More Stuff I Could Do Without

Soulless automatons that take other people’s stuff.
Having to call my wife and say, “Can you pick me up? The car’s been stolen.”
Waiting for thirty minutes in the cold drizzle for the crack “Community Enforcement” squad to arrive and take my statement regarding stolen car.
Realizing crack “Community Enforcement” squad consists of one fat pseudo-cop in a pickup, weilding a clipboard.
Insurance company phone trees.
Repeating identical information five or six times to various people who would save everyone a lot of time if they communicated amongst themselves.
Waiting for callbacks.
Companies that are too cheap to install legitimate security devices, choosing instead to invest in such winning—and effective!—concepts as the “dummy camera.”
Having to wake up a peacefully slumbering spouse to take me to train station due to aforementioned automaton’s actions.
Train delays.
Forgetting my iPod and having to listen to crass, exaggerated conversations from fellow train passengers about obviously fictional sexual conquests.
A lack of ability to destroy people with my mind.
Perpetual rain in “sunny” California.
Rain.
California.
Bus drivers that leave early and abandon daily passengers.
Bus drivers that operate their large, unweildy vehicles as though they were involved in some manner of Nascar event in an effort to compensate for previously mentioned delays.
Fearing for my life prior to 7:30 am.
Being late to work due to forces beyond my control.
Lateness that causes irreparable schedule shifts resulting in missed meals.
Realizing it’s going to be a bad day prior to 8:00 am.
Thinking it can’t get any worse prior to 9:30 am.
Being proven wrong.

The Great Whiner

Can I be heretical for a moment? Cool, thanks.

I hate Wayne Gretzky.

Seriously, that guy bugs the heck out of me.

This isn’t a new development. He bugged me to death in the Sharks early years when they had to play him as a King all the time. If there was ever a player who lived off his superstar status, it was Wayne Gretzky. He would whine, he would moan, he would grumble and he would argue every little call, every minor mishap, every time anyone even looked at him funny. Finish a check against the “Great One”? Please, you’d grind the game to a halt for twenty minutes while ol’ whineypants took the refs to task for not ejecting the offending defenseman. That was, of course, if the refs didn’t give you a four minute hooking major for, like, brandishing the stick.

It would be nice if now that he’s all Mr. Face of Hockey that he seemed like a mellower kind of guy, humbled by his place in the pantheon of ice hockey.

Nope.

Now that he’s behind the bench he—I didn’t think this was actually possible—complains even more than he used to. Listen, the Sharks didn’t play magnificent hockey last night but they at least showed their usual discipline and managed to come out on top. The Coyotes played like their namesakes and cheated at just about every possible opportunity. The refs even let some calls go on them after a while because I’m sure they were tired of blowing their whistles (the game seemed to take forever). But you know who never got tired? Yep, The Great Crybaby never showed any signs of exhaustion as he screamed and griped and fired spittle on the backs of his players’ heads.

So since no one else seems to want to say it, allow me: “Hey Wayne! Shut up.”

Moore Weirdness

I’ve been on a graphic novel kick lately; probably because the lull of a moving train is too much for the car-sleeper/book-sleeper in me to resist. Confronted by the combination of a novel and engine noise during commute times I tend to nod off, drool on the pages and miss my stop. So I read less intellectually demanding stuff like comics to keep myself entertained while also awake.

Also, I really like comic books (Gasp! Something geeky that Paul likes! Say it ain’t so!) but that they have ramped up to $2.50 per monthly book is way more than I’m happy spending. Besides, comic books are like soap operas: They don’t end. Graphic novels, however, are usually complete narratives and are, comparatively, much cheaper. So I buy those.

The last two I’ve read were Alan Moore’s Watchmen and V For Vendetta. Of course I picked up V For Vendetta because the movie just came out and I wanted to read the source material first before seeing the film, especially since Moore has been so critical of the result.

After having read the two works he’s most famous for and reading a bunch of his interviews, I can say that I feel Moore may be a gifted writer but the man is just a flat-out weirdo. I mean, V For Vendetta is a pretty politically challenging story and I’m fairly impressed that the thing made it to the screen at all. If he expected them to accurately portray V as the full on nutcase anarchist that he is the books, he apparently has never bothered to cast even the most casually critical eye toward Hollywood. I mean, that’s just not how they work.

I get the indignation, but I think that generally speaking the whole “artistic integrity” thing is being blown out of proportion here. It’s perhaps one thing to say “This isn’t what I meant, if you want the real story, buy my book and throw me a couple bucks in the process.” If nothing else you can look at the movie as a perhaps effective if maybe misguided marketing vessel for the graphic novel (which I note comes in a hardcover version now). It’s another to say, “This isn’t what I meant, so I want my name taken off the book, I want to be distanced from the whole thing and I want you to act like I had nothing to do with any of it because my feelings are hurt.”

Whether Moore was tricked into signing away the rights to the story or not, he still signed them away. I can feel sorry for him but it becomes less so when he comes across as such a baby about it. Buck up, kid, us wistful aspiring writers should have such problems. I mean, I might cry for ten whole seconds if someone wanted to convert my writings into a movie so bad that they didn’t care whether I wanted it to be done or not. Sniff.

Of course, it isn’t just the grumpy compromised-vision interviewee that makes me realize the guy is bizarre, his stories are strong enough testament to that on their own. Not that they aren’t good; thought-provoking stories in a comic book format is something of a nerd holy grail and Moore definitely delivers there. But Moore is unique in that he seems to try to defy convention so much that he seems to try to have us sympathize with really vile individuals. Even V is clearly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent people with his actions. His rationales are presented in abstract terms but Moore conveniently sidesteps any moral landmines by whitewashing over the fact that V’s bomb-happy master plot must logically involve substantial collateral damage.

Watchmen is a little different in that it is forced to deal openly with the problem of heroes (literal and literary in this case) who are merely human or even those who are anything but and therefore cannot sympathize with the human condition. This works on a level slightly above V For Vendetta but the examination needs some place to build to and when the curtain is lifted from the story bubbling beneath the intellectual and character examination it seems so farfetched and out from left field that it kind of feels like a grotesque kick in the head.

Which isn’t to say that either is ineffective: I enjoyed both very much. It’s a testament to the overall quality of the subplots that the major events are flawed but don’t make the ideas presented seem like foul-tasting medicine. Unlike watching Schindler’s List or Saving Private Ryan where the ideas and information presented are admirable but the exectution is so unpleasant as to prohibit any literal enjoyment or entertainment, Moore delicately walks the line and manages to stay just this side.

Still, I think my next graphic novel is going to be something even easier. Like a Plastic Man anthology or something.

The Adventure of Links

A few days ago I mentioned—almost in passing—Apple’s Boot Camp. As expected whenever Apple does, well, anything the Internets have been abuzz with punditry. First off I’d like to direct your attention to the haters, starting with CNet Australia’s Asher Moses’ piece, “Bunk Camp: Apple Gets It Wrong.” It bears mentioning that Moses’ article spawed from another CNet tidbit from the “Well Hello Duh” files titled “Dare I Say This Aloud? Boot Camp is a Gimmick.”

I realize that, coming from me, it may be difficult to reconcile that I might take exception to Moses’ arguments. But note that I don’t buy into just everything Apple does; in fact up until the Boot Camp announcement I was pretty underwhelmed by the whole Intel switch. I’m the first to admit that Apple has its faults; it is only that they are capable of really impressive technology and occasionally accomplish leaps forward in consumer products that makes me a “Mac Guy.” This is not an apology, just a clarification.

But let me cut to the point here. After rambling on for a while about how Boot Camp requires a reboot to use the other operating system (duh), he says:

Rather than enticing existing Windows XP users to switch, Boot Camp will be primarily attractive to current OS X users that are lusting after certain Windows XP applications, such as games. This makes sense—they’re already accustomed to performing most tasks on OS X, and only need to switch over to Windows when they feel the urge to game.

Once again, I reiterate. “Well, duh!” What all these XP adherents completely fail (possibly due to blissful ignorance, possibly because of untreated fevers) to grasp is that while Windows and Linux folk continue to preach about the invisibility of operating systems and the apathy of the average consumer to what actually runs the programs they need, OS X users are smug in their knowledge that an OS doesn’t have to be much of anything but when it is a smooth, well designed program in itself it makes using all those other programs so much more pleasant.

Does Moses honestly think the 3% of computer users who choose Macs put up with idiot web designers, incompatibility, sluggish game support, expensive hardware from a single manufacturer and the constant badgering by the other 97% just so we can be “different?” Of course not. We know something about what it is like to use a system that works. I was talking to HB the other day about his switching experience and he noted, “What’s strange is that I’m so used to Windows and how everything is convoluted and takes 400 tries to get it right that when I try to do something new on the Mac, I spend a lot of time trying all the hard ways first only to eventually figure out that it’s the easiest thing in the world.” And he’s right: On OS X, simple things are simple. It’s usually only the fact that we’ve been trained for years by Microsoft that simple things are a pain in the neck that makes using a Mac challenging. It’s not the system design, it’s years of poor conditioning.

So no, it doesn’t matter that Boot Camp is a gimmick or that it could be better if it was some sort of virtual machine. Moses’ “thesis” seems to be that Boot Camp should have been a virtual machine. Listen to the madness:

To most users, the operating system is simply a means to an end—a basis for running their favourite applications. So the real potential lies in allowing Windows XP to be run inside Mac OS X, enabling users to execute Windows and Mac applications side-by-side without rebooting. This day could be closer than you think, too, thanks to a technology called virtualisation.

Oh really? Closer than I think? Like how about, I dunno, years ago?

The whole point is that VMs are slow. You can’t run games in virtual machines because they need full, uninterrupted access to the system resources. VMs are cool, don’t get me wrong, but being able to dual-boot is a huge bonus that has been a pipe dream for people who actually, you know, have a clue as to what they’re talking about for a long time. I mean, if you want to nitpick Boot Camp, maybe pick on something that is actually a problem.

Bullet the Blue Links

Why don’t spiders spin when dangling from a single strand of web? Scientists don’t know, either. They’re trying to figure it out, though.
Know what would be awesome? Buying a $500 graphics card that will be obsolete in 10 months. Man I love that.
I admit that while the 10% or whatever that they take is kind of atrocious, I really dig those little Coinstar machines. Now they do iTunes music cards, which is kind of pointless but cool anyway. Honestly if it weren’t for the fact that we have to use quarters to do our laundry I bet I could finance a vacation with the amount of spare change we collect in a month.
Since “controversial” usually means “tasteless,” this article on GamePro about the most controversial print ads for video games shouldn’t be much of a mystery: It’s tasteless. Kids, don’t click that link! The funny thing is I remember seeing all but the Gameshark example (and honestly, aside from her outfit being fairly skimpy I don’t see the big deal there) and in every case thinking, “Ooh, someone’s going to get a nasty letter for that.” I totally called it.
You know, the more I hear about what Nintendo is doing with the DS, the more impressed I am. Downloadable content? For free? Sure! Now they have a locator for the Download Stations. Sweet.
Nik pointed me to an interesting article yesterday about the offensiveness of the word “midget” referring to people with dwarfism. This is somewhat intriguing to me because after watching the first episode of F/X’s “Black. White.” a few weeks ago Nik and I were talking about what gives words their power: Is it the words and the concepts behind them from the perspective of the speaker or is it the weight and impact granted them by the listener? Discuss.

Cinematheque

If you were to say that I’m a fairly rabid consumer of entertainment in the sense that rags like “Entertainment Weekly” and the E! network use the word, you would not be incorrect. Music, movies, TV, books: These are my launchpads for shared experiences, backdrops to lively discussions and time-markers for set pieces of my life. I devour this stuff because it is pop art, accessible at times and utterly repulsive at others, its whole point is to be fascinating and the way in which it defines its terms must be revealed by the interaction between creator and observer.

I don’t know, it’s a curious interaction and I keep investigating it because, partly, I know that it is a common thing to devote time persuing and the mentality behind lifting what amounts to disposable artistic creation onto revered platforms is intrisically (or perhaps morbidly) engaging but also because that process itself occasionally creates things that I feel are not without value in their own right.

Consider that on one hand you have a movie like Fahrenheit 9/11 which sets its agenda as something less than art (at least art for its own sake) and something more than escapism: It is a vessel for a message (nevermind the message itself for now, you can substitute any politically charged movie/documentary here). On the other hand you have a film like Sahara which has very little (if any) aspirations to make a statement about anything but which is determined to be escapism at all costs. Then you can look at something like Waking Life which perhaps struggles as a cohesive narrative film (therefore eschewing escapism) and perhaps touches briefly on a message it wants to send but is so wrapped up in being pure art that it ends up being only truly remarkable when other contexts can be set aside.

Occasionally you may find a film that has something to say, does so with a sense of artistic style and manages to entertain at the same time. These are rare films, rarer television shows, and usually interpretive in terms of how well a given book or piece of music achieves this goal, assuming it was ever a goal at all.

I’m not trying to say anything, really, I’m just pointing out why I like entertainment. Searching for the elusive example of the boldly artistic, thought-provoking example of pop culture that also manages to be something you really want to experience versus doing so because you feel like, culturally, you ought to—it’s pretty fun.

King Kong

I’m pretty sure I’ve already bemoaned the fact that I don’t get out to the theater too often. Despite the fact that most modern movie megaplexes are flawed operations completely worthy of the scorn heaped on them, I still like going to the movies. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that while I don’t mind watching DVDs at home, I don’t exactly have some awe-inspiring home theater set up going. Who knows. But I sorta like seeing big action flicks on the big screen. Stuff like comedies or talking head dramas I can certainly wait to see at home. I mean, what difference does it make? But there is something really cool about watching an explosion on a 40 foot screen instead of my little 36″ TV, you know?

Now I’m not a huge fan of King Kong. I saw the original black and white movie when I was younger and I was decidedly apathetic about it. I mean, that ape looked pretty bad by the time I saw it and I sort of walked away thinking that people in the 30’s who were scared by the movie and thought there must be a real 25 foot gorilla somewhere must have been pretty retarded. But when I saw that Peter Jackson was going to re-make the movie and it was this summer popcorn flick, my first thought was, “Yeah, okay cool. Maybe I’ll go see that.”

Then I saw rough cuts of the effects on a preview or trailer somewhere. The effects looked pretty sorry and I was almost ready to say “forget it” when I saw some newer clips that made it look like it might be at least tolerable. But once again the stigma of the modern theater got the best of all my acquaintances and I never got around to it. So I figured I’d drop it in the Netflix queue and catch it on DVD.

So here’s the thing about the new King Kong: It’s a lot better than I expected. Considering that I was initially unimpressed with the effects and not a huge fan of the story to begin with, I managed to somehow really like this movie.

A couple of beefs: First, they didn’t fix all the effects. Kong looks a lot better in some shots than others. Also certain lighting effects show the warts of the technology more than others (most of the scenes in the jungle at daylight are fantastic, but at night it’s less impressive). There’s nothing particularly wrong with any of the bazillion effects shots in the film, but whenever I found myself noticing the Uncanny Valley it worked to pull me out of the story and start reflecting on technological limitations which is not really what you want from your audience. Secondly, they rarely get the effect of Kong clutching Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) correct, and it usually looks either fake or like she’d naturally be crushed.

Lastly, PJ has a serious problem with his editor: Jamie Selkirk. I don’t know who Selkirk is, but he really needs to learn to tell Jackson “No.” This is a three hour movie that granted needs to be a bit longer than the two hour standard, but certainly doesn’t need to be as long as it is. There are about four too many rescue scenes, the fight between Kong and the T-Rexes goes on for about ten too many minutes and a fairly disgusting and pointless scene in a canyon with a horde of giant insects both defies logic (a guy shoots a bunch of squirming bugs off of a guy from point blank range with a tommy gun and never even grazes the human) and wastes time. There are dozens of other scenes where the camera just stays on too long.

But once you get over all that, it’s actually a pretty great movie. What impresses me the most is that I don’t recall the original doing enough to give Kong his motivation. Why would he be so fixated on Darrow? It also had a creepy element in the Darrow (Fay Wray)/Kong scenes since the ape model was incapable of realistic emotions so he had a kind of creepy smile and an angry scowl, but that’s it. Here, Kong’s emotions come through in a more animalistic yet completely natural way. Rather than trying to project full human emotions on Kong, Jackson manages to make him like a giant pet. Anyone with a dog or a cat at home can understand the personality of animals and the connection that can happen between human and animal. It is this bond that Kong and Darrow show. Kong is dangerous, there is no doubt, but he has a persona and a compassion that we learn as the characters do.

Which would all be useless and even laughable if not for Watts’ stunning acting. Why she didn’t get an Oscar for her work here is beyond me. She manages to juggle her swing from desperate Depression casualty to hopeful dreamer to terrified captive to concerned protector with a remarkable ease and never once makes it seem hokey or implausible. Consider that she does all this while mostly playing off of a green-suited stand-in and you have to marvel at the result.

Coming Attractions

A couple of movies I’m excited about that are new or coming up: Brick, the neo-noir flick set in a high school and Silent Hill which looks like it might be the first really good movie based on a video game. Although why no one has re-done that game for modern consoles totally escapes me.

Gross

Today’s repulsive moment: A book bound with human skin. Yet somehow the phrase “anthropodermic bibliopegy” is about the coolest thing I’ve seen all day. Say it a couple times. It’s awesome!

Rant/Review

The words emitting from my keyboard yesterday in regards to Lost were joyous. Enthusiastic. I really like that show and I look forward to it each week. I even get a little bummed out when the repeat-streak comes.

Let me quickly set about deflating any of that happy, positive vibe before it starts to spread. The only thing we like to spread around here is vitriol.

Oh, and jam. But that’s a whole other deal.

Top Chef

Nik and I started watching a couple of dumb shows that came on around the same time. One is Top Chef and the other is The Next Food Network Star. Now, both shows are ostensibly about finding out which of a pool of candidates is best suited to have their culinary skills put on display. The execution of each is night and day.

I’m not even going to bother “reviewing” The Next Food Network Star. It’s a decent show that has a fairly likeable ensemble who seem to be cordial to each other even if they are technically in competition and it works as both a reality contest and a sort of backstage look at the staple Food Network shows. They don’t focus on forced interpersonal drama and the prize being offered is clearly one of obvious tangible value. I’ll keep watching it.

Top Chef, on the other hand, is an unmitigated disaster of a TV show that I’m almost inclined to carry on with it just to have the object lesson of how not to execute a reality show—or for that reason any style of TV show. It is only the fact that I have zero interest in ever actually creating a reality show that prevents me from persuing this particular lesson.

First of all, they focus almost entirely on the drama between the differing personalities of the chefs/contestants. In case you haven’t heard me say it before, I have no problem repeating myself: The absolute worst, most un-entertaining, deplorable part about “reality” TV is the constant bickering, arguing, intelligence-deprived raving we’re subjected to that is I guess supposed to approximate drama. Actually it’s like listening to cats fight: All sound and fury with no real purpose but to annoy the crap out of anyone in earshot. And this is 85% of the show.

A large part of this negativity comes from them having cast The World’s Most Unlikeable Contestants featuring six of the seven character traits most likely to cause spontaneous migranes followed by blackouts and vast chasms of lost time leading to bewildering arrests and insanity pleas. I mean, that Steven guy? That simply must be an act for the camera because I simply cannot believe in a world where someone that repulsive and supererogatorily smug finds a way to function in society. Anyone I ever met that took themselves so seriously as to suggest that they might be unfamiliar with a hot dog due to its base nature would, by definition, require ejection into the void of space. “I’m accustomed to four-star dining,” indeed.

But you know, I watch Survivor (against my better judgement, but that has yet to stop me for longer than one season) so I’m pretty familiar with the “repugnant fame-seekers” routine here. I may not like it, I may gripe about it incessantly, but I can cope with it. What I cannot abide by is the utterly asinine and completely farcical nature of this so-called competition.

To recap, the prize at stake here is $100,000, a full line of high-end kitchen applicances, a write-up in a respected culinary magazine and a job catering a high-profile event. For a budding chef, this is pretty huge I’d imagine. You would think, with so much riding on the line, that the producers of the show would make an effort to try and both cast people of roughly equal skill and then follow that up by creating fair and reasonable tasks for them to compete in which would allow the judges to fairly identify which was most deserving.

Apparently that never entered anyone’s mind in setting up these “challenges,” or even the premise of the show itself.

First of all, each show has two competitions, the “Quickfire” challenge which is a fairly short test of some kind where the winner is given immunity (using Survivor parlance) from the second elimination challenge in the second half of the show. The first flaw in the logic starts right there because while having immunity prevents a contestant from being booted, the person who is eliminated is the person who performs the worst in the challenge. So if the person who won the Quickfire challenge performs poorly in the elimination challenge, the eliminated contestant is the second worst person, which is a pretty massive injustice to begin with. But that ignores the fact that you have a negative contest, which in and of itself is a very poor game mechanic. Think about it this way: They give one player the title of “winner” from each elimination challenge. But it means nothing. Literally, nothing happens from winning. It is only the ultimate loser who suffers which means that the contest becomes (once you factor in the immunity granted from the Quickfire challenge) “be at least the third worst.”

Put another way, you are only ever—ever—competing to be better than just two other contestants.

But it gets even better. Assuming that was simply the case, you still might have a decent competition if the playing field remained level. But it doesn’t. For starters the contestants range from a twentysomething ex-model trying to start a new career who has practically negative real world chefing experience to competitors who have owned and operating their own restaurants for years. The above mentioned Steven isn’t even a chef, but rather a Sommelier. It turns out he does have at least a modicum of cooking skill but he could have easily spent the whole show just handing the judges various glasses of wine. Even if you assume that it would be more or less impossible to get a group of chefs who were of roughly equal skill and experience, you would have to at least assume that the challenges themselves were balanced, right?

Bzzzt.

Consider the most recent episode. The contestants were divided into teams of two. Now, right off the bat that’s a suspect condition because remember we’re trying to decide which individual chef is worthy of a massive reward and now we have them working with randomly drawn partners which, if improperly paired, might result in someone’s dismissal due to any number of non-cooking-skill related factors (managerial miscues, personality conflicts, poor performance by the teammate, etc). If that weren’t bad enough, the challenge was to create street food that fused two distinct culinary styles. The common thread was that all had “Latin cuisine” as one of the styles. In the interest of fairness I would assume the other style would be identical across the board. Nope. Instead there were as many different secondary styles as there were teams.

When you note that one of the styles was Japanese while another was Moroccan you realize that there is simply no way that the results of the contest could be fairly and accurately compared, much less quantified into some sort of heirarchal structure. On top of all this there is a different “celebrity” judge each week, usually a respected local chef from a restaurant in San Francisco where the show is filmed. But this too is another problem because these chefs are under (apparently) no direction to keep their opinions limited to the taste of the food; rather they judge contestants (in turn) by their attitudes, their execution of the specifics of the challenge, their personalities, their choice of ingredients or any other thing they might choose to use as criteria. In one case last episode the guest judge remarked a number of times that he absolutely loved a particular kind of pork, which one of the teams had just happened to use. A happy coincidence but one wonders if the team in question might have suffered if a different judge who did not care for the dish had been involved.

I realize that these types of shows are not exactly fair. Survivor isn’t fair. But the one thing about Survivor and its clones is that at least of the ones I’ve seen they manage to stay internally consistent. The biggest clue that Top Chef can’t even manage to work within its own context? Each contestant has, at one point or another, been among the lower tier of the players at elimination time and facing a potential punting from the show. Explain to me how you can award someone a title and a prize if at some point in your own competition designed to find the best, they (in theory at least) had performed poorly enough to warrant ejection from the game?

Flicks

I’ve caught a couple of movies this week. Among them are The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Derailed. Narnia is fantastic (it is difficult for me to pry my fond childhood memories of the Narnia stories when my dad read them aloud to my brother and I from that idealized context, but fortunately the movie doesn’t make me need to) and Nik actually bought me the two-disc extended collector’s edition. I’m pretty happy that worked out well.

Derailed, though, is a mess. I had zero expectations going in, even not knowing what genere it fell under. In spite of this handicap I had the movie’s plot, twist and outcome nailed within twenty minutes and was actively annoyed when the plot of the whole movie hinges on the lead character acting like a complete simpleton twice in the span of ten minutes. Do yourself a favor and miss this movie.

The Good, the Bad and the Awesome

Good

Okay, I know the Intel Macs have gotten some negative press for various technical issues but it sounds like Apple is busting their humps to get them cleaned up, so I won’t really get into that right now. Basically I pretty much suspected that the first versions of the processor swapping hardware needed to be categorized under “Early adopters only; buyers beware.” I mean, it’s a first rev of an Apple product. Duh.

But dude. I mean, have you seen this Boot Camp business? Homina.

Bad

I flipped on the TV last night to check out the Sharks game only to catch the fade to commercial at the end of the first period. When the ads were over they switched over to the Giants game.

For clarity’s sake I want to point out that I’m a Giants fan and generally speaking I want Fox Sports Net to broadcast local teams’ games. But let’s think about this for a minute: On one hand we have the Sharks, nine games from the end of the regular season, on a comeback year after the lockout, locked in a tense and exciting playoff race. On the other hand we have the Giants vs. the Padres in a stadium that got rained out yesterday, playing the effectively meaningless third game of the year. Which of these two events should get top billing on FSN?

What really hacks me is that they moved the Sharks game to Fox Sports Net Plus, which our wonderful local Comcast affiliate pulled a couple of weeks ago.

Yeah, I was pretty flamed about it. I ended up listening to the Internet broadcast (barely maintaining my sanity despite the onslaught of ear-wrecking audio artifacts, pops, hisses and dropouts—hooray for Windows Media Player) but it wasn’t the same. I would have even begrudgingly admitted defeat if the game was at home, but this was in Colorado. Colorado.

There is no justice.

Awesome

Are you watching Lost? Because if you aren’t, you’re totally missing out. Totally.

Potential minor spoilers follow. Read at your own peril.

I probably don’t need to be enumerating the wonders of this show since it doesn’t seem like it has a really tough time finding viewers, but after last night’s episode I saw more than a little negative feedback around the Internets from people who felt that the “It’s all in Hurley’s head” meme of “Dave” was a set up for an eventual cop-out.

Maybe it’s just me but I took this episode as a direct dismissal of that explanation (or any other “It’s all just a dream” hooey). Put it this way, I can’t see how the writers, producers and directors who have spent the last year and a half building an intricate, layered mystery would choose now to reveal essentially the entire secret. I mean, if this is all it is—Hurley or someone else’s (Walt comes up a lot in these discussions) dream—and they’re telling us now, who’s going to keep watching? Who’s going to care what the hatch is all about or what the map means or who the Others are or where the smoke comes from? The answer would have to be “What difference does it make, it’s all in Hurley’s mind anyway?”

Presenting this as a possibility at this stage in the game suggests to me that the island is anything but a dream. And I don’t even think it’s a red herring, it’s just a way of saying “We wouldn’t do that to you… but wouldn’t it have been wicked if we did?”

I’m not saying this show won’t disappoint in the long run. J.J. Abrams didn’t exactly inspire confidence with Alias in his ability to develop effective exit strategies for his shows. But I read more than a few posts from people on message boards that said based on “Dave” they were done with the show. To those people I say, “C’mon! If this is all it takes for you to lose faith in the writers maybe you didn’t really like the show that much to begin with.” Which would be sort of sad because for my money there hasn’t been anything on TV this engaging and this generally high quality since… well… I dunno. Buffy, maybe. Even then Buffy had its share of filler or outright bad episodes; my complaint with any episode of Lost has only ever been that they didn’t move forward enough and that’s probably just a testament to how deep my appetite for the story this show is telling goes.

I meant to update my “Box in the Living Room” series for the mid-season but I’ll be honest and say that I watch a fraction of the shows I made sure were on my TiVo back in September/October. I’m only still watching Surface, Supernatural and How I Met Your Mother from the fall’s new shows (even then, Surface is over and Supernatural isn’t necessarily what I’d call a can’t-miss in my book) and most of last year’s staples have drifted from my immediate consciousness leaving me with basically Lost, Scrubs and Veronica Mars as weekly appointments.

I was a bit hard on Lost back in October but it has occurred to me that the pacing of the show is actually pretty good this season and as long as I’m having fun, the revelations and new mysteries are coming at a decent pace to keep me intrigued. I’m not sure what else I could be asking for, you know?

Tank Talk

My father responds to the dissection of this years’ Sharks with his usual wit and insight thusly:

First, regarding Patrick Marleau: I like a lot of what Marleau does on the ice, his work ethic, and, of course, his stats don’t lie. But I’ve come to the rather peculiar conclusion that, for all his overall hockey skills, he’s a below average puck handler/passer. Mind you, he can definitely shoot, no question about that, but (and I’m guessing no one keeps stats on this) I’d bet that easily 60% of his passing attempts are off the mark or directly onto the stick or skates of an opponent. He also gets his pocket picked far more often than, say, Cheechoo or even Michalek. This latter problem could be that he tries a bit too hard, attempting slick little dipsy-doodles slipping the puck around a defender to one side and trying to circle around him and retrieve it on the other or zipping it between the defenders skates. That works, like, one time out of every thirty or so attempts. Of course, when it works he’s on a breakaway but when it doesn’t he’s left coasting into the offensive zone without the puck which now belongs to the defender at the blue line. None of which changes my agreement with your bottom line which is that Marleau is a tremendous asset to the team. But it might help explain why such a prolific point-scorer is a -8.

Second, regarding Kyle McLaren: There was a time that I considered him one of the Sharks’ best defenders, albeit one whose shots are far more likely to find the netting at the top of the glass than the netting in the goal—even with no goalie. However, while I still think he’s more good than bad, I’m surprised at how often he makes bonehead plays in his own zone, especially unforced turnovers. It sometimes seems his brain is on about a half-second delay from his actions. Nonetheless, he wouldn’t be my first choice to replace on defense.

Speaking of defense, though, I think this is the key weakness for the team. Their defensive corps is very young which translates to mistake-prone. While the speed of the NHL can suppress the scoring skills of many a phenom forward, they can still cope and often be reasonably effective. However, it appears to be almost overwhelming for rookie defensemen. Minor missteps or slight errors in positioning that were easily recovered-from at lower levels become devastating scoring chances in the NHL. Scott Hannan is a prime example. As good as he is now, he struggled a lot his first year. After Hannan and McLaren experience is almost nonexistent. Preissing, Davison, and Ehrhoff are, essentially, in their second seasons. Jorges, Murray, and Carle are rookies. Fahey is in his third season but, as you noted, is the least skilled. Add to that the number of very young front-liners who also may not be as astute as they should in covering their defensive responsibilities and the Sharks aren’t likely to bag a lot of shutouts. The last game they played against Detroit illustrated all too clearly the sizable gap between a top-notch defense and their own.

One final thought: What on earth is up with the Sharks’ ineptitude during shoot-outs? It’s not as if the goalies are making spectacular saves against them either. They regularly get stoned on mundane shots—that is, if they get a shot off at all. It’s embarrassing!

I’d agree with the criticisms of Marleau; his speed is remarkable and he’s got a spectacular shot, but if you notice he rarely does what some of the really top scorers like Ovechekin and Jagr do which is make that little stick deke or half shot fake, and I think that’s because he’s not that great with his hands. And for a Center, his passing is definitely sub-par.

McLaren I agree makes mistakes sometimes, but I sort of overlook it for a couple of reasons: One, he hardly ever does what a lot of the younger rookies do which is cough up a turnover high in the neutral zone which almost always leads to breakaways or short, transitional odd man rushes that are simply murder. If he does turn it over it is typically on a mistimed or poorly executed pass to the point which certainly isn’t something to praise, but isn’t a deadly mistake. Secondly some of his defensive zone gaffes come from his physical play. I mean, if you whiff on a six-stride hip check, you’re going to be out of position for several pivotal seconds. Still, I’d rather see him try the check and miss occasionally than not even try at all and just stand there swinging his stick back and forth.

You know, like Rathje used to do every shift, every game.

And there’s nothing I can say except to express full agreement that the weak point on the Sharks is their D. I’d say that a lot of Nabokov’s woes this season are due to the Shark’s defense struggling in the early part of the year and the offense being inconsistent which left Nabokov feeling like he had to win games on his own. When he wasn’t able to do that I think it may have shaken his confidence and left him struggling to get his game back.

Before I say anything myself about the Sharks in the shootout, I’d like to direct your attention to a San Francisco Chronicle article describing how the shootout has actively hurt the Sharks—and only the Sharks—this year. I’m not sure what the problem is. Obviously the Sharks have some great goal-scorers. They haven’t faced a Shark-killer like CuJo or Turco every time they’ve gotten to the tie-breaker and I’ve even seen San Jose goalies put on some impressive performances trying to keep the Sharks in the contest. But somehow they just can’t seem to get the job done.

What gives?

My only theory is that Ron Wilson simply didn’t think at the the beginning of the season that it was really going to matter that much. At the point of the shootout there’s already one point on your side and maybe he just thought, “We’ve got enough snipers on the team to pull us through and that will be enough” and didn’t practice it at all. Whereas you look at the Dallas Stars who’ve only lost one shootout this year, they told everyone that they had practiced the shootout like mad. You think the Sharks wish they had the 11 points Dallas earned from shootouts?

Exactly.

The Character of the Team

I feel like talking about the Sharks because Saturday’s overtime loss may have been overlooked as an insignificant event in light of the one point and Edmonton’s loss moving San Jose one point closer but not really being a huge move either way.

In case you missed it, San Jose played their second game against the Coyotes in three nights and after having been soundly beaten on Thursday they looked to be back in low form during a second period meltdown that put them down 0-3 going into the last twenty minutes of play. Randy Hahn and Drew Remenda, Sharks TV announcers, noted as the period began that that final period would be very telling as to what this Sharks team is really all about this year.

When all was said and done the Sharks lost during the 4-on-4 overtime which was certainly disappointing but when you consider that they were on the penalty kill when the winning goal was scored and you note that they had some very real chances of winning shorthanded (that is to say, they almost scored at least three times with only three men on the ice) plus they had just battled back from a deep deficit and the penalty called against Matt Carle was dubious at best (as were most of the calls, going both directions, all night long), well let’s just say if there is such a thing as a moral victory, this was one.

Here’s the thing about the Sharks: They’re a very good team on paper. Good enough that they really ought not to be struggling at this late stage in the game to make it into the playoffs; good enough that they should be fighting for Pacific Division Champions and not trying to elbow their way in a crowd of five or six other teams hoping for two or three low-seed playoff berths. Adding Joe Thornton has certainly improved the team, but that wasn’t really hard because the Sharks were basically atrocious in the early part of the year (remember December?).

It may be a bit early to be nitpicking each individual on this squad but I figure no one cares once the season is over (assuming the Sharks don’t make the playoffs as I predicted) and it won’t matter if the Sharks actually do hit the post-season since a year in which one finishes in the top eight can’t really be counted as a poor effort. So regardless of what happens from here on out, here’s my decidedly un-professional opinion about the team, player by player.

Steve Bernier: Bernier has been pretty impressive this year. I like putting a big strong guy on a line with the speedy Marleau and if nothing else Bernier will be remembered in San Jose for that sublime spin-o-rama goal a couple of weeks ago. For a guy with his size he doesn’t seem too thrilled about hanging out in front of the net which is a shame, but he’s definitely got potential as he continues to improve and learns how much his strength can be an asset.
Matt Carle: It’s tough to say if the late season pickup of this young collegiate star is a good thing or not since he’s been seen so little at this point. I can say that I like the guy’s slapshot (hard and on target, unlike—for example—Kyle McLaren who just shoots it hard at… who knows what) and offensive D-men are a welcome presence in this club so hopefully he’ll stop taking brain-dead penalties sooner than later and work on making sure that he doesn’t push the offensive side of the equation so far that he forgets his primary responsibility which we’ve seen him do a few times already. I appreciate that there is a learning curve in the NHL but a guy coming in with this much hype is going to have a hard time working through his growing pains in the middle of a playoff race so he’ll have to get good in a hurry or I bet fans’ patience with him will be very thin.
Jonathan Cheechoo: Fans knew Cheech was something special during the last season but if you think it was just the addition of Joe Thornton that turned him from an average goal scorer into a 50-goal threat behemoth you’re not looking at the whole line. Cheechoo impresses me not just because he can bury the puck but because he’s not a Selanne-like cherry picker who sits and waits for the feed outside of hot zones; the kid forechecks like a lunatic, crashes nets, smells opportunities and capitalizes on chances. Thornton may have made him complete by understanding what he was capable of and making Cheechoo’s efforts pay off, but I think Cheechoo would have had a 35 goal season even without big Joe on the dish. When you have a dynamic duo like this, don’t worry about where it comes from or why it happens, just keep enjoying while it lasts.
Rob Davison: A remarkably average defenseman, he does nothing special either for or against his team. The quintessential warm body on the ice, he’ll occasionally throw an impressive check or make a blue line play but I wouldn’t miss him if he were gone and I don’t mind him filling a roster spot while he’s here.
Christian Ehrhoff: Ehrhoff is one of those players who is either the hero or the goat. As often as he’ll make a brilliant play he’ll drop a massive egg out there which is why watching him is so frustrating. Streaky offensively, he has finally started finding the net from the point as opposed to being a threat primarily to the corner glass. Which doesn’t mean he scores a lot, just that hopefully he’ll start making those power play shots mean something other than a free zone clear for the defense. His inability to hold a blue line is probably his biggest detriment on that side of the ice. Defensively he makes some questionable decisions way more often than I’d like, Ehrhoff has at least youth going for him and if the organization decides to keep him around hopefully he’ll continue to improve bit by bit until he eventually develops the flashes of excellence he shows and stamps out the last vestiges of youthful idiocy to become a premier defender.
Nils Ekman: Give Nils credit where due: The dude gets more dynamite chances to score than anyone else on the team. I’ve never seen so many breakaways, hard work chances and pure skill based opportunities develop as a result of Nils Ekman’s play. It’s a shame that he can’t shoot the puck to save his life. For every brilliant scoring chance laid at his feet he seems to fail to capitalize 99.999% of the time. Compare and contrast him with Jonathan Cheechoo who both benefit from Joe Thornton on their line and where Cheechoo has let his natural scoring ability sparkle with the big passer’s skills at his disposal Ekman has continued to struggle with shot placement, second efforts and finishing plays. He’s also the worst offender of the bad penalty on the whole team, taking hooking calls deep in the attacking zone for no reason, making sloppy plays on defense and constantly putting his team in a bad position at the most inopportune times. Ekman has in him, somewhere, a very good hockey player but it doesn’t seem to be coming out in this line or perhaps in this system. Bottom line: Trade bait. Sorry, Ek.
Jim Fahey: Fahey hasn’t played a ton of games this year and seems to be in the process of being replaced by the young Matt Carle. Which isn’t a bad thing since in 21 games Fahey is operating at a -11 which puts him lowest on the team in plus/minus.
Marcel Goc: Another low plus/minus player on the Sharks is Goc which I attribute to the fact that he’s lazy on defense probably because he fancies himself a sniper which his performance doesn’t seem to validate. When lower line Centers have you beat in points production (Goc has 19 points in 72 games of which only 7 are actual goals) you have some work to do and I honestly don’t see Goc making a lot of progress. He looks far too contented and even bored on the ice and if the Sharks make it to the playoffs or hope to make a serious run to the Cup next year it’s guys like Goc who are going to have to defecate or vacate the toilet.
Josh Gorges: Gorges has quietly been putting together some nice work in the Sharks’ zone since coming up mid-season. He hits hard and plays aggressively which I like and while he hasn’t been much of a threat offensively, he at least seems to have the fundamental defensive skills to become a young Hannan-type player. One to keep an eye on.
Scott Hannan: The Sharks primary ice-time guy, Hannan has been a very good zone protector for several years now and he’s still improving as he goes along. I’m happy to see Scott rushing pucks into the offensive zone on occasion now and generally looking more comfortable taking the shot than always looking for the pass. He doesn’t play quite as much of a physical game as guys like Doug Murray or Kyle McLaren but he’ll play it when it’s smart and seems to try and outthink his opponents. He is great at playing the body position game and I’ve seen him break up more than a few odd man rushes or breakaways that shows you he’s a good player to pair with a younger guy like Carle or Gorges in case one of them makes a mistake. If Scott could put a 40-point season together, that would take the Sharks a long way toward being serious Cup contenders.
Patrick Marleau: The Sharks captain has finally shaken off the slumpy woes that plagued him through his first seven years as an NHL player and the resuts have been exactly what fans have been hoping for. You don’t argue with 80 points and 32 goals from your captain and the fact that most of the year has had him playing on a line with two rookies just makes his season all the more impressive. Giving Bernier and Michalek ample time to develop into their own skills will only make this second line stronger (on other teams a 130-point line could be their number one) and Marleau better. Which is kind of scary, really. Doug Wilson and crew need to do what they must to make sure Patty is a Shark for a long time.
Alyn McCauley: McCauley did great things for the Sharks during the previous season but has been quiet this year, playing out of position on a more physical line than normal (the Sharks have seven natural Centers so someone had to play elsewhere). You’d like to see McCauley be closer to 20 goals at this point in the season but not every year can be a career defining one. If the Sharks don’t make the playoffs this year expect to see McCauley traded in the off-season or on a very short leash for the 06-07 campaign.
Kyle McLaren: Kyle McLaren must love playing defense. He’s got that classic D-man insanity in his eyes and it seems to be his life’s wor to try and peg every swollen-head sniper the Sharks face with a big fat end-over-end hip check. And it’s a blast to watch. Nothing is sweeter as a fan than seeing Selanne, Iginla or Modano smeared all over the ice trying to sneak something tricky across the blue line. For that reason alone (and the fact that he’s not horrible on the other side of the rink) I think McLaren should remain a Shark for seasons to come.
Milan Michalek: Bernier and Marleau’s linemate has quietly had a pretty darn decent rookie year with 34 points and a +6. Unfortunately his offensive production seems to have the same sort of stutter-start, streaky issues that Marleau went through for the first few years of his career. Michalek is a fast skater with good instincts and some nice moves but it doesn’t seem like he works with his line yet; almost like he’s playing with Marleau but not Bernier. A bit more chemistry on that line and it could be really, really dangerous.
Doug Murray: It’s a shame that the new NHL rules have forced guys like Murray into a supporting role because he’s an absolute hoot to watch. The way he throws checks reminds me of watching hockey back when the Sharks first came into the league and the game was grittier and nastier and there was a reason that hockey players evoked images of toothless savages. Now the game is slicker, faster and I’ll grant you overall more exciting. Still, nothing sparks a stadium crowd like a thundering, bone-rattling, glass wobbling plaster into the boards. Maybe a bit more time in the minors developing some stick skills and a shot to go with that devil-may-care body tossing will create a real force to be reckoned with. Murray is everything we always wished Rathje would be, and that’s a compliment.
Evgeni Nabokov: It’s been a rough year for Nabby. He’s been hurt, he’s been bad and he’s been good. He seems to have finally settled into being “mediocre” which is at least something. And he has been playing okay since the Olympic break… I can’t help but wonder if he suffered during the lockout last year somehow. But Nabokov hasn’t been Mr. Brilliant since his first couple of years in the league and I think with Toskala playing well lately and an impressive if little-seen netminder waiting down in the minors for his second chance, Nabby is going to have to find a way to rise above. Contract or no contract.
Ville Nieminen: Nieminen is an odd player. A checking line guy that has some finesse; a winger that acts like a d-man; a brute that shows some surprising grace on occasion. It’s fairly obvious that the Wilsons got Nieminen to put some grit out there in case of a playoff berth but he seems to have had a positive impact in the race to get there as well. Surprisingly his career numbers aren’t much to look at, but he’s got a noticeable work ethic that shows up on the forecheck, backcheck and work down low that could make all the difference in a tough final nine games.
Scott Parker: Like Nieminen and Murray, The Sheriff is a relic of a game gone by. Sad or not, hockey has moved on and this isn’t Scott Parker’s game anymore. I don’t mind having Parker on the team but if you watched him take a miserable penalty on Saturday night and get moded into a one-sided roughing penalty for trying to pick a fight it’s hard not to think of him as a liability, especially down the stretch. The Sharks could have used his gut and heart-on-the-sleeve style early in the season when they were slumping badly but at this stage of the game they need clean play and solid skills, not goons. If Parker can learn to adapt and use his abilities to lead the charge in playing a physical game (the Sharks are 500 times better when they play tight, physical hockey) without taking a bunch of idiot penalties in the process he’s going to be a huge asset. If he can’t do it without constantly putting the Sharks down a man, he’s got to be out of a job.
Tom Preissing: The Sharks best offensive threat from the blue line has started to come into his own late in the season, finding the back of the net more regularly and (importantly) at opportune times. I’d still like to see the Sharks rely a bit less on the long shot from the point on the power play but if they have to go that route at least send it Preissing’s way. If the Sharks only got to keep two defensemen from this year’s team, I’d let them all loose save Priessing and Hannan.
Patrick Rissmiller: Yet another young offensive player who hasn’t had enough time to really get over the learning curve of the NHL transition. Time will tell if he’s got what it takes but so far I haven’t seen much to really complain about.
Mark Smith: It’s a crying shame that Mark Smith doesn’t have more skill than he does. If guys like Stevenson, Michalek and Goc worked half as hard as Smith does they’d all be 25+ goal scorers. I absolutely love watching Smith play. He tries so hard and you can just tell he’s only where he is in the league because he simply never gives up. Of course this means he’s got to do a lot of compensating for his lack of raw ability so he ends up in the penalty box a lot. But he plays with heart and mind so usually I don’t mind the penalty minutes. When you consider that comparable role players like Sean Avery have more than twice as many PIMs than Smith (the most penalized Shark), you realize that we’re lucky to have Smith doing what he does.
Grant Stevenson: I was hoping for a bit more from Stevenson this year. Maybe it was just that with so many rookies on the team I had to pick one that I thought might come out of nowhere and have a spectacular year. Well that didn’t happen and honestly Stevenson has quite underwhelmed me. I hope he gets better but even if he did so on some other team, I wouldn’t be all broken up about it.
Joe Thornton: The Sharks needed a superstar. Granted, it could have been Marleau. He’s got the stuff to put up 100 points. But Marleau isn’t there yet. You know the difference between Thornton and Marleau? Thornton was ready for the NHL faster. I guess that’s why he was picked first and Marleau was chosen second. So the Sharks got both. They had to give up some fan favorites like Sturm and Stuart, but look what they got in return. 57 assists. 16 goals. +21. My only concern about big Joe is that he’s so good that sometimes the other players look to him too much to bail them out of a jam. I’ve mentioned this before but Thornton is enough of a threat to other teams just being an option, if he becomes the Sharks’ only option, the team is going to be easy to beat. Also I’ve noticed during the last few games (in which the Sharks have been in something of a slump not coincidentally) that Thornton has started to almost have too much confidence, giving up odd man rushes or breakaways due to trying to do too much by himself. Maybe he’s buying into his own hype, maybe he’s just getting too much pressure from other teams that don’t want to fall victim to the Thornton/Cheechoo machine, whatever it is he’ll need to straighten it all out if the Sharks want to make the playoffs this year. And no matter what he’ll have to keep bringing it full on next year or the Sharks are (ahem) dead in the water.
Scott Thornton: I can’t believe this guy is still on the team. Repeat after me Mr. Wilson: “I must trade Scott Thornton. I must trade Scott Thornton.” 19 points in 63 games with a -10 and 75 PIM? Buh-bye.
Vesa Toskala: I’ve been down on Toskala in the past. I’m not here to repent or try to kiss up now. I’ll grant you that he’s been the guy during this last push for a playoff spot. But is that really that he’s been spectacular or that Nabokov has been stunningly so-so? Okay, Defensive Player of the Week is good, but Toskala still makes me nervous because he doesn’t make routine stops, he always seems to fight the puck. Honestly, I don’t care as long as he wins. At this point in the season he’s beating Nabokov in virtually every non-cumulative stat category and I guess that’s why he keeps getting the nod. I still think it wouldn’t be a crime to trade him off for some added depth in the offense or bundle him with Scott Thornton for a big name defender like a Visnovsky, but I’m not sad to see him still here. Competition is good, and hopefully it will make Nabokov rise above. Then again, we’ve gambled on him before and lost Kiprusoff in the process so maybe I’m suggesting we make the same mistakes again.
Ron Wilson: Whenever a team does poorly people look at the coach. Whenever a team does really, really well, the coach gets some credit. When a team could be great but is underachieving, it seems like no one really thinks about the coach. I think Wilson did a bang-up job when he first stepped in for ~~Beaker~~ Sutter. He cleaned up the penalty kill first thing. But what’s up now? The Sharks penalty kill has flat out sucked most of the year. Their power play is streaky at best and Wilson can’t seem to decide if having Marleau on the point is a good idea or not. They’ve lost so many opportunities on failed 5-on-3 advantages that it simply can’t be all the players’ fault. I suspect—and this is only speculation—that Wilson is too nice of a guy. He seems to only get heated at the refs. Where’s the fire for the players that act like turds on ice? I want to see him up in the grill of a guy like Goc when he’s out there fumbling around, staring at the hot dog vendor. I want him to flat out bench a guy like Fahey when he lets a winger draw him into a bad penalty. Instead he seems oddly indifferent to his own players and that concerns me. I’ll be the first to take it all back if the Sharks pull it together but as a team they’ve been inconsistent enough and slumped often enough in critical portions of the season that some of the blame has to be levelled at the coaching staff for not making these players aware of what they’re capable of and inspiring them to live up to those expectations. I’m certainly not suggesting it’s time to start thinking about a leadership change, but I think the talent is there or nearly there, the front office seems to have a clear picture of what they want to do and the only thing that’s lacking is the day-in-day-out execution on the ice. It’s something to keep in mind.

Oh, and One Other Thing

Dude, I totally do this all the time. Now I know what to call it!

Oh, the Places You’ll Go

Virtually speaking, of course.

Newsflash: Web 2.0 isn’t the Answer to All Our Problems. Don’t get me wrong, I love a lot of these new sites coming out, but nifty features on a still-young, constantly changing platform are going to be prone to some hiccups. For example, I tried to log into Writely last night from Safari and couldn’t get past the intro screen. Maybe Writely doesn’t work with Safari, maybe it was just a glitch but if using a specific computer caused Word to stop working, there would be rioting in the streets. Suited rioting. Also it is kind of unnerving to add network connectivity problems to the list of reasons why I might not be able to get some of my important software to work. Network uptime isn’t exactly rock-solid in any environment I’ve ever been in.
I’ve considered checking out one of those Treo deals. Don’t get me wrong, I like the RAZR mucho grande but my job gets me discounts and deals on Cingular stuff and it also requires me to be more plugged-in more often than I’ve been used to in the past. Having my email at least rudimentary Internet access handy would be quite a boon. Oh, and besides, Nikki covets my RAZR. I don’t blame her. The thing is dead sexy. Anyway, I may be looking at the 650 after reading this second take on the 700w.
Seriously, this is not a positive development. First of all most conversations I find myself in bore the life out of me. I don’t need someone electronically outing me. Secondly, if I had one of these it would be buzzing all the time because I suspect my conversations are dull principally because I am involved in them and, well, I’m pretty bromidic.
If this article were condensed into a 30 second narration and read aloud by a guy with a deep baritone and a overwrought sense of urgency, I swear it would sound exactly like a movie trailer. “Deep beneath the surface of this small town, an unquenchable fire burns…”
Want to see digg and slashdot posters’ heads explode? Watch them squirm under the conflicting death rays of a software patent dispute that results in Microsoft’s IE7 needing to handle ActiveX controls in a new way that will result in massive headaches for web developers. Root for the patent lawyers? Feel sorry for Microsoft? Worry about their own sites’ traffic? It’s good fun.
Sounds like OpenSSH developers are whining that they have no money. I’m kind of torn about this. On one hand I like OpenSSH a lot and I use it pretty much every single day. So yeah, I can see dropping $10-20 for it. That’s no problem. What I don’t like is when people release stuff for free and then cry about not getting paid for it. I mean, huh? Hello!

Anti-Verve

I’m wiped out this week. These 4:00 am risings aren’t helping. Tomorrow moring? 3:00 am, and no blissful train-slumber (which really isn’t that blissful since when I actually can nod off I invariably wake up in deep mortal terror that I’ve missed my stop); instead I shall drive in to work at 4:00 am. The good news is that I’m such an easy sleeper that I can doze off at 8:00 pm no sweat.

‘Cept not.

Anyway, my mental capacity may be diminished, but am I the only one who thinks this is so lame as to actually be sorta cool? I mean, I know it’s aimed at the affluent urban types (aka drug dealers), but a Windows application? Who has a PC in their car in the ‘hood? Still, if I had a “pimped” ride, I would totally roll around with a picture of Dr. McNinja on my wheels. Oh! And a Sharks logo.

Things I Would Point Out if I Were a Grouchy Guy

It starts raining each day roughly 30 minutes before I have to go outside to wait for the bus/train.
I have a nice whiteboard at work… but no eraser or markers.
I’ve more or less forgotten to eat lunch every day since last Thursday.
The Sharks have yet to stay “in” the playoffs for two games in a row.
I keep drinking the canned Apple Juice at work, thinking it’s healthier than diet soda. Then I read the label and realized it’s even worse than regular soda.
I bought a new toothbrush and it hurts my teeth.

Whew! Dodged that bullet.

Friday Geek Links

Simply awesome story about a dude with cybernetic arms.
Nintendo Revolution to play TurboGrafix-16 and Sega Genesis games. Woo!
Stories that make me wish I was a lot smarter so I could understand Physics and Quantum theory: Scientists create a new superfluid (this Wikipedia entry may help comprehension on the article); other scientists getting closer to artificial gravity.

Overheard Quotes at the Hamilton House That Sound Vaguely Naughty But Really Aren’t

“Honey, after you finish your cereal can we look for my pants?” –Nik

Devilishly Seductive

Can I admit something? I’m thinking about buying a DS.

I know. I know.

On one hand I want to say that I don’t need one. And that’s true, I don’t. I bought two versions of the GBA (traded one in, though) and while I got more than my money’s worth out of it, most of that time was spent on only a handful of games: Advance Wars 2, Metroid Fusion, Mario Kart Advance and then of course there was the 200+ hours I sunk into Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. Did I mention I still haven’t beaten that stupid game?

Anyway, the need for another gaming system is slim at best. Yet I’ve always maintained that it’s not about the system but rather the games for said system and at this point I’m comfortable saying that the DS has enough games I’m interested in to start thinking about a purchase. Mario Kart with wireless? Check. Resident Evil? Check. Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow? Check. Metroid Prime: Hunters? Check. But I could resist all that. I mean, I’ve played two Metroid prime games already, I’ve beaten Resident Evil several times and played Mario Kart on assorted platforms until I was silly in the head. So yeah, it’s an attractive proposition but not one I absolutely must succumb to.

Until today.

See, there’s this conference today and they announced something that sealed my fate.

Wind Waker-style Zelda for the DS. Game over. I’m a total sucker for Zelda and I loved Wind Waker (yes, yes, I’m excited about Twilight Princess too… why can’t I like both cell shading and realistic graphics?) so it might as well be a done deal.

But just in case I had an ounce of resolve left, Nintendo also announces that they’re releasing a redesigned DS called the DS Lite. Smaller, sleeker, brighter screens? Yes, yes and—oh yeah—yes.

Sigh. My wallet hates me.

Stuff I Could Do Without

Dudes in public restroom stalls huffing and puffing like they’re passing a watermelon.
The phrase, “All that and a bag of chips.”
Online Lemmings.
People who insist on talking to me when I’m clearly wearing earphones and minding my own business.
Unwanted conversations about public transportation seating arrangements that interrupt good songs.
Vending machines that only have $1.50 “King Size” Paydays and not the regular size $0.40 ones.
Menudo. Both the “band” and the “food”.
Earthquakes just strong enough to be an all-day topic of conversation (i.e. “Did you feel the earthquake?”).
Unsolicited email explaining to me what phishing means and how to avoid it. Especially if it includes the statement, “Use a spam blocker” without acknowledging the irony.
Spam blockers that don’t work.
The “band” Pussycat Dolls.
Excessive or improperly applied air quotes.
Unfriendly or downright surly service people.
Poorly constructed sandwiches.
People who encourage me to splurge with zero insight into my financial situation.
1,000% markup on clothing.
People who interrupt an interesting story with a boring anecdote and don’t steer the conversation back to a point prior to their interruption.
Ill-functioning hibernate mode on Dell laptops.
Overly forgiving media critics.
Media critics who obviously loathe the media they cover.
Media critics.
Heavy rain in late March.
Radio broadcast-only Sharks games.
Inappropriate speakerphone use.
Applebee’s.
Lame, uncreative and transparent excuses.
The term “Mashup” applied to non-musical combinations.
Dr. Phil.
Professional wrestling’s cyclical popularity.
Lung butter.
People who ask me for help and when I offer a solution or suggestion reply, “No, I don’t want to do that.”
TV show “seasons.”
FM radio, excepting NPR.
Smart people who cling to dumb ideas.
Oprah and her legion of suburban dweebs.
The term “Soccer Mom.”
Categorical decrees about technological limitations made by people who should know better.
Brokeback Mountain jokes.
Brokeback Mountain apologists.
Gay cowboys.
The Villiage People.
Wedding receptions featuring any of the following: “The Chicken Dance”, “YMCA”, “Mambo No. 5″ or “The Macarena.”
Creepy, earnest guys who think they have a chance with a lady who is clearly uninterested.
Anne Geddes.
Software that requires typing without spellchecking.
JavaScript.
Laptop mouse solutions.
The cliché “Living Legend.”
Street names, buildings and parks named after living people.
Allergies.

Rap is Dead

I can’t exactly recall how I got that Nelly song about those puerile teeth coverings made of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of precious metals and gemstones got stuck in my head. I’m fairly certain I don’t want to know because if it was the result of some direct action by another human I might be forced to hunt them down and pummel them around the head, neck, chest and shoulder region. I’ll assume it was an annoymous car stereo that was playing at a reasonable volume and just happened to penetrate my rolled-up windows and blaring music of quality at a stop light during a moment of intermission zen between Rush’s “2112” and The Replacements’ “Unsatisfied.” It makes the world safer that way, trust me.

I don’t want to be accused of painting too broad of strokes but I don’t find a lot of use in my life for jewlery of any kind. I wear a wedding band of simple metals and minimalist design and that’s it. I suppose I could be persuaded to wear a watch on occasion but my wife has presented me with roughly 47 watches—many of which were nice/expensive and I wore them each for about a week and a half before I realized that wearing timekeeping devices set an expectation for promptness that I just was not comfortable with.

To a small degree I accept men who wear necklaces as reasonably harmless as well, so long as they remain consistent with the rest of their accoutrements (shell-bead necklaces and power ties don’t match, nor does a thick silver cuban chain with a polo shirt) and aren’t worn to excess. Earrings are fine, but stretchy earlobes are just gross. Anything else is cause for suspicion: Bracelets, bands, extra rings, facial peircings, and anything that is large enough to be considered “bling.”

And other than wedding bands and watches I have to question the necessity of anything else. They serve no purpose. I suppose there is no harm in a hemp necklace purchased in Hawaii or a leather wrist cuff since they are cheap and purposeless, but expensive jewelery on a guy? I don’t even understand spending a lot of money on jewelery for girls who may actively demand that they receive pointlessly pricey rocks and human tinsel. Why would any guy buy an expensive fashion accessory?

To then take that question and try to comprehend the idea behind making teeth covers of supposed high value is like trying to make scientific and rational sense of the plot of the Back to the Future trilogy. One can reasonably assume that covering ones teeth with jeweled mouthguards requires said item to be placed in ones mouth. Once there it will necessarily be covered with saliva and hidden, unless unfortunately disfigured by some tragic accident, by ones lips.

To summarize, these “Grillz:”

Are expensive jewlery.
Designed to go in one’s mouth.
To be covered with spit.
Hidden by lips.
Unless one makes a comical facial expression in order to reveal them.

It was in thinking about all of this that I realized unequivocably that Rap is Dead.

If that is a shocking statement (and it was for me at first), I should tell you that we should have seen it coming. I mean, the warning post was set right there in front of us in 1998 and we missed it. In retrospect it was clearly obvious.

The end of Rap was heralded by Jay-Z’s sampling of the song—nay the Show Tune—”Hard Knock Life” from the broadway production of Annie.

I’ll let that sink in for a moment.

Annie.

Little orphan Annie.

You will note that the play also contains the song “(The Sun Will Come Out) Tomorrow,” a contender for the schmaltziest, most saccharine song ever written. And Jay-Z chooses this pop culture divide between his thug life image and uplifting children’s tale as a chasm he’d like to cross. And people liked it. It was a legitimate hit for Mr. Z.

I want to make sure my point is clear here: It is not okay to try and repurpose anything related to or even in the same spiritual meme as Annie with growin’ up on the mean streets of Compton. Word. It simply cannot be done; not with irony, not straight, not even in satirical contexts. It just doesn’t work.

It’s not like Jay-Z decided to try and use the phrase “Hard Knock Life” as a description of what it was like to live as a gangsta. Nope. He sampled the chorus. With the original cast recording using children’s voices. And he raps about violence and struggles in the verses, again with no irony. Observe a snippet of lyrics:

Sleeping on foutons and cots, the king size, dream machines, the green fives
I’ve seen pies let the thing between my eyes analyze life’s ills
Then I put it down tight grill
I’m tight grill with the phony rappers you might feel we homeys
I’m like still you don’t know me,
I’m tight grill when my situation ain’t improving
I’m trying to murder everything moving, Feel Me!!

Trying to murder everything moving? How do you find time to listen to the Annie soundtrack, then Jay? How do you find the time? So no, I don’t “Feel” you. Sorry. Maybe those adorable little abused and neglected children feel you? You seem to feel you have much in common with them. I’m thinking suddenly that the parallels between the black urban experience dealing with the police and oppression can be plainly seen in the interaction between the lovable rascals that are the orphans and Miss Hannigan. The juxtaposition is simply chilling.

So I really shouldn’t be surprised that Nelly is rapping about obscenely priced tooth covers and other artists have resorted to singing about dancing whilst wearing clown make-up and fabricating words to describe this revolutionary activity; it’s clear that rap ran out of stuff to talk about eight years ago. I’m just surprised it took me this long to realize that rap had succumbed to the same fate as rock n’ roll, but then again, I’m not really hip with the scene.

But if rap is ready to start branching into more of this kind of territory, what with the clowns and funny teeth masks and Broadway shows, I’d love to see a DMX/Sound of Music/Ringling Brothers mashup. I’m thinking “So Long, Clown, Farewell (Popped a Cap).” It’ll be brilliant.

The Long March

I’ve been waiting a lot lately. Thursday after work I waited for three hours for the train to arrive—in the rain—while they attended to “track work” 45 minutes earlier up the line. Eventually I got sick of being cold and uncomfortable so I called Nik to come pick me up. We had dinner while we waited for the traffic to finish clearing.

Friday we had to be at the hospital for Nik’s surgery at 5:15 am so we hurried over there and the staff there proceeded to separate Nik and I for as long as humanly possible until just before they wheeled her off to another part of the building I was not allowed to go. I shuffled from waiting room to waiting room trading one uncomfortable chair for another, exhausted and wanting sleep but not getting any unless you count my rear end going all numb and pins-and-needles from the “cushions” on the seats.

I tried to keep myself occupied with books and various computing activities such as watching Battlestar Galactica on my laptop but nothing was interesting enough to suffer through the discomfort for very long. Eventually the doctor came and told me Nik had done just fine and I’d be able to see her in a little while which turned out to be an hour and a half.

Fortunately Nik was fine and in good spirits when I came in to see her and it wasn’t very long at all before she was getting up out of bed (albeit slowly and with some understandable effort) walking herself to the bathroom and so on. It was pretty clear by about 1:00 pm that she was doing fine, eating before she was scheduled to, mobile before she was scheduled to and clearheaded before she was expected to be. They had originally said that she would have to stay the night but I was thinking pretty early on that she might as well just go home.

Here’s the thing: I’m no doctor so I don’t know squat. It would certainly be tragic if a patient were rushed out of the hospital before they were ready and had a setback which required them to come screaming back in via ambulance or something shortly after getting home. But generally speaking I think that there needs to be some kind of mechanism in place to evaluate patients based on their indicidual progress. A nurse actively denied Nikki some solid food because she said she didn’t want her to throw up. Anyone who knows Nik knows that she’d rather have performed the surgery on herself minus the anaesthetic than vomit even a little bit so her asking for food was pretty much a 100% guarantee that she was ready for it. Of course when she finally did eat she kept it down fine.

Sometime after dozens of lame TV shows a nurse finally noticed around 6:00 that Nik was doing fine and suggested that they try to talk to the doctor about discharging her early. (Digression: I’m a fan of TiVo, the product. I think people should buy and use TiVo and for the most part I like TiVo the company, too. There are many, many upsides to TiVo but there is one pretty major downside which isn’t expressly obvious at first but gradually becomes clear: Once you get used to watching TV on TiVo, it absolutely positively sucks trying to watch TV without it. I’m not even talking about commercial skipping exclusively here, either, although that is a major appeal to TiVo. I’m also talking about the fact that in the three plus years we’ve had and used TiVo, I can remember maybe one or two at the most times where I’ve felt like watching TV, sat down to watch it and found nothing to watch. If you configure TiVo properly, there should almost always be something you’re interested in waiting for you. Watching the hospital TV with it’s abridged cable channel selection and dodgy remote during peak daytime TV hours was probably the most painful thing Nik had to endure the entire stay. I know it felt like I was getting a lobotomy.)

Of course they couldn’t find the doctor to authorize the discharge so we waited. And waited. Technically visiting hours are over at 8:30 pm. When that came and went I started to wonder how this was to be handled. On one hand the hospital isn’t exactly a hop skip and jump from our apartment or even our home town. We’re talking about a solid thirty to forty minute drive and that’s for a guy who’s working on not much sleep and a long exhausting day of being completely useless. It’s rather amazing how tired literally doing nothing can be. I’d almost have rather worked a whole day truth be told. I’m glad I was able to be there for Nik but my actual value aside from providing Nik reassurance and the occasional display of sympathy (expressed via a complex facial expression that takes literally seconds to fabricate) could have been measured in nanoliters.

At around 10:30 the doctor finally bumbled in (getting out of his last surgery of the day which if you calculate means that he had been cutting people open and toying with their insides for about 17 or 18 hours which is somewhat disconcerting) and looked at Nik and said, “Want to go home?” She nodded. “Okay!” he replied cheerfully. And that was it.

I thought if that was all it took I was pretty sure there had to have been someone that could have done that six or seven hours earlier. But I think Nik was just glad to get to sleep in her own bed. She and I had both been worried up until right before he walked in that I might have to take off without her and leave her overnight regardless of any doctor permission because my ability to safely drive home was rapidly diminishing. Fortunately I had enough left in the tank to push through the discharge procedure and make it home in time to crash and spend the rest of the weekend working.

Fin

If you’ve asked me for help, assistance, contact or have invited me to something, presented me with a project idea or offered me any kind of opportunity in the last three months let me extend my humble apologies to you. I’ve been working two taxing jobs since December one being my day job and the other being a long contract assignment. Well I think I finally finished the contract assignment over the weekend so all those things I’ve procrastinated on might actually get some attention now.

I mean, I’m still a Level 14 Procrastinator so don’t start holding your breath or anything, I’m just saying I don’t have to actively procrastinate something else to procrastinate your deal.

Point Shot With Commentary

As mentioned above I finished my contract assignment and I think I’m going to take the opportunity Bosslady offered me to go on a contract work hiatus. My new job has been more intense than even my pessimistic initial projections predicted. Because of this trying to balance everything has gotten me pretty wiped. Anyway, my final spoils from this last job should be something pretty nice since I’ve put so much time into it. Having maxed out my old iPod, I was thinking about doing the upgrade thing. It is interesting to me that I was concerned when I first got it that I might not use it enough to warrant the price. I think I’ve gotten my money’s worth out of it and probably fivefold. I use it all the time. Incessantly, you might say. The new black 60GB model looks pretty sweet but then today I see this Engadget bit and it just makes me grumpy. To wait or not to wait?
I know I mentioned Dr. Mac’s blog previously and perhaps in passing let slip that Mrs. Mac also has a blog. I should point out that she updates far more often than he and her refreshingly frank comments about new motherhood are funny and fascinating at the same time. Highly recommended.
I was griping about not getting sports scores on Netvibes the way I can with My Yahoo! Ryan seems to have made it his mission to correct this oversight and I think he’s found something that will work from Fox Sports.
After my rant about MMORPGs the other day I ran across one that apparently is not only letting people play for free, but also supports Macs. If anyone out there is interested in playing, I’m willing to give a free game a shot but I’m not going in alone. I’m scared.
Have you seen this gizmo? It lets you point it up in the sky and get information about what constellation you’re looking at. Spiffy! Not shipping for another couple of months and no indication what they’ll run you when they are available, but pretty cool nonetheless.
Mark Rosewater is a designer for Magic: The Gathering. I haven’t played Magic in a long time primarily because I can’t afford to stay in the game and I already have an excessively expensive gaming hobby picked out but I still observe the game in a detached yet pseudo-interested way. Mr. Rosewater writes regular columns that are fascinating glimpses of the life of a game designer and he occasionally crosses his observations about design pitfalls with life lessons, as in the link above. Good reading.
Last up today is a link I’m hestitant to post. First thing you should know is that it’s uproariously funny and had my eyes watering with laughter on several occasions. The close second thing you should know is that the humor found herein can be pretty blue so if you’re a young’un or sensitive to that sort of thing, steer clear. Also, if you don’t like comic books you probably won’t get it or care anyway so you’re off the hook as well. If that doesn’t elminate everyone, the rest can check out this site describing how Superman is really a big jerk.

ironSoap

A critically engaging exercise in pointless tedium.