Saturday, September 30, 2006
HGL Field Trip
I can't go into too many details, thanks to the NDA I signed, but I was lucky enough to get invited to Flagship Studios on Friday afternoon, for some Hellgate: London play time. I'll be
posting more about it on my HGL site, obviously, but I just thought I'd mention it here in case anyone reads this and not that... though if you like HGL enough to care about my visit, that seems unlikely.
At any rate, it was a lot of fun to play the game and see the various guys I know from the old Blizzard North days, and honestly, if you thunked me on the head and I got amnesia and forgot all about the demise of Blizzard North and the founding of Flagship Studios, etc, and told me I'd been to Bliz North's new office yesterday, I wouldn't argue with you on the point. Same sort of vibe, lots of the same great guys, really fun game to play pre-release, well-stocked kitchen, timely pizza delivery, etc.
My only regret, aside from getting about 12 hours less play time than I wanted, was that Malaya had to work and couldn't come along (the visit opportunity came up on fairly short notice, so she couldn't plan ahead for some time off). I doubt I'll get another chance to visit pre-release, with them hoping to get into the beta testing by the end of the year, but if so I hope we can both go. I did bring her a shirt, at least, though Dusty's the only one
who's tried it on yet.
Labels: flagship studios, Hellgate: London
Friday, September 29, 2006
Live Boy or a Dead Girl
As the old saying goes, an incumbent politician won't quit unless he's caught with a live boy or a dead girl. It's a stupid saying, since it pretends there are no female politicians, insults homosexuals, overlooks financial scandals, etc. And yet...
sometimes it's true:
WASHINGTON - Rep. Mark Foley (news, bio, voting record), R-Fla., abruptly resigned from Congress on Friday in the wake of questions about e-mails he wrote a former teenage male page.
"I am deeply sorry and I apologize for letting down my family and the people of Florida I have had the privilege to represent," he said in a statement issued by his office.
...Foley's two-sentence statement gave no reason for Foley's decision to abandon a flourishing career in Congress. But several officials said the resignation had been prompted by the e-mails, and he took his action as fresh details emerged about electronic messages he had sent.
Foley, 52, had been a shoo-in for a new term until the e-mail correspondence surfaced in recent days.
...ABC News reported Friday that Foley also engaged in a series of sexually explicit instant messages with current and former teenage male pages. In one message, ABC said, Foley wrote to one page: "Do I make you a little horny?"
In another message, Foley wrote, "You in your boxers, too? ... Well, strip down and get naked."
You hate to laugh at this sort of thing, since it's serious for the man and his office, serious for the kid he was harassing, and so on, but with the extenuating evidence about this one, you can't help but chuckle a bit.
Foley, as chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus, had introduced legislation in July to protect children from exploitation by adults over the Internet. He also sponsored other legislation designed to protect minors from abuse and neglect.
"We track library books better than we do sexual predators," Foley has said.
Sounds like he was certainly speaking from experience there, eh?
Labels: politics, sex
Monday, September 25, 2006
Firefox!
So, I finally switched to using Firefox full time. And now, for my great Evangalizing tale...
Actually, there isn't one. It works 99% like the MIE 6.2x I'd been using, and aside from slightly different icon appearances, and a search toolbar rather than a pop up window, I wouldn't know I'd "made the switch," as they say. I changed for technical reasons; suddenly Sunday morning upon bootup my computer started popping up a WMI error box that I'd never seen before. It kept coming back too, every 20-30 seconds, and it was a new box each time; I couldn't just minimize it or drag it to a corner where I could ignore it.
Windows help was as useful as ever:
The WMI (Window Management Instrumentation) Control is a tool that lets you configure WMI settings on a remote computer or local computer. Use the WMI Control to set permissions for authorized users and groups, turn error logging on or off, back up the WMI repository, or perform other configuration tasks.
Which is great, but there's nothing about fixing it or making it stop popping up. I found some more info online, but just enough to learn that it's a feature that runs a lot of your computer's functions and that you can disable it, but that doing so will usually kill your firewall and lots of other necessary functions.
Repairing HD errors didn't help, and I couldn't run virus scan or much else since my computer was locking up each time the window popped up. I was considering reinstalling Win XP, when it stopped after the next restart, then started up again once I started surfing, and my browser kept crashing. About that time I noticed that the MIE icon was inexplicably missing from my quickstart taskbar, and taking that as a sign, I left the browser closed, saw that no pop ups appeared, and downloaded the latest Firefox, imported my bookmarks and browser settings, and fired it up.
Firefox worked just like MIE, the WMI pop up errors stopped, and the French webpage I was trying to view google translated (see news on the HGL site) didn't crash Firefox as it had MIE. And here I am, hours later and pretty happy. I've had to dig up several passwords since Firefox didn't import those, and I had to spend a while rearranging my bookmarks since they imported but were resorted alphabetically, but other than that there are no problems. Several sites even load faster, and I've been told that FF works much better with wikis, which is useful since I've been spending a lot of time on one of those lately.
So there.
Labels: firefox
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Raiders!
So with typical Bay Area NFL television options, I taped the early game, Oak@Balt, just to have something to FF through once I got up in the afternoon. I knew I wasn't going to watch StL@SF live, anyway. I mostly taped the Raiders for a laugh; they were humiliated 27-0 at home last week, and they were playing a Ravens team that won 27-0 last week. I joked about 54-0 being the likely outcome, but I didn't expect anything like that, mostly because I didn't think Baltimore had much of an offense.
I still don't, after skimming through
their 28-6 loss with much laughter, though this game was never in doubt. Oakland wasn't sacked 9 times like last week; they were sacked 6 times, and added 3 INTs, 5 fumbles (3 lost), and a general early season Bad News Bears vibe that would have absolutely ruined my weekend if I were a Raiders fan. Truly, truly embarassing. They've been outscored 55-6 on the season, and that's definitely on merit. They looked uncoached against San Diego last week; incredibly inept in their game plan. This week that wasn't as bad, mostly since Baltimore didn't exactly laser in on the Raiders' weaknesses. Oakland's execution was astonishingly inept though. I'd say it was like a high school team, but I think even teenagers play better fundamental football.
Aaron Brooks started at QB, and got benched after handing of twice, then fumbling the third and fourth snap he took from center. Baltimore recovered both inside Oakland's 25, and Oakland put in 2nd year QB Andrew Walter on their third series. Walter played the rest of the game, and also fumbled twice on snaps, but did manage to fall on both of those. He was less lucky against the pass rush, fumbling one that got run back 60 yards to set up another field goal, and throwing three picks, though two came late when Oakland looked increasingly ragged with desperation.
It was 28-6, but honestly, I wasn't that impressed by Baltimore. Their defense was opportunistic, but relatively porous, and they kind of outsmarted themselves with a variety of defenses that simply weren't necessary against Oakland's incompetent offense. Last week San Diego just jail breaked all game; never rushing fewer than 4, usually sending 5 or 6, and pressuring or sacking the QB on nearly every play. Oakland had no answers then, and didn't this week either, since any time Baltimore rushed more than 4 guys they either got a sack or put heavy pressure on the QB. Fortunately for Oakland's sanity, Baltimore got bored doing the same thing that was working, and started rushing just 3 or 4 guys while dropping others off into various zone coverage schemes, all of which were pointless since Oakland still doesn't have any quick passing plays. Everything requires a long, 7 step drop, and 90% of Oakland's passes are either curls to the sidelines, 20 yard lob passes to the sidelines, or crossing passes to big tight ends about 15 yards over the middle. They arne't any good, but occasionally they'd complete 2 or 3 in a row and move the ball a bit. They did get a couple of field goals, at least.
The bright spot, if you can call it that, was Oakland's defense, which didn't play poorly, considering. Baltimore kicked 4 field goals, but if you look at the drive charts for those, they were like 11 yards, 18 yards, 14 yards, etc. It was 9-0 in the first quarter, but Baltimore only had about 50 yards at that point thanks to a long kickoff return and Brooks' two fumbles at the line. Baltimore had a good TD drive just before half, but that was it until they scored with a few minutes to go, when Oakland's defense looked to have given up after their offense turned it over for the sixth time. Baltimore only has 264 yards, and given the field position they inherited, they really should have put up 40+. They're 2-0, but McNair threw 33 passes for just 143 yards, and looked very slow. He just dinked and dunked little drop offs to running backs and tight ends, for the most part, and Oakland sacked him twice, pressured him regularly, and largely controlled Baltimore, until that last drive of the game.
As for Oakland, it's tempting to say they have to improve... but why? Their defense will keep them in some games, but with their horrendous offensive coaching and play calling, and their crappy offensive line, it'll take some real breaks or a truly stupid opponent to allow them more than 14 points all season. The good news, for me at least, is that they're got their bye next week, which means I should have the option of watching two real teams play at 10am on Sunday.
Elsewhere, my nominal favorite San Diego won big again, and they've now outscored their two opponents 67-7 on the season. True, they warmed up
Nebraska style with a pair of Division II cream puffs (I'm not sure if Oakland was Louisana Tech or Nicholls State, but it hardly matters.) but in the NFL, all the wins count the same. SD's first real game comes in two weeks, after their bye, when they face Baltimore, who will certainly be 3-0 at that point after massacring their third hapless opponent.
Incidentally, what happened to parity? Why are there so many awful teams this season? Kansas City, Oakland, Tennessee, Cleveland, Detroit, Green Bay, Tampa Bay, and Houston are all 0-2 and all have looked horrible in both of their games. And I'm not even mentioning Carolina, Miami, and the loser of tonight's Dallas/Washington game, who are all also 0-2, though somewhat less deservingly. Meanwhile, Chicago's two game total is 60-7, San Diego's is 67-7, Atlanta's is 34-9, and Baltimore's is 55-6, largely thanks to a pair of games apiece against the flock of aforementioned tomato cans.
Labels: football
Friday, September 15, 2006
Cheerfully Accepting Mediocrity for Positive Mental Health
While replying to a friend's email I wrote a brief analysis of someone we both know, and immodestly thought my comments were faux-insightful enough to edit slightly and repost here, where everyone could read them. Don't bother trying to guess who I'm talking about; you don't know them (well, Malaya does) and he's not a celebrity. Just consider the personality type analysis, and the tragic and self-implicating conclusion I draw at the end.
...he's deceptively bright and can write adequately, but he seems to be missing the critical dose of self loathing (for himself and especially for his creative output) that all successful cynics and writers require. He thinks his merely-adequate features are great, and he is way off in his appreciation for his own comedic efforts, at least judging by the unfunny, 14 y/o skewing stuff he's posted on his site.
He's not a lost cause though; he's shown some shrewd literary appreciation and deprecation; he just isn't quite harsh enough on his own work. Or who knows, perhaps his inner critic is up to snuff and it's his talent that's lacking? Maybe he knows his writing is mediocre at best, but he also knows it's the best he can do, and he's come to terms with that and learned to embrace his limited talent. It's not a bad idea; most readers are perfectly happy with mediocrity, as a glance at the bestseller list will tell you, and if you can only turn out okay stuff, why live in misery, lamenting the brilliance you'll never consistently attain?
Is that conclusion depressing, or uplifting? After all, most people will never be great at anything. Should we chew through our dinner while browbeating ourselves for not being a great cook? Bang our heads against the steering mid U-turn for not being a flawless navigator? Slam our post-coital nuts in the bathroom door for not being an infinitely-energetic lover?
Of course not! (He said, while glancing nervously left and right.) We accept our own shortcomings and limitations in every aspect of life, while (hopefully) striving to improve. Why shouldn't that acceptance extend to our professional or public output? Plenty of creative people fall far short of brilliance with their writing, painting, composing, acting, tackling, pitching, etc. But if they're doing (something clsoe to) the best they can and striving to improve, or at least not regress, why shouldn't they take pride in their production? They're still better than 99% of the people on earth. Should Robert Jordan stop writing
The Wheel of Time just because George R. R. Martin is halfway through
A Song of Ice and Fire?
Hell yes! He should stop because books 7-10 were the longest squirt of literary autoeroticism this side of every myspace site with a pink background, and... *cough*
Okay, bad example. Sorry about that. My point though, is that good enough sometimes is, and even if you don't love your work, you can accept that it'll never be perfectly perfect, (Assuming you're less delusional than
the Good Widow Rice.) but that it's probably good enough. And yes, I tell myself that every day as the editing of my novel drags on, and on, and on, with vanishingly diminishing returns to anyone's eyes but mine.
Labels: psychology
Real Life Whores
I always enjoy seeing photos of real prostitutes, because the photos always prompt two questions, the first of which is rhetorical. 1) Is there any woman so ugly a man won't pay to have sex with her? And 2) What are those poxy things on her face?
Happily, The Smoking Gun has
a fresh batch of nine whores the local cops in Bensalem, Pennsylvania picked up off of Craigslist, and they amply answer my questions. #1)
No,
no, and
no. And #2) some
sort of herpes, I'd imagine. You know it's a scurvy lot when even the
token Asian girl is a mess.
Labels: prostitution
HGL Drama! On training wheels.
Well, not really. But it's the first thing I've felt worth posting here, since several posts about my Quixotic (and misguided) quest for the Flagship Studios Community Manager job. Just to follow up on that first, Goddamn am I glad I didn't get that job. It would be fun to play HGL every day, but I'd have gone insane months ago at the nearly-daily "answer the same questions on 10 fansite forums a day" grind, and if that and the pain in the ass dealings with major gmaing sites and media hadn't finished me off, the long hours and travel would have. Ivan Sulic, the guy who got the job, routinely sends emails to the fansite list at 8 or 9 or 10pm on weekends, he (and the rest of the company's PR apparatus) was recently in Germany for a week, and he's now in Japan for the Toyko Game Show. Yeah, some of the travel would be fun and I'd enjoy parts of the job, but the time drain would be unacceptable. I'd hardly ever see Malaya, and I certainly wouldn't have time for writing, working out, practicing martial arts, and spending time on various other important things I've yet to mention on this blog.
I'm much happier with my HGL connection being just a fansite, one that hasn't required that much of my time (and hopefully won't until the beta madness begins early next year). It's nothing like the fun it was co-running diaboii.net back in the crazy 1000 emails a day chaos after that game released, and I'm not making a dime from this site, but with lesser responsibilities come far lesser worries.
Speaking of worries, Ivan and Flagship have another one.
Info leaks, and the asshole fansite webmasters who
draw attention to them! I hate that Flux guy! Oh wait.
Anyway, if you're no following the issue, Flagship has thus far announced two of the characters in their upcoming title,
Hellgate: London. The Templar and the Cabalist. It's pretty clear from their release schedule and the amount of the game that's been completed with the beta supposedly starting in just a few months that there are only going to be three characters in the game (with two more in some future expansion, I suspect). And when you consider that their first game was Diablo, and notice that the Templar is basically a warrior, and the Cabalist is basically a mage, you're left with a rogue-type char for the third. A character who can do melee and cast some useful spells, but is primarily designed as a ranged attacker. They
said as much, and months ago.
As for rogues... Well, you can see already that our classes tend to be a mixture of several minor sub-types to create one compelling character. For instance, the Templar is a combination of monk, paladin, fighter, spellsword and barbarian classes, whereas the Cabalist is a mixture of wizard, sorcerer, summoner, necromancer, and psychic. It's not hard to imagine, thus, that another class could conceivably feature rogue-like attributes and skills in addition to many other things.
--Ivan Sulic, April 24, 2006
That's probably why they didn't hire me for the job... I could never drop such subtle hints!
Anyway, speculation on the 3rd char class has focused on a ranged attacker with some stealth/traps abilities since we learned about the Cabalist early this year, and scratched "mage with summoning and transformation abilities" off our lists. Everyone following HGL is certainly curious to see their take on the character, and to learn their backstory and see what the male and female versions look like, but there's pretty wide agreement on the basic character template, simply by process of elimination. (What will be interesting is the expansion, to see how Flagship can define 1 or 2 more chars without giving them abilities that overlap those of the first 3 hybrid type chars.)
The real questions, at times, has been speculation over what they'll call such a character. And now we know, thanks to this bit of description over one of the comic books they're releasing to promote the game:
Templar Commander Jessica Sumerisle, Cabalist Crowe Jane, and Demon Hunter Saul Petrus have reluctantly teamed together in the hunt to decipher this arcane symbol.
You knew they werne't going to be the 500th RPG to have a "rogue," not when they already called it that in
Diablo 1, and class titles like "assassin" or "marksman" or "gunner" or "sniper" seem both lame and limiting. "Hunter" was another possibililty that's been bandied about, but it didn't seem real appropriate for a character who basical mows down hundreds of demons in open combat. That's hunting like mowing the lawn is grass hunting. Flagship's apparent solution, as linked to above... "demon hunter!" Because that's so very different! See he's a hunter, who hunts... wait for it... demons! (HGL is set in London, 20 years after a demon apocalpyse, when monsters flowed through "hellgates" and overran the earth. Calling a character a "demon hunter" in this setting is kind of like calling the swordsman class in an orc-fighting game "Orc Slasher.")
Happily, the drama isn't just that the character class was (accidentally; the official news on Dark Horse comics does not include those class titles) leaked by a PR release to some comic book site, since I don't think that's very big news. It's just the character name, and not a very evocative one at that. We still don't know anything about the character's look, skills, back history, fighting abilities, etc. If anything, it adds to game interest, since we now know something about the 3rd character, and can spend our time speculating about what his/her skills and abilities might be.
That's not the drama. Not for a company that apparently had their entire source code stolen some months ago. No, the drama is on the periphery, where I've posted about the name leakage, and (most of) the other HGL fansites have chosen not to. They're honoring Flagship's wishes and frantically deleting threads in their own forums when any fans try to post or discuss the news. I'm certainly not unsympathetic to FSS' plight, and I've delayed info releases in the past when they've asked, but in this case I'm sorry, but the genie is
so out of the bottle. The news was posted on a comic book site and linked to by much-viewed threads in the forum of every major and minor HGL fansite. Despite the noble efforts of Flagship and people like myself, there are only about 500 people who give a shit about HGL at this point, and all of them saw the info yesterday morning when it was reported. Fifty of those people run fansites, and apparently 49 of them are so new to this and so loyal to FSS and so indifferent to their obligation to provide news to the fans that they're more than happy to self censor. I'm not.
I can kind of understand the other fansite webmasters' POV; I remember how in awe I was of Blizzard back in the early D2 days, and how any post by a Blizzard employee was cause for celebration. An email from them? Rapture! If they'd one day asked me to remove half the 500 images in our screenshot gallery because they didn't like the contrast ratio, I'd not only have done it, I'd have apologized for posting the screenshots in the first place, before begging for the chance to spend my weekend fixing the problem with Photoshop. That never kept me from wanting to post news when it came in though, and with the HGL site I've really made a point of that.
On the HGL site I'm running, I post news about anything good and HGLish, no matter where I find it. This despite the fact that a number of the other HGL fansites apparently view my/our site (Elly and Paul made the site and do a great deal of the backbone) as the enemy, and never post news links to us, even when we have exclusive content that every HGL fan would want to see. Gameplay movies, in depth reports from first hand play at E3, etc. Even as they rudely snub me, I still link to them when they happen across something good, and if you think Elly and Rush agree with that attitude, after our/their near-decade of being regularly raped by practically every other D2, War3, WoW, and GW fansite on the internet, you must live in a very happy, sun-filled world.
Adding more fun to the equation, two of the admins of a rival HGL site emailed me this morning to say that they already knew about the comic book class name reveal, and that they're not posting about it and that Ivan would want me not to post about it either. Which is probably true, but there are a lot of things Ivan and the rest of Flagship want, and while their desires are usually going to match up with mine and my responsibilities as a webmaster/news disseminator... usual does not equal always.
I'm not getting into a flame war over this issue, but I have to quote a few choice morsels.
...Simply put, the name of the class and its related info are all under non-disclosure agreement (NDA). It doesn't matter that you think it's "silly". It's still under a NDA. I'm sure I don't have to explain how contracts and NDAs work.
...I'd ask that you show Flagship the same courtesy as all the other fansites by stop pretending to be some kind of journalist for the New York Times.
...Please show some decency, and fulfill Flagship's request for reticence and remove the offending information and the related posts and advise your visitors to do the same.
I'm snipping a lot from his message, and I really don't mean to make fun, since the guy sent me a very polite message. But man! Delusions of... something. Equality, since Ivan gives him an email or ICQ every now and then?
I'm certainly sympathetic to Flagship's goals, and I hope the game is a big success both since I want to play it and since I'd like to have something to continue my fansite about. I am now, however, an unpaid extension of their PR wing. Well, I am, but I'm not a total hand puppet, damnit! At least not until Bill Roper gets a manicure. "
I am not an animal! I am a human being!" With dignity! And something superficially resembling self respect!
As I told the other fansite guy, I'm running an HGL fansite to provide information to the fans of the game. (Hence my linking to all good HGL stuff, even if it appears on other HGL fansites -- a practice most definitely
not adhered to by the emailer.) I am not, however, on Flagship's payroll, and I do consider myself a journalist, albeit one of a slightly
yellow-tinged hue.
I also found it amusing that he brought up NDAs, and even said he didn't need to explain how they worked to me. Apparently someone does need to explain them to him, since I know damn well I haven't signed anything in regards to reporting or not reporting HGL info, and I'm quite sure he hasn't either.
Of course the risk of all this "information wants to be free" grandstanding is that Flagship might get pissed and blackball my HGL site. That would be unfortunate, since at this early stage we're still dependent on Flagship itself for game info, a situation that will end the second any sort of public beta begins. True, I could just read other HGL sites for news and then report it myself, but that would cut into our coverage in at least one area. Ivan regularly sends out .docs of his many forum posts, which I whittle down to the highlights and post as news items. No one else does this, probably because they 1) don't want to link to other site's forums, and 2) it's work. I think it's great info for the fans though, and I think people will see that our news and coverage is better and know that if anything HGL worth seeing happens, they can count on my site to link to it. I could duplicate the posts by surfing the other forums, but having them all in one .doc is a great time-saver.
What'll happen as this drama unfolds remains to be seen, but it should be interesting. I should also note that our policy at the D2 site was initially to link to other fansites when they had something good. We gradually grew out of this thanks to other sites 1) never linking to us, and 2) constantly stealing our news and content. Despite, or perhaps because of this, (and our superior content/news/forums/etc), we soon became the leading D2 fansite, and the largest single game site on the entire Internet. In other words, my current policy at HGL is 1) repeating a past mistake, 2) contradicting direct personal experience, and 3) open to regretful revision. I hope not, though.
Labels: Hellgate: London
Televised Football
I spent too much attention on football last weekend, thanks to college on Saturday and good NFL games on Thursday, Sunday, and Monday night. This weekend is great for college, but thankfully, the NFL is back to their usual TV patterns in the Bay Area, and I'll have no problem doing more useful things this Sunday. 10am, Oak@Balt, 1pm StL@SF. Yes, just two games, unlike seemingly every other city in the US, where there are always 2 early and 1 late, or vice versa.
I might tape the Oak@Balt game just out of a sick voyeuristic interest, since last week Oakland lost 27-0, and Baltimore won 27-0. I wouldn't predict 54-0, but it's not completely out of the question, with Art Shell coaching and game planning.
Labels: football
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Monday Night Massacre
I promise I'm not going to get all carried away with blogging about football this year, but I had to say something about Monday night's SD@Oak game. San Diego won,
27-0, and I enjoyed watching it since as far (nott very) as I have a favorite NFL team, the Chargers are it. So it was fun watching them batter Oakland, but the enjoyment was tainted by Oakland just being so fricking awful.
The stats are painfully lopsided, and they're even worse when you consider that Oakland gained about 60 of their 129 yards during the last four minutes, after SD pulled most of their defensive starters and played a vanilla prevent defense.
I was honestly embarrassed by Oakland's play, and I blame it mostly on their coaching. The players seemed to be trying hard (at least for now) but their gameplan was unbelievably bad. They looked uncoached, as if they had done no preparation at all, and committed nearly as many stupid penalties as they always do. Their best play of the first half came when San Diego missed a field goal... and of course a Raider ran into the kicker after coming nowhere near blocking the kick, causing a penalty that gave San Diego a first down, and led to a shorter and successful field goal a few plays later.
San Diego came into the game with a great running game, good receivers, and a brand new quarterback. Every football fan in America knew that, and knew that Oakland would jam the line on defense, stuffing the running game and forcing SD's new QB to throw the ball under pressure. On defense, Oakland knew that San Diego had a terrifying front line and heavy pass rush, but that their defensive backs were suspect, so the logical course would be to throw the ball a lot, and quickly, since the pressure was always going to come hard.
What did Oakland do?
They played a soft nickel defense for most of the first half, allowing SD's all league running back to rack up 101 yards by halftime, while putting almost no pressure on SD's young QB, who threw the ball about 4 times in the entire first half, and never under any real duress. On offense Oakland called a lot of slow-developing sweeps and counter tray type runs, all of which failed since SD always had 7 or 8 guys near the line of scrimmage. And when Oakland passed their receivers all ran long patterns, which gave SD's five rushers time to collapse the pocket or sweep around the sides, leading to a near team record 9 sacks. Honestly, I can't think how Oakland could have designed their offense or defense more perfectly to play to San Diego's strengths.
If there were any real Raiders' fans, and not just a bunch of plastic halloween costume-wearing wannabes, there would be justifiable outrage amongst the Raider Nation. Their new coach humiliated the team on national TV, setting the tone for another disastrous season, and didn't even really seem to care. If Oakland were owned by someone other than Lizardman, say by George Steinbrenner, circa 1980, they'd be looking for an entire new coaching staff tomorrow.
The sad thing is that Oakland really wasn't really beaten that badly. It was only 13-0 at the half, and as one of the TV announcers said, no doubt sensing TVs clicking off all across the nation, "Oakland's only two plays from being right back in this thing." I laughed at the desperation in his voice, but he had a point, and 13-0 is far from an insurmountable lead -- so long as you don't keep doing the exact same stuff you did to dig that hole in the first half.
The Chargers went three-and-out their first 3 possessions of the 3rd quarter, all started inside their own 20. As a result, Oakland got the ball around midfield three times in a row, and with any kind of normal success would have turned that into at least 10 or 14 points. Instead they turned it into 3 punts, and SD finally moved a bit on their 4th possession of the half, when they stopped running plunges into the line on 1st and 10 and 2nd and 9, and sometimes 3rd and 7.
During the game, SD ran more or less up the middle on at least four 3rd and long situations, and made none of them. It looked quite a bit like they were playing to punt, figuring the 40 yards and time off the clock was worth it with their defense. And they were right, at least this time. It's not a strategy that would work against a real team, though. One with coaches who know what they're doing.
The story of the game was the SD defense, and Ladanian Tomlinson, who had 31 carries for 131 yards and a TD. Impressive, until you consider that he had a 58 yard break away, which means he only gaine 74 yards on his other 30 carries. And that sucks. That's unsustainable. It worked here, and the SD coach said they called the plays just for this game, and that he wouldn't have thrown more with any QB. Which is really quite a dis of Oakland's offense, when you think about it. The SD coach clearly had no worry about stopping them, as dumb as they were.
And it was dumbity, I assure you. Oakland threw about 4 quick passes in the whole game. All of them were complete, including two in a row to Randy Moss, who juked a defender or two on both and gained about 15 yards combined. They worked so well that Oakland never did it again, allowing SD's cornerbacks to get away with playing 10-12 yards back, which kept Moss from being able to beat them deep, even assuming the Oakland QB was still on his feet at that point. It was like Oakland had read some sort of, "The way we used to play football." manual, and determined that they were going to play like that. They'd throw the deep ball, they'd only run on occasion, and they'd never call a screen pass or keep tight ends in to block, and they wouldn't throw quick passes, even though the tactic worked every time they tried it, since that's not how they used to play back in the 70s and 80s, when Oakland was good.
I'm honestly depressed by this, and not just because I'm stuck watching local teams Oakland and SF every weekend, while far better games are on in every other market in the US. Although... it might be sort of fun watching Oakland play this year, if they're this bad every week. I was laughing out loud during MNF, and it's kind of the bad movie corollary: if a movie is just bad, it's no fun. But if it's beyond bad, it takes on an unintentional comedy sort of genius, and can become entertaining.
Labels: football
Monday, September 11, 2006
Monday Morning Things
NFL season started over the weekend, without much amazement. We had three games on TV here thanks to Oakland playing Monday Night, one of which I taped and sort of enjoyed watching later. The Sunday night game wasn't bad either, when I watched it at 2am on a break from writing. I'm looking forward to Monday night's SD@Oakland game, and will get to watch it around 1am, since I'll be out all evening and then interacting with Malaya once I get home, before she goes to bed.
Can you tell I'm trying to avoid getting into long football discussions on the blog this year? As a result, the preceding paragraph was among the most boring ever posted on this site, but at least there was only one of it.
My fingers aren't tired, but my brain is. I spent several hours Sunday evening working on an as-of-yet unannounced project, and then worked another couple of hours on HGL site stuff, several more on my novel, another hour on emails and instant messages, and here's this, as I prepare for bed. Happily, all these projects use very different parts of my brain, metaphorically speaking, and I can use the next one as a break from the previous one. My next break will involve snoring, and take place in the dark bedroom, with Jinxie propped over my left ankle.
We splurged on Chinese food Saturday night, and I got the best "
in bed" fortune cookie message ever.
Soon the credit for your input will be recognized.
Sounds like my
ExtenZe prescription must be on the way!
Much as I hate hot weather, the fact that our daily highs haven't exceeded 82 for a month is starting to aggravate me. Have the weather gods forgotten
the best $350 we ever spent? Do they not know that statistically, July and August are the two hottest months here, with September just a few degrees behind? Can they not arrange another (brief) daytime heat wave, giving us an opportunity to gloatingly unleash the 18000 BTU now squatting malevolently on our back patio, before October ushers in six months of daytime jacket weather?
I'm sure there was something else I meant to mention here, but my brain's kind of fried, so anyway, something something something...
Labels: football, weather
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Movie Review: Infernal Affairs
Infernal Affairs is a Hong Kong film about cops and crooks, set in modern Hong Kong. Each side has infiltrated the other, and crime continues as undercover operatives report back to their bosses, and side tries to hunt down the moles within their organization. The film has a great concept and some good performances, but the plot doesn't build on the set up, and the film has a very slow opening and uneven pacing throughout.
Incidentally, the DVD cover is completely misleading. I'm not even sure who that woman is, but no female ever appears in the film dressed anything like, and no woman ever handles a weapon at all. Lies!
To the scores, which are
explained here.
Infernal Affairs, AKA Mou Gaan Dou, 2002
Script/Story: 7
Acting/Casting: 6
Action: 4
Humor: 3
Eye Candy: 5
Fun Factor: 5
Replayability: 5
Overall: 5.5
This piece of Hong Kong cinema has a very high reputation among movie buffs, and after hearing good things about it for years, we thought it would be worth $7 as a used DVD. It wasn't bad, but neither Malaya or me thought it was an especially good film. It's not bad, and the plot/concept is great, but the performances weren't that great, and the screenplay didn't live up to the story's potential. We might be alone in our indifference, since the film's got
a stellar 8.0/10 rating from iMDB users, but we calls 'em like we sees 'em.
The set up is the best part. Ten years before, a Hong Kong gang took six of their newest members and sent them off to the police academy, to become cops and work their way up through the ranks, all while reporting back to the crime syndicate. Simultaneously, the police are trying to penetrate the triads with undercover officers, and eventually each side has one high-ranking mole sabotaging investigations and drug smuggling operations. The police chief and the crime boss both know they have a mole, and both spend much of the movie trying to find out who it is, while placing most of their trust in... the moles themselves.
Loyalties become compromised over time, as each guy makes friends and forms relationships based on lies and deception, and the viewer is left to wonder if the cop will come back to law and order, and if the gangster has grown tired of his double life and resentful of his violent and crazy mob boss.
That's the theory, anyway. In actuality the cop was clearly a good guy and sick of being undercover as a criminal, and the criminal had a nice girlfriend and respected the police chief, and was clearly having second thoughts about helping the gang. The gang leader wasn't a bad guy either, making him understandable and almost reasonable, and the only crime shown was some drug smuggling, so the gang didn't really seem all that bad, and the gangster pretending to be a cop was doing nothing more than a sort of hi-tech espionage.
The film needed more juice; the gangsters should have been portrayed as more evil and crazy, especially the boss, and the undercover cop should have had to compromise himself more to maintain cover. They should have made him watch rapes, or made him beat someone to death. At the same time, the undercover mob guy seemed like the best, most noble cop in the film. Always full of misgivings, and with his gangster allies doing nothing but selling drugs, it wasn't like he was directly causing murders or child slavery or anything morally-damning.
I actually had trouble caring who was doing what for a while, with all the war room scenes of cops trying to bust heroin shipments, and moles undercutting their efforts. My complete personal ambivalence over the pointless war on drugs came in there, and as with drug busts in the US, I was like, "Who cares? It's not like 10 more boats aren't coming in with more heroin tomorrow night." As long as it's illegal and there's a demand, there will be smugglers getting rich off of it, and tax dollars being wasted trying to stop it.
Eventually the plot started kicking in some nice plot twists, as other characters turned out to be more or less than what they seemed, and there was a decent face off at the end. The conclusion felt rushed, though, and we didn't really care who won or lost in the end, since we had no one to root for or against. The fact that there's an alternate ending with a totally different conclusion, and that we had no real preference for either version, pretty well sums up our interest in this well-made but uninvolving film.
Our other problem, and I hope it doesn't sound racist, but we couldn't tell the actors apart for the first half hour. Everyone in the film is a young male, everyone's Chinese, everyone's got short black hair and no facial hair, everyone's in uniform, all their voices sound the same speaking a foreign language, subtitles don't have character name tags, and there are about 10 speaking roles all moving quickly. Eventually we caught on once the film moved forward in time and the undercover cop had facial hair, but the first portion of the film was a long sequence of, "Which guy was that? Is he the cop or one of the gangsters?"
While I can't really recommend this movie, I did enjoy the concept enough to get interested in the American remake. It's called
The Departed, and it's coming out October 6, 2006, with an all star cast. Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Matt Damon are the four leads, though I don't know which are the cops and which are the crooks. I usually have no interest in US remakes of foreign films, but in this case I'm curious, since the concept of Infernal Affairs was solid; it just lacked on suspenseful execution, meaningful character development, and sufficient plot twists. Can the US script improve on the grit and conflict, and change enough details to make it suspenseful for people who have seen the original? Can Martin Scorsese amp up the tension and keep the film's flow more even? I guess we'll find out.
Labels: movie review
Saturday, September 09, 2006
The Protector: US version
As I said
in my review, I saw the Asian version of Tony Jaa's
The Protector (AKA
Tom Yum Goong) and thought the plot a right mess. I wouldn't call it 110 minutes of incoherent bullshit punctuated by awesome martial art scenes, but I wouldn't argue much if someone else did. I was curious about what they'd change in the US verison though, and if the editing would improve things. Well, the film's opening this weekend, and while I'm not curious enough to buy a ticket, I can read the reviews without leaving my seat.
There are
58 reviews on RT now; evenly split between good and bad. The good ones say they liked the action despite the rest of the film, and the bad ones... well, here are a few quotes:
Scene after scene is fashioned together in the most confusing (read that as meaning 'dull') fashion, like a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle missing half the pieces.
Michael Ferraro, Film Threat
The Protector is a disaster, barely made viewable by Tony Jaa's incredible physical abilities, often trapped inside shitty fight choreography anyway.
Devin Faraci, CHUD
... it's little more than a disjointed succession of kick-ass action scenes motivated by a country bumpkin's quest to rescue his giant pets from big-city baddies.
Maitland McDonagh, TV Guide's Movie Guide
So muddled as to be virtually incoherent...but the chases and fight scenes are the raison d'etre of The Protector, and in purely athletic terms they're great.
Frank Swietek, One Guy's Opinion
And so on. They made edits too; our DVD is 110 minutes, and the theatrical is listed at 90, which includes the credits, meaning it's more like 83. Cutting half an hour had to make the plot more incoherent, but it was such a bad plot with awful acting and characters that we didn't care about that I'd say US audiences are still coming out ahead. The Asian version isn't incoherent, really, it's just bad.
The bigger issue is mentioned by a few critics; Tony Jaa, for all his outstanding physical abilities, has zero screen personality. He is almost expressionless, he can't speak English, he's got a baby face that doesn't have any character, he can't emote or act anything but a sort of "let's fight" determination, and he doesn't have that feral, glowing sort of ferocity action movie stars need to manifest. Hardly anyone has all of those traits, especially when you're talking about martial artists, but you'd better have at least a few of them if you're going to be a movie star, rather than just a glorified stunt man.
Jackie Chan couldn't look mean and he didn't have presence, but he was playful and fun and invented a lot of fun stunts. Jet Li can't act or smile or emote or speak English, but he's got a glowering presence and a pock-marked face that makes him stand out. Bruce Lee exuded presence and charisma, and had a twinkle in his eye that made the camera love him. As of now, Tony Jaa has none of these things, and there's no way to say if he'll ever develop them. He'll need to, to move beyond low budget chop socky that people like me (and perhaps you) enjoy. On the other hand, he'll also have to considerably tone down the violence if he goes mainstream, and that would suck.
You can shoot hundreds of people in a mainstream action film, but you can't beat them to death, or break their arms and legs, or hit them with clubs, the way Tony does in his largely-realistic action sequences. Yes, good martial arts does exactly that, but there's a reason quite a few people can't even watch boxing, much less MMA-style brawls; realistic violence is upsetting to them. The same people who will gleefully watch Ah-nold blow away 50 terrorists wince and cover their eyes at the sight of a well-executed arm break. So maybe I shouldn't root for Tony to break into the mainstream, since that would just ruin what I think are the best elements of his films.
Labels: tony jaa
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Movie Review: The Protector, AKA Tom Yum Goong
Tom Yum Goong was the original name of the film set for a September 9th release in the US, as "
The Protector." It's Tony Jaa's second major film release (he had bit and key parts in several very low budget films that are now being re-released) and the first film he's been in that had anything approaching modern production values. It's still not any good, at a film, but the fight scenes are incredibly good, better than the ones in Ong Bak, which was the best martial arts film I'd seen prior to this one.
This review is based on the import DVD, purchased some months before the film was (finally) released in the US, so the version most of you see in theaters or on DVD may be different. Frankly, I hope it is, since the version of TYG I saw was a complete mess, with an incredibly sprawling and unnecessary gangster/bad guy aspect to the plot, when no one really wants to see anything but more of Tony Jaa fighting and doing acrobatics.
To the scores, which are
explained here.
Tom Yum Goong, 2005 (AKA The Protector, AKA Ong Bak 2) 2005
Script/Story: 3
Characters: 4
Action: 9
Combat Realism: 8
Humor: NA
Horror: NA
Eye Candy: 6
Fun Factor: 6
Replayability: 8
Overall: 6
I was torn on my overall score, especially since
I gave Ong Bak a overenthusiastic 7.
Ong Bak wasn't that good a film; a real score for
Ong Bak for it would be about a 4, but the fighting was so good I elevated it substantially. It was an 8 or 9 for a martial arts/action fan, and about a 2 for anyone else.
TYG is a far better film than
Ong Bak, at least in terms of production values and budget and variety of fight scenes, and it has better/more fighting action, but it didn't have as much of a feeling of being fresh and never-before-seen. So I'm scoring it more realistically, in comparison to other mainstream films. As
chop socky, it would get a 9+. As a real film, it's about a 5, though one that non-martial arts fans would probably find unwatchable.
The fight scenes and action were outstanding, but as for the rest? Pretty much dreadful. The US release might be improved by some editing, since there was a lot of dead wood in the import version we saw on DVD, since we were unwilling to wait for the US theatrical release. The film we saw seemed to have been edited in almost random fashion. Numerous scenes (almost all that don't involve fighting) appear and end without making any real sense. There's a fight scene, then you're in an office with 10 characters you don't recognize, then some police shout at each other, then a bunch of characters are in a cemetery, then there's a helicopter shot of a jungle, then Tony Jaa walks into a warehouse and fights a bunch of rollerblading badguys, then some girl is in a mudbath with a police official, and so on.
It's all well-shot and well-lit and in-focus (all steps up from
Ong Bak's home movie quality production values) but the plot is scattered all over the place and the continuity of the scenes is quite suspect. It's basically too big a movie; the plot needs to stay focused on Tony Jaa and his quest to find his stolen elephants and get revenge on the bad guys who stole them. We don't need any of the long digressions featuring interchangeable Asian mafia bad guys, police department power struggles, random immigrant girls and their poverty problems, news reporters, etc. At least 50% of the non-fighting scenes could easily be jettisoned, and at 110 minutes, TYG would definitely have been improved by the removal of at least 20 minutes of nonessential bullshit.
StoryIn
TYG/The Defender, Tony Jaa is an innocent villager in Thailand or some other jungly-type Southeast Asian counry, he and his father raise and live with a female and male elephant, and their one son. They make and sell furniture, and some time after some poachers kill the mama elephant, the King hosts some sort of festival. Tony and dad take their father and son elephants to the show, and while Tony's distracted watching some martial arts dad gets shot and the father and son elephants are kidnapped. Tony finds out they were taken to Australia and goes after them. The rest of the film is him wandering around Sydney and fighting lots of bad guys.
The problem is the subplots. We get scenes showing the evil mafia guys about five times more than we need to, since we don't care. Some odd transvestite son is trying to take over the mafia organization, there are assassinations and poisonings and corrupt police and mistaken identities, and it just goes on and on in entirely unnecessary fashion.
It's basically an early Jackie Chan movie with delusions of grandeur. There's lots of action and some comedy and bad guys who must be brough to fist-based justice. Jackie even makes a cameo, when he and Tony Jaa bump into each other in the airport. But it's a Jackie Chan plot gone wrong, since we need just a little bit to establish the cartoony bad guys and set up the final confrontation when our hero tracks them down and takes vengeance. Instead we get numerous scenes of them doing stuff we don't care about. It's like the director saw
The Godfather too many times and wanted to make a real movie, with a heavy martial arts component. He should have stuck to the martial arts, since Tony is completely off the screen far too much of the time. True, Tony's acting skills seem to be inversely proportional to his martial arts talent, and any time he's on screen talking it's actively unpleasant, but the script did him no favors. A typical scene establishes some bad guy hang out, and then Tony runs in and starts shouting for his elephants, in Thai. "Where's Corn! Where's Corn! Bring me Corn!" he cries, over and over again. Corn is the name of his young elephant, you see, though I can't say why he expects any of the Australian bad guys to know that, when he busts in shouting in Thai.
His shouting works well enough though, since whenever he does it a bunch of bad guys run out to fight him and he beats them up in creative fashion, and then we get another scene with mafia guys talking, and then Tony comes in shouting, and so on. It's really about as bad a movie as it could possibly be, with such good martial arts.
Martial ArtsAnd the martial arts are great. I've linked in the past to various fight scenes online,
this one with lots of guys in black and arm breaks, and
this one vs. capoeria fighter Lateef Crowder, a guy with a broadsword, and a really huge steroid brute. (The water fight in the church is a good example of the insanity of the film's plot, since Tony and another guy are hiding in the church, and they say, "The police might check here. We should leave." The film cuts to them sitting parked in a field, and they say, "We should go back, something bad might have happened." and then they're back at the church, which is in flames and infested by evil martial arts guys. So then they leave again, after the fight scene.)
Those two action scenes hardly scratch the surface; the first one is just a small excerpts of the whole scene it takes place in, and there are several other fight scenes as long or longer than those, along with lots of short, intense fight scenes.
The best one in the movie is probably a fight in an underground club/casino, since it's done in one long steady cam shot. I'm talking long, like 4 or 5 minutes of unbroken footage, in which Tony fights a bunch of guys the lobby, then ascends a spiral staircase with stops on each landing to beat down more bad guys. They fight with weapons, furniture, fall over the side of the stairs, get kicked through walls and doors, and on and on, and all in one take. Tony must dispatch 50 guys in the scene, all without an edit or a cut. You can tell he's getting a little winded by the end, and it really reminded me of some of the extended sparring sessions we do in Kali class, against one or more people, where you have to pace yourself and use less-demanding moves when you get tired, save energy for flurries, etc. It's a marvelous shot though, and really illustrates the benefit of having an actual martial arts guy in your film, rather than just training Keanu Reeves or Matt Damon or whoever to fake it. When Tony and other martial artist/stuntmen are going at it, the camera can just show what they're doing from a distance -- everything doesn't have to be multiple camera angles and close ups and deceptive editing.
Overall, this film gets my highest recommendation if you enjoy fight scenes and martial arts. If you don't it's not something you'll enjoy sitting through, and in any event, you're probably better off buying or renting the DVD so you can fast forward through the crap and watch the good stuff over and over.
Labels: movie review, tony jaa
Longest Movie Reviews Ever
If you think my movie reviews tend to run long, you're correct. However, you're very wrong if you think I'm the only one, or even the longest one. Thanks to a link I've long since forgotten, I ended up at the
Agony Booth earlier tonight, and marveled at the wonder that was the Batman and Robin
review/recap. At thirteen (
yes, 13) pages, it's quite possibly longer than the script for that misbegotten adventure in celloid waste.
It's also not the longest review on the site, since his
treatise on Zardoz comes in at 15 pages, and after cutting and pasting from the handy printer-friendly version, I discovered that it ran almost 25,000 words. And, because I was curious, I checked my longest review, which is inexplicably for
Underworld! A film I awarded a 4 (out of 10) to and disliked enough to skip avoid ever watching it again, despite its nearly constant presence on cable TV. My Underworld review runs a mere 6400 words, or hardly long enough to measure on the Agony Booth metric. (My review pages for
The Matrix 2 and
LotR:RotK are both much longer, but each compiles several blog entries, reader feedback, etc.)
Penis issues aside, the Agony Booth reviews aren't reviews; they're more like recaps, or perhaps post morteums would be a more accurate description. They're like live blogs of the entire films, with every scene described, memorably bad dialogue quoted, sarcastic comments inserted when needed, and so forth. They must take hours and hours to write, but if you want to know all about a movie without acutally sitting through it, the Agony Booth can be a valuable resource, and it's definitely a lot more enjoyable to consume.
I've never made it through more than 5 or 10 minutes of Batman and Robin, but I read a good chunk of the Agony Booth dissection, and gained great insight into why exactly that film is probably the worst megabudget movie ever made. I've always been astonished by the horrible performances, with absolutely everyone but Alfred the Butler camping it up worse than Boy Scouts on an overnight to Lake Minnehaha, but it seems that the film has far more horrible stuff to offer than just the acting and dialogue. For example, it's absolutely chock full of laughably-implausible action scenes, incredibly stupid human interactions, and is constantly punctuated by horrendous puns and various stupid scenes that clearly exist only to set up the horrendous puns. Director Joel Schumacher has defended it by claiming he meant the whole thing as a sort of an over-the-top action movie parody, and yeah, it kind of is, but 1) I think that might have been accidental, and 2) a parody has to do something other than suck self-ironically to sustain viewers through 100 minutes of flashing lights, bright colors, and loud sound effects.
The film and its ridiculous circus antics did serve a purpose though: it killed off the franchise for a decade, and ensured that when Batman got back on the big screen in last year's
excellent Batman Begins, the character and the film would be appropriately dark and serious.
Labels: batman, movie review
Monday, September 04, 2006
Crocodile Hunter RIP
In news that's dominating this traditionally newsless US holiday weekend, the famed and somewhat insane Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin, has died to, of all things, a stingray barb. He was not exactly a celebrity, but he was internationally-known, enough so to warrant
an obit in the London Times:
As the exuberant, golden-haired, khaki-wearing and apparently fearless Crocodile Hunter, he got very close to — and even wrestled — numerous apex predators. His unscripted narration was punctuated with "Crikey!" and "Look at this beauty!"
...Irwin was typically to be seen crawling towards wild crocodiles, snakes, goannas and spiders, among many other animals.
"I would never blame an animal if it bit me, that is for sure," he said to one interviewer, "because I’m at fault, not them". He later estimated that he had been bitten more than 1,000 times. He was sanguine as ever when his leg was "chomped" by a saltwater crocodile and needed 12 stitches. "I heal so quickly," he said. "I tell you what, if you cut my arm off I would grow a new one."
His most (in)famous moment is pictured here, when he did his usual "feed the crocs" show at the zoo, while cradling his infant son in one arm.
At the time I joined most people in thinking he was insane, but in retrospect I'll grant that he knew what he was doing. After all, Irwin had spent more time around crocodiles than almost anyone, and he'd probably done that raw chicken bit in his zoo a thousand times, without incident. The animal in this instance was basically a trained zoo performer, and Irwin knew how fast a croc could lunge, how high it could jump, that it would go for the chicken and not him, etc. So no, his kid probably wasn't in any danger, but that doesn't make the whole thing any more reasonable. It's not like the infant gained anything from the experience of being tucked under dad's arm like a football and swung about while a big lizard snarled and a crowd of hundreds gasped at Irwin's lapse in judgment.
As for his death, it's both tragic and ridiculous. I don't imagine too many people were shocked to hear that the Crocodile Hunter died to an animal, but a stingray? I'd have bet on a snake getting him, personally. He had tons of near-misses with his patented bare-handed pick up technique, and it seemed only a matter of time until he slipped or misplayed and got a bite to the face from something slithery and venomous. Instead he got nailed by a stingray, an animal that has a dangerous barbed tail, but which
almost never uses it for more than injuring someone's ankle.
Stingrays are placid fish whose larger species are occasionally known to tolerate the efforts of gung-ho scuba divers to "hitch a ride" by clinging to their fins. But when the usually non-aggressive creatures feel threatened or are trodden on, they are capable of delivering horrific, agonising injuries by lashing out with the razor-sharp, barbed sting at the end of their tails.
The barbs, which grow out of the bayonet-like fingernails, are designed to snag in the flesh of the ray's unwary victim. Each barb is serrated and can be up to 20cm (8ins) long, and is coated with a paralysing toxin which the ray secretes along two grooves in its tail.
...Victoria Brims, a shark and stingray expert, has said that Irwin’s death was only the third known stingray death in Australian waters. An Aboriginal boy died several years ago, while the previous record death was in Melbourne in 1945. Only 17 such deaths have ever been recorded worldwide.
The medical report says that Irwin got plunged right through the heart. I can see him floating above the animal, pointing down with many a bubbly "Crikey!" and then bang, something startled the ray and it zoomed away, lashing out with the tail as it went. And by a freak accident, it happened to bang Irwin in about the only place it could have killed him.
The question now is were they filming, and will they show the footage at some point. The answer to the first question is,
yes!
The events were caught on camera, and the footage was handed to the Queensland Police. After reviewing the footage of the incident and speaking to the cameraman who recorded it, marine documentary filmmaker and fisherman Ben Cropp speculated that the stingray "felt threatened because Steve was alongside and there was the cameraman ahead."
As to when/if the footage will air, there's no word yet. You know Irwin would want it shown since he documented everything he did, and showed all his screw ups and errors. His wife and kids might feel differently, given the outcome of events, but I'm not speaking for them. If it were on though, could you turn away? I would have to watch it; I mean hell, you know the guy's actually going to die at the end of the show, how can you change the channel?
Overall, I'm actually sad about this, unlike 99% of the other "celebrity" deaths I hear about. I enjoyed Irwin's work and had an affection for his mania; he was even memorably parodied on
an episode of South Park. I don't know if he went out trying to "cram his thumb right up the butt'ole" of the stingray, but it would make me happy if he did.
Quotes. More quotes, including
this one:
"If something ever happens to me, people are gonna be like 'we knew a croc would get him!'"
Labels: steve irwin
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Gender Confusion
Looking over
some gossip blogs, I see that the Mtv VMAs were on yesterday. I'm not sure if anyone really gives a damn about them, or pays attention to popular music anymore, but I did see one thing I thought worth commenting on. This picture of Fergie and two of her backup dancers.
Feel free to join me in a "WTF?"
At first you want to congratulate Fergie for actually finding two women ugly enough to make her look good. Or at least better. And then you look closer and you're like, "Those are guys, right?" Before realizing, "Wait, does the one on the right have boobs?"
Honestly, I don't know what I think now. I guess I'm leaning towards them being guys with fake tits, for some weird, theatrical reason. I can't call them transvestites since they don't look like women. Are they even supposed to? Are they actually attractive women who Fergie's makeup people successfully attacked?
Thanks to
the magic of YouTube I even watched Fergie's show opening, lip-synched performance of her annoyingly-catchy
London Bridge tune, but that didn't answer any of my questions. It turns out there are actually four backup dancers like these two, but the image quality on YouTube isn't good enough to make a guess at their genders. The choreography of the song has them dancing like women, but that doesn't prove anything, given the long history of androgenous dancers in this sort of song. Witness most any Madonna video from the past 15 years, for instance.
Labels: fergie, music
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