Empty Bookshelf Reviews

Author: Nate

LOST: Season 2

ULTRA-MEGA REVIEW!!!

Note: This review was mostly written before Dan decided to call me out, which is kinda coincidental, but in which case will read less like I’m defending myself (which he pre-assumed I’d be writing in response), and more like a straightforward and attemptedly (yes, I said “attemptedly”) unbiased review. I’ve also written it before the airing of the season finale, which may be unfair (due to possible “wrapping up” of plots, or paying off of loose ends from earlier), but may in actuality be more fair due to the fact that I’m not blinded by my opinion of the single episode, keeping me honest about the rest of the season. Also, I apologize for the extreme longwindedness.

I wonder if their island Abercrombie takes American Express.
I guess I should just be happy that they’re all looking in the same direction in this group shot.

With Dan’s take on “the current TV landscape” overtly lacking any mention of the rise of drama and fall of comedy (only 13 hours a week among the five networks devoted to comedies for next fall, as opposed to 47 for dramas… of course that’s counting Desperate Housewives as a drama), I thought I’d focus on a few hour-long shows in my next set of reviews.

First and foremost, my current favorite drama, and the winner of last year’s Emmy and Golden Globe in the category. LOST’s Season 2 managed to expand the world of the show enormously, but still keep viewers in the dark as to the overall picture, and wanting more answers, sometimes a good thing and sometimes a bad thing.

For those of you who haven’t watched any of the show at all, it’s probably best for you to start at the beginning, partly because there’s so much going on, and partly just because the first season is a lot better. The show revolves around the survivors of a plane crash on a mysterious island. There’s a huge cast of characters, including the doctor, the Korean couple, the fugitive, the con-man, the ex-druggie rock star, the pregnant Australian girl, the rich brother and sister, the mysterious and wise bald man, the black guy and his estranged son, the Iraqi military man, and of course, the fat guy….. Whew, I think that’s all of them. There apparently were 38 total survivors, but these are the only ones we spend any real time with. The other 24 people are usually just random extras walking around in the background, who somehow never have anything interesting to do in the way of advancing the story. While learning how to get along and how to survive together, they encounter various different strange things, including some sort of monster that uproots trees and kills people, some polar bears, a strange French radio transmission that says “it killed them all”, and has been playing for sixteen years… and that’s only in the first two hours.

Whereas the first season included events that seemed strange, and you could just say, “They’re on a strange island”, season 2 tried to give vague answers to the questions about the oddities, and at the same time, keep viewers intrigued by keeping them in the dark, revealing the story little by little. Of course with each “answer” comes at least 3 more questions. It’s this dragging on of the answers that drives most people to keep watching. There are those, however, who are frustrated by the whole thing, and are too cynical, or just would rather watch shows that wrap up nicely every episode. Personally, I’m a fan of the shows with huge overarching stories and cliffhangers meant to keep me tuned in. It means the characters must be well-developed and we feel an attachment to them more than if we just see them solving a case or healing someone. I also enjoy those types of shows, because while adhering to the serialized nature of old-time movies (the ones your grandparents tell you about seeing for a nickel every Saturday), they tend to be the ones challenging the rules and format of television shows, breaking new ground and taking us places we’ve never been. I tend to shy away from cop shows and hospital shows, because in essence, Grey’s Anatomy is Chicago Hope is St. Elsewhere, and it’s been done to death, usually by the same people (cough cough, Steven Bochco, David E. Kelly). Lastly, I’ll just admit that usually when I’m interested in an episode of something and it ends in a cliffhanger, I will be the sucker that P.T. Barnum was talking about, and I will desire to see a suspenseful moment come to its conclusion, whether it be a week later, or after a commercial break. That’s why once you start watching an episode of Law and Order you can’t stop until its over, but you could care less about watching another one.

Getting back to pushing the (for lack of a better phrase) “grammar of the medium” in new directions, the first season was so gripping because all of the characters were interesting and new. Also, it employed a completely unique way of introducing us to their personalities, using intermittent flashbacks that focused on one character each week, and one particular story from that person’s past. Usually, these stories are picked/written to reflect what that person is going through on the island, and to inform the viewer of why he/she is acting a certain way, or making a tough decision.

Oftentimes, and what made the show so intriguing from the get-go, was how they played with the expectations created by our first impressions of characters. They’d go back and show us that certain people led completely different lives than they want others to assume, the lives that they’ve left behind, so that they can start with a clean slate. Also, many of the people had strange instances in their past, and occasionally if you looked closely, you’d see another of the people from the island in someone else’s flashback, or at least a connection to the other person. People (the internet obsessives… I don’t consider myself one, but I’ll look at the evidence they have to offer) started to obsess over why certain characters were appearing in others’ flashbacks and if everyone who was on the plane had some sort of “six degrees”-style connection to each other. Of course, since nobody ever talks about their past either (in addition to not talking about island discoveries), nobody ever realizes, “Hey, that guy in that picture’s your dad? I took a trip to Australia with him and he was wasted. I was gonna offer him some help, but I had to get somewhere. How’s he doing?” “Oh he ended up dead from alcohol poisoning in a gutter in Sydney. That’s actually where I was flying from, when the plane crashed into this island hell. Thanks a lot for ruining my entire existence, you jackass.” One big question that nobody ever really touches on, though: are these flashbacks specifically intended for the viewer, and therefore completely the facts, or are we seeing the thoughts and memories of the specific characters, allowing them to eventually somehow be discredited, i.e. could they be using the faces of people from the island to replace background people from events in their past, just because they can’t remember what those random people looked like, or possibly had their memories tampered with?

While it is perfectly feasible to fill 24 hours of television (with commercials) this way, at some point it’s going to get old, and the flashbacks are going to become insignificant or boring. That’s my first complaint about the second season (over 1000 words in!). While most of the stories in the characters’ pasts were relevant to their present motives and actions, many of them were just plain boring or possibly irrelevant to the big picture. Sure, I can’t expect every one of everyone’s flashbacks to involve something paranormal, but watching the con-man pull off a pretty normal con job, that has nothing of relevance to do with his overall story-arc, and is completely predictable, isn’t the most interesting thing to me… especially if it’s slow-moving. The same goes with watching the blonde rich girl try to get over the fact that she’s “useless”, or the bald guy trying to come to terms with his estranged and ungrateful father, or the rockstar trying to help his junkie brother get clean. I understand the reasons that they were put there in terms of what the characters were going through in the present, but if I want to watch boring melodrama about a whiny teenage rich girl who wasn’t allowed a shot at her dream because her dad left all her money to her stepmother who won’t give her a cent, I’ll go watch The O.C. At least there I’ll learn what “Indie” (the genre) music is hip nowadays. Even WB shows are at least more entertaining than that.

After exhaustive research, I’ve determined the location of the LOST island. It’s the one that looks like a pie.

In the second season they’ve moved away from stories about the survivors trying to get off of the island (save for one episode where one guy justly decides to create a giant SOS sign, and nobody wants to help for some reason), or fighting over food and medical supplies (mysterious food drops keep them supplied, in addition to the island’s staggering amount of mangoes), and basically all of the necessity-type issues, and onto the bigger things at hand. You see, it’s not themselves that they should be fighting with (although that proves difficult due to the incredible amount of stubbornness each character possesses), it’s the group of people on the other side of the island, who were there before the plane crashed and who want something from the survivors but won’t tell them what, instead opting to threaten them, and kidnap some of them. Of course, like with everyone else on the island, I’m sure if they all just talked it out, and thought about things before doing them, all of the conflict and issues with each other would be solved. But this isn’t a show about problem solving. It’s a show about characters acting, usually, stupidly or irrationally, with the only reason being to keep the plot going. After all, if there was no conflict, we’d be watching Gilligan’s Island, and who wants to watch that? In fact, I guess in the simplest terms, the problem is that the show went from having the characters drive the plot forward in the first season to having the plot drive the characters in the second season. Rather than being about what the survivors find, or what choices they make, it becomes about the things on the island that affect the characters, and the “mythology” of the place… how it affects the characters, and not how they affect each other.

Of course, what second season would be complete without a group of new characters? In addition to the mysterious people on the other side of the island, (who may or may not be running some sort of scientific experiment on the crash survivors), there was a second group of survivors who were in the tail section of the plane (affectionately referred to by the online community as “talies”), that eventually got whittled down due to attacks and kidnappings by the mysterious “others”. These characters were greeted by fans with mixed reactions, some becoming quick favorites and good additions, and others being grating and just seeming like dead weight meant to stir conflict, but not really serving their purpose. By now, there’s only a few left, due to some high profile offings of characters.

This brings me to my second (or is it third? or fourth?) complaint. This season (not just on this show, as I’ll explain if I write something about 24 season 5) has been filled with the killing off of popular characters, or at least medium-sized ones. If it’s done for a story purpose on occasion I don’t have too much of a problem with letting go of characters. The problem comes when a show does it mainly for ratings and once it’s over things don’t change as much as they should, or characters don’t react as dramatically as they should for as long as they should. There was one major death in the first season, and it was used to advance characters’ reasonings, heighten drama, and make a statement to the audience that people are expendable… that “anything” can happen. Then in the second season, with as much advertising hoopla as in the first season, there was another death. This was done in a way that should have heightened tensions within the group and drove the plot for upcoming episodes. Unfortunately, I believe this was mishandled and after 2 episodes (about 2 days time on the show) everyone had pretty much gotten over the fact that she died. The producers contend that they had nowhere to advance the character to, but she had just started two new minor storylines. Near the end of the season they had at least one more major death, and this one finally did what it needed to do, served as a motivation to advance the story in a major way, promising payoffs in this finale, which the producers have sworn will be more revealing than last year’s (generally considered) underwhelming finale, and yet at the same time also leave us with a huge cliffhanger that will set up next season’s major conflict.

Which brings me to a topic that I don’t know how I feel about. Certain TV shows like to set up a goal that characters are attempting to achieve, and with that, payoffs and conclusions to plots for us at the end of the season. Season 1 of Lost had the bald guy attempting to crack open a metal door that he had found in the ground, but lacked a handle or latch, and the black guy, the Korean guy, and the con-man building a raft in an attempt to escape. The finale had each of these characters succeed at each of their goals, only to meet an obstacle afterward, thus setting up the second season. The problem with this season is for the bulk of it, there wasn’t much driving it forward. The characters realized that there’s more to this island than they thought, but they’re not freaked out about it, or anxious to actively pursue escape. They’re not actively seeking anything, for the most part. Sure the first half of the season had the people from the raft journeying back to their own side of the island, and the end seems to have a group ready to attack the other side of the island to get back one of their own, but in between everything was kinda fly-by-the-seat-of-your pants. That’s not to say that there isn’t an overall plan for the show. I believe that the people in charge have an endgame, and a few planned stops on the way. This season, however, it just seemed like the middle was trying to be filler to get to this season’s “stop” and big reveal.

Why I say that I don’t know how I feel about that is because, really, we’re pretty much in the same position as all the people on the island, trying to understand the surroundings as we go along. We know as much as all of the survivors combined (at least regarding the island… not about their pasts), but we don’t know more than that. We hope for them to share information with each other, but know it’s not going to happen. And while this leads to a lack of action, I think I’d rather not know the secrets until the heroes discover them. There are no scenes of the villains in their secret lair planning their scheme, filling the audience in and making us cringe when we know that the choices the heroes make are wrong. We’re in this with them, and if they make a wrong choice, we won’t know it until they do, and I think I’d rather have it that way. In fact, on a positive note, the season MVP had to be the person who was caught in the jungle… Henry Gale. Why this is important to this topic is that the characters suspected him of being one of the “hostiles” or “others”, when he insisted (through pain of torture) that he crashed on the island in a balloon. We didn’t know if he was lying, just as the other characters didn’t. We found out the truth just as they did, and we didn’t know if we could trust him, just as they didn’t. Every scene that he is in is absolutely gripping, because we know so little about him, and every single word that comes out of his mouth could be a lie to manipulate people, or he could say it knowing the people would think that he’s lying… or he could just be telling the truth in general, with no ulterior motive. This performance and character alone make the second half of season two worth watching, and it’s all because we don’t see his side of the story.

The other thing that was an issue (and not just with me, but with every person who watches every week), which wasn’t the show’s fault, but the network’s fault, was that they would run a string of new episodes for a few weeks, and then a long span of repeats. Viewers had a hard time knowing when new episodes were on, were bored with repeats, and were impatiently waiting for the wrapping up of cliffhangers from weeks previous, usually only to find that they wouldn’t wrap up until a few episodes later anyway. The network has decided to fix things next year by running a few months of uninterrupted episodes in the fall, taking a few months off to debut a new show, and then coming back in February with the rest of the season. After getting the DVDs of the first season, and watching them, I realized that if I had the patience, I’d much rather wait the extra nine months, and just buy the season set, because watching weekly, or however often it’s on, is quite grueling, and usually very manipulative.

With all of these negatives, you would wonder why I claimed that this was my favorite drama on TV. (now comes the part where I justify myself) First of all, I don’t think that this year it was the best drama on TV. It may have been my favorite, but I can’t ignore the huge logic holes, and the few procrastination episodes in the middle. As a whole however, I think it’s the most engaging drama, due to the sheer amount of story and history that not only are contained in the island itself, but in the characters as well.

Just because I thought you deserved a break from reading.

I think that the story and the characters are more realized and well-rounded than most shows are. By allowing us to see the people’s backstories (albeit selectively), we can understand where people are coming from without being bored by endless cheesily-spouted exposition. You can understand each character’s drive and reasoning, oftentimes before he/she takes action, because we know where s/he’s been. Not only that, but their stories are usually more interesting than normal drama fare. It’s not often that you one of your main characters is an overweight man who spent time in a mental hospital where he met a patient who compulsively repeated a set of six numbers that the character eventually used to win the lottery, only to be marred with immense amounts of bad luck for the rest of his life.

I believe that in addition, it is the most creative, engaging, and unique television show I’ve ever seen. Sure, there are those television history enthusiasts out there who’ll tell me that a weird island has been done before on “The Prisoner”, but never with a group of characters this large and diverse, never with a mythology that is expanding to Asia-sized proportions, and never as evenly managed. Some people will say that there’s definitely a few lead characters, and I agree. But this is the largest ensemble show I’ve ever seen where every character is given at least one hour to be fleshed out, and where every character is checked in on on a weekly basis. All this, and they manage to keep the mythology-obsessed people generally happy.

Think about it this way. The X-Files had two characters, and justly used “monster of the week” self-contained episodes to flesh out a season that usually bookended, and possibly “middled” with episodes dealing with that show’s over-arching storyline. There was very little character progression, mainly Scully coming to realize that things aren’t always easily answered, and that didn’t come until like the sixth season… this after having seen all that creepy weird stuff. Yet the first five seasons of that show are considered some of the best of the 1990s, and most people who watched the show continuously are more interested in the conspiracy/aliens story than they are with the repetitive self-contained eps. LOST succeeds at taking that mythology and upping by at least 5 times. There are seven times as many main characters, and they change their perceptions of the events just as we do. The one thing that the X-Files did much better was the self-contained stories, and while I concede that LOST is more about the overall picture, there are a handful of episodes that work rather effectively by themselves.

Overall, the show has its faults and I acknowledge them, specifically the leading us on little by little, but the general scope and size of the undertaking, and the skill with which it is pulled off amaze me week after week. There may be better shows out there, (at least this year), but LOST’s labyrinthine story has had me hooked since the day the pilot aired.

LOST’s second season gets a slightly disappointing 3.5 stars. Mostly because of the major issues I dealt with in the first half, i.e. some boring episodes, some plotlines that went nowhere (at least as of now), some frustrations over not getting the answers (but like those adventure-puzzle games, the journey is usually more interesting than the destination), the rather soap-opera-style killings of major characters during sweeps weeks to get ratings and not serve the story, and of course the problem of the repeats, which will be solved next year, or by watching the episodes on DVD. The reason it doesn’t get less stars (those are a lot of complaints) is because of the usually deft handling of the many, many characters (including ones I didn’t mention way, wayyyy back when this review began in the Byzantine era), the extreme creativity of the story, the way they’ve managed to keep the idea of a group of people on an island fresh after two seasons, the way they’re taking their time in giving us what we want, so that they don’t blow it all in one shot, and the way that they pay off minor events or things that they know don’t make sense. They even had a voice for all of the background extras for a few episodes until they exploded him randomly and without warning. That’s right. He exploded, chunks and all. It was great, and is just one of the many reasons why I love this show.

May 28, 2006
The Concept of The Da Vinci Code The Video Game

I think the picture speaks for itself.

So as I was walking into the movie theatre yesterday, on my way to see what I think will be the summer’s biggest-selling movie (despite the terrible reviews), The Da Vinci Code, and I was handed a coupon for Best Buy. SWEET! Except that it was only good for a video game… you guessed it, The Da Vinci Code, for Playstation and X-box.

I couldn’t help but laugh at how preposterous this was. I was reminded of the scene in Spaceballs where Mel Brooks was showing off all of the Spaceballs product tie-ins. I had the notion of Star-Wars-like fast food restaurants giving out cryptexes in happy meals, or “The Da Vinci Coke” littering store shelves.

But the more I thought about it, I wondered what kind of video game this would be? I mean, video games have to be exciting and engaging, or else the player realizes he’s just sitting around doing nothing productive. That’s why most of the video games that are based on movies are made from action movies. Seriously, would you want to play a game based on Brokeback Mountain? Think of all of the things you and your player 2 can do together… like herding cattle!

What kind of format could this game take? Would it be like Grand Theft Auto, with Tom Hanks and the french chick driving around, stealing people’s cars by boring them to death with lectures about where the swastika came from? Or maybe he could choke people with his long, flowing locks of hair.

Could it be a fighting game where you play as Silas and try to get past the Priory members? You’d then advance to nuns (hint: hit them with stone slabs), and aging, crippled Grail scholars (watch out for the crutches!). Of course after every victory, the bonus round includes self-flagellation.

Personally, I’d love to see a whole line of games. The DaVinciKart, where the characters race around Paris, in small european cars, throwing out things like Silas’ spike strip, and the Madonna of the Rocks painting, to make other players swerve. There could be a soccer game, or a baseball game. There could even be a Mario-like game, where Tom Hanks has to save Sophie from the evil “Frogs” by jumping on them.

All joking aside, I really have no idea how they’d make a straightforward game out of this movie. I’m sure it would involve a ton of cut-scene videos of people talking and explaining all sorts of things about the holy grail and the Priory of Sion.
The only thing I can imagine it being, honestly, is in the style of a puzzle-adventure game like the old LucasArts games that were so beloved. Even that though, is a stretch, because anyone who’s seen the movie or read the book knows all the answers to the riddles, all the intense “history”, where the characters should go next, and ultimately, where the resting place of the Grail “is” anyway. There’s no point in going through the entire journey if you already know the answers, because the fun of adventure games is figuring out the solutions.

There is no possible way that this game could both fit into an existing video game model and be interesting. It’s interesting as a book and a movie because you’re engaged in following the characters along, passively. Once you’re actively controlling the characters, there’s nothing interesting about what they do, only what happens to them, and video games aren’t about being passive.

.5 stars, for allowing me to imagine all of the humorous possibilities.

May 23, 2006
The Degree Navigator Class Registration System

They kinda look like the Azores.

With the one-year anniversary of my college graduation taking place on May 16th, I figured I’d write something about my college experience, something that the few of you who read this that went to Ithaca would be able to relate to and feel nostalgic about. I decided early however, that I wasn’t just going to do a review on my college experience, as that would seem too “Dear Diary” for me. I wasn’t going to complain about the “food” in the Campus Center Dining hall ad nauseam, because I’m sure that’s been done to death… and most people move off campus or to the Circle Apartments and don’t deal with the “Double C” for their last year or two. I wasn’t going to complain about the curriculum, mostly because those issues have been dealt with, starting with the class after me, and they’re much better off for it. Lastly, I wasn’t going to offer warm and fuzzy memories of how great all my friends were, the teachers were, the facilities were, and my extracurricular opportunities and the semester in L.A. were.

What else could there be to complain about/praise? Well if you haven’t guessed by reading the title, I’ll put it bluntly: The method of registering for classes that we used.

Let me preface this all by saying that before computers were used, I have absolutely no idea how a class registration system could be fair. I can assume that people wrote down on a piece of paper the classes that they needed, and the classes that they wanted and turned it in and waited for the results… sort of like in high school, where your guidance counselor spent 25 minutes convincing you to take a bunch of extra classes that you didn’t come in wanting, (of course, taking some time out in the middle of the meeting to take a call from his real estate side-job) only to find that when your schedule arrived weeks later, you weren’t enrolled in any of the classes anyway. Maybe that was just me. But by handing in forms that said what you wanted your schedule to look like, how were students to be guaranteed that those were the classes they were going to get? What if classes were filled? What if new sections that students were switched into conflicted with other classes the student wanted to take? How did the administration decide what order to take individual registrations? Obviously by credit amount, but what about students who were at the same grade level, with the same amount of credits?

In any case, it seems like as an incoming freshman, they had just recently implemented a computerized system by which all the students would register for their next semester’s classes, presumably to solve all of these problems. The program, “The Degree Navigator”, itself wasn’t that terribly hard to understand. There were multiple tabs to take you to different views. The most important three (as i can’t remember what the other two were) were the class selection tab, the schedule tab, (i’m sure they were standard on registration software for everyone at every school), and the strange “island” view, which conveniently showed you what your different requirements were (as in communications, non-comm, liberal arts [a phrase whose meaning still eludes me], and the various requirements within each major) shown in the form of colorful islands floating on a bright blue background. When you rolled your mouse over them, it showed what you had completed and what you were still required to take. I believe that those might’ve been shown in pie chart form, but I could be wrong.

You would go to the registrar’s website, and there would be a link to register for classes. Clicking on it would open the application, as sort of an advanced pop-up window with forms. This was the degree navigator. You’d go over to the selection tab, type the course number into the spot for it, and hit enter. The course description and section times would come up, and you were allowed to add the classes to your schedule. You would then have to go over to the side where all the selected classes were and individually finalize the registration for each class. If there were time conflicts between sections, the program would tell you, but in an unhelpful and very computer-like way, by course number. I wouldn’t expect the program to give me the course name, so I’m not really complaining about that. In fact, once you used the program the first time, you realized it was actually a pretty easy application to navigate around… provided you could understand the whole “island” thing, which was more for telling you what classes you had done and what you needed to do, rather than for registering.

The problem was in the actual method by which the whole student body was meant to register. It happened during the course of a week and a half every semester. A different group registered every day, starting with students in the honors program (i don’t know that i ever met any of them), then freshmen, then seniors (yes freshmen got to register before seniors), juniors, and sophomores… of course all of those were divided up into first and second semester students, via credits. So each day of registering saw students within about a 12-18 credit window signing up at the same time. Not too huge of a problem. We weren’t a terribly large school, so it wasn’t like there were more than a few thousand people registering per day. There was no breakdown however, within each day, and so you had a couple thousand people trying to get on the system at the exact same time. That shouldn’t’ve been a problem… after all, there’s at least four times that amount that use the internet at one time, any other time of day or year. The problem however, was that our residential computer network was incredibly unstable to begin with (blamed by the people in charge on the proliferation of computer viruses on the network…. cause I’m sure that other schools don’t have to deal with viruses, and they manage to be fully operational), complete with fits of shutting down at the most inopportune times (a subject for an entirely different review, and someone more knowledgeable in the area of computer networking than I am). That coupled with the fact that everyone was going to the same site and trying to open the same web-based application proved not the best way to handle things. Rather than giving us a program that we could install on our computers, bundled with the initial netware software that we had to use to be able to use the network, and the antivirus stuff, they figured that opening it from the registrar site would be the most viable option. Of course they were completely wrong.

It was an epic disaster. The residential network just couldn’t handle the sheer number of people attempting to log on (if you managed to open the program prior to the start time you could open the application, just not log on to actually register). And of course rather than just telling us that we couldn’t be logged on because something somewhere along the line was too busy, it just kept trying to log everyone on. Of course, in the best possible scenario of it not working, the program froze. In the worst, it caused people’s computers to crash, freeze, and quite possibly be thrown out of windows in fits of frustration.

In fact, only serving to exacerbate things more was the registration time. Because classes started at 8 a.m., and the people in charge wanted to make sure that everyone had the same opportunity to get to classes before the seats were filled, the registration window opened at the extremely early 7 a.m. That’s right. Imagine thousands of frustrated college students pissed off at the idea of being shut out of classes and screwed over by the system, dealing with a program that isn’t going to work correctly, having to reboot their computer numerous times, and on top of that, having to get up before 7. At least we had the opportunity to register from the comfort of our own computers, if we could ever get this demon program to operate correctly.

The worst year that I remember was the second semester of my freshman year, registering for sophomore year. It was early April probably, and it was also probably really cold and rainy outside. I just remember sitting at my computer, my comforter draped over me, waiting, complaining to neighbors across the hall and next door. I sat there, knowing I was going to miss my 8 a.m. class. Everyone that I had recently added to my AIM buddy list was in the same boat as I was. People had away messages up about how much they hated the degree navigator, how they wished it would die, and how they were so tired and pissed off in general. Having just gone through a phase of creating new screennames and harassing people with them, I saw this as an opportunity to pose as the Degree Navigator through IM, asking people why they hated me so much. I was THAT bored and pissed off. People who managed to log on were offering to register other people for classes via phone, but others were skeptical about giving out their registration password for fear that their schedule might be tampered with. It wasn’t until 10:15 that I was able to log on and register, making me late for my 10:25 class. Of course, I got the bottom of the barrel when it came to classes that weren’t course requirements. I can’t remember what I had, but I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t anywhere near what I had in mind the night before.

The following semesters were much of the same, but not taking as long, as more people in my class (year) decided to move off campus, or use the computer labs, which were on a different network, to do their registration. Knowing that I’d probably have to wait in line to use a computer for as long as it would actually take me to register from my room, and not wanting to get dressed at 6:50, and instead go back to bed when I was done, I decided for next few semesters to just ride out the storm in my room. Unlike the people in New Orleans, my decision wasn’t really all that detrimental to my health. Sure it took forever to get logged on, but none of the future attempts took more than an hour. Still, the away messages were up, the people were complaining across the hall, and there was a feeling of bonding.

Without a popular sports team to rally behind (save the one game a year where the entire school went crazy for the football team, mostly because it was an excuse to get drunk at 8 a.m.), or, fortunately, some tragic event that effected everyone at the school (save the September 11th stuff), the universal hatred of the degree navigator registration system brought everyone together. In fact, I’d wager that had somebody decided to sell T-shirts that said “I survived Registration ’02”, they’d probably make enough money for the school to fix the actual problem. To prove my point even more, I typed in “Degree Navigator”+sucks in google, and these are the first two pages it came up with: here and here.

Of course, what this 7 a.m. east coast registration time meant for me when I was in L.A. was that I had to register at 4 a.m. Pacific Time….and we didn’t have the internet in our apartment. I’m not sure how we got around that, but I know I didn’t walk 3 blocks at 4 a.m. to register at the Ithaca L.A. student center.

The Degree Navigator was a good system in theory, but they say the same thing about communism. There were bigger problems that everyone pretty much blamed on the Navigator, giving it a bad rap.

The Degree Navigator program itself gets three and a half stars. It was mostly easy to navigate, and I’m sure it was a bit more fair and, yes, less of a hassle, than however they did it before it was done by computer. It was pretty much the scapegoat for the entire student body’s issues with registration, and served to bring them together with something unified to complain about.

The actual process of class registration gets one star for not having the foresight to see, especially after it happened numerous times before, that the network would get log-jammed by allowing so many people on at once; for not allowing people to get into classes that they needed; and for intruding on the sleep of thousands of students who schedule their earliest class at 11 a.m. for a reason.

May 17, 2006
Ben Folds – “Songs For Silverman”

I should take some photography lessons from this guy. Every time I try to take a picture of myself in the mirror with a forlorn look on my face, all that shows up is a bright light.

I’ve got a bit of a dilemma. I’m a huuuge Ben Folds/Ben Folds Five fan…. as I’m sure most of you already know. If you asked me to put the albums in order of my favorites, I’d probably be able to do it. The problem is that it wouldn’t be the same order that I would rank the overall album quality. “Songs for Silverman“, his first solo full-length album in at least 3 years, has such a high concentration of songs that I would deem “best he’s ever recorded”, that I would put it just slightly ahead of “Whatever and Ever Amen”, on my favorites, however, there are a few songs that are weaker than anything on the earlier Ben Folds Five release, dropping the actual star rating below WAEA.

While WAEA was a collection of good songs, varying fast and slow, deep and shallow, “Songs for Silverman” is more uniform, and at the risk of sounding like a press release, more “mature”. The songs are for the most part slower, have more instrumentation and vocals, more thoughtful lyrics… and just overall, more ambition. To understand a bit better, a brief history, that will probably turn into a bit longer than I intended.

Ben Folds Five was founded as a “fun” piano-electric(usually) bass-drums trio that specialized in “punk rock for wusses” as it was put. The first album was filled with mostly fast, piano-driven songs that were pretty light and enjoyable, with mostly good melodies and a fairly sloppy production quality that had a feeling of spontaneity. The second album, WAEA, had more of a polished feel, with more strings, some slower songs, a “mouth keyboard” of sorts in some of the songs, and more complex three-part backing vocals. The band moved forward even more with the third album, “The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner“, a “concept album” that used mainly slower, even more introspective songs, more experimental instrumentation, and a definite album cohesiveness, including lyrical and musical ideas that were carried over into multiple tracks.

The progress stalled though, when the band broke up, and Folds went solo. His next album, “Rocking the Suburbs” seemed to basically be a sequel to WAEA in style and substance, in fact including a sequel song to one on the first album. He played all the instruments on the album, even though some songs sounded like they had electronic drums in places. The problem though, was that he was touring without a backup band or singers, and so he was writing songs that he could play without backing vocals (actually many of the tracks on the album had overdubbed Folds vocal tracks in the background) or extensive instrumentation.

Back to the present, and he now has a more-than-capable drummer and bassist duo behind him. With this in mind, the album at times has a feeling like it might be where the original band could’ve eventually progressed to, but that’s a moot point. What’s important is that with the exception of a few weak tracks in the middle, this album is filled with jam-packed songs that range from jazz and blues riffs to pop to classical-style, sometimes in the same song. The songs are dense, and for the most part under five minutes, yet some of them I’d say are epic. I would especially say this of “Jesusland”, and the last track “Prison Food”, a song that’s moved up to my number two favorite, with an ending that is built up so much and has so much going on between the furious drumming and bass playing, pulsing piano part, the too-many-to-guess-part harmonies going on, and the mood-setting steel guitar, which brings me to my next point.

When this album came out the online Ben Folds community didn’t accept it right away… to tell you the truth it took a few listens for me to get to like it. The songs and tone of the entire album (we’ll get to individual songs in a minute), were completely different than anything that came before, even including concerts the previous summer and the 3 EPs released the year before. The biggest issue for a lot of people was the guitar. Yes, for the first time in any of the tracks that I can remember, there’s a non-bass guitar. In fact one song has a regular acoustic guitar, but another has a 12-string, and two have lap-steel guitars in them, enhancing the fullness of the sound that much more.

Many of the songs borrow short musical ideas, or tones (in the English class sense of the word, not the musical one), from previous songs… including “Jesusland” borrowing an opening from “The Ascent of Stan”, and the tempo and drum styling from “Mess”; “Landed” borrowing the main piano riff from “Philosophy” and turning it inside out; “Give Judy My Notice”, upgrading a solo-piano version from one of the EPs (adding backing vocals, steel guitar, drums, etc.); “Sentimental Guy”, borrowing the bluesiness (is that a word?) of “All U Can Eat” from another of the EPs; “Time” sounding eerily similar to, but a bit more somber than a song called “Bruised” that he recorded with Ben Lee and Ben Kweller; and “Prison Food”‘s main piano part coming from a superfan community favorite that was released on a collection of rarities, “Emaline”. I know that’s a long list, but I sincerely believe that the songs as a whole are different enough, and in most cases, completely better than the songs containing the borrowed ideas. “Landed”‘s been featured as the theme for the kennel club dog show, and now on the Hilton ads, “Judy” was slow and kinda empty without the added music and faster pace, and “Jesusland”, “Time”, and especially “Prison Food” are among the best on the album, if not the best he’s ever recorded.

For the most part, these songs include what could possibly be considered the most difficult piano parts he’s written (especially the first four), and a large number (every one excluding “You to Thank”; “Gracie“, and “Sentimental Guy”) having what might be his most complicated backing vocals to date.

Overall the album is very intriguing and complex, and grows on you the more you listen to it, as long as you don’t get bogged down by a few slower songs in the middle, and the sappy, yet completely understandable, “Gracie”.

“Songs for Silverman” gets four and a half stars, as it’s more complicated and pleasing to listen to than most every pop recording you can find these days, a few of the songs stand out among my top favorites (which is enough to counteract the sub-par ones), and it has a cohesiveness to it, with only “Gracie” feeling awkward and out of place.

In case you’re wondering, I’d rate the rest of them, in order of my favorites: “WAEA”- Five Stars; “Rocking the Suburbs”- Four Stars; “TUBORM”- Three and a half stars; and “Ben Folds Five”- Three stars. Not included in those are “Fear of Pop: Volume One“, “Ben Folds Live“, “Naked Baby Photos“, “William Shatner: Has Been“, or any of the EPs.

May 9, 2006
American Dreamz

This review might be rendered irrelevant by now, considering the extremely poor showing of the movie financially, and its inevitable disappearance from theatres within the next two weeks. In fact, after being totally overwhelmed with the ubiquitous advertising campaign, I’ve heard nothing about it in the past few weeks. I’m sure by now you probably don’t care about this movie, or have totally forgotten about it. I’ve written it though, and you’re going to read it.

Now imagine a comedy that was funny. That’s right keep imagining.

Coming off of seeing “Thank You for Smoking” the week before, I was hoping that “Hollywood” would be two for two in the satire game. I was thoroughly disappointed. I should’ve known better after looking at other people’s reviews, but I’ve been known to not agree with most critics sometimes, see “Good night and Good Luck”, “Matchpoint”, and that terrible Robert Altman murder-mystery, “Gosford Park”. But I hate it when they’re right and I don’t listen to them. I mean seriously, how could it fail? It’s got a great premise (a president who’s losing face with the country is booked to be a guest judge on a fake american idol show, and terrorists, seeing an opportunity to come face to face with the POTUS, have one of their own attempt to make the finals in order to blow him up), the director of some good movies, including “About a Boy” and “In Good Company“, and it’s got a great cast. AND NY1‘s own Neil Rosen gave it a big four out of four apples!!

I have a confession to make that’s kinda off subject. I like Hugh Grant. I think he’s entertaining and enjoyable in pretty much every movie I’ve seen him in. I do like him better in non-romantic comedy movies, and I know he’s got a limited range, but he’s good at what he does. Having him play a Simon Cowell character here is absolutely brilliant, as I can’t think of anyone who could pull it off better. The rest of the cast is stacked as well, with 3 academy award nominees. The direction is fine, and the acting passable, Grant, Mandy Moore, Seth Meyers, and the Arab performer are the standouts, with everyone else kinda coasting along with not much to do except play bland cookie-cutter stereotypes. I think the reason that both of these aspects come across as mediocre, however, is because the writing is just below the quality it should be. Sure the idea and the story are interesting and relevant, but somehow, it’s not funny. There’s no jokes. No punchlines, no pratfalls, no double entendres or mistaken identities, and only a few asinine situations. The humor in a satire is supposed to come from exaggerating reality the point of ridiculousness to show our foibles. Most of this movie, however, just goes for imitation and not exaggeration. The President story is actually the least interesting, as instead of trying to come up with completely outlandish politician generalizations (dr. strangelove perfectly showed this, without having to resort to cheap imitations), they go for the tired bush/cheney imitation, with nothing new or funny to say about either. It’s as if they were conflicted between making fun of the president and humanizing him. He’s not completely stupid, just sheltered by his chief of staff, and a bit socially awkward, and he barely says anything that would remotely be considered a bush-ism.

The Mandy Moore story is good, until they attempt to make a dramatic turn with her and Hugh Grant, which would actually work well in any other movie, but doesn’t seem to fit here. It’s as if they can’t decide between sweeping generalization and dedicated character examination. In fact, these are the only two characters in the entire thing that don’t play as stereotypes and have any sort of internal conflict (outside of the arab contestant, whose conscience seems entirely motivated by having us feel sympathetic for him for plot reasons).

The most interesting aspect of the entire movie, and the only one that actually could qualify as satire and not just imitation, is the show itself. The caricatures are spot on, from the sassy black woman, to the Clay Aiken pretty-boy and the rocker (one of which was played by trey parker, but with as little screen time as they got, I couldn’t tell which one it was), whose song pretty much consists of variations of the phrases “I’m a rockin man”, “I like to rock”, and “I’m the real thing”. In addition, the other two finalists (aside from Mandy Moore) consist of the aforementioned arab, who’s often hilarious in his on-stage performances, and a hasidic jew who sings about getting down with the ladies. The only time that the movie really goes for a straightforward joke, it nails it. After a huge disaster happens at the show’s finale, and the technical difficulties sign comes up, it says, “The voting lines are now open”. We are shown images of people all over the world watching in shock at the events, but then picking up their phones simultaneously to vote, including the terrorists who vote via satellite phone.

Basically that’s it. The movie had promise, but without a better script it just came across as boring and for the most part, unfunny. Oh yeah, and there’s a gay arab choreographer. If something like that doesn’t get on your nerves after five minutes, this may be the movie for you. I wanted to like it, there just weren’t enough good things for me to justify myself liking it.

American Dreamz gets one and a half stars for being a movie that set itself up well, but opted not to go for many punchlines at all. The cast was game, and the direction a little confused at times, but most of that confusion falls on the writers. I was bored for at least half of it, and without any characters to root for, (because the only ones that weren’t poorly realized caricatures were too self-loathing) you kinda just find yourself hoping that the movie will end soon. In “Thank You for Smoking”, the main character is more self-indifferent than self-loathing, and that’s why it’s easier to root for him, and that movie as a whole. I highly suggest that movie over this one, as it’s much smarter, deeper, and more biting.

May 2, 2006
“Diary” by Chuck Palahniuk

It’s important to note that I formulated my opinion of this book without the knowledge that it was so universally acclaimed by book critics. This review has nothing to do with their opinions, nor my opinions of their opinions, and is solely based on the merit of the book. “Just for the record“, I think they’re all out of their minds.

I thought it was about cattle farming. Boy was I wrong!….. Ahhh, who am I kidding? That probably would’ve been a better story, anyway.

Of the five Chuck Palahniuk books I’ve read, “Diary” is undoubtedly the least engrossing, and the most difficult to “get”, at least for the first fifty pages or so. Most of that difficulty comes from the fact that the “voice” switches between 3rd, 2nd, and 1st person perspectives at seemingly random times. For the first few chapters the reader is entirely confused. It’s not until later that we’re clued in to the reasoning of the writing style, and even then, it’s still a little hard to figure out why. The book is written as the “coma diary” of Misty Marie Wilmot, an account of the events of her life, for her husband, laying in a coma after his failed suicide attempt. She writes from a detached 3rd person point of view for most of it, discussing “Misty“, but saying “you” or “I” to re-iterate that her husband is responsible for things being the way they are, or when taking the blame herself, respectively.

Of course, without the clarification that this is indeed her talking about herself, the reader is left with a jumble of “I”s, “you”s, and “Misty/Peter”s, and totally distracted, but knowing the way the author writes, I’m sure that’s how it was intended. Effective, yet at the same time offputting for first-time “Chuck” readers. A common theme in his books is that he hides who characters really are, through tricks of language, and unfortunately, that payoff in this book is both early and underwhelming.

The bigger problem with the story, though, is that there doesn’t seem to be enough plot elements to warrant the length of the book (even though it is pretty short). The story revolves around Misty of course, who met her husband Peter at art school (the details of their courtship are a separate subplot thrown in every few chapters or so, “just in case” Peter doesn’t remember it when he wakes up… conveniently for us), got married, and moved in with his well-to-do family on the tourist trap Waytansea Island. Strangely enough, even though there’s a large influx of non-natives during the summer, somehow all of the rich island people have run out of money and are angry/resentful at/of the tourists. Their sole purpose is to reclaim their life of luxury and exclusivity. And Misty, they say, through her art, will be the one to do it for them.

The main action of the story involves Misty’s discovery of walled-up rooms inside houses that Peter built for the “Summer People”. Inside the rooms he has scrawled incoherent warnings on the wall in large print with spraypaint. The whole time that she is investigating, she is being manipulated by the island inhabitants, including her 13-year-old daughter, into basically becoming immobile and drugged-up, so that she can channel the spirit of a painter who’s been dead for 100 years.

The problem is that the mystery of the walled-up rooms doesn’t go anywhere. Once you read the first message, you realize that he probably didn’t want to be a part of the manipulation, and that’s why he tried to kill himself. There’s no point in dwelling on these rooms at all, yet there are countless chapters devoted to it. It feels like it was just tacked on to lengthen the story, and provide us with those trademark “Chuck” factoids that he fills his books with, namely construction superstitions.

His foreshadowing in this book is also pretty terrible, in that instead of hinting that things aren’t as they seem, he pretty much has the narrator discover that they aren’t, and through her, the reader as well, but not do anything about it. For example, early on, Misty asks around about the cause of Peter’s father’s death, which is met with different responses from different people. Of course she, and we, realize that they are lying to her, but when he appears at the end of the book, alive and well, it seems that we’re expected to be surprised that he is alive. Not only that, but there’s no explanation given as to the reason they faked his death in the first place.

Of course, as with all of the author’s other books, this one is filled to the brim with useless tidbits of knowledge about a few specific subjects, including facial musculature, graphology, the artwork patterns on fine China, and the methods used to make early paints. Unfortunately these factoids fail to be as interesting as how to make soap/explosives, the environmental impact of new species entering a habitat, or even how to clean impossible stains .

The book’s biggest detriment is that there’s no sense of the unexpected about to happen. The only reason I kept reading was just to see if I was right in my guess about the rest of the story.

I can’t in good conscience recommend this book to anyone but die-hard fans of the author. You’d be much better reading Survivor, Lullabye, Fight Club, or Invisible Monsters… probably in that order too.

This book has too many extraneous stories that don’t really resolve well enough. The characters aren’t likable in the least, even the character we’re supposed to be rooting for. The writing style is confusing at first and once explained, just tedious. The foreshadowing is too blatant, and there aren’t the traditional surprises that make his books interesting. The factoids quite possibly are the most boring of all of his books, even beating out the complete overkill of the items in Survivor. On the whole though, it’s a lot more of a pleasant read than most of the stuff we had to read in 9th and 11th grade of high school, namely “The Good Earth”, “Jane Eyre”, “The Scarlett Letter”, and “The Red Badge of Courage”, all considered classics.

April 24, 2006
NES GAMES – The Legacy of the Wizard

as a sort of addendum to this review, i’d like to point out that i found a walkthrough, and even knowing where to go, what character to use, and the type of objects needed, won’t help you beat this game. It is that difficult. There is no way any kid ever has gotten to the end by himself.

“Hey, look! A Dragon trapped in a bunch of blocks and doric columns. Let’s kill it!” “…Uhhh How?” “I don’t know… carbon monoxide poisoning?” “That sounds exciting!”

I think the best ending for this game would involve P.E.T.A. storming in and demanding the release of this animal into it’s natural habitat…. devastation.

Out of all the games I had for NES, I was very glad that I somehow managed to keep the instruction booklet for this one. Without it, you’re basically screwed. I read it recently and realized that the entire reason I could never figure this game out was that you actually had to read it before you played the game. What kind of idiot game-maker would make a kid read something in order to play his game? The whole reason kids play video games is so they don’t have to read. That’s like making someone go inside a Taco Bell to place an order to pick up at the drive-through window. Or course it goes without saying that I can’t seem to find the booklet right now (just my luck), after finding it was the original inspiration for this series of reviews. I didn’t write the review of this game just then because I figured I’d work my way up to this…. you know, use it when I ran out of ideas.

Of course, now I can’t find it, and wikipedia doesn’t have an entry for the game. I searched for it via google but it seems that its biggest contribution to mainstream society has been to fans of techno-remixed video game music.

BREAKTHROUGH! Just as I’m writing this, I found a site, on the fourth page of google results, with links to the sites that not only have maps of the “levels”, but the full text of the instruction booklet.

Apparently, according to the booklet, the goal is to destroy the dragon. You pick a character, and kind of wander around a giant maze… if you don’t believe me about the giant nature of the game, or it’s maze-like qualities, take a look at this map. Just to warn you though, my computer almost crashed attempting to load it. That’s how big the image is. It is insane to believe that any child would have any reasonable means of committing this map to memory, just by wandering around aimlessly…. in search of a dragon. And not just any dragon; a dragon that’s locked up in a cage deep within a giant underground maze of inescapable proportions. Of course according to the story, that you just have to read for yourself here, they decide to hunt him only after the dog, Poochi, comes back with some dragon skin in its mouth. Now that’s what I call a full-SCALE attack! What I don’t know is how the dog got to the dragon in the first place and why they didn’t just send the dog back with a vile of dragon poison. I guess dragon poison wasn’t invented yet.

As in any other multi-character RPG, (a long parenthetical: I didn’t know until recently that the game was actually an early RPG, [other than the fact that you didn’t have to talk to characters you meet, using them to find stuff out about how to succeed in the game] and I didn’t even know what an RPG was until much after I had this game [like all my NES games, it was a gift]. For those of you who don’t know what an RPG is, I’ll let Wikipedia explain, aside from me saying that it’s a completely long-lasting game that involves lots of trial and error. In addition you have to save your game, which in this incarnation was achieved by going back to the surface where your grandmother would give you a code. The next time you played you could enter the code and start off where you ended. Of course, not reading the booklet, I again didn’t realize this.) you need to use certain people for certain situations. One member of the family can jump high, the other can move blocks, the dog doesn’t get attacked by the numerous mole-men, CHUD, and chupacabras or whatever, that live underground. Only the son can slay the dragon for some reason. The hassle in this is that you can’t just switch characters when you need them; you actually have to return to the surface. What a pain.

There’s also an overly-complicated system of special items that you take along with you, or can buy at shops which are conveniently located in the underground maze (along with inns where you can regain your health for 10 gold pieces. Not exactly sure how these inns stay in business, as it seems that their clientele would consist mainly of the goblins and C.H.U.D. that wander around aimlessly underground, and I’m sure that they’re probably all broke). These special items are what you can use to beat the bad guys, who, in turn, leave things for you like bread, potion, keys, and gold… and of course, EVIL POISON, which looks exactly like all the other items, considering they’re just small blobs of pixels. These monsters really just don’t have it going on upstairs. If they all just carried poison on them, instead of bread and money, they’d win every time.

There are enormous amounts of treasure and items and “special items” that are so confusing, you’d need the booklet to tell you what you can do with each when you get them, and would have absolutely no clue how to use without it, or even with it. In the instructions, for example, notice the large section devoted to how to move blocks with the magic gloves.

Mostly, there just is too much to say about how overly-complex this game is on the whole. You have to navigate through this huge maze to find four crowns that will allow you to access the dragon, but you have to get the “Dragon Slayer” sword and then use the son, which means that you have to go back to the top, switch characters and then find the center of the maze to beat him somehow. Afterward, this is what happens… “After you defeat Keia the dragon, she catches on fire and burns and the rest of the family is waiting outside the dungeon and you come up out of the dungeon and you all walk home together then they stop near the door and wave bye bye at you.”

Doesn’t that sound like it’s worth spending at least 40 hours of your time to accomplish? They wave goodbye to you? At least Mario finally finds his princess, Scrooge McDuck finds all the gold in the world, Mario wakes up from his dream, historical landmarks stop getting stolen, Mario finds the Princess again… okay that one was a bit of a “been there” sort of thing, and kinda disappointing, but at least that game was fun, and easy to play. The only consolation here is the irony of a dragon burning to death, and I don’t know if irony is a good enough reason to spend that much time on a crappy video game.

This game sucks.

This game gets half a star for being way too complicated and horrendously over-designed. “Make a map” the instruction booklet says. Even with the actual map, I can’t figure my way around. You think my scribbles are gonna help me? Kids everywhere were probably so frustrated by this game that they threw it out their windows and hoped a 16-wheeler ran over it… ten times. There’s no reason to even be sympathetic towards the main character(s), because it’s not like the dragon is doing anything bad, he’s kinda just there, playing solitaire or reading a book or something.

The half star goes to the designers for putting together something so ambitious, and so detailed that nobody had any clue what they were thinking. I have to give that kind of work something, for their good intentions. Unfortunately you need more than intentions to make a good video game. You need violence; the ability to trick people into thinking your game is easy, when three levels later it becomes really hard; and absolutely no brain power needed to play it…. and some cement.

April 9, 2006
The Fact that “Andy Richter Controls the Universe” is not on DVD yet

In an attempt to get women to notice him, Andy imagines himself wearing a suit full of puppies. Unfortunately, he probably didn’t take the drycleaning bill into account.

I keep holding out hope. I don’t know why I do, because I never hear news about the possibility of this happening. Maybe it’s because every week I see that studios are releasing vast quantities of television shows that have no other value because TV stations won’t buy them in syndication. March 28th alone has the DVD releases of such blockbuster TV shows as American Muscle Car 1.x, Andy Milonakis Show 1.x, Astro Boy: Ultra Collector’s Edition,Avatar: The Last Airbender: Book 1, Vol. 2,Danger Mouse 5.x/6.x, Dark Shadows Vol. 23, DeGrassi: The Next Generation 3.x, Doctor Who: The Beginning, Dog the Bounty Hunter: Best of 2.x, Three Friends Theme Box Sets with episodes that everyone probably has already,Godzilla: Monster Mayhem, Godzilla: Mutant Madness, Highway to Heaven 3.x, The Invisible Man 1.x, Knots Landing 1.x, Little House on the Prarie (2004 Miniseries), Masters of Horror: Cigarette Burns, Masters of Horror: Dreams of the Witch House, Merv Griffin Show: 40 Most Interesting People, Modern Marvels: Extreme Gadgets, Modern Marvels: The FBI’s Crime Lab, Modern Marvels: Great Inventions, Modern Marvels: Walt Disney World, Northern Exposure 4.x, Not the 9 O’Clock News: Best Of, Planet of the Apes: Ultimate Collection, Quantum Leap 4.x, Return to the Planet of the Apes, Robot Chicken Vol. 1, Six Feet Under 5.x, Super Mario Bros.: Super Show, Tales of the Unexpected Set 4, and The Triangle: The Complete Miniseries. Isn’t that an obscene amount of mostly obscure television series? How many of them do you think will even be on the shelves of your local Best Buy? In fact, by June, you’ll be able to buy the entire series of The Adventures of Superboy, something called “Odyssy 5”, “Tommy Lee Goes to College”, all 13 episodes of “Law and Order: Trial By Jury”, and the first seasons of “F-Troop” and “Power Rangers Mystic Force”. In addition, every time I walk into Best Buy I see the set for “Wonderfalls”, a completely interesting show, but one that only ever aired three episodes. Heck, even the live-action “The Tick”, which only aired like two episodes and made all of six got a DVD release.

I take it you get my point by now; there are a lot of TV shows that are random that nobody would ever buy that are released just to make a few dollars from the few people who want to be able to see shows that they’ll never see again… like “the dog whisperer” or… “Full House”. But why am I specifically targeting the lack of Andy Richter DVDs? Because this is quite possibly the funniest, most offbeat and weird comedies of all time. I’m not taking anything away from Arrested Development, or any of those other shows that I can’t think of right now but probably will be able to by the time I get to the bottom. Anyway, sometimes the stories weren’t great, but that’s not the point. “Andy Richter…” was about all the absurd ideas that went on in the head of a bored instruction manual writer, ideas that popped up “Family Guy”-style, but without all the esoteric pop-culture references that half of the audience doesn’t get, and smarter dialogue, not to mention the fact that he talks to the long-dead, creepy, crotchety old man, former owner of the company. One episode had him wonder what the situation would be like as a musical, one showed what would happen if they were all dogs. It was a completely brilliant premise and the execution was terrific. It’s a shame the show failed after airing only 14 episodes and making 5 that never aired, and it’s an even bigger shame that with shows that have absolutely no market coming out on DVD, that a show this funny will keep those 5 episodes unseen. I mean, heck, I even used it to write a seven page paper on how a specific TV show handles a sensitive issue (in this case racism… specifically against a black man who’s irish… of course the insensitive remarks are made about the irish, allowing them to get across points they wouldn’t be able to do if it was about how he’s black).

There’s nothing else to say. There’s a lot of bad and obscure TV shows out on DVD. This one was very good and I think would get enough attention in the geek community that Fox (at least I’m assuming they would be the ones with the rights) would turn a profit by releasing it…. plus there are five episodes that nobody ever saw… that’s probably one of the biggest reasons why people buy short-lived series like this. This show deserves to be available. End of story.

March 19, 2006
Gauntlet Review – The Beatles – “Rubber Soul”, “Let it Be”, “George Martin: In My Life”, and “I am Sam Soundtrack”

This is a huge mega gauntlet review. I wanted to write a review of the first two albums above, kinda comparing them, etc., but then I realized that I had these rather interesting cover albums, and it would be a total shame if I didn’t write about them in some capacity (one of them being decidedly stranger than the other), so I’ve ballooned this up to epic scale. I’ve also kinda assumed that everyone is at least familiar with the more popular song titles.

AHHH! It’s like they’re staring straight into my soul!…. My Rubber soul!

Up first: Rubber Soul is quickly becoming one of my favorite Beatles albums, partially because of how underrated it is, but more because it is THE bridge between what the Beatles were and what they became, and also because of the amount of creativity and musicianship put into it. First off, to name the tracks that everyone should already know: Drive my Car, Norwegian Wood, Nowhere Man, Michelle (which somehow won the “Song of the Year” grammy for that year, even though there are plenty of songs on this album that are better, and it didn’t even hit number one on the singles charts… granted i don’t know the effect that it had on pop culture, but from a musical standpoint, I don’t get it… not that the Grammys judge anything by musical standards anyway), Girl, I’m Looking Through You, and In my Life. That’s a lot of songs that were major hit singles, although none of them ever hit the number one spot. Not only is that an impressive feat, but this was the second album they released that year, in addition to the movie “Help!”. With the exception of maybe 4 slow to moderately paced songs, all of the tracks are upbeat. All, except maybe one George Harrison-written song are catchy, and all contain at least two-part vocal harmonies, with most of them containing consistent three-part vocals. The tone as a whole, as well as the musicality, is consistent. In addition, this is the first of the albums to begin experimenting with other sounds, and more diverse lyrics. Norwegian Wood, with it’s sitar, and In My Life, with the sped up piano solo in the middle of it, giving it a baroque sound, are prime examples of advancements in both sound and lyrics beyond those of cheeky love songs. The album carries a romantically jaded lyrical tone to it, with songs about manipulation, death threats, and being in relationships you don’t want to be in. All in all, a very pleasurable and underrated album that paved the way to their first real change to the pop music scene, and the record that was voted the greatest album of all time by a crapload of magazines and music stations, (even though I find it to be highly spotty) Revolver.

The album gets four stars, due to the two or three lackluster songs in the bunch. The rest are gold, and work very well together. The songs form a coherent album, not just a collection of tracks that were thrown together to get past a deadline.

“Let It Be”, once again proving that the Beatles were good at not all being able to look in the same direction.

The “Let It Be” album is another that’s moving up on my list, and could very well be at the top. It’s at the opposite end of the spectrum entirely in terms of tone and presentation from Rubber Soul. Whereas all of Rubber Soul’s songs are tightly compacted, and cleanly put together, Let It Be plays like the closest thing they have to a concert album, mostly due to the fact that many tracks were live recordings, some from their famous rooftop concert, and others being raw takes from the studio. Wikipedia has a more detailed version of the story, including specifics of how each track was pieced together, but basically the story is that these tracks were going to be for a soundtrack to a documentary film that was being made about the making of a Beatles album called “Get Back”. The band was starting to have their fights though, and the material got shelved in order to put out the Abbey Road album. After they had been broken up for about a year, Phil Spector managed to piece together the audio clips from the various takes, and the album was released. Of particular interest (among the individual song details) is the details of the various guitar solos on the actual track “Let it Be”. I prefer the album version with the 1970 guitar solo over the single version, which is kinda weak as far as the guitar part goes. Anyway, the album is a lot of fun, and it has a very casual mood to it. There are audio clips of the band goofing off in between songs, certain tracks that are kinda “spur of the moment” messing around-type songs that fall apart after 40 seconds or so, but are still fun, and of course the famous closing line, “we’d like to thank you all, and we hope we passed the audition”, or something to that extent. Famous tracks include, “Let It Be” (obviously), “Across the Universe”, “The Long and Winding Road” (the most infamously criticized of the tracks, due to Phil Spector’s inserted overpowering and sappy orchestration), and “Get Back”. Other standout tracks include the band showing off their blues-rock influence with the live “I’ve Got a Feeling” and “One after 909”, and the last released of the McCartney-Lennon dual lead vocal tracks, “Two of Us”. The most interesting thing is how different the band sounds here than on any album between Rubber Soul and this one, with the possible exception of the White Album. Even though Sgt. Pepper is supposed to be fun, and Abbey Road and Revolver have some fun songs, it doesn’t seem like the band is enjoying itself, and that’s what really shows through here. Even though apparently they were at the peak of their fighting, the musicianship seems pure and easily accomplished, rather than worked on and overdubbed and experimented with. It seems spontaneous and lighthearted (with the exception of three tracks), and they again seem like a band that you would like to have playing at a party, rather than one who would rather be perfect and pristine. The other thing of note is that again, like many bands who go through big changes musically, if you play these two albums back to back (you can actually fit them both onto one CD) you wouldn’t realize that they could be the same band, especially considering that they were only four years apart…. just look at Scott Stapp.

“Let It Be” (the album) is an incredibly fun listen, mostly because you can hear the fun that the band (at least by all outward appearances) had while making it, and we’d all rather imagine them that way instead of arguing. The only weak spot is that although I really like “The Long and Winding Road” (and hate the acoustic version on the “Let It Be: Naked” album), it really has no place with the rest of the songs. The orchestration completely separates it from the tone of everything else, especially between the roots-rock of “One After 909”, and the folksy acoustic blues of “For You Blue”. It might have been better suited to end the album, after “Get Back”, especially knowing as Phil Spector did at the time that it was going to be the last Beatles album.

Onto the cover albums.

If this was 2003, it would be a perfect time for me to do the Sam voice. Fortunately, I’ve gotten over that sad time in my life. Ahh, what the hell,….”WHY CAN’T LUCY GO HOME WITH MEEEEEE!!!”

For the 2001 movie about a mentally handicapped Sean Penn raising his daughter Lucy, (Dakota Fanning), the producers wanted to get the most fitting of soundtrack material. Someone decided to make the movie heavy on the Beatles references, including the fact that Lucy is named after “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, so it was a prerequisite that their songs be included. They had trouble getting the rights to the songs, or at least the original performances of them, so they worked around it by getting a bunch of musicians to play them, with Eddie Vedder, Sarah McLachlan and Sheryl Crow being the highest profile names. The full track list can be found here. The album runs hot and cold, with the first three-fourths being well translated, and the second half going more for mood than preservation of the original intent. In fact, the only miscue before track 13 is “I’m Only Sleeping” by the Vines, and that’s mostly because the song is a weak one to begin with. Maybe the song fit thematically with the movie, but the skip button usually gets pushed when it comes on. The aforementioned three artists do perfectly competent (in Vedder’s case more like near perfect) recreations of the original versions of their respective songs. Rufus Wainwright, Stereophonics, Wallflowers, and Chocolate Genius (presenting a track that’s one of my favorites from the White Album), successfully update the songs with more contemporary instrumentation and vocal styles. Aimee Mann and Sean’s brother Michael blend their voices perfectly on the opener “Two of Us” (what I would consider, along with Rufus’ “Across the Universe” as the two standout tracks). Ben Folds iisn’t given enough to do with “Golden Slumbers” (the original goes on into two other songs, with a drum solo in the middle that he could’ve pulled off well… yes he does play the drums too… and bass… and probably a few other instruments), Ben Harper’s “Strawberry Fields” is light before turning into the noisiest of the tracks, and the Black Crowes’ track is perfectly forgettable. The album turns after track 12, with slow acoustic versions of “We Can Work It Out”, “Help”, and “Nowhere Man” by two people I’ve never heard of and Howie Day. Someone forgot that “Help” was urgent for a reason and that the best part of “Nowhere Man” was that the whole thing was sung in three parts, and not a whiny Bob Dylan impression. The album finishes off with a simple, solemn, baritone version of “Let it Be” that gets the point and shows the hope-tinged sadness of the original. The worst track is Grandaddy’s “Revolution”, that changes the tune entirely and removes the bluesy syncopation that made both the album and the single version of the original worth listening to, in addition to singing with an apathetic tone instead of one of cynicism.

The I Am Sam Soundtrack is probably the best compilation of Beatles covers available, and I’m sure that there are people out there who like the tracks 13-16 but they aren’t me. Three stars for all of the aforementioned reasons.

George Martin: In My Life? More like George Martin:Sells His Soul to Crap all Over His Life’s Work and Make a Few Dollars…. BAHHH-ZING!

In case you couldn’t guess by the above caption, this album is a total wash and the only purpose it serves is for comic relief when telling other people about it, and the fact that anyone would want to make something like it, especially someone like George Martin. For those of you unfamiliar with the man, you can view a detailed biography here.
Basically, he produced every Beatles album from 1962 until 1969 (essentially just leaving off the Phil Spector-produced “Let It Be”), and is oftentimes called “The Fifth Beatle”, although I think that’s kinda lame… just like this album coincidentally. Anyway, this CD came out in 1998, when Martin decided that he wanted to go out on his own terms, with his last work. So of course, you’d think that he would try to get interesting musicians, and probably have the means with which to get them to do it. You would think that, but instead we get people like Goldie Hawn, Robin Williams & Bobby McFerrin, Phil Collins, Celine Dion, and of course Sean Connery and Jim Carrey. Yep. That’s who does the songs. Not only that, but they managed to make some very good songs into mostly terrible songs. Out of that list, you wouldn’t expect that the best one would be from Jim Carrey, but it is. His version of “I am the Walrus” was something that I would play for other people and not tell them who was singing it. Nobody could ever figure it out, because it sounds nothing like Jim Carrey, except for the few ad-libbed lines he threw in, and, in the most knowing line on the album, the part at the end where exclaims, “There! I’ve defiled a timeless piece of art! For my next trick I’ll paint a clown face on the Mona Lisa while using the Shroud of Turin as a dropcloth”. Celine Dion turns a rather bland song (“Here, There, and Everywhere”) into one of her terrible sappy love songs right up there with the Titanic song. Goldie Hawn destroys “A Hard Day’s Night” by making it a lounge ballad. Robin Williams and Bobby McFerrin do a serviceable job with “Come Together”, but it’s completely overshadowed by Jim Carrey pretty much doing the same thing but better. Phil Collins provides a highlight with his full version of “Golden Slumbers” including an extended drum solo, something that Ben Folds should’ve been allowed to do. Sean Connery reads “In My Life” like he wants to be William Shatner, but with a Scottish accent. It’s okay, if you don’t care about the actual tune of the song. Other tracks of note are electric guitarist Jeff Beck playing the melody of “A Day in the Life” note-for-note without adding much else, classical guitarist John Williams outdoing Beck with his acoustic guitar version of “Here Comes the Sun”, and George Martin conducting a new version of the Pepperland Suite from the “Yellow Submarine” movie. Other tracks of ill-repute include Billy Connolly and his Scottish accent portraying a ringmaster for “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite”, and the biggest travesty of them all, making the decision to can the best part of the second best of the Beatles’ three-part harmony songs, “Because”, in favor of having electric violinist and fad at the time, Vanessa Mae give us her instrumental version. I believe that covers the entirety of the album. It’s a very obscure compilation that not that many people really know about, and it should be kept that way.

This album gets one star due to a few tracks that would be enjoyable to people who’ve never heard the original versions. Also, other tracks are guilty pleasures as you listen and wonder why anyone, especially someone with this much music industry power, would do something like this. Then you realize that in the liner notes he actually explained each decision individually. These explanations are worth about as much to me as the explanation for the movie “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band“, the lowest regarded of anything even vaguely having to do with their music, and an entirely different subject that perhaps one day I’ll tell you all about.

February 23, 2006
Meeting/Seeing Celebrities

I want to make this review as “non-braggy” as possible, so I’m gonna refrain from giving a list of famous people of whom I’ve been within 100 feet, but just to warn you all, to give examples, I’m still probably going to have to drop a few names.

A picture I took of Naomi Watts and Heath Ledger, back when they were still dating in 2003. Hopefully he didn’t break her nose like he did Jake Gyllenhaal’s.

So, I’m sure you’ve all heard me give examples or tell stories about “When I was in California”, and I’m sure you probably cringe every time I mention it. I actually do when I find myself saying that phrase. The problem is that for people that I haven’t talked to in a while, it makes good conversation, and is probably the most interesting thing I’ve done since senior year of high school. People (who haven’t heard it before) like to hear my “glamorous” stories about the time where I stood in a crowd of hundreds on Hollywood Boulevard, watching dozens of people take pictures of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston making kissy faces at each other at the premiere of her “instant classic” film “Along Came Polly”. Honestly, I was bored. Everyone around me is trying to get a glimpse across the street to the dimly lit figures about as big as if I hold my index finger an arm’s length away from my face and close one eye, and I’m there wondering what the big deal is. I suppose it’s good for “bragging” rights, as anyone who’s seen my “You can kind of make out the back of his crew cut” pictures of the event knows. Yeah, I took some pictures…. yeah, my lens doesn’t zoom…. It was my first time around at an event like that (it actually was the first night I had gone into the hollywood area) and I just happened to have my camera on me. But I was the tourist, and those other people lived there, so I’d hope that grants me a pardon. You’d think that after living in the area for more than I had at least, that the other onlookers would get tired of staring at people for no purpose other than that. Maybe there were a lot of other tourists in the group. I don’t know.

Moving on… working at the tv show that I worked at, I had daily run-ins with notable people… mostly b-list celebrities, and while I was excited going in to see what they looked like close up, most of the time it wasn’t a big deal or I was totally let down. The “beautiful people” as we’re led to believe, usually are no more or less attractive than any moderately attractive person you’d see in everyday life, and in fact, many times are less so. Elisha Cuthbert and Eliza Dushku are the biggest examples of this. Elisha Cuthbert (as well as Avril Levigne) is so remarkably short that you wouldn’t even recognize her if they walked past you. Eliza Dushku just wasn’t very attractive at all in person. Kelly Clarkson looks nothing at all like she does on TV or movies, or album covers without being very heavily made up.

The bottom line is that watching things like red carpet coverage where we learn to worship the idols of TV and film, we de-humanize them, and in that humanizing instance where they’re getting gas at the pump next to us you realize that they’re just above- average-looking people with a good amount of money, and unless they’re total coked out divas, or fried has-been rappers, they’re usually really normal and humble.

Meeting/Seeing celebrities gets two stars as the only real positive that can come of it is being able to tell other people and hope that they actually care (and don’t perceive you as unjustly gloating your “fortune”). Expectations usually will not be met because the media have set such a high standard, making people larger than life with us supposed to care about every little detail of their private lives. In the end, they’re just moderately attractive people who like to play dress-up, or dance around like idiots…. Rob Schneider, I’m looking in your direction on this last one.

February 8, 2006