Expansion

October 15th, 2008Blog0 comments

Just in case you needed another reason to vote for Obama: He wants to expand the Harlem Children’s Zone Project to 20 more cities.

I had written about the Harlem Children’s Zone Project in an earlier post — how it is working to break the cycle of poverty by starting with children at a very young age, teaching them reading and vocabulary skills from the very beginning. It’s great stuff, great news, and something that could yield huge dividends for our entire country.

Implosion

October 10th, 2008Blog0 comments

Yes, in about a year’s time we will all be living like Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. I’m looking forward to this — I’m working on my tightrope-based combat skills, and I know I look good in a mohawk and face tattoos. So it’s copacetic.

Seriously, I’m not worried about the financial crisis. I don’t know why. I’m a little afraid to look at my 401(k), but everyone is. And I feel like knowing that we’re all in this together is giving me a weird sense of security. For the first time since 9/11, we all have something in common.

Hopefully we won’t fuck it up this time.

What I’m really, really looking forward to in the next couple of weeks: Fallout 3. I have been waiting for this game for literally ten years. It’s by Bethesda, one of my favorite development houses, and everything I’ve seen indicates that it is going to be Tha Bidness. One of my favorite aspects is the fact that you can build your own weapons from blueprints and found items. One of them is a “rail gun” which fires railroad spikes and makes a choo choo noise when you hit the trigger. LOVELY!

I was looking at video of Diablo 3 when it hit me: Diablo is essentially, at its, core, Pac Man. Kill enemies, gather items. Repeat.

In fact, most RPGs are essentially Pac Man. Gather items, kill enemies, get stronger. World of Warcraft is group-based Pac Man with chat.

In fact, LIFE is essentially PAC MAN. Oh fuck!

Product Placement

October 8th, 2008Blog1 comment

“This episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is brought to you by Dodge with limited commercial interruptions.”

I’d been hearing a lot about how advertisers have been trying to work deeper product placement into television shows. Doing it in an overt, 30 Rock tongue-in-cheek style is fine by me. However, seeing it in action in the last episode of Terminator was galling.

A couple of the heroes need to rush down to a military academy to prevent a terminator assassination. So they jump into their Dodge RAM pickup — shot begins zoomed in on the Dodge RAM badge on the hood, pulls out to see the entire car. Montage over: Our heroes packing their gear in the Dodge RAM pickup’s many compartments and storage spaces. CLOSE on the Dodge RAM pickup’s dashboard, pull out to see our guys climb in to its spacious interior.

After seeing this I was like, “Hey — I think I just saw a commercial.”

I mean, a show needs to earn a buck to survive. That works for me. But I think there’s a problem when it becomes so overt that it’s noticeable. The audience shouldn’t be thinking, “They’re force-feeding me a commercial.” They should be thinking, “This car will get me laid.”

And another thing: If you’re a thrown-together family of fugitives hiding from robots from the future, how is it that you can find the time to keep your Dodge RAM pickup so immaculately shiny?

Talking Head

October 7th, 2008Blog0 comments

MSNBC Talking Head: “Tonight you saw a 20th century candidate debating a 21st century candidate.”

Oh yeah? Well I’d like to see how well Obama does against a 22nd century candidate with his/her/its Jedi mind tricks and Vulcan nerve pinches.

“Destroy… Destroy…”

Absorb

October 6th, 2008Blog1 comment

Chris Rock’s Kill The Messenger: Incredibly fucking hilarious. An absolute must-see. “George Bush fucked up so bad that he made it hard for a white man to get elected President.”

A lot of comedians live off of bits that aren’t about much but are incredibly entertaining in the way that they are said; Chris Rock has got something to say and he says it beautifully.

Caught a great episode of This American Life called Going Big (Listen to it on the web here) — in it we hear about a program for low-income parents and their kids called Harlem Children’s Zone.

One thing they emphasize is a focus on reading to very young children (babies to toddlers) to build language skills, comprehension, patience and learning capabilities. If a child doesn’t start learning these things at a very young age, it becomes very difficult for him/her to acquire these skills in the future.

It’s pretty amazing how attuned human beings are to language and storytelling. We need storytelling from a young age in order to develop properly. I’ve always thought that storytelling is a major thing that separates us evolutionarily from animals — the ability to know the past, plan a future, comprehend and describe where we are now.

But it’s incredible to think about how intrinsic it is to us as a species. It really is the core of who we are.

WRDL

October 2nd, 2008Blog1 comment

My new favorite web toy: Wordle.

Some Wordles I’ve made:

- Darwin.

- Genesis.

- And my favorite, Hamlet.

You Can’t Go Home Again

October 2nd, 2008Blog0 comments

I just recently saw American Gangster — I liked it, thought it was all right. It contains some really great moments — specifically the scene towards the end of the movie between Denzel and his character’s mother.

I’m breaking down and studying The Departed right now. Both movies share a lot of structural similarities.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the act breaks in movies — the break between acts one and two, the break between acts two and three. The structure of a story hinges upon these breaks — where they are, what they are, and how they are significant. Often the second act break is a resonance of the first act break.

One thing I’ve been thinking about lately is that a requirement for the first act break is that the protagonist crosses a point from which he or she can never return. “The Ordinary World” of the first act (as described by Chrisopher Vogler in “The Writers’ Journey”) is left behind by the protagonist, and he/she can never come back to it. Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru are smoldering skeletons. Your life as it once was is now over. It may not have been your choice, but you now must choose how to react to it.

It’s pretty much the point in the story when a character’s adolescence ends and his/her adulthood begins. You lose something — the death of a parent, for instance. Or you gain something — a new love that you have to protect. That’s precisely what happens in The Departed — one man loses his mother and thus all ties he has to family. Another man gains a love interest (the cop shrink) and is now bound to maintain his forged identity.

It’s really neat how that works. Now the trick — the magical part — is the second act break when the protagonist goes from adulthood to something else entirely.