. It’s just… life.
A few hours later I stared again out the window of the plane at the tiny lights below making a patchwork of dots and lines against the black expanse of ground, invisible except for where the orange lights touched it in little pools unable to fully reveal the detail from this distance. I closed my book, now finished, and glanced over at Nik, who tried to nap with semi-success in the uncomfortable seats crammed tightly together for maximum profitability. Somewhere down there is home, I guess.
Whatever that means.
