I got behind in watching Heroes. Tonight, I finally caught up on the latest 5 episodes. After all, no more new episodes until next year.
Spoiler alert – I will mention some significant plot points. Don’t read any further if you haven’t watched them eps. You have been warned. Continue reading
This morning, I had to put Al to sleep. He threw a blood clot, couldn’t move his back legs, and his heart was also damaged.
Al lived a long and happy life (almost 20 years!) in Chicago, Neenah, Portland, Boston, and Los Angeles. My brother got him from a pound and named him after the youngest of the brothers Karamazov. When Kevin moved to Japan in 1991, I became Al’s custodian. He was so shy that my dormies didn’t see him for the first month. Once Al and Calliope finished their turf war, he began venturing outside my room, then running back inside. He eventually conquered the landing, the stairs, and the first floor. By the end of the year, both cats would chase each other throughout German House.
I love him and miss him.
And here is the most boring video of Al drinking milk. After Calliope died, he became quite insistent that I keep feeding him milk too. It may not be healthy for cats, but it brought him pleasure in his old age.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q0v5k_rGtE]
Two weeks ago I bought a Wii. This is the first time I have ever purchased a game system. Even though I grew up in a family that played games – alphabet soup in the car, Risk, Trivial Pursuit, cards, Stratego, and later RPGs – we never became obsessed with computer games. My family had some antiquated console (not Atari!) that we got for free from a timeshare presentation. My sister had C-64 that had some adventure/strategy game; its codeword at the end was CONDOR, if my memory serves me well.
Back in the 1990s, my roommate had Myst. I was engrossed within its world. When I was out in the real world, I wanted to click on buildings (especially ones on BU’s campus) to see what would happen. This level of involvement/addiction scared me. I swore off computer games. It helped that I didn’t had an old computer that wouldn’t run most games.
Yet I broke my self-imposed bad an bought a gaming system. I love it! Best of all, I have not become addicted to it. Yet.
I am troubled, though, by my Mii. I had fun putting it together. I even added a mole to my face. The face did reflect my own. And then I realized it was a mirror reflection. The mole on my Wii is on my right cheek, but is on my left in real life. Same with the part on my hair. I had created myself as if I were looking in a mirror.
Is this normal? Do most people create avatars that are mirror reflections? Wouldn’t that be a cool research project – compare how people construct their avatars across different systems? I hope that someone has already done this, or is in the midst of it. As we said at Reed at that moment of epiphany, “Thesis!”
My Second Life avatar is fanciful. I never even tried to make it into a self-portrait. Yet with the Mii, it felt natural to make one look just like me. I’m going to make a new Mii that is not a mirror reflection. I wonder if it will disturb me at some level.
Last Saturday, my friend Stacey and I attended Spike TV’s Scream 2008 Awards at the Greek Theater. It was my first awards show and the closest I’ve ever come to a live red carpet. I had won tickets to it at Comic-Con; I didn’t research the show much.
While waiting in line to get in, we marveled at how many people were dressed up in costume. A man in a yellow uniform from Old Trek was with a woman dressed in black & red as a cat. Lots of people were dressed up as Heath Ledger’s Joker. There was a large assortment of goths and punks as well as characters from various horror movies, and Gumby.
The show lasted about 3 hours, only 2 of which were shown on television. Despite that, several awards were not mentioned or awarded at the show but did make it into the press release. That document’s funniest line was about a rousing performance by The Smashing Pumpkins. Admittedly, I am not a fan, but I was so bored during their song that I forgot that they were playing. So unmemorable. Kerli, on the other hand, was awesome. I tried to look more at the dancers and musicians that at her; I figured that she would get most of the facetime during the broadcast. I loved the performance. The dancers wore white masks and black bondage gear; they moved in fluid jerks, successfully generating an eerie scene. I missed seeing most of the climax of the song, Walking on Air, because the confetti and smoke obscured my view of the stage. Despite that, the performance was transcendent. Unfortunately, that energy and otherworldliness did not translate in the broadcast. I think it was the confetti in the air that the cameras could not adequately capture.
Gerard Way seemed to be the most sincerely geekiest happiest presenter. Others were comfortably in their element (Kevin Smith, Rosario Dawson) and others were at home in front of a crowd (Sharon Osbourne). Frank Miller seemed nervous; we couldn’t hear half of his banter. Somehow they edited his words together as a coherent bit for the broadcast.
There were other goofs by presenters. Marilyn Manson seemed to be too tall for the mike. A fan came up and held the mike stand closer to his mouth. It was hilarious even though the sound kept cutting out. Unfortunately, they make Marilyn redo his bit. Compared to the first version, he gave it in a monotone. I was cracking up at his f**k you to the show’s producers. Marilyn, though, is a smart and talented presenter because the low energy version broadcast on tv was surprisingly funny and bearable.
Julie Benz forgot that she was presenting a second award; the trophy girl, Julie, and Christopher Nolan were trying to find their way backstage when a producer came out and made them take their places again. I feared another complete do-over, as happened with Marilyn Manson. How did they not capture his speech? It flowed in an enjoyable manner. What torturers were these producers if they were making him give another version of his acceptance speech? Luckily, Christopher explained the situation, described it as a pick-up, and repeated the last line of his speech. Julie announced that Christopher and his brother had also won best screenplay; there were more speeches. That doubling-up of award winners was a common, and puzzling, occurrence. On a couple occasions they didn’t even bother to list the other nominees.
The producers ran into technical difficulties not related to speeches. Rosario Dawson had to repeat announcing the winner of the best film award because the Batman prop didn’t light up properly the first time. They also kept Tim Burton in the balloon for several minutes. He looked so uncomfortable. I do not know what caused them to stop his trip about one-third of the way across the audience. He was racing out of the basket once he landed.
We were told that there would be audience participation during the finale. When the green lasers went off, we were supposed to wave green glow sticks. When the sticks were passed out, though, a different set of instructions were taped on; now we were supposed to wave them when Samuel L. Jackson began talking. Right before the finale, the announcer came back on and asked us to break open the glow sticks but hide them until the appropriate time. Of course, he did not specify what that appropriate time was. My friend and I dithered – do we wave them when Sam Jackson starts speaking, or when the lasers go off? In the end, we followed the crowd and started waving when Sam walked on stage. From the broadcast version, I now know that we were wrong to be lemmings. The editors definitely had a hard time finding footage without the the glow sticks in motion. The audience was rowdy; several people threw their sticks onto the stages, at the Stormtroopers, and across different sections.
The producers did keep the crowd entertained during breaks. Before the Smashing Pumpkins went on, an aerialist entertained the crowd. During the regular commercial breaks, they showed the original trailers for Blacula, Terminator, and Escape from New York. They also showed trailers for obscure offerings, including The Sinful Dwarf and The Multinauts. I must watch the latter.
My friend and I were in the cheap seats above on the right side. Although there was free beer & wine available, no one seemed to be assigned to our section. We had to highjack another server. Direct views of our area by the cameras were obscured by the bank of lights on the railing. No matter. If you re-watch the awards, listen to the first woo in response to Frank Miller’s name-dropping of Jean Giraud, aka Moebius. That’s me. I cheered loudly, then stopped and realized that I was about the only in the entire audience woo-hoo-ing. I sat in my seat embarrassed yet happy, wishing that the volumes of Moebius were back in print.
All in all, I had a grand time at the show. I’d like to go again next year, in better seats, and perhaps in costume
