Who likes to lose?

I do! Well, in a way. It's probably more accurate to say that I enjoy not always winning. Mike and I were talking about Left 4 Dead tonight -- a game that has mercilessly destroyed us any time we've attempted it with four human players -- and it led to the subject of difficulty levels in games. Mike, for example, might play through Halo 3 on the "normal" level of difficulty and be satisfied with the completion. It was apt that he used that game as an example, as I believe the original Halo was the first game I was inspired to immediately play through again on a greater level of difficulty after finishing the first time. Since then I've made a point of flogging myself through the likes of Call of Duty games on the Veteran level of difficulty. If it's an incredible challenge, I'm accomplishing something, right?

Last week I happened upon the play-by-post forum games of the Battlestar Galactica board game over at Penny Arcade. I maintain that the franchise is important enough to justify purchasing the game, comfortable with the likelihood that I will never find people to play it with. After reading through a couple of sessions of the game I admit that I am determined to try and rope people into it at least once. They do a great job of capturing the flavor of the show and sticking players in the middle of it. What you have is basically a big team game where all the players are good guys working together to accomplish a common goal. The chocolatey-awesome-excitement comes from the fact that a couple of those people are not on your team, and their job is to see to it that you lose without ever knowing they were against you. Assuming, of course, you are one of the good guys.

The game should arrive from Amazon tomorrow or Thursday. I may be super-geeky and play through a theoretical game all by myself, just to learn how it works. Then I'll post here about whether I was able to trick myself into believing that I was a cylon, when in fact I was the cylon all along.

I <3 Eddie J

Tomorrow it will have been one week since the series finale of Battlestar Galactica.

I think I'm finally able to talk about it.

Seriously, it's been kind of a rough week. It feels like my older, hotter girlfriend broke up with me because she graduated and left for college while I'm still a sophomore. I knew it was coming, and it had to end when it did, but it's still sad.

BSG has been the best thing I've ever seen on television, hands down. I don't think it was followed by many people in my social circle, but I hope to be able to convert a few people on that front with liberal loaning of DVD collections. I believe the thing that held the show back (at least from my non-watching friends) was a certain perceived geekiness threshold. Hear me well: this notion you have of Star Trek-level sci-fi -- glossy heroes in spiffy future-wear working together to come up with complex scientific solutions to alien puzzles, then explaining said solutions by way of a simple analogy ("Like putting too much air into a balloon!") -- is false. The reimagined BSG was a dark and frequently tragic telling of an epic story, utterly lacking in camp and robotic dogs. The heroes are anti-heroes half the time, and most are deeply flawed yet undeniably sympathetic characters.

The cast as an ensemble is second-to-none. Edward James Olmos' Admiral Adama literally brought tears to my eyes on more than one occasion with a speech. I'll be the first to admit that I can be moved to tears by big movie moments (perhaps because I am stoically unmoved by events in real life), but this man could do it to me on a practically weekly basis. James Callis' Dr. Gaius Baltar is one of the most surprising and entertaining characters of all time. Katee Sackhoff's Kara "Starbuck" Thrace is portrayed with such consistent hard-edged bravado that when you finally catch a glimpse of her genuinely smiling, it's breathtaking.

I could go on. I will, as a matter of fact, in my next post, which will be about the BSG board game.

So if you haven't seen any of it, rent and watch the pilot, really. It's an investment of a couple hours and you'll know at that point if it's for you. There are only four seasons of the show so there's no need to worry about getting endlessly caught up in yet another TV series. If it grabs you the way it grabbed us you'll tear through the whole story in a few weekends.

If you can type

If you're like me, a blank canvas terrifies you. I find that my creativity often needs some kind of training wheels to get it going. Therefore, I am a fan of the kind of websites that provide you all the structure you need to be creative. Case in point, XtraNormal.com

The animation is already there for you to choose from. Just type in the dialogue and then play director.

And speaking of FIST, here's a video created by WIT's own Mikael Johnson - who introduced me to the site. I happen to be the dead guy in his undies.

Seriously, watch this.

(click on the link because it's not letting me embed it...)

The WTF Blanket

I just had to put this up... I've seen a lot of pretty stupid parodies of the Snuggie Blanket, but this isn't one of them.

Directing Can Be Fun

I've never been solely responsible for the direction of an improv troupe. I have assistant-directed on a few occasions but what that generally meant was leading exercises the actual director had left for me in his/her absence. I've never felt inclined to take on the role of director, mainly because I recognize that people are often more sensitive than I am and I have a hard time in situations where it's not necessarily a good idea to say what I think.

I'm not saying that I think people suck -- not at all -- but when it's my place to criticize it always sounds to me like I'm saying just that, even if I don't mean to. I guess it follows that I thrive on harsh criticism. When the drill instructors at Parris Island came screaming into our barracks for the first time and most recruits were paralyzed with fear, I was smiling inwardly and thinking that things were just starting to get interesting.

So this evening I sat in and coached (in a very loose sense of the word) a FIST team that will perform this weekend. I hardly had any criticisms at all, and what I did have to say was more to their format than to any one individual's work. They seemed to appreciate my suggestions and ideas and I think we all came away from it with a positive feeling. I'm excited to see their show on stage and it will be gratifying if any of my ideas play a part in their (hoped for) victory.

It might also help cover the bitter, ashy aftertaste of my own team's early demise.

Watchmen: Opening Titles

Found a link to the Watchmen opening titles, which are definitely worth a look. Props to yU+co. for doing starting the movie off with a bang, and thanks to the guys at Motionographer for sharing the love.

[ Update: Apparently, the kids at Warner Bros have pulled this video down due to copyright infringement. Whether it has to do with the use of the Dylan track or something else, it seems pretty shortsighted on their part... I know a few people who have decided to see the film based on the strength of the title sequence alone! ] 

Who Watches the Watchmen?

Wow. So... where to begin...

After years of waiting, I finally saw the Watchmen movie today. And I'm surprised to report that I honestly have no idea whether or not this movie worked as a movie. 

Seriously. This is the first time that something I'm so familiar with has been put up on the big screen, and I have to say that I'm apparently way too close to the source material to know whether it worked or made sense or seemed cool to anyone else in the theater. I walked in knowing every plot point and nuance along the way, and ended up watching it with a very different and completely unexpected mindset: one that was almost worried about what I was about to see. It was almost like hearing a friend's band do a cover version of a song I grew up with; there was an equal mix of "Oh, cool... they're doing that with it," and "Oh, no... what if nobody likes it?"

It was stressful! Each time a key scene was ready to unfold, I was anxious about how they were going to pull it off. There were times when that feeling stuck with me longer than I would have liked, and other times when I found myself smiling like a little kid. The montage/recap during Rorschach's visit to the cemetery, for example (which remains one of my favorite parts of the book), was a lot of fun to watch and a really well played moment.

I can tell you that fans of the book will be thrilled with the look of the film; the attention to detail was nothing short of amazing. Sets, costumes and casting were pulled right off the page. I was particularly impressed watching the cover art from each issue sneak seamlessly by... a nice nod to the people in the know that didn't feel obvious and heavy-handed to everyone else. Visually, I really couldn't be happier with how faithfully the story was brought to life.

But there were definitely a few things that rubbed me the wrong way as a fan. In a few key instances, they traded smarts and subtlety for blood and gore, which was a huge disappointment. I won't spoil anything for the uninitiated, but he end of Rorschach's origin story in particular was a real let down. They took one of the more chilling and original moments in the novel and sold it short in favor of shock value (which is ironic, because the written version is actually twice as shocking and stayed with me for a long time after I'd read it). Of course, no one who hasn't read the book will notice, but it will definitely piss off a few folks who have.

Also missing for me was any real sense of impact at the story's Surprise Ending. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that the movie wasn't able to spend any time with any of the more incidental characters along the way... the book fleshed out a lot more of the surrounding cast, so when Things Happened that effected all of them, there was a lot more weight to the proceedings. This was probably always going to be problem for the film; with such a dense story, some details simply had to be left out in order to keep the running time under five hours. But in keeping the stories of the main characters intact (which really was an impressive feat in and of itself), we lost some of the context for the consequences of their actions. It left me feeling like we'd watched events unfold from far away, which is a tough trade off.

But for all of the good and bad and things that I liked or didn't, I'm surprised to say that I'm too close to this thing to know if it worked for anyone else! We saw a lunchtime showing on opening day, and there were only about thirty people in the theater. So aside from the dude behind me saying "damn!" every time a bone was snapped (and fair warning; it happened quite a few times), I really couldn't tell how it went over with the audience. Maybe it's brilliant. Maybe it's confusing and longer than it needs to be. Maybe it's a landmark event, or maybe it's a disappointment. All I know is that I'm really happy it finally got made by a director who gives a damn, and I'm probably going to have to see it again to get my head around it.

What did you think?

Alan Moore is Pissed

And you know what? That's fine. That's his prerogative.

Me, on the other hand? I'm freaking giddy. A grown man with a child at home probably shouldn't be this excited about tomorrow's release of the Watchmen movie, but guess what? I am.

I've spent nearly twenty years wondering how they could possibly pull it off. My buddy Andrew and I used to sit in the back of our high school art class and argue over who should play the leads and who we'd want to direct it. I've been following the blogs and reveling in the leaked details since the summer of 2007... we're talking seriously geeky behavior on my part, and I won't make excuses for it. I'm really, truly, genuinely fired up about this.

Alan Moore has refused to have anything to do with the movie since Hollywood ripped his Jack the Ripper and less-than-ordinaried his League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. And that's his business. All I know is that I walked in to a Target last night and saw a small mountain of the books for sale front and center. A Target, Alan. I think that's pretty freaking sweet.

I've been patiently watching the Watchmen develop, and I haven't seen the cast or crew put a foot wrong yet. Tomorrow we'll see if they've pulled it off at last. Tomorrow we'll see if Mr. Moore has a case.

Tomorrow is going to be a lot of fun.

Xbox Fixed and Xbox Fixed

I got my repaired console back today. Really a pretty quick turnaround in light of the two-to-four week estimate they give. I'm not sure if it's a repaired console or just a replacement because I haven't pulled it out of the box yet.

Hm. I'll bet you won't mind waiting a moment for me to open it.

Here we are. It's definitely not the same console -- different serial number and a 2008 manufacture date -- I'm guessing it's refurbished. I'll try plugging it in tomorrow in its new media-center role and see how it goes from there.

Of course it makes sense that the week my original console died was about when Microsoft came out and stated that the RROD problem has been solved. Granted it's an improvement in their design and repair process so my old console wasn't going to benefit. I'm content with the belief that my 360 was the one that inspired the solution, the final martyr to the cause.

That's right. My console died that yours might live forever.

A neat little bonus: the new box came with a free month of Xbox Live Gold taped to it.

So far I am satisfied.

When Worlds Collide: Apple and MUFC

As a fan of both Apple and the Busby Boys, I thought this was a great story following Sunday's Carling Cup shoot-out win. If it had popped up only ten years ago, I think people would have guessed it was science fiction or some sort of FA/ABU conspiracy.

Ain't technology cool? Ben Foster would say yes, but I have to wonder what Sir Bobby makes of it...