ironSoap

I asked yesterday if Joe Montana had ever struggled early in his career as the 49ers QB. No one really leapt to assist my memory so I did a bit of Google digging and came up with JoeMo’s career stats. It looks like Montana did struggle his first year (although I can’t believe I’m reading that right because it looks like he played in 16 games and attempted only 23 passes that whole time; I suppose he could have been a backup that came in every game) and his second year was only average. But he made the Pro Bowl in his third year and other than 1979 (first year in the league) he never threw for less than 1,700 yards in a season as long as he played at least half the games.

Now Alex Smith is demonstrably better this year than last; his stats tell the tale. In one third of the number of games he played in last year he’s already more than doubled his QB Rating (which I don’t think was a stat when Montana played), has almost as many yards passing as he did last year, nearly tripled his yards per game average and so far his interceptions per game ratio is much improved (he averaged about 1.3 per game last year).

I just very much want the Niners to be respectable again. I don’t need them to win the Super Bowl right away, I just don’t want to root for a team that can’t win more than two games a season anymore.

A Giant Change

So there have been a lot of discussions recently on the local sports talk radio station about what should be done with the Giants. A lot of talk has focused on what to do with Bonds and Felipe Alou. I say get rid of ‘em both. Alou never really impressed me—his radio talk show segments seem to indicate that he’s perhaps too nice of a guy and never has anything negative to say about anyone, even if they’re struggling or they just flat out don’t play well. This translates into my biggest pet peeve in baseball: Pitchers that don’t get the axe early enough. Look I know all about the pitcher’s rest thing that is such common wisdom in baseball. Hey guys: Man up. If you pitch yourself into a three run hole with two runners on and no outs in the first inning on 28 pitches, three things are going to happen. One, you’re getting pulled. Bye. Two, you’re pitching either tomorrow or the next day and you’d better shape up and find your release point or whatever. Work with the pitching coach, get your head in the game, whatever, but no one should put their team down by more than four runs in any of the first two innings and expect to keep pitching. If you need time to “warm up” you’re a liability and maybe you don’t deserve to be in this league. Three, you’re on the short list for an exit from the rotation. Maybe you’ll miss a start or two, maybe more. It depends how bad you are. I know everyone has a bad day now and then but I’m so tired of seeing multi-million dollar contract pitchers who can’t keep their ERA below 6 and have a win percentage in the .400 range. If you aren’t winning, you aren’t helping. I would make exceptions for cases where the pitcher gets no run support, but in that case it’s going to be some batters sitting on the pine thinking about it for a few games.

I don’t know if there are managers out there who can do something like that and whip talented but lazy (*cough*Schmidt*cough*) players into shape or not, but that’s what I want to see.

As for the rest of the team, here’s a quick recap of what I’d do:

• Armando Benitez – Gone. Eight blown saves in only 25 save situations? Nope, not good enough.
• Matt Cain – Stays. He can be dominating. I’m not sure what makes him inconsistent but maybe some tough love (see above) might help.
• Noah Lowry – I’d give him a couple more seasons to develop. He could be good, but something is keeping him remarkably mediocre. Still, he’s young so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.
• Matt Morris – Aside from Alou (the manager) and Bonds, this is the hottest topic of discussion on the radio. 10-15 record and a 4.98 ERA from a guy sporting career numbers like 111-71 and 3.79 ERA? What a bust. Axe him.
• Jason Schmidt – He drives me kind of nuts because as good as he is, he seems to be the most delicate of instruments, thrown off my the slightest breeze or sidelined from a hangnail. Of course Giants announcers are so quick to make excuses for him, but I don’t want excuses: I want wins. He stays, but I’d build some clause into his contract that says he needs to suck it up or else he doesn’t get a raise.
• Eliezer Alfonzo – I love the way this guy plays. He looks happy to be there, and he works hard all the time. I love professional athletes that try. Definitely a keeper.
• Ray Durham – Meh, I don’t know. He’s decent but aging and I don’t like the geezer factor on the team over the last few years. If he’s not much drain on the wallet, I’d keep him another year.
• Pedro Feliz – He’s good for about one month and a week of solid play per season. Not enough. Outro.
• Shea Hillenbrand – What a joke. This guy was lame to begin with and the Giants picked him up for mysterious reasons that became even more mysterious once he started playing and was worse here than he was in Toronto. See ya.
• Lance Niekro – I dunno, he’s alright but he doesn’t really hit for power, he isn’t fast and he’s only a .250 hitter. Maybe he’ll improve some over time so I don’t know that he’d be my first pick to send packing, but I’d see if I could find a better day-to-day guy to take his place.
• Omar Vizquel – As long as he can still play SS like he does, I’d keep him around. He’s not exactly a terror at the plate but he’s passable in a thin position hitting-wise so his defense does a lot to make him a keeper.
• Moises Alou – I suppose I don’t mind him in right field but I doubt he’d want to stick around if his pops got the boot and he’s old and on the DL a lot as it is. Again with the geezer factor so if there was a way to trade him off for someone younger, I’d do it. Otherwise I can tolerate him one more year.
• Barry Bonds – Too expensive for his output. Let him go to the AL to chase his record as a DH and stop making left field a liability on defense. I mean really, unless it’s hit right at him the guy never makes a catch out there. It’s embarassing.
• Steve Finley – Geezer alert. Buh-bye.
• Randy Winn – They had high hopes based on one strong month last year. Guess how it worked out? Yeah, I’d cut him.

That’s like most of the starting lineup. No wonder they can’t even play .500 ball. Sheesh.

Briefly I have a few things to touch upon.

Tee to the Vee

I’ve caught a few of the new shows for this season and so far the best is (by far) Heroes. I admit that Ali Larter’s Niki Sanders character is either really lame or she’s just a terrible actress (maybe both); Adrian Pasdar plays the same exact character he always does (good guy/bad guy… who can tell?) and the cliff hanger commercial breaks were rarely ever thrilling. But still, this is a show that has something a lot of shows never have: Promise. Consider another show I caught the premiere for: Smith. A show about the other side of the law. I’m thinking Goodfellas. I’m thinking Heat. I’m thinking high-tech Sopranos. But instead it’s more like Desperate Housethieves than anything cool. Too many personal stories. Why does he have to have a respectable alter-ego? I don’t understand why someone would go through the hassle of trying to maintain a dual identity (complete with respecable sales job) if they were either that good at being a burglar or if doing their theiving would compromise their family. I mean, either you can support yourself without breaking the law or you can’t, right? It doesn’t make sense that someone would even try to do both.

At least on the Sopranos they made that part of the story.

I also caught the Shark series premiere which I enjoyed quite a bit despite it being only a shade more intriguing than would be if Sam Watterson were given the whole show (Law & Order), primarily because James Woods is fun to watch pretty much no matter what he’s doing. Although, I got the impression from the premiere that Woods was going out of his way to be all Emmy worthy. Like he was trying too hard or something. Still interesting but it did break the spell a few times.

I also caught the premiere of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip which was basically not very funny and not very dramatic and therefore not very good. It seems very much like a show that the writers really wanted to do, but it turns out that watching the creative process behind the shows we watch each week? Not very interesting after all.

The only thing I’m still waiting for is The Nine and I missed the first episode of Kidnapped (but it looks like they’re re-airing it on Saturday). Other than that the few shows I’m holding onto from last year is all I’m anticipating so I have a feeling that since they usually cancel the shows I like, I’ll probably have nothing to watch in a few months.

Sporting Bads

• The 49ers are a better team than last year, but they still managed to showcase their patented “Sieve Defense” on Sunday versus the Eagles. Here’s something I was wondering for some of you older-school Niners fans: I recall Joe Montana only as being the dominant, clutch-thriving QB that earned him a bunch of championships in the eighties. But it occurs to me that he must have had some sort of career prior to that time. Was he always good? Did he dominate in college? Was he a solid NFL QB right out of the draft? What I’m (probably obviously) driving at is, can we even hope that Alex Smith was the right guy to draft or is his so-so performance thus far indicative of a long term trend of not living up to his hype?
• I guess the Giants are officially out of the playoff race this year. Big surprise when your starting rotation starts serving up whiffle balls on the most pivotal road trip of the whole year. So now people are starting to talk about next year. I guess nearly the whole team is up for contract renegotiation. I don’t know if you remember but back a couple years ago when the Giants choked in the World Series an East Coast radio personality and lifelong Giants fan had a screaming rant after they bowed to the Angels about how difficult it was to be a Giants fan.

  I’ve talked about this before because while the Indians and the Cubs have longer streaks without championships, it has to be easier for fans of those clubs because they have had a lot more crummy teams that can’t win the World Series (like, big surprise). The Giants reserve a special brand of torture for their fans by actually fielding good teams… who can’t win the World Series. Anyway, the guy from the East Coast (Chris Russo) got on the horn this morning with one of the local SF sports talk stations and had some pretty spot-on opinions.

  Basically he thinks that the management of the Giants has made a bunch of bonehead moves in the last few years and I agree. I mean, let’s compare the two Bay Area teams. On one hand we have the revolving door of the Oakland A’s where each year is a new crop of random youngsters and league no-names. But they’re built to be a team and somehow they keep having legitimate chances at winning stuff. Oh, and they do it with no money but having a rich farm system and focusing on things like winning games versus breaking pointless records and having recognizeable names. The Giants have a decent payroll which they squander on has-beens. San Francisco has become like the pre-retirement community for the Major Leagues. I don’t want to go to the park and watch a bunch of washed up geriatrics struggle to make basic plays, I’d rather watch a bunch of kids who have something to prove run their butts off and make stupid mistakes. For every A’s game I watch where I see some rookie get caught in a stupid rundown or something because he tried to stretch a long double into a weak triple I see two games where Bonds can’t score from second on a stinking double or Morris forgets his bifocals and walks six batters in a row. Forget these old codgers. Let’s set up a farm system, let’s get a real game plan that is more in depth than “let’s get people on base and then bring Bonds to the plate!”

  Come on. Bonds has been on the team for over ten years (since 1993) and (as Russo points out) they haven’t won with him. This year he’ll play maybe 132 games and he’ll have the lowest HR total in a season since he was a Pittsburgh Pirate which includes 1999 where he barely got in 100 games. I don’t care about the steroids thing. I don’t care about Babe Ruth’s home run record. You know what I care about? The Giants doing something that makes me glad I’m a Giants fan.

• I was glad the Saints won last night, even if the second half of the game was pretty much snooze-fest. I wanted New Orleans to win for the same reason I’m guessing most non-Atlanteans did, although ESPN’s incessant badgering on the Katrina angle got really old after about oh, the first quarter, But I had ulterior motives as well: My opponent in fantasy football had both Michael Vick and Warrick Dunn going last night and needed them to help him make up about 30 points. Not insurmountable for a running back and a QB, but both of them sucked last night which was just fine with me. Thanks, Saints!

And the Rest of It

• I know we just came up big time on a new-to-us 36″ TV, but the lure of HD is strong and my will save vs. techno-geekery is like -8. Thus it was with rapt attention that I followed the announcement and ensuing hullabaloo regarding the release of the TiVo Series 3 HD DVR. Of course to take advantage of such a device I would need:
  1. A HD-capable TV.
  2. HD content, probably in the form of cable television we cannot receive or an XBox 360 I can’t afford.
  3. Some place to put it and/or our existing equipment.
  4. $800 for the TiVo3.

  I have been looking at HD TVs for some time now. Remember that the Trinitron acquisition was more of a kind blessing from HB and Gin than something we sought. I keep seeing a very nice one at places like Best Buy for what I consider to be pretty reasonable (roughly $1,700 for a 42″ Sony Plasma) but then I recall that we don’t have any way of really getting HD content and we can’t afford it and we don’t need it. But like I said, I can’t resist. Stuff like this usually helps some and reminds me why, though I may be a covetous geek-tard, my patience for technological foulery is far, far too thin to be a true early adopter.

• We’ve played a couple of sessions of a pretty fun large-party game called Werewolves of Miner’s Hollow. It’s kind of like the old elementary school rainy-day recess game “Heads Up Seven Up” where players close their eyes and someone is randomly chosen and they have to guess who picked them. This slightly more sophisticated version uses a series of phases that last through the “night” (the time when players have their eyes closed) during which various different people get to open their eyes and perform tasks. Primarily, the werewolves (determined by randomly distributed cards) look around and choose a townsperson to kill or remove from the game. The remaining players try to figure out which of those left in the morning (when all players open their eyes) is the werewolf in their midst through debate and discussion. Eventually they all must choose someone to “lynch” or remove from the game through democratic voting. Sometimes they pick correctly, other times they kill an innocent. There are a lot of other special townspeople like the Mystic who can examine one player’s card during the night and the hunter who can take someone down with him if he’s killed during the night. It’s a good game for parties because it doesn’t require a lot of set up and it encourages people to interact. We played it for Whimsy’s “surprise” 30th birthday party last weekend and I think everyone really enjoyed it. It’s also fun because the individual rounds don’t last that long (maybe fifteen minutes) so players don’t get stuck doing the same thing and you can play through several dozen rounds in an evening. There is a very comparable game that uses similar mechanics but with a few variations that Nik and I purchased called Lupus in Tabula. The main difference between the games (from reading the Lupus instructions) is that in Lupus you don’t reveal the dead players’ identities until after the game is completely over which would probably work well to increase the general tension and paranoia since you don’t necessarily know (if you’re a regular townsperson) how many allies you have left at any given point in the game.
• There is a new poll up. In case you were interested.

I very much enjoy the show Cold Case. Not in the way I enjoy something like Lost which I actively look forward to each week, but it’s something that doesn’t sit in the TiVo queue very long.

My interest in the show is a little unexpected, really. It’s basically a standard police procedural with the oh-so-clever “twist” of having the cases be ones that were either previously solved (incorrectly, natch) or were shelved as unsolvable. Not exactly the most creative of show premises, but it works as it allows the producers to work in a lot of flashbacks and incorporate time-specific soundtracks (the show relies a lot on musical montages) which keeps the often standard pick-from-about-four-possible-perps formula interesting enough. While it doesn’t really try hard to be ground-breaking or anything I like it because in a manner similar to Law & Order, it sort of pushes the principal’s character development to the periphery and lets the immediate story of the week take the forefront. Only Cold Case isn’t as smug as Dick Wolf’s ubiquitous NBC franchise(s).

That is, until last night’s season premiere. The primary story revolved around a couple of badgered teenagers who went on a Columbine-style rampage in a mall before taking their own lives. The twist was a hidden video camera that was recovered and contained footage of the massacre that revealed there may have been a third shooter.

Okay, fine. But as soon as they mentioned that the two shooters had played a ludicrously titled online video game, I groaned. “Here we go.” Sure enough, it was only a few lines of dialogue later that the detectives latched onto the concept of the video games as being the ultimate cause for the teens’ cruel, vindictive shooting spree, going so far as to take heavy pains to touch the parents of one of the kids with sympathy.

I don’t really want to get all in-depth in the whole “video games are corrupting the youth of America” faux-debate, but being a reasonably well-adjusted lifetime gamer myself, I’m sure you can guess where my opinion lies.

What I did find outrageous or ironic or whatever was that after forty-five minutes of not-so-subtly laying the blame for the kids’ actions on the doorstep of their (obviously unhealthy) interest in video games, the show proceeded to depict the entire massacre in exquisite, almost loving detail. The teenage characters roared with glee as red-tinted corn syrup flew and horrified-looking extras staggered under the weight of their fictitious wounds and the music swelled with emotion-rending schmaltz. I watched with a curled lip and a bitter disposition.

Perhaps it was my cynical streak leaping forward again but I couldn’t help but think of the insanity of having a television show (you remember television, right? That’s the medium that used to be corrupting America’s youth before video games came along and magically made TV a bastion of wholesome, educational entertainment) blaming a video game for causing a horrible event that it in turn cheerfully re-enacted for the sake of some ratings points. The basic problem is that entertainment is just that: Entertainment. It’s impact on people cannot be measured; people are stupid, weak-willed, unstable and in some cases flat out crazy. But people are also discerning, resilient and generally smarter than they’re given credit for. Blaming one facet of society for all of the perceived ills is ridiculously limiting and narrow minded.

I don’t think Cold Case’s depiction of their story is going to irreparably damage society. I do think it was a bit irresponsible but then again I don’t think Grand Theft Auto is training an army of youthful murderers but that doesn’t mean I refuse to believe it (and other video games) could be irresponsible; I think video games cross that line a lot. But there’s a difference between entertainment products being inappropriately marketed or crossing a line into bad taste or pushing an envelope that maybe didn’t need to be pushed and those that erode our moral fiber. You know what the difference is? If Cold Case’s handling of the story had been less idiotic and if the final shootout scene had been handled more tastefully, it might have been good. Quality and taste often go hand in hand, even if there are elements in there that are of questionable benefit by themselves. It’s like cooking with lard: Sometimes it’s just the right ingredient for the job, but you don’t want to sit down to a nice slab o’ lard sandwich, you know? You have to know how to blend things together in the right way.

And this time Cold Case got it all wrong and left a bad taste in my mouth.

Stop with the Wii puns.

Right now.

I’m looking at my Netvibes “Games” tab and I count the following Wii-related punny headlines. This is just from today, on a sampling of maybe 15 sites:

• NYT Tech Guys Wii-ly Clueless
• Are Wii Ready to Rock?!
• Wiink Dump
• Wii are turning it up to ‘11′
• WiiDay
• Wii All Dance?
• Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles (AKA: Resident Wiivil)

I can’t stand it.

• My Dad sends out a monthly email to family and friends (why he doesn’t just maintain a blog is sort of beyond me, but to each his own) and in his latest he was talking about ugly sports uniforms. He specifically mentions the University of Oregon and I couldn’t agree more although clearly he hasn’t seen the new Buffalo Sabres duds. Gah. What was wrong with the old ones?
• Speaking of sports, Sharks pre-season starts tonight. Yay!
• This is exactly what I’ve been looking for. Sah-weeet.

My brain is working in incompletion mode, which is to say that I can get a thought formed, but my attention wanders before it gets more than about halfway through. It may make this post a bit challenging to read, but if you’ve been coming here for the last five years or so I’ll assume you’re used to that sort of thing.

• My co-worker is currently engaged in the most epic battle of support vs. customer I’ve ever witnessed. Sample dialogue, “I understand where you’re coming from, but if you don’t try to understand where I’m at then I might as well hang up this phone.” The crazy thing is, I think they’re both enjoying it.
• I made dinner last night which hasn’t happened too often lately due to a lot of weird schedules and a general malaise about cooking the same dozen or so dishes that Nik and I have perfected. Actually the cooking isn’t so bad (although even that gets a little dull) but eating the same ol’ stuff gets tiresome which isn’t exactly a great reward for putting in the effort to cook it in the first place. At least if you eat the same crummy fast food over and over again you may be bored but it takes no effort. Anyway I tried something new last night: Apricot chicken. It’s basically just baked chicken breast with a sauce/glaze made from dijon mustard, apricot preserves, salt and chili powder so it was nice and easy but combined with some roasted red potatoes and a batch of crescent rolls it was the best meal we’ve had at home in several weeks.
• Speaking of best meals, I forgot to mention that my friends have engaged in a new pasttime: Perfecting barbecued ribs. You will note that I have not yet taken part primarily because I don’t have a BBQ grill and also because I’m not that great of a grillman, but I have certainly done my fair share of judging their progress and what a delicious chore that has been. I think HB almost has it nailed, and last weekend he smoked and then indirect-heat grilled a few racks of ribs for something like 10 hours grand total. Before those ribs Lister’s eight-hour applejuice-basted spareribs were the best ribs I think I’d ever tasted but HB’s probably topped the list. You’ll note this isn’t exactly a competition, it’s more of a collaborative effort as they try different techniques and seasonings to try and get them perfect. They’re very close after the last batch, I think all that they’re missing is a signature sauce (Sweet Baby Ray’s is good, no doubt, but I don’t think you can enter a BBQ competition with store-bought sauce… that’s like cheating).
• The only—only—downside to the rib mania sweeping our circle of friends lately is that it has me really digging ribs but everytime I look at them on a restaurant menu I can’t help but think, “There’s no way these are as good.” I usually end up ordering the fish.
• So the 49ers lost, which is no great shock, but what was somewhat surprising was how much of an actual game they made it. Sure Alex Smith is still not exactly a dominating presence back there, but at least he didn’t get picked off every drive, and he’s got Frank Gore back there who looked very good (and helped out my fantasy team, to boot). Meanwhile I watched the Monday Night game, mostly to root against the Raiders, and I was very impressed with San Diego. I think they rely on LT a bit too much (note the beginning of the second half when they went three and out a lot, mostly because the Raiders gave up on defending the pass and threw everyone they had at Tomlinson) but their defense looked pretty good and Philip Rivers made some nice plays despite the fact that they didn’t give him the nod very often. Now granted, the Raiders were wonderfully, delightfully horrible and embrassed themselves on national television (which is something they normally let their fans do for them—and they never fail to deliver) but I think San Diego deserved more credit than they got for pwning that game.
• I jacked up my shoulder somehow. My hip finally seems back to normal and now my shoulder on that same side is tweaked. I think it happened while I was trying to attach a keyboard tray to the bottom of Nik’s desk at work with a fairly heavy drill, some stubborn screws and some very poor planning which required ripping it off and re-doing the drilling three times. But despite my handyman ineptitude, it shouldn’t be killing me to reach out and grab a can of Diet Coke a week later, right?
• Political sidetrack: There are probably Bush supporters that read ironSoap, and that’s fine. But do me a favor and watch this 4-minute clip from an interview with Matt Lauer. While you watch it, keep this in mind: This is the same guy that has demonstrably and repeatedly lied about motivations, actions and methodologies when it comes to combating terrorism post 9/11. What his whole diatribe amounts to is, “Trust us, we’re not doing anything wrong here. I won’t tell you what we’re doing, but just trust me, it’s for your own good.” I have to ask the question: What reason have we been given to believe and/or trust him? It certainly isn’t the stellar track record, after all. And I for one would really like to know just what these legal but secret methods of extracting information are.
• While mildly amusing, I really have to wonder a couple of things about this survey or study about attire for IT workers versus non-IT workers. Question one: Who cares? I mean, how does this impact anything? Then the random correlation at the end:
  

  “Intermedia.NET believes the findings in this study to be very valuable,” added Bradbury. “Both business managers and IT professionals are quickly adopting hosted Microsoft Exchange, and this research helps us to better understand the mindset of our customers.”

  Huh? But when you get right down to it: Was this really necessary? I mean, did you really need statistical analysis to determine that geeks wear black and have ponytails? Puh-leeze.

I wrote a quick blurb a while back mentioning the summer cable show “Psych” which, after watching almost the entire first season, I realized was more clever in premise than execution. After about four or five episodes it was already getting a bit stale. Dr. Mac was reminded upon that mention of another summer cable series, Eureka and pointed out that it too showed promise.

I had actually already been watching Eureka but unlike Psych it didn’t strike me right off the bat as being as good. Now I think this has more to do with the premises of the respective shows and while Psych failed in a lot of ways to live up to its initial potential, Eureka has managed to suck me in with some engaging characters and—I’m not too proud to admit it—a healthy dose of itch-scratching in that X-Files/Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Lost region of soap-opera-y science fiction serials.

But there are things about Eureka that I’m not too sure about. Before I get to that, let me list what I do like about the show.

1. Colin Ferguson. The casting for the lead role is exactly perfect: Jack Carter pulls off smarmy, smart but in a different way than most of the eggheads in Eureka, charismatic but not hammy and he swings easily between the shows varying thematic twists (see below).
2. Jo (Erica Cerra). Despite being criminally under-utilized, the Jo character is one of the most appealing on the show and Cerra nails the deadpan by-the-book deputy perfectly and manages to steal most scenes she’s in.
3. Henry (Joe Morton). Joe Morton has been good for a long time, despite never really achieving a big star status (probably because he always gets cast as the doctor, the scientist or the clever FBI agent instead of getting the lead) but he’s perfectly suited to being the town’s mechanic/coroner/tow truck driver/etc and also Jack’s (smarter) sidekick.
4. The humor. When the show is in comedy mode, it’s usually pretty spot-on. Some good recurring jokes are Jack’s AI house (S.A.R.A.H.), Henry’s velcro job title coveralls, the quirky romantic tension between Jack and Allison and Jo’s insistence on following official police procedure (the “over” bit in the most recent “Right as Raynes” episode had me actually laughing out loud).

But of course I have complaints. First of all, the show is crazy inconsistent, even within the confines of an individual episode. In fact, if it were at least steadfast within a given episode, I could certainly forgive (and in fact would probably even enjoy) some disparity week to week. Take X-Files as an example, some of the best episodes are the ones that break from the norm (”Jose Chung’s ‘From Outer Space’”—best ever) but at least within the episodes themselves the levity was always contextual and never felt like “the slapstick scene” or whatever. Eureka seems to set each episode up with rapid-fire quips and jokes and then Something Serious happens and the jokes evaporate and we enter full-on Drama Mode until the Sinister Stuff gets introduced and then it’s Spooky Time until the resolution (often Action Theater) at which point we go back to the Funny for the episode’s epilogue.

The problem isn’t that the show tries to be entertaining on several levels, it’s that the execution is often clumsy which results in the show feeling uneven and a bit like it’s trying too hard. In essence the tone of the show is never set: Is it supposed to be lighthearted with a sinister undertone? Sinister with a hint of humor? Dramedy? Soap-y? It’s kind of all of them at various times and it’s that lack of focus that really hurts the show the most.

Perhaps as a by-product, character interactions suffer from inconsistency. The competitive tension between Jack and Nathan is forced a lot, the townspeople’s reactions to Jack in general seem to be arbitrary depending on what the current scene demands. Most specifically, the part of the show that doesn’t work is Jack and his daughter Zoe’s strained relationship. Somehow the ever-in-peril Zoe is smart enough to go toe-to-toe with whip-smart Dad in their verbal battles but is stupid enough to constantly be in need of rescue at the last possible second.

Granted, the same complaints could be leveled at other shows (even X-Files relied on Scully getting into situations where she needed to be rescued by Mulder about once per episode in the early seasons) but here the clichés feel even more egregious because you can tell this show wants to escape the traps of standard serial fiction but it seems comelled toward them for some reason… almost like it were one of Eureka’s wayward inventions pulling the plot toward trite convention instead of confidently running with the quirky and the bizarre. It’s a lack of committment to the show’s overall premise that worries me the most.

I’m certainly in it for the rest of this season, but I’m hoping it only takes a year to iron out some of the kinks because the potential is there, it’s just a matter of executing and so far close isn’t cutting it.

• So we stopped by ConQuest SF Friday night and Saturday, enjoying some good times playing a few games and making some nice scores in the flea markets/dealer room. The highlight was a lengthy game of Arkham Horror which is so good that it probaby cracked my top five board games after only one play, so that was cool. I also scored some cool Blood Bowl blisters on the cheap and picked up a card-based fantasy wargame (very similar in mechanics and theme to Warmaster only without the pricey models) that looks pretty cool as far as that goes. The weirdest experience was a demo I got for a skirmish-level SF miniatures game called Rezolution. Put it this way: I played a quick couple of rounds against another guy getting the demo and I literally wiped him out without getting hit once. I could blame it on the dice rolling but it wasn’t like I was making spectacular rolls so instead I chalked it up to poor game balance which, in a game like that, means one thing: It’s broken. Sorry guys, try me again with Second Edition. While you’re at it, maybe think about offering something that isn’t already done (and better) in games like Necromunda.
• We had lunch with Nik’s Dad and Grandma when we got back and then stopped to see Grandma’s new digs in the retirement community she moved into recently. It’s a nice place (Nik and I actually lived across the street from there in our first apartment right after we got married and I used to go there before the management changed to recycle newspapers for Boy Scouts way back in the day), although it is currently in the process of being rennovated so it looks kind of in-progress. Despite the general pleasantness of the surroundings, there can’t help but be a sort of sad, morbid atmosphere around a place like that. I couldn’t tell if Grandma was happy, unhappy or indifferent to the whole thing, which made it somewhat awkward on top of everything.
• HB and Gin spent their weekend shopping for a new TV, eventually settling on a JVC 40″ HD LCD set. Of course they also needed new speakers and immediately had their old receiver give up the ghost on them (of course) so had to replace that as well. The bottom line was that they pretty much upgraded their whole entertainment setup and as a result had a leftover 36″ Sony Trinitron. They offered to let us have it for the price of taking them out to dinner (a mighty fair deal in my estimation) so we hit Ikea after we left Grandma’s place and grabbed a new TV stand (the old entertainment center wouldn’t accomodate the new TV… at least I don’t think it would; and even if it did, it worked out better this way) which marked the innagural use of the truck for hauling purposes. With Nik’s expert help we slapped the stand together in less than 30 minutes and then HB and I muscled the behemoth of a TV out to my truck, then up the stairs into our apartment. Of course we needed a bit of help from the next door neighbor once I lost my balance and ended up sitting on one of the steps with the 750 pound beast pinning me down and making my leverage such that I could not stand back up. Eventually we managed to grunt and strain to get it set on the stand and there it will stay until I pay some burly men an obscene hourly rate to move it for us because I am never picking that thing up again as long as I live. Still, it was mostly worth it once I turned it on and saw SportsCenter with Lee Corso’s head staring at me some two feet across. I did say it was mostly worth it.
• One thing I only peripherally noticed about our old TV (now in the bedroom, replacing the sad TV/VCR combo 19″ set on which the VCR no longer worked and had a bad greenish burn-in mark in the lower left corner) is that it wasn’t aligned right so about two inches of the picture was cropped on the right side. Mostly this didn’t affect viewing except when title screens were right-aligned and you’d lose a few letters on the end of words and names. But it turns out there’s a whole little world going on over on the right side of TV screens like little faded overlays of network logos and stuff. Not that I’m super-thrilled about seeing all that now but it makes me wonder what else I missed watching the other TV.
• Steve “The Crocodile Hunter” Irwin died yesterday in an accident involving a lethal but very uncommon stingray attack. On one hand, we all knew this was coming. I mean, the dude was constantly picking up stuff like the Venusian Death Beetle and saying, “This lil’ bugger’s got 40cc’s of the world’s most toxic poision stashed in each of seventeen different stingers! Let’s shake him up and bit and see what happens, right?” But going out on the barb of a normally docile stingray? On that hand, it’s kind of… anticlimactic? I can’t decide if him being taken out by a typically non-dangerous critter is fitting or sadly ironic. At least he wasn’t like hit by a bus or something. That would have been really weak.
• Worst Price is Right Player Ever. Stay til the end because Bob Barker’s reaction is splendid. I kept waiting for him to say, “I need a nap.”