A life-affirming weekend

It was a busy few days, climaxing with the wedding of my good friends Shabnam and Kyle on a fog-shrouded mountaintop above Malibu. Shab is one of the six people (six!!!) who officially Follow this blog, and I really appreciate it. I'd appreciate it even more if I knew the significance of the Follow feature, but here we are. Huge congrats to the both of them--not only for getting married but for getting married in unimpeachable fashion. I worked as a banquet waiter during college breaks for several years, and in those years I attended at least a hundred weddings of various sizes and flavors. No gay weddings ever happened over there at the Naval Postgraduate School, but I'm sure that was just a coincidence. In any event, this wedding was in my all-time top three, narrowly edged out by a pair of 200-guest barn-burners (one Irish, one Jewish--both peoples can really party). To have accomplished such a celebratory feat with less than a hundred guests and a day of foggy, drizzly weather was downright miraculous, and I say that as a hardened professional. Finally, even this bitter, salty soul was touched at all the sweet, funny awesomeness of the wedding. I don't believe I know anybody, including myself, who deserves lifelong happiness the way Shab and Kyle do. Their kids will come out of the womb princes(ses) of men.

As with most of life, weddings are gentle amalgamation of the choices you make the choices you don't. They got just about everything right--an absurd accomplishment for two people who were not only marriage rookies, but came from intact families! (No divorces/re-marriages for practice reps.) I counted five crucial mistakes they avoided:
1. Attempts at humor during the ceremony
Actually, they walked right into this one and emerged unscathed. I'm not sure how it happened--normally weddings are awful venues for humor. There's too many people with too much at stake, and public humor is tricky under the best of circumstances. But Shab and Kyle decided to fire a challenge fastball down the pipe on a 0-0 count, and it paid off. Both the wedding program and the vows were laugh-out-loud funny without undermining the sweetness of the whole event.

2. Having a clergyperson perform the ceremony
I don't think "clergyperson" is a word and neither does my word processor. Anyway, there's only two good reasons to have a priest or rabbi or what-have-you perform your wedding: a) you are super religious and this person has a close relationship with you and your intended; b) you are super religious and you feel like you MUST have this person do the honor or it's not official. Kyle and Shab are not super religious, and the wedding was officiated by a mutual friend from college named Nick Allen. Nick actually did a lot of work to make everything work and huge props to him, but he hammered home God's honest truth about weddings and funerals: personal relationships matter. I don't want some religious figure I barely know intoning about either my future life or my present death.

3. Attempts at humor during the toasts
I was pretty worried about this. Funny wedding toasts don't work; either they embarrass the bride and/or groom, or they're so peculiar that nobody understands the joke. Standing up in front of a hundred people and making them laugh is really, really hard. That's why stand-up comedy is one of the hardest things on the planet--and the difficulty increases exponentially as the crowd grows. After a successful flouting of the funny-ceremony rule, it must have been very tempting for Lyndsay and Drew (MOH and BM--that stands for Maid of Honor, and Best Man. Also Bowel Movement, which is fun). And both of them did the right thing by keeping it sweet, authentic and concise. The only violation of the rule was unintentional: Drew's toast was delayed because he was scrambling to try and find the iPad on which he'd written said toast. If you're asking "Who on Earth would write a wedding toast on his iPad?" then clearly you don't know Drew Wahl. I hadn't seen the guy in years, and I'd like to thank him for providing the whole wedding with a priceless "Oh, Drew, you preppy son of a bitch" moment. You forget how much you love somebody until something like that happens.

4. Wedding cake for dessert
I'll admit this peeve is heavily fueled by my waiting years. You see, the waiters don't pack a bag lunch. They take a minute here and there during the reception to duck in the back and wolf down some of the extra food. So they eat what you eat, including (usually) a slice of the cake. Let me say this for those of you who don't go to many weddings: the cake is a lie. It's made days in advance with ingredients selected not for taste, but for density and "hold." These are terms typically used to describe the benefits of hair mousse. Because the cake is not a dessert made to taste good; it's a structure designed to look good. The end result is a bland, spongy substrate tasting vaguely of corn syrup and maybe chocolate. The frosting is applied in vast quantities from a spray gun, and it is closer to toothpaste than anything else. The best wedding desserts are just normal desserts that people make--cookies, pies, turnovers, homemade cakes. Realizing this, Shab and Kyle had not one but TWO amazing dessert spreads. I tried a half-dozen items and all of them were delicious, but there were about 15 more desserts I could have tried. There was a cake, and it was cut in ceremonial fashion by the bride and groom, and slices of it were eaten by some poor deluded souls, but it was far from the focal point. As it should be. And that brings me to the last mistake they didn't make...

5. Cake-facing your spouse
This is probably the most obnoxious wedding "tradition" in all of human civilization. I'd actually prefer the Middle Eastern tradition of cutting loose with gunfire from an automatic weapon. Even if tragedy strikes, there's a bunch more room on the dance floor. I'm not even sure how to muster a rational argument against cake-facing, so let's just do the Colin Cowherd thing and say it out loud: "I'm standing here with the person I'm going to spend the rest of my life with, who's spent months preparing for our special day of celebration. You know what would make this moment really special? Mashing some cheap industrial wedding cake right into her stupid fucking face!" Oh wait, you didn't say "fucking?" Well, you might as well have, because you just hit your bride in the face with a piece of shitty cake. There is nothing to be gained by cake-facing your new spouse. DON'T DO IT. As Shab and Kyle were cutting the cake, Nate Dogg (the future Dr. Mr. Dr. Terrell Stevenson) piped up next to me, "I hope they get each other in the face!" This is the sort of degenerate Western Civilization with a capital W and C is up against. But this was no bush league couple, and they served each other a ceremonial First Bite of Shitty Cake with class.

I drove all night to make it home from the wedding. This probably seems like a really bad idea, but it was actually a lot of fun. I was too cheap (read: poor) to book a hotel room, and having spent the entire night dancing and talking with old friends I was completely sober. Big mistake, by the way: my "stuff yourself and get wasted at the reception" instincts badly eroded during my banquet-waiting tenure. A good wedding guest should really not be able to make it across the parking lot after the reception, let alone find his car and get into it and operate a manual transmission. But there I found myself, and the next five hours were a blur of red console lighting and Australian death metal. I used huge amounts of caffeine for the first few hours, and supplemented it with weed for the last two (THC knocks you out eventually, but it works in the short term). It was a great night, all told.

And since I'm reminded of weed, I'll close this post out with a highly informative video on the debate surrounding Prop 19. The Taiwanese are visual learners, apparently. Talk about counter-intuitive.



I don't want to get into much detail here (and I have work to do before Monday Night Football starts, so we're wrapping up), but these are my three favorite things from this video:
1) Pot smokers clearly delineate themselves from law-abiding Californians by wearing bandannas, growing beards and driving authentic replicas of the Mystery Machine from Scooby-Doo.
2) That has to be the smallest goddamn barn I've ever seen. Though I guess it has to be, in order to appropriately house the bounty of those 25 square feet.
3) As far as Taiwanese people know, the only black people in California are incarcerated. I don't feel bad at all for my racist slanty-eyes cheap shot before the video.

And finally, last last last business: Rob is gone for good. Nick and I will be rocking +30 moodlets for at least the next three days, so by all means come over and enjoy our good cheer (and the Giants in the NLCS!). I won't get into details because only the most corrosive kind of asshole would spread self-serving falsehoods about his home life to anyone stupid enough to listen--right, Rob? I'll just sum up my feelings using a context-inappropriate Eminem lyric: "Bitch, if you died, wouldn't buy you life."

Some Bob Dylan song

The title of this post should convey the ongoing passage of time. I understand Bob Dylan wrote a number of songs dealing with that idea, but...he also performed those songs, so I'm not going to listen to them. In a world full of talented singers and guitarists, Mr. Dylan couldn't have found SOMEBODY to perform for him? It's selfish, really.

Tumblr sucks
Some lazy asshole looked at a blog and decided, "You know what I could really do without here? The words." Enter Tumblr, the blogging service for the illiterate generation. Rather than developing ideas or doing work, bloggers can now simply post webcam pictures of themselves in various fun outfits, or showing off their nails, or showing off their abs. If that's too much trouble, just link Youtube videos or re-blog posts that other (possibly creative?) people have made. I understand an awesome part of Tumblr is its ease of use on mobile platforms. That is neat. But here's a thought: if a thought enters your head while you're away from your computer, try keeping it to yourself. If you feel the need to share, ask "why do I feel this need? Am I sharing to please myself, or because this is really worth sharing?" Not every thought that passes through your head needs to come out of your dumb fucking mouth. If you have ever posted your current physical location on Facebook, this discussion also applies to you.

Sports
Went to the Giants-Padres game Saturday with Nick. He got amazing fourth-row first-baseline seats as a birthday present, and asked me to go. I told him to take a girl, but he reminded me that neither of us even know any girls except my sister. So I went with Nick. And it was a great experience, except for the Giants losing and forcing a nail-biting Sunday conclusion (which they thankfully won to clinch the NL West). We were probably 40 feet away from Aubrey Huff and Adrian Gonzalez, and the best part? To get down to the "Club" level of seats, to which these swanky things belong, you have to go down a special staircase through security. Once down there, you access your seats via a corridor where only Club-seated patrons can go. It's got its own set of food vendors, beer vendors, bathrooms and all the rest; which means you never have to wait in line, except maybe during the seventh-inning stretch (speaking of which, MLB: the DH and the "stretch" have to go). You could literally get a beer during a pitching change, so Nick got five beers and ended up passing out on the floor of the CalTrain on the way home. Great day, except for Barry Zito. I hear big league pitchers walk in two runs during the first inning like...all the time.

Politics
Everything's going to hell at approximately the same rate it was the last time I posted. Not much to see here. I will say this: Meg Whitman should die of gonorrhea and rot in hell. ("Would you like a cookie, son?" "Ohh, look...they're little footballs!") I realize it's her right to spend ridiculous sums of money on her own political campaign, because money is the only thing that matters to politicians. But in so doing, I end up deluged with Meg Whitman ads, and those ads are among the worst I've ever seen. Why, you ask? To start with, Ms. Whitman's carpet-bombing strategy began in the Republican primary, where she used far-right populist Teabagger rhetoric to obliterate the reasonable, bookish former state comptroller who was campaigning without the benefit of 80 trillion moneys. Of course, the second her primary opponent was defeated, the Great Satan started carpet-bombing the airwaves with ads excoriating her Democratic opponent. He's a lefty liberal, and she's a moderate conservative with business smarts!

Except for this: because Whitman's only solution to campaign problems is throwing ad dollars at them, I am deluged with her messages and thus I remember them. Thus, I remember that the Great Satan was a far-right-wing populist during the primaries...but mysteriously became a moderate business-oriented conservative the second they were over. And I remember that no matter where I go, I cannot get away from this image of a pantsuited blonde with bad teeth and a face that's too small for the rest of her body. Also...EBay? Not impressed. That was a brilliant idea, something essentially unique on the Web even today, and it wasn't Meg Whitman's idea. Sorry, not much credit awarded for succeeding with somebody else's brilliant idea. The folks at Facebook took a done-over idea and executed it so well that hundreds of millions of people were practically compelled to use it. That's something I can appreciate. Fuck EBay. And finally, let me speak to the idea in Ms. Whitman's ads that "while Sacramento politicians ruined the state, Silicon Valley execs were conquering the world." Government and Silicon Valley-style entrepreneurship are two completely different skill sets. The former requires reconciliation and bitter compromise. The latter leverages your personality with relatively small size of the company to steamroll all opposition and direct all credit towards yourself. I wonder which Meg Whitman prefers?

Even on my personal Pandora station (loaded with metal, electronica and 90s grunge), I am hammered with ads for the Great Satan. I don't even know what the hell she'd do as governor; all I know is that the television tells me California is doomed unless I vote for her. So I don't have much of a choice.

Games!
I got a PS3; my only console from the current generation. My original PS2, purchased in 2002, is still working--I decided those fellows over in Japan know what they're doing. I'll expand the game library as I can, but for now the PS3 is purely a vehicle for Bayonetta. Released last year, it's an absolutely absurd action-combat game...like Devil May Cry with J-Pop sensibilities. There's a cover of Frank Sinatra's "Fly Me to the Moon," performed by a 14-year-old Japanese girl Frank would have loved back in the day before there were laws about that. I'm just kidding--it's still legal to tap 14-year-olds in Japan. You can go as young as 12 if you have tentacles.

StarCraft 2 was fun, but as predicted I dropped it after about a month. It's too much of an e-sport: and like most e-sports, it becomes so specialized that a normal human being can't enjoy himself anymore. Imagine a friend invites you to play soccer with him. You accept, and upon arriving at the field you realize that all the players are standing on their heads. They've determined that the best way to play soccer is to run with your hands and manipulate the ball with your feet in the air. And they're right; it's just a more optimal way to play, and you get your ass kicked if you try to compete using your feet to run AND handle the ball. This leaves you with two choices: either you can learn to run with your hands, or you can go home. It doesn't matter how much you hate playing upside down; it's more optimal and in order to compete you have to do things the optimal way.

That's SC2: either you play in the bizarre, scripted, predictable, highly-optimized style that the pro Korean gamers do, or you get your ass kicked. You're not losing because you're a bad player; you're losing because you haven't trained yourself to play in this specific super-optimal way, and the loser on the other end of the Internet has. "Tony, this seems like sour grapes!" It would, except that I've got an excellent record in SC2. I know the "right" way to play, because a friend taught me back in high school (another problem: people who played the first game are at a huge advantage). I just hate it, and I think it's silly and non-intuitive. You keep running around upside down; I'm going to play a different game.

The single-player campaign was about as well-done as anybody could have expected. Tons of cutscenes, tons of dialogue, fun mission objectives and character progression and whatnot. But, uhh...somebody forgot to actually make the dialogue good, or the characters interesting. All we know is that when Jim Raynor is drinking whiskey, he is Sad Jim (similar to Sad Keanu, but with a thicker neck). When he has a gun, he is Tough Jim. When he's yelling, he is Angry Jim. And when he's not doing any of these, he's an Enigmatic Blank Slate--the rarest of all video game characters! Props to Blizzard on putting in the effort from a design standpoint. There's a lot to work with here. It's just that nobody cared enough to take any risks. I actually applied for a job writing SC2 dialogue and cutscenes for Blizzard a year or so back; obviously I didn't get it, but obviously I would have been a bad fit. I want characters to be interesting because of what they do and say, not because of some expository dialogue about their pasts. I want the story to take me places I didn't expect to go. In college, we used phrases like "Show, don't tell." I guess that's a little highfalutin'.

And that's why Gamespot's recent selection of Sarah Kerrigan from the original StarCraft as the Greatest Game Villain Ever makes me want to punch my puppy in the face. I got a puppy, by the way. I'd post pics, but I'm not a girl so I won't assume you care. Anyway, how can a secondary character from ONE GAME be the greatest game villain ever? Particularly when she was a protagonist for the first half of the game, and inhabited a moral gray area even once she "turned?" Kerrigan's in SC2, but she has only a couple lines of dialogue. She's the focal point of the final cinematic, but she's unconscious for the whole freaking thing. No agency, no evil. Sometimes I wonder if anyone else even gives a shit about these things. And then I stop wondering, because I know games are written by a disinterested hodge-podge of semi-literates assigned to other tasks, and they very much do not give a shit.

Last post before the Rapture

Today was an obvious day to post here. First, it lets me slide in under the one-month threshold for inactivity. I don't mean to quibble about degrees of laziness--like pregnancy, you either are or you aren't--but taking a step every now and then to cover your own butt from the worst accusations is a good idea. Maybe you love blow and hookers, but snorting blow off a hooker's butt is crossing a line. Maybe you're a slothful fucker with a blog, but at least you don't go a whole month without posting. You took at least one step down the road of dignity, and credit is due. If you'll recall, these were roughly the standards to which we held George W. Bush. The man did not personally destroy New Orleans--he may have appointed a known incompetent to a disaster-management position for the ideological reason of proving the government's incompetence, and New Orleans may have been destroyed as a result, but George Bush did not personally hold any black babies' heads underwater. For this, we salute him.

Another big reason to post today: the Nerd Rapture is coming tomorrow and there's no telling whether I'll even exist on Wednesday. I speak of StarCraft II, the long-awaited sequel to the world-altering original from 1998. If you weren't paying attention in '98 (or if you are female), it was just the biggest thing. The nerdiest kids in school played and discussed it endlessly. The coolest kids in school played and discussed it with the nerdiest kids, but kept it away from any girls. Remember this, ladies: the difference between a "cool" guy and an "uncool" guy is that the cool guy is lying to you. He is lying because you want to be lied to. The point is, that game rocked the foundations of an entire young generation and StarCraft II promises to do the same. An astonishing number of People You Know will pick up the game and, at least for a month or so, allow it to consume them. Blizzard releases have a broad cultural pull that few gaming events achieve. Seeing as they haven't released a typical game since 2002's WarCraft 3, our culture's been able to ignore them.

Aside: World of WarCraft was a huge success and has inspired more misleading newspaper stories than any piece of software not abbreviated "GTA," but most people don't play MMORPGs. They view these games like military-grade psychotropic drugs out of a William Gibson novel: products that will reduce you to gibbering street-corner lunacy with such immediacy that their use cannot be contemplated. And while they're making your fingernails fall out, they demand a monthly fee! Never mind that MMOs offer more entertainment per dollar than any other product available, including cable TV and pot.

Anyway, Starcraft is a big deal. I'm curious as to whether a game for PCs only (by which I mean Personal Computers--the game is available, in admirable Blizzard fashion, for both Mac and Windows machines) can really be successful in the modern marketplace. I'm sure it will be, but let's be real: games are sold for consoles these days. Most studios would recoil at the notion of a PC-only title, though strategy games are something of a different breed. It is hard to micro your Speedlings on your Xbox 360 whilst pounding beers. It is even harder to type "GG" at the end of a game while your bros are slapping your ass pink in congratulations. Much as Blizzard would love to make console games (and much as Activision CEO Bobby Kotick would gladly murder his own children for said games, then proudly announce to interviewers that he'd murdered said children because shame is for losers), when the development cycle for your product is longer than the life cycle of the console your options are limited. Diablo 3 will be released in 2020 for Windows Miasma, Ultra-Mac and the PlayStation 3.

I have to admit, I question Blizzard's decision-making process in releasing this title right now. If you recall, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (a dictatorship, not to be confused with the Republic of Korea, a democracy) recently threatened "retaliatory sacred war" over joint US-South Korean naval exercises to be held this summer. Dubbed Operation Invincible Spirit (a name that sounds for all the world like it came out of North Korea), it will consist of maneuvers and tactical procedures, carried out with the goal of wasting a shitload of time, fuel and money to no productive end. But here's my real concern: it's irresponsible for Blizzard Entertainment to critically undermine the national security of South Korea at a time when it's under the threat of nuclear holocaust. The country's entire citizenry will be utterly consumed with Starcraft 2 for at least the next two years, and it's doubtful that even a direct military incursion by North Korea would provoke much of a national response unless, somehow, the Internet got shut off. At which point the South Koreans will be pacing and fussing in front of their routers, waiting for them to restart as the tanks roll through Seoul.

The solution? Release Starcraft 2 tomorrow in America, and hold off in Asia. Since it took 13 years to release a sequel to the first game (and they still LOVE the first game over there), it shouldn't be a big deal to wait a little longer. We can hold off until Kim Jong Il is spirited by the Lord to the Great Frozen Head Depository in the Underground Bunker, and replaced by whatever egg-shaped, jump-suited ("It's a Speed Suit!") progeny he's favoring this month. I'm really not worried about the next guy--by all accounts, dictators' sons are like Michael Keaton's clones in the movie Multiplicity: each gets progressively loopier at a geometric rate. Kim Il Sung was a legitimately terrifying figure, but his son (Kim Jong Il) is a terrifying joke and HIS son (current heir-apparent Kim Jong-Un) is pictured at right. On a related note, I hear Fidel Castro's son is literally Woody Allen's character from "Bananas."

The "Avatar" Live Diary

This has been a long time coming, in part because the DVD took forever to come out and in part because my Netflix account has been straining to manage a busy throughput of pornography. I'm just kidding; Netflix (remarkably) doesn't offer any kind of adult content. Which begs the question: why doesn't Netflix offer any kind of adult content? I don't care what the real answer is; I just know that if they opened it up, CEO Reed Hastings would wake up the next morning with piles of cash stacked on palettes in his driveway. It wouldn't have been delivered by anyone; it wouldn't even have been income from Netflix. It would have been a natural phenomenon--if someone leveraged porn across such a large mainstream service, money would just accrete via Newtonian laws of gravity and physics.

Avatar is a bit different from the other movies I've tackled with running diaries: not only is it actually a good movie, but I've already seen it prior to this writing. I suspect this will improve the product. Let's get going; this is a long one, and I've had the DVD menu's video/music loop going for 15 solid minutes now. Surprisingly, the only thing I really hate is the menu UI. For shame, Mr. Cameron.

0:01 Exposition GO. "I was in the VA hospital, with a big hole blown through the middle of my life...and also my spine, because my legs don't work." Also, his brother was murdered "by a guy with a gun for the paper in his wallet." Sam Worthington thinks of events in simple terms.

0:03 Six years in cryo-sleep makes sense in the context of real space travel, but wouldn't it make quality talent hard to find? Oh wait, the military guys say "The pay is good...VERY good." Sam Worthington is now sold. What use a bunch of money is on a God-forsaken jungle planet, I don't know. Especially when it'll be 15 years (travel included) before you get to spend any of it. Interstellar travel is really a bummer when you think about it.

0:05 "One life ends...another begins." Sam Worthington and his brother both managed to get themselves shot in completely different ways in rapid succession. His brother didn't even shot in combat! They are lousy soldiers, the Jakesullys.

0:06 "They can fix a spinal if you've got the money...but not on vet benefits. Not in this economy." The VA is a government organization and thus operates pretty independently of economic concerns. Seeing as Jake got shot in combat, I'm pretty sure they'd pony up.

0:09 Sweet, the big intimidating speech from the big intimidating soldier. I'm not sure if they got a real actor to play him, or whether he's a CGI character straight out of Gears of War. Cartoon scar and all.

0:11 Our hero is introduced to a plucky crew of half-characters. Their half-stories will mature into half-subplots, then everything will get abandoned halfway through the movie. I don't blame you, Mr. Cameron. This movie probably should have been 4 hours long.

0:14 Shipping scientists back and forth between Pandora and Earth seems really inconvenient. By the time these Avatar program guys get out to Pandora, they've missed out on six years of research. Having an ignorant marine like Jake Sully on board shouldn't be a big downgrade, because in a ridiculously fast-moving field like xenobiology your knowledge is invalidated by the trip.

0:16 Unobtainium! We don't know what it's used for or why it's valuable, but we know it's awesome. We also know what Giovanni Ribisi apparently has $30 million of desk ornamentation. He's come a long way from The Mod Squad. Claire Danes, not so much. And she was so pretty.

0:18 "Maybe I got tired of doctors telling me what I couldn't do." Follow that up with a seething look perfected by the kid who played Ryan on The O.C.. Eat it, Sigourney Weaver. You a bitch.

0:19 It dawns on me that the Na'vi, for all their physical prowess, must have really small genitals. They go through some amazing contortions and wear really tiny clothes and never once does a ball pop out. "But Tony, maybe Na'vi don't even have junk like humans." Oh really? Well, every other fucking thing about them just says "blue person." Tiny dicks. Be aware.

0:21 Blue Sigourney Weaver tosses Blue Sam Worthington a big plant pod and he just sinks his teeth into it. Delicious fruit! Good thing that was edible, because you didn't ask and you certainly don't know shit about alien botany. The Gears of War guy even TOLD you that everything on Pandora is a lethal hazard, and you're just eating the first plant you see. Suppose that's poisonous and your avatar just drops dead. Oops.

0:23 Sam Worthington walks in on Gears of War guy liftin' weights and spittin' tough guy cliches. "They could fix me up if I rotated back, make me pretty again, but you know what? I kinda like it." Also, that would take at least 12 years of space flight, by which time Mr. Gears would be pushing 60. He gets in a few parting cliches, complete with some air boxing in his mech. More on the mechs later. I have many important thoughts to share.

0:27 Sorry, I got caught up watching the gunship fly over Pandora. There's nothing I can say about the big exterior shots in this movie. They're amazing and everyone knows it. Michelle Rodriguez ably plays the exact same character as Pvt. Vasquez in Aliens. Did you know the actress playing Vasquez wasn't even Mexican? She's Jewish. Amazing.

0:31 Blue Sam Worthington runs into a big rhino thingy in the jungle. Given that Pandora is a low-gravity moon and the Na'vi are appropriately gangly, where does this giant thick-boned monster come from? And how could a whole herd of them operate in a dense jungle like this? On a savanna, maybe.

0:33 Big scary predator, as we run the gamut of Interesting Pandoran Wildlife. Life all Pandoran wildlife, it is oblivious to gunfire. Maybe the marines' shipment of Guns that Actually Work is still on the six-year journey from Earth.

0:35 First appearance of Blue Zoe Saldana (who's just Zoe Saldana, since there's no non-blue version of her). This is a weird character, because Zoe Saldana is unbelievably hot...but her character isn't as hot, because she's full Na'vi and has their facial structure. All in all, she's 92% as hot as Krista from the movie Ferngully. Which, if you weren't aware, has a nearly identical plot to "Avatar."

0:37 Blue Sam Worthington fights off a pack of space hyenas, attractively rendered by the Unreal 3 engine. The shot where one of them gets lit up in slow motion by firelight shows its seams pretty badly. Zoe Saldana makes a big deal out of finishing one hyena off, though she just killed five of them.

0:39 Blue Sam keeps running his mouth at Zoe Saldana, though she's an alien who has no idea how to speak English. Oh hey, turns out she speaks pretty fluent English. You're smarter than you look, Blue Sam.

0:42 Mysterious jungle jellyfish! They show up at critical plot junctures to totally change the minds of the Na'vi. They are ignorant savages, so the simplest natural displays can sway them. Okay, now the jungle jellies are all over Blue Sam like a shirt. That seems like magic. The Na'vi are also smarter than they look.

0:45 we're introduced to Tsu'tey, whose name I will probably have to keep typing out. His relationship with Zoe Saldana is never clear. Are they siblings? Are they supposed to be mated one day? And why does Blue Sam insist on making human gestures at aliens? They don't understand.

0:48 A really nice touch as Zoe Saldana complains at her mother--equal parts cute and petulant. Just reminding you that this movie doesn't actually suck.

0:50 Jake Sully returns, temporarily not blue! They never make it clear how much sleep people need when they're doing this stuff. Jake is "sleeping" while he's in the avatar...but the avatar needs to sleep too. Does this operation require 12-16 man-hours of sleep per day? If so, why aren't the avatar pilots put to sleep immediately when their avatars crash, to minimize downtime? Also, we get a nice shot of a resentful Dorky Scientist, jealous at Jake's success. This is an interesting subplot, but don't worry--it'll vanish completely in about an hour.

0:52 Here we learn the real source of the conflict: the native village is built on top of a giant unobtainium deposit. Neat! I don't recall exactly, but I believe they leave this as a pure coincidence. Sinister Executive states, "If there's one thing shareholders hate more than bad press, it's a bad quarterly statement." Well, seeing as it would take years for a communicade to reach Earth and even more years for the actual ore to reach Earth, aren't we dealing with long-term issues exclusively? Whatever. They want this stuff and are willing to resort to a reasonable amount of evil to get it. Not too much evil, though.

0:53 Sigourney Weaver says explicitly that Zoe Saldana and Tsu'tey are supposed to be a mated pair and rule the clan eventually. But they're brother and sister, right? I can think of at least two things that are wrong with this arrangement. Also, more resentment from the nerdy scientist. Whatever.

0:57 "We're gonna need accurate scans on every column," speaking about the structure of the big tree. "Roger that," Jake responds. With what shall he scan them, dear Leader? He's using a borrowed loincloth. It's even more embarrassing than the time I had to borrow a short-sleeved dress shirt for a wedding.

0:58 The legendary floating mountains of Pandora! That's really cool! There's nothing to support them; neither stone nor physics. I'm sorry, but if you have floating mountains in a sci fi movie I expect an explanation. It doesn't have to be good--we'll set a Geordi LaForge engineering idea as the baseline of acceptable nonsense.

0:59 The whole "flying on big lizards" thing is cool, but I question the goggles. What exactly is the point of eye protection made of twigs? A bug could still hit you right in the eyeball and disrupt zahelu or whatever.

1:01 "The days are becoming a blur." This means it's time for a slowed-down, narrated montage. You gotta have a montage. Even Rocky had a montage. We also hear, "Norm's attitude is improving." Say goodbye to your subplot, Dorky Scientist. It was fun.

1:02 Oh man, triumphant music rears its head in the montage! We must be getting close. After a bit it gets soft and tender, as Blue Sam and Zoe do fun things together. She shows him a helicopter lizard: the most useless animal on Pandora. Then Sigourney Weaver puts him to bed, which works because his legs weigh about 15 lbs. combined. Blue Sam and Zoe end up cheek to cheek while she instructs him on archery--and suddenly, we're feeling something. When did that happen? When did the Na'vi become real people, just like us? Wow. And finally, after Blue Sam makes a fuss about killing some stupid animal, Zoe knows he's achieved Supreme Intergalactic Oneness. Like in Ace Ventura 2.

1:06 Blue Sam climbs the floating mountains. As he does, stones break away...and fall? What the fuck? Also, the majestic floating mountains are dotted with majestic FALLING WATER. Giant stone mountains can float, but water? Get out of here, you clown.

1:09 Blue Sam makes his way among the flying lizards, across rocks suspiciously lacking in flying lizard guano. Maybe it's like the rocks, and just floats out of their scaly sphincters.

1:11 Blue Sam's efforts to tame his flying lizard reminded me of the horse-breaking missions in Red Dead Redemption, only if you got to fuck the horse when you were done. Come to think of it, that might have actually made RDR worth playing.

1:13 Blue Same is now Jakesully. He banged his first dragon, so he's officially more than just the blue version of a non-blue person.

1:16 We are introduced to Turuk, the super-dangerous predator of flying lizards. Why, on a planet filled with solo flying lizards and other flying things, would a predator go after a lizard with an armed Na'vi aboard? It's smarter and more dangerous than anything else in the sky.

1:18 "It's hard to believe it's only been three months, and I barely remember my old life." Well, you certainly remember your old accent; these voice-overs make Sam Worthington's mouth go all funny and Australian.

1:20 Mr. Gears, once a big proponent of this project, has apparently decided he's against it. Not sure when this happened; maybe around the time Dorky Scientist decided to abandon his beef with Jake and Sigourney Weaver stopped being interesting.

1:22 Aww snap, the scene in the purple trees with Retard Helicopter Lizards flying everywhere and giving themselves motion sickness. It's nice and pretty and Jakesully gets to bang Zoe Saldana. Though she's apparently supposed to mate with Tsu'tey, she really doesn't hesitate at all. She's pretty much begging for it the whole scene and nobody seems to consider this taboo. All the conflict and duality in Jake's character is compressed into a whispered-to-himself "What are you doing, Jake?" after banging Zoe. Good talk, self.

1:26 Jake almost dies because he's eating oatmeal. A real tragedy, since oatmeal is great for your heart. It also makes you wonder why a guy who's about to spend 12 hours unconscious (and has no legs to begin with) needs a hearty meal.

1:27 The giant excavating machines are STRAIGHT out of Ferngully. There is no Tim Curry pouring like liquid sex out of the smokestacks, but, uhh...Giovanni Ribisi looks nice in that shirt. The Na'vi are caught completely by surprise by these machines, though we know they've been chugging for three months. These guys suck at being attuned to nature.

1:29 Jake and Zoe get in some trouble for banging. Tsu'tey is upset, but nobody else seems too scandalized. See why I said there was some ambiguity here? Not much of a tradition. Also, the Australian accent is in full effect when Jake gets upset.

1:32 Jakesully broke a camera on a tractor, so now he's an enemy of the state. To be fair, he and Sigourney Weaver are really not making this easy on the corporate guys. These folks need a bone thrown their way. They want unobtainium, and you should figure out a way for them to get some of it. Compromise! Work it out. Giovanni Ribisi yells, "they're just goddamned trees!" Sigourney Weaver disagrees. Who'll be proven right???

1:36 He's kinda mean, but Giovanni has a point. I actually like the guy and wish his character was more important. He's not a bad guy, but he's got a job to do and somebody else would do it if not him. The entire Pandora settlement is financed by this metal, and he needs more of it. And since it's called "unobtainium," it's probably hard to find.

1:39 The flying human armada, especially the big ship, is pretty awesome. James Cameron has a true gift for Space Marine aesthetic. If they ever make a StarCraft movie, he needs to direct it and we cannot have a discussion about this unless the discussion is an attempt to define the length, width and breadth of this idea's awesomeness.

1:43 Michelle Rodriquez (not a Jew!) bails out of the attack in the most futile gesture of civil disobedience ever. Zero lives saved, zero trees saved and a bunch of other Marines pissed off. Still, her character couldn't stay credible and open fire. You get a pass, Mr. Cameron.

1:44 The Great Tree finally falls, and...well, aside from a lot of crushed blue people, nothing really happened. The world wasn't destroyed. The big "network" appears to soldier on. There was no greater calamity here. So, uhh...I guess Giovanni Ribisi was right! It was just a big tree. Moving on.

1:48 Michelle Rodriguez rescues the good guys, throwing out a "tree-hugging traitors" line to bait the guard. Apparently nobody, including the angry Marines on her gunship, noticed her bugging out in the previous scene. Making her civil disobedience all the more futile.

1:50 Mr. Gears earns his Total Badass merit badge by running out in the funky atmosphere to shoot at the good guys. He mortally wounds Sigourney Weaver, whose most interesting line of the past hour has been "Oh, shit!" Aside: I really like the fact that the Pandora atmosphere is unbreathable to humans. This is a nice element of realism: a non-toxic atmosphere with the wrong balance of gases for human survival.

1:55 Was Sam Worthington drunk when he recorded these voice-overs, or was his dialect coach sick that day?

1:55 Jakesully captures Turuk to become the second biggest badass in the universe: Turuk Mak'to. The biggest badass is Kurak Mak'to, and that is such an inside joke that I won't even explain it. There are like three people on the planet who MIGHT laugh.

1:58 Tsu'tey is the chief of this particular Na'vi tribe after his father's death...so does he have to marry his mother? Does he have other options? I don't know the answers. I do know that Sigourney Weaver's "I'm not really naked" vine wrap looks absolutely ridiculous. If she can't wear clothes, why bother at all? Old ladies with bullet holes in them aren't sexy. I kid; Sigourney Weaver is always hot. In any event, she dies and it's sad.

2:02 Big speech by Jakesully. Stirring stuff. But it turns out that Tsu'tey (doing the translation) is a really lousy public speaker and butchers his delivery, so the Na'vi get lost. The moment is rescued by Jake jumping on his Turuk; the babes love that. A brief montage follows, where Jake skips the awkward translated speeches and just shows them his ride. And Na'vi across Pandora agree that his ride is the most pimpingest of all flying lizard mounts, so they join his crusade. We talking pimpin' since been pimpin' since been pimpin' etc. etc.

2:06 Mr. Gears delivers a counter-speech where he prepares to blow up the tree of ancestors or whatever. The first tree going down didn't do a whole lot; why will this be different? It's even more specialer?

2:11 Final battle is ramping up. Mechs have been deployed. Let's talk about mechs. These ones are cool and realistic in several ways, but they make the crucial (usually Japanese) mistake of giving mechs hands. Nobody would ever build a mech with hands, and then build special guns to be held and fired by those hands. That just doubles the number of things that could break or go wrong. Any real mech would have weapons built in, or at the very least attached to modular hardpoints. I have spent a lot of time thinking about mechs and you need to respect that.

2:14 Not sure why, in a jungle setting, you have to rush the line of human marines (using guns) with your own line of horsey-riders with bows and arrows. The guys in the air came from above and behind--that might be a good idea.

2:16 Thrilling aerial chase/battle scene with Jakesully and Michelle Rodriguez (in a badass war-painted gunship). I kind of wonder where Jake's original lizard mount went when he upgraded to Turuk. The critter can't find another rider; it had to be heartbroken, or as heartbroken as a cold-blooded animal can be. It's like somebody who dates an American Idol contestant--you're just gonna get upgraded and it sucks.

2:18 Tsu'tey dies. Bullets...his only weakness! Incidentally, he'd jumped off his lizard into the back of the Carry-All. Donald Rumsfeld could have plotted a better exit strategy.

2:21 In their darkest hour, the Na'vi are bailed out by the forest goddess Eywa and her animal minions. Best surprise comeback since those suits of armor beat the Nazis in Bedknobs and Broomsticks. What's the Greek term for a forest goddess? Deus ex machina?

2:23 Dorky Scientist pulls on a mask, grabs a gun and runs out into the jungle. They needed to get him out of the scene so Jake and Mr. Gears can get a 1v1. We'll see him again at the end of the movie.

2:24 Jakesully stumbles while riding the giant mega-gunship and has to grab a missile to hold on. I really wanted them to launch the missile so he could ride it like the third level of Contra 3. Meanwhile, the gunship blows up and Mr. Gears is alone in a mech.

2:27 Zoe Saldana, riding a big predatory thing from earlier in the movie, disarms the mech and breaks its gun. Maybe the gun should be attached to the mech, so these things don't happen? Nah.

2:29 Jake has missed two killing blows on Mr. Gears now, but Zoe Saldana finishes him. Not since Kobe Bryant in Game 7 has such a poor performance been bailed out for a win.

2:32 White Jake and Blue Zoe are together, and for the first time we notice the fundamental weirdness of their relationship. She's twice his size and blue and weird. Human beings would NOT be attracted to Na'vi under typical circumstances, so it's good they both met as blue folks. Zoe's trying to be really nice here, but all she can think of is "Oh my god, what the hell is wrong with your legs?" Invalid Na'vi get dropped off the top of the Big Tree.

2:34 Jake lets Turuk go and presumably returns to slumming it up on his old mount. They kick the humans off the planet, including a chastened Giovanni Ribisi. I'm sure the humans will slink off, defeated, and never return to the ridiculous economic bounty of Pandora...in which they've already invested countless billions. Conflict resolved. And Jake gets his own ridiculous leaf shorts to ease his transition to full-time Blue Person. It works because he wasn't already dying; Eywa sees right through that shit and she's not going to give you a pass just because you were hilarious in Galaxy Quest. Eyes open, credits roll.

Looking back on this diary, I feel a little bad. It's a good movie and it's still moving and satisfying on the third viewing. The payoffs still work. Cameron created the first work of Serious Science Fiction in a long time, though I'm sure nobody will take the hint and we'll spend the next decade saddled with poorly-shot shit heaps featuring vampires and werewolves. Eclipse comes out today, and the action shots in the trailers are enough to make me cringe. It's awful and it pains me that modern technology is not being put to work making better movies. Criticize James Cameron all you want, but he's doing things that nobody else is willing to do. I imagined a Cameron-directed Dune and now I have to take a cold shower. For reference, the picture below is an example of what happens when people who aren't James Cameron try to make serious sci fi epics. Thanks always for reading.

Anelka don't like people playin' on his phone

I'll admit I didn't envision two back-to-back World Cup posts. Had it not been for a family trip to Yosemite last week, there might have been a buffer post--about what, I don't know. You would have seen a late Thursday post about...I dunno, Cthulhu or something. He might have been eating a video game or playing Norse-themed heavy metal. Like the four chords that comprise all of rock music, this blog is about making art out of a few simple components. But the South African events of the past week have been too awesome to pass over. The extent to which nations' collective personalities are played out in their national soccer teams is remarkable.

France: Vive la revolution!
French forward (they are called "strikers" in soccer to pad the sport's record number of awkward synonyms) Nicolas Anelka was kicked off France's national team after mouthing off to coaches behind closed doors. This is weird enough--in America even "beloved" athletes like Magic Johnson routinely get their coaches fired and nobody cries foul--but then the entire team responded by boycotting practice (awkward soccer synonym [ASS]: "training"). Now the squad is in total crisis, with the President of France holding his Sports Minister in South Africa to broker a peace. I have a couple thoughts here:
**What the hell is a Sports Minister? Apparently in France this is a real job supported by tax dollars (ASS: "Euros"). In America, a Sports Minister is one of those guys who delivers the opening prayer at the start of a NASCAR race. "Dear God, please protect these mighty athletes as they turn left over and over. Let their ankles not cramp up while pushing the gas pedal. And most of all, God, we ask You to hide our Caribbean romps with sexy boys, lest everyone discover what awful hypocrites we are, Amen."
**This whole situation could really be shot by Dave Chappelle for "When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong." In this case, Anelka could have kept his mouth shut and taken his share of blame for a disappointing French squad. He kept it real. His coach could have written the explosion off as an in-the-moment emotional outburst; but he kept it real and sent the mecontent back home. His teammates could have swallowed the whole unpleasant episode and re-purposed their anger towards--I don't know, maybe the big international soccer tournament they came to play in? But no; they, too, kept it real. This may be a shitty soccer team, but damned if they aren't the most Real motherfuckers in the tournament. Their first-round exit will be just as real.

Bottom line: the French are just too good, as a people, at keeping things real. They are so eager to let the perfect be the enemy of the good that they've never kept a government for more than 80 years without cutting somebody's head off. There are strikes and boycotts (ASS: "stand-ups" and "disbuyings") on a daily basis. The team is just reflecting the culture from which it derives. It so happens that the culture is full of confrontational douchebags. But the origin of the word "douche" tells you everything you need to know about that.

England: Oh my God, we're all doomed
England hasn't won a World Cup since 1960. The preceding sentence is the single most important thing to remember about the English soccer team, the English people and the entire English nation until the Cup is over. It's all they think about; not even the Cup itself, but the fact that they haven't won in fifty years. English soccer fans are so traumatized that, like Boston fans of decades past and Cleveland fans of decades present and future, they destroy their own chances. Whenever anything goes amiss for England, the fans get a look: Oh God, we're doomed. The players get the same look, because they grew up as fans. They know the history. They know they're doomed too. And because of that, they tighten up and fail and under-achieve. They are so convinced they'll let themselves down that they can't help but deliver on that one promise, if nothing else. Contrast this to the USA team, who only seems to get fired up by giving up early goals. Having grown up on insipid American sports movies, which promote the scrappy never-say-die underdog and actually conflates giving up an early lead with moral rectitude. If you were winning at the start, you'd be the evil black-clad Norway team and Coach Bombay is NOT HAVING THAT. Our guys don't take leads very well, but at least they don't utterly collapse when shit goes wrong.

So the team is in trouble, facing elimination if they don't win against Slovenia (national motto: "All our women are either REALLY hot or REALLY ugly"). They know it; everyone knows it. And characteristic of the English people, they are busy working themselves into a giant neurotic knot because of it. The knot can't be un-worked because...why? Oh right, because (characteristic of the English) they can't even bring themselves to talk about it. Team leaders called a closed meeting after the disastrous 0-0 tie with Algeria, but their overbearing Italian coach wouldn't even let the players speak. That is how conflicts are resolved. If an Englishman loses a thumb in an accident, I assume he waits until he has a headache so he can go into the hospital and ask for some Aspirin. Don't want to bother the doctors about all that blood. And I don't want to read too much into this, but why in hell is an Italian coaching the English national team? Do you think that at the Empire's height an Englishman would have let an Italian tell him how to do anything? This is a civilization in decay.

Sadly, England is all about under-achievement. And I can't blame them. This is a people who were told in 1940, with their empire in collapse and their homeland under attack by a massive and intractable foe they'd allowed to thrive, that should their civilization endure another thousand years "this was their finest hour." Way to set the bar low, Winston. It's like when Nick regales us with stories of his athletic prowess in the 8th grade. Is that really how you want to frame the narrative?


North Korea: Wait, we have to go back?
I always thought it was funny that both North and South Korea managed to qualify for the World Cup. Doesn't it reflect kinda poorly on the South Koreans? Those guys don't even have food, and they do just as well as you. Maybe a little less StarCraft, a little more jogging? Hmm? I kid, I kid; North Korean soccer players probably have access to both food and shoes while the World Cup season is going on. The real question is, where do these players come from? I don't know if the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (out of four words in the country's name, three are lies. I assume North Korea is truthfully located in Korea) has its own pro league, though I can't imagine the games are very competitive. I picture two squads; the Pyongyang Chosen of the Dear Leader and the DMZ Capitalist Pigdogs. They have something of a Harlem Globetrotters-Washington Generals dynamic, reinforced by the fact that all members of the Pigdogs except for the goalie are executed before every game.

The North Korean squad hasn't acquitted itself very well in international competition. Players have expressed shock and astonishment at the other players, "who stand nearly as tall off the ground as the Dear Leader himself," and the rowdy fans "who are allowed to stand and make all kinds of distracting noise." The prevalence of night games has also contributed to the players' discomfort, as most have never played under electric lights and get freaked out by multiple shadows they cast on the field (ASS: "pitch"). Frankly, they may just be suffering from a lack of moral support; North Korean soccer fans are notorious for traveling poorly.

It's hard to gauge the mood inside the DPRK camp, what with all the razor wire. But the players seem determined to soldier on. "It is crucial that we make the elimination round," stated defender (ASS: "backer") Park Kae-Soon. "I think we are allowed to stay here as long as there are games to play. We want to play more games." The mood has to be somber after today's 7-0 thrashing at the hands (that turn of phrase really doesn't work for soccer) of Portugal. Even athletes from the tiniest nations have a lot of pride, but there can't be a good vibe when you know everyone's going to be executed. The good news: maybe the Head Coach/Chief Political Officer can argue that losing at a game of capitalist oppression is winning at class struggle. I just hope he can sell the Dear Leader on it.

I'll leave you with an animated GIF that captures how most Americans feel about the tournament's physicality. This is courtesy of my friend Adrian, who cares more about soccer than any fat American has a right to. Some of these flopping motherfuckers are starting to make baseball players look tough.