One of the many things that makes baseball the greatest sport in the world is that it represents stability - every March, players start training for April. Every April, thousands of fans show up for Opening Day at their respective ballparks, filled with the hope of possibility - even if their team is predicted to lose 100 games this year, it hasn't happened yet: everybody starts 0-0.
As the oft maligned former commissioner Bart Giamatti said: It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.
In other words, it appeals because there is so little about the game that ever changes. It is as familiar as the spring, as familiar as the sun rising and setting.
When Harry Kalas died yesterday, it surprised me that it hurt. It didn't seem to me at first like I had any right to really be affected: after all, I didn't know Harry personally. I never met the man. I was just a Phillies fan, one that probably took him for granted too often like many others, so used to him calling the games that it didn't even cross my mind that someday, he wouldn't be around to do it. Harry called every Phillies game of my entire life - his presence was as ubiquitous as the Phillies themselves, as baseball itself.
I stare out the window at what is a gloomy day here in Delaware, and I know the spring will come. I know that everyone will eventually move on, myself included, because baseball, like life, goes on.
But for right now, for this moment, Harry is gone, and with him the spring and the promise that both it and baseball bring. The promise they represent - that there are windows of opportunity in life where anything seems possible - for now seems to have disappeared.
The feeling will pass, as all things do, and no matter how much we might want things to stay the same, no matter how much we might want to turn on the game tomorrow night and hear Harry call it, comforted by the familiarity of it all, it won't happen. We learn to adjust.
Baseball represents that too, you know: the game may not change, but the people do. It's not a bad thing or a good thing, it just is.
Right now though, I just want it to feel like spring, the way it did on Sunday when the Phillies won and Harry called the game, and everything was exactly as I thought it should be on an afternoon in April - and now can't ever be precisely the same again.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Thursday, January 08, 2009
5 Most Anticipated Films of 2009
I absolutely love movies, but I dislike going to the movie theater. In the past 2 years I've seen maybe a half dozen movies in the theater, and very rarely will I go on a busy movie day (like a Friday night) if I go at all. I like a nice Sunday matinee, but really with TVs and DVD players being what they are, with all of the easy access we have to movies via Netflix, movie channels, TiVo, Netflix on TiVo, etc. it just seems kind of silly sometimes to go to a movie theater when I (personally) can be guaranteed to enjoy the experience at home. Going to the movie theater is not a sure good time, mostly because of the occasional rudeness of other movie-goers.
But sometimes you just can't avoid the hype and you find yourself unwilling to wait for the DVD release.
My buddies at LastBestAngryMan and The Philosophy of Time Travel agreed we would all post our top 5 most anticipated films of 2009. Here's the top 5 movies I'm most likely to see in the theater in 2009, which by proxy means they are the most anticipated:
5) 9 - This film will mark the real feature film directing debut for Shane Acker, who really cut his teeth doing animation with Weta during the Lord of the Rings films. Here's the deal with this one - Acker made a 10 minute or so short film around the concept a few years ago. The movie is embedded below. The film coming out in theaters this year is the whole story. The visual style is super cool and I'm always a fan of animation in all its incarnations.
Short film "9":
Feature Film Trailer, featuring a terrific song by Coheed and Cambria:
4) The Lovely Bones - There are two big reasons I'm looking forward to seeing this. Number one, the book is absolutely terrific and for me exceeded the critical hype. Number two, Peter Jackson is directing, and the material from the book is something I think he could prepare a feast with. No trailer available yet.
3) The Wrestler - This movie is technically out right now in the US but only under limited release. I check every weekend to see if it is out around Delaware but so far no luck. The number one reason I want to see this: I haven't seen a Darren Aronofsky movie yet that I haven't loved. I also have a soft spot in my heart for the material here because when I was a kid I was a huge fan of pro wrestling. There's a lot of Oscar talk swirling around Mickey Rourke's performance in this one, if that kind of stuff matters to you.
2) Public Enemies - It's a 1930s crime drama starring Christian Bale and Johnny Depp directed by Michael Mann. If you need any more explanation than that I have no idea what to tell you.
1) Watchmen - I'm worried about this movie. Really, really worried. There is a very good reason that Watchmen is the only graphic novel on Time's 100 greatest novels list: it is an absolute masterpiece. It is also really, really complex and has always seemed like it would be a nightmare to faithfully translate to the big screen. We already know that at least one key element (the Tales of the Black Freighter framing device) will not be in the movie. There are more and more reports suggesting that the ending has been changed. The director's original 3 hour cut was apparently loathed by the studio and who knows if it will survive tampering. The whole thing is a recipe for a colossal disaster.
But I had a lot of the same skepticism with Lord of the Rings, and boy was I completely wrong there. This easily gets #1 because it is probably the only movie I will definitely see this year in the theater, and that's because there's no way I'll be able to avoid it. A great deal of my friends love the graphic novel as much as I do, and I'll be unable to avoid discussions of this movie when it is finally out.
Hopefully they will be discussions about how we were totally wrong about all our concerns over the movie.
But sometimes you just can't avoid the hype and you find yourself unwilling to wait for the DVD release.
My buddies at LastBestAngryMan and The Philosophy of Time Travel agreed we would all post our top 5 most anticipated films of 2009. Here's the top 5 movies I'm most likely to see in the theater in 2009, which by proxy means they are the most anticipated:
5) 9 - This film will mark the real feature film directing debut for Shane Acker, who really cut his teeth doing animation with Weta during the Lord of the Rings films. Here's the deal with this one - Acker made a 10 minute or so short film around the concept a few years ago. The movie is embedded below. The film coming out in theaters this year is the whole story. The visual style is super cool and I'm always a fan of animation in all its incarnations.
Short film "9":
Feature Film Trailer, featuring a terrific song by Coheed and Cambria:
4) The Lovely Bones - There are two big reasons I'm looking forward to seeing this. Number one, the book is absolutely terrific and for me exceeded the critical hype. Number two, Peter Jackson is directing, and the material from the book is something I think he could prepare a feast with. No trailer available yet.
3) The Wrestler - This movie is technically out right now in the US but only under limited release. I check every weekend to see if it is out around Delaware but so far no luck. The number one reason I want to see this: I haven't seen a Darren Aronofsky movie yet that I haven't loved. I also have a soft spot in my heart for the material here because when I was a kid I was a huge fan of pro wrestling. There's a lot of Oscar talk swirling around Mickey Rourke's performance in this one, if that kind of stuff matters to you.
2) Public Enemies - It's a 1930s crime drama starring Christian Bale and Johnny Depp directed by Michael Mann. If you need any more explanation than that I have no idea what to tell you.
1) Watchmen - I'm worried about this movie. Really, really worried. There is a very good reason that Watchmen is the only graphic novel on Time's 100 greatest novels list: it is an absolute masterpiece. It is also really, really complex and has always seemed like it would be a nightmare to faithfully translate to the big screen. We already know that at least one key element (the Tales of the Black Freighter framing device) will not be in the movie. There are more and more reports suggesting that the ending has been changed. The director's original 3 hour cut was apparently loathed by the studio and who knows if it will survive tampering. The whole thing is a recipe for a colossal disaster.
But I had a lot of the same skepticism with Lord of the Rings, and boy was I completely wrong there. This easily gets #1 because it is probably the only movie I will definitely see this year in the theater, and that's because there's no way I'll be able to avoid it. A great deal of my friends love the graphic novel as much as I do, and I'll be unable to avoid discussions of this movie when it is finally out.
Hopefully they will be discussions about how we were totally wrong about all our concerns over the movie.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
The Peace Team
You don't need to know the ins and outs of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to know that it's bad. In fact, it has been so bad for so long that whenever another bombing or act of terrorism is reported, it just seems to roll like water off a duck's back for most folks.
It says something when a story of cooperation is more unexpected and surprising than a story of people blowing each other up. It says something sad about the way things are there. But it also says something awe inspiring at just how far some people will go to try to change things, even on the tiniest of levels.
-------
When you say "football", people from different parts of the world will think of different things. Most, of course, will think of what we call in America "soccer". In Australia though, they think of their own variation of "rugby" - Australian rules football.
In 2002, Australia hosted the first ever Australian Football International Cup. The idea was to promote interest in the sport in other countries by hosting a tournament that Australia itself would not participate in. It's the kind of thing I can't imagine America bothering to host - we'd want to win our own tournament, after all. But since Australia has the only professional league for their unique sport, it made sense to sit out this tournament because winning was almost guaranteed. Why not give other teams playing their sport in other countries a chance to compete and measure their talents?
The tournament was enough of a success that it was hosted again in 2005, and now it will happen a third time here in 2008. This year 16 teams from around the world will compete for the trophy, the most since the tournament started.
When you look at the list of teams competing, one jumps out at you: Peace Team.
A strange name for a side participating in a rough and tumble game.
-------
In January of 2008, Australian football legend Robert "Dipper" Dipierdomenico, along with some other league representatives, presented the rules of the game to a room full of 100 young men. Out of that 100, 40 were selected to participate in a 3 day clinic to learn the basics of the game.
The unusual part of the story: these young men were a mix of Israelis and Palestinians, and the clinic was in Jerusalem.
Perhaps crazy enough was the idea of getting a team of men completely unfamiliar with the sport ready to compete internationally in just under 8 months.
But even crazier was the idea of trying to do it here, with these men.
The team faced complications trying to train that would be completely unheard of elsewhere. The coach's instructions needed to be translated to both Hebrew and Arabic. The team was shut out of their Israeli training facility for 4 days during a visit by President Bush when all Palestinians were denied access, including Palestinian members of the team. Team members received threats from both sides of the conflict, either enduring the usual hate from one side or being called "traitor" by the other. Palestinian team members needed to obtain work permits for every training session, sometimes traveling upwards of 4 hours through various security checkpoints.
The pressure was too much for a number of the players. Some of them, facing threats from their own friends and neighbors, left the team.
In spite of all of this, a few kept practicing. A few kept playing. In spite of the lack of a proper field (they played on soccer fields) with proper goalposts (they had none), they kept learning.
The first time the team had seen real goal posts was when they arrived in Australia a week ago.
They play their first match of the tournament today against Great Britain.
-------
New Zealand and Ireland will be the favorites going into the tournament. The Peace Team will probably be lucky to win a single match.
But win or lose, they will do it together.
"Everyone knows the story in Israel and Palestine, the occupation, the killings, bombings, we came here to show the people, we came for the peace, we need the peace," says Palestinian ruckman Fares Switte.
In January, it's not likely Fares Switte knew what a ruckman was.
But then again, in January, the whole notion of a team like this was pretty unlikely too.
-------
After the tournament is over, the players on the Peace Team will return to their normal lives. They will return to face the same strife and conflict they faced before they started playing together.
They might even return to find themselves reviled in their own homes.
But they'll return changed in this small way, knowing this simple thing: if we can play together, we can live together.
-------
Note: For a tremendous introduction to the various factions and pieces in play in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I can't recommend the game Peacemaker enough. It is easily the most engaging introduction I've ever seen, better even than any book I have read on the topic.
And yes, it has a Mac version.
It says something when a story of cooperation is more unexpected and surprising than a story of people blowing each other up. It says something sad about the way things are there. But it also says something awe inspiring at just how far some people will go to try to change things, even on the tiniest of levels.
-------
When you say "football", people from different parts of the world will think of different things. Most, of course, will think of what we call in America "soccer". In Australia though, they think of their own variation of "rugby" - Australian rules football.
In 2002, Australia hosted the first ever Australian Football International Cup. The idea was to promote interest in the sport in other countries by hosting a tournament that Australia itself would not participate in. It's the kind of thing I can't imagine America bothering to host - we'd want to win our own tournament, after all. But since Australia has the only professional league for their unique sport, it made sense to sit out this tournament because winning was almost guaranteed. Why not give other teams playing their sport in other countries a chance to compete and measure their talents?
The tournament was enough of a success that it was hosted again in 2005, and now it will happen a third time here in 2008. This year 16 teams from around the world will compete for the trophy, the most since the tournament started.
When you look at the list of teams competing, one jumps out at you: Peace Team.
A strange name for a side participating in a rough and tumble game.
-------
In January of 2008, Australian football legend Robert "Dipper" Dipierdomenico, along with some other league representatives, presented the rules of the game to a room full of 100 young men. Out of that 100, 40 were selected to participate in a 3 day clinic to learn the basics of the game.
The unusual part of the story: these young men were a mix of Israelis and Palestinians, and the clinic was in Jerusalem.
Perhaps crazy enough was the idea of getting a team of men completely unfamiliar with the sport ready to compete internationally in just under 8 months.
But even crazier was the idea of trying to do it here, with these men.
The team faced complications trying to train that would be completely unheard of elsewhere. The coach's instructions needed to be translated to both Hebrew and Arabic. The team was shut out of their Israeli training facility for 4 days during a visit by President Bush when all Palestinians were denied access, including Palestinian members of the team. Team members received threats from both sides of the conflict, either enduring the usual hate from one side or being called "traitor" by the other. Palestinian team members needed to obtain work permits for every training session, sometimes traveling upwards of 4 hours through various security checkpoints.
The pressure was too much for a number of the players. Some of them, facing threats from their own friends and neighbors, left the team.
In spite of all of this, a few kept practicing. A few kept playing. In spite of the lack of a proper field (they played on soccer fields) with proper goalposts (they had none), they kept learning.
The first time the team had seen real goal posts was when they arrived in Australia a week ago.
They play their first match of the tournament today against Great Britain.
-------
New Zealand and Ireland will be the favorites going into the tournament. The Peace Team will probably be lucky to win a single match.
But win or lose, they will do it together.
"Everyone knows the story in Israel and Palestine, the occupation, the killings, bombings, we came here to show the people, we came for the peace, we need the peace," says Palestinian ruckman Fares Switte.
In January, it's not likely Fares Switte knew what a ruckman was.
But then again, in January, the whole notion of a team like this was pretty unlikely too.
-------
After the tournament is over, the players on the Peace Team will return to their normal lives. They will return to face the same strife and conflict they faced before they started playing together.
They might even return to find themselves reviled in their own homes.
But they'll return changed in this small way, knowing this simple thing: if we can play together, we can live together.
-------
Note: For a tremendous introduction to the various factions and pieces in play in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I can't recommend the game Peacemaker enough. It is easily the most engaging introduction I've ever seen, better even than any book I have read on the topic.
And yes, it has a Mac version.
Friday, August 15, 2008
The Olympics, and Liquor
It's an ever shrinking world.
On the one hand it means we tend to fight a little more over resources that we all need.
On the other hand, it means we have a better opportunity than ever to learn to live with each other.
I'm a big fan of the Olympics. I'm talking about an event where we get to see sports that we probably won't see for another 4 years, but with a built in rooting interest. We root for our country. We root for the human interest stories. We root for the ideal that we can all, just maybe, get along for a couple weeks.
Of course the ideal is not reality. The Olympics are bringing some of China's questionable government practices out into the world spotlight. The games are sometimes overshadowed by stories of the conflict in Georgia.
In spite of these things, sport goes on. The beauty of sport as a fan is that, for the duration of the match, game, whatever, you aren't thinking about those things. It is not a good idea to ignore what goes on in this world. But it's not a bad thing to set it aside once in awhile.
-----
Imagine you've got a tumor in your belly growing so large that it begins to push all of your internal organs, liver, intestine, kidneys... all to the sides of your body.
Imagine that the hospital that is trying to treat you has just been taken over by a group that is likely to kill you if they see you.
Imagine that it doesn't matter anyway, since the doctors have told you there is nothing they can do to save you.
Imagine you are two years old.
This boy exists, and he lives in Iraq, the child of a Sunni family whose hospital had been taken over by Shiite militia.
On the other side of the world, in Boston, someone hears of this, a wealthy, 85 year old liquor tycoon whose own son died of an incurable form of cancer.
The world is shrinking.
The elderly fellow from Boston pays for the young boy's family to fly to Jordan where there is a very dim hope of treatment with the tumor so far advanced.
The doctors in Jordan do not know what will happen, but it is the only hope.
It is not a miracle what happens next. A miracle would be something that defies all explanation.
I don't yet believe that acts of human kindness defy all explanation.
-----
The pursuit of athletic excellence is an ideal, just like the pursuit of global peace. They may both be fleeting things sometimes, but that doesn't mean they don't occasionally exist, even if only in very small batches.
For just a few moments, when Michael Phelps breaks another world record, for a fleeting moment he is the pinnacle of athletic excellence.
For just a few moments, when a young Iraqi boy walks out of a hospital in Jordan after treatment paid for by a elderly man in Boston, they are world peace.
The world is shrinking. And it is not a bad thing.
On the one hand it means we tend to fight a little more over resources that we all need.
On the other hand, it means we have a better opportunity than ever to learn to live with each other.
I'm a big fan of the Olympics. I'm talking about an event where we get to see sports that we probably won't see for another 4 years, but with a built in rooting interest. We root for our country. We root for the human interest stories. We root for the ideal that we can all, just maybe, get along for a couple weeks.
Of course the ideal is not reality. The Olympics are bringing some of China's questionable government practices out into the world spotlight. The games are sometimes overshadowed by stories of the conflict in Georgia.
In spite of these things, sport goes on. The beauty of sport as a fan is that, for the duration of the match, game, whatever, you aren't thinking about those things. It is not a good idea to ignore what goes on in this world. But it's not a bad thing to set it aside once in awhile.
-----
Imagine you've got a tumor in your belly growing so large that it begins to push all of your internal organs, liver, intestine, kidneys... all to the sides of your body.
Imagine that the hospital that is trying to treat you has just been taken over by a group that is likely to kill you if they see you.
Imagine that it doesn't matter anyway, since the doctors have told you there is nothing they can do to save you.
Imagine you are two years old.
This boy exists, and he lives in Iraq, the child of a Sunni family whose hospital had been taken over by Shiite militia.
On the other side of the world, in Boston, someone hears of this, a wealthy, 85 year old liquor tycoon whose own son died of an incurable form of cancer.
The world is shrinking.
The elderly fellow from Boston pays for the young boy's family to fly to Jordan where there is a very dim hope of treatment with the tumor so far advanced.
The doctors in Jordan do not know what will happen, but it is the only hope.
It is not a miracle what happens next. A miracle would be something that defies all explanation.
I don't yet believe that acts of human kindness defy all explanation.
-----
The pursuit of athletic excellence is an ideal, just like the pursuit of global peace. They may both be fleeting things sometimes, but that doesn't mean they don't occasionally exist, even if only in very small batches.
For just a few moments, when Michael Phelps breaks another world record, for a fleeting moment he is the pinnacle of athletic excellence.
For just a few moments, when a young Iraqi boy walks out of a hospital in Jordan after treatment paid for by a elderly man in Boston, they are world peace.
The world is shrinking. And it is not a bad thing.
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
The Big 3-0
Aaaaand we're back.
So as of today I am 30 years old. Things couldn't be better.
I've written before about what I think the advantages to getting older are and I still stand by those things. Bill Watterson once suggested that people who remember childhood as an idyllic time were probably never children, and that's a statement I agree with. It's not like being a kid was bad (it wasn't), but it's a pretty amazing (and sometimes scary) thing to have a modicum of control over your life.
I also maintain it is awesome to be able to have the authority to scold those younger than you are. Age is the type of completely arbitrary authority that just increases with every passing day. Just this morning I pulled into the parking garage at work and there was a young fellow blasting music out of his car. Just the fact that I could legitimately think to myself: "That young punk, what's he doing playing music at that volume this early in the morning" and actually have a small part of that thought be automatically accurate (the part about him being "young" compared to me, not necessarily the part about being a punk, he's probably a real swell kid, I mean after all he is arriving at work at 7:30 AM just like I am, probably during his summer vacation) is the type of thing that I find internally amusing enough to keep me in a good mood.
So, where have I been these past several months? Well, I haven't been doing anything particularly epic. Since getting married, Jules had been busy studying for the Delaware Bar Exam (a 3 day test which she finished taking last week, results in October) and I've been doing... whatever it is that I do.
And frankly that's what I LIKE doing. There was a time in the heady days of my youth (you know, like 8 years ago) where I would have been terrified of the notion of working a 35-40 hour a week job, settling in to some kind of routine. Now it's really what I enjoy most. Some of my best times are just relaxing at home talking to Jules, reading a book or watching baseball on the tube together. I'm a much more boring guy than I used to be, but I consider that to be a good thing.
So why haven't I been updating the blog then? What's the excuse? Well, there really isn't any. But I've been thinking during all those months I haven't been writing about what this blog is exactly. Is it a journal? Is it a blog about games? Shouldn't it have a theme of some kind?
And I've kind of decided that there are enough blogs out there that spend their time discussing games, and enough blogs out there that are just journals. There are enough blogs out there that complain and mock various things, and really I'm not as good at any of that stuff as they are.
So as of today, I'm going to try something new with the blog. I'm going to go for a general theme of optimism. A general theme that says "life can be pretty cool." That may still involve games that I think are fun and self-deprecating personal anecdotes and some of the other random stuff I throw up here... but the gist will be the type of kerfuffle that puts a smile on my face.
We'll see, maybe it will put a smile on yours. And if you got this far, thanks for not unsubscribing from this thing.
So as of today I am 30 years old. Things couldn't be better.
I've written before about what I think the advantages to getting older are and I still stand by those things. Bill Watterson once suggested that people who remember childhood as an idyllic time were probably never children, and that's a statement I agree with. It's not like being a kid was bad (it wasn't), but it's a pretty amazing (and sometimes scary) thing to have a modicum of control over your life.
I also maintain it is awesome to be able to have the authority to scold those younger than you are. Age is the type of completely arbitrary authority that just increases with every passing day. Just this morning I pulled into the parking garage at work and there was a young fellow blasting music out of his car. Just the fact that I could legitimately think to myself: "That young punk, what's he doing playing music at that volume this early in the morning" and actually have a small part of that thought be automatically accurate (the part about him being "young" compared to me, not necessarily the part about being a punk, he's probably a real swell kid, I mean after all he is arriving at work at 7:30 AM just like I am, probably during his summer vacation) is the type of thing that I find internally amusing enough to keep me in a good mood.
So, where have I been these past several months? Well, I haven't been doing anything particularly epic. Since getting married, Jules had been busy studying for the Delaware Bar Exam (a 3 day test which she finished taking last week, results in October) and I've been doing... whatever it is that I do.
And frankly that's what I LIKE doing. There was a time in the heady days of my youth (you know, like 8 years ago) where I would have been terrified of the notion of working a 35-40 hour a week job, settling in to some kind of routine. Now it's really what I enjoy most. Some of my best times are just relaxing at home talking to Jules, reading a book or watching baseball on the tube together. I'm a much more boring guy than I used to be, but I consider that to be a good thing.
So why haven't I been updating the blog then? What's the excuse? Well, there really isn't any. But I've been thinking during all those months I haven't been writing about what this blog is exactly. Is it a journal? Is it a blog about games? Shouldn't it have a theme of some kind?
And I've kind of decided that there are enough blogs out there that spend their time discussing games, and enough blogs out there that are just journals. There are enough blogs out there that complain and mock various things, and really I'm not as good at any of that stuff as they are.
So as of today, I'm going to try something new with the blog. I'm going to go for a general theme of optimism. A general theme that says "life can be pretty cool." That may still involve games that I think are fun and self-deprecating personal anecdotes and some of the other random stuff I throw up here... but the gist will be the type of kerfuffle that puts a smile on my face.
We'll see, maybe it will put a smile on yours. And if you got this far, thanks for not unsubscribing from this thing.
Friday, March 28, 2008
I Can Prove It With Google Results
I'm starting to see the following expression used more and more in various publications these days, particularly by journalists:
Searching for X on Google produces Y results in Z seconds.
If you haven't seen this before, let me give you a couple of examples:
From Law.com:
Online virtual worlds are wildly popular, attracting millions of people every day, and a recent Google search for MMORPG yielded approximately 32 million results.
From the Toronto Star:
Partner new Blue Jay shortstop David Eckstein and the word "scrappy" and a Google search will advise you of some 5,300 possibilities. In just 0.38 seconds, too.
From Jose Canseco's new steroid book, Vindicated:
Put in 'Alex Rodriguez' and 'infidelity' and you'll get like fifty thousand hits.
The gist I guess is that there is supposed to be some correlation between X and Y.
People, please stop this madness. Maybe you think it's a cute gimmick and a nice alternative to the old stock "Meriam Webster defines 'infedility' as..." type of intro, but all it does is expose you as a complete idiot. For the love of god, there is no correlation between X and Y. It's a firk ding blasting search engine, it goes and gets as many results as it can.
Allow me to demonstrate via the following examples of my own.
If there was any question that more dinosaurs are wearing pink hats now than ever before, just pair "pink hat" with "dinosaur" in a Google search. You'll get 635,000 results in 0.17 seconds.
I always thought bananas were funny looking, like they're from another planet. You might be surprised to hear that a Google search of "aliens plant bananas" yields 526,000 results in 0.29 seconds. Bananas may be the proof we need that we are not alone.
Recycling for the planet is one thing, but what about recycling what our own body produces for ourselves? A quick Google search of "lose weight by drinking raw sewage" gives you 153,000 results in just 0.32 seconds. It's obviously an idea worth considering.
To writers everywhere, I am begging you this last time to please stop this insanity, or so help me I will Google "[your name here] is completely brain dead", thus proving forever that somebody needs to pull your plug.
Searching for X on Google produces Y results in Z seconds.
If you haven't seen this before, let me give you a couple of examples:
From Law.com:
Online virtual worlds are wildly popular, attracting millions of people every day, and a recent Google search for MMORPG yielded approximately 32 million results.
From the Toronto Star:
Partner new Blue Jay shortstop David Eckstein and the word "scrappy" and a Google search will advise you of some 5,300 possibilities. In just 0.38 seconds, too.
From Jose Canseco's new steroid book, Vindicated:
Put in 'Alex Rodriguez' and 'infidelity' and you'll get like fifty thousand hits.
The gist I guess is that there is supposed to be some correlation between X and Y.
People, please stop this madness. Maybe you think it's a cute gimmick and a nice alternative to the old stock "Meriam Webster defines 'infedility' as..." type of intro, but all it does is expose you as a complete idiot. For the love of god, there is no correlation between X and Y. It's a firk ding blasting search engine, it goes and gets as many results as it can.
Allow me to demonstrate via the following examples of my own.
If there was any question that more dinosaurs are wearing pink hats now than ever before, just pair "pink hat" with "dinosaur" in a Google search. You'll get 635,000 results in 0.17 seconds.
I always thought bananas were funny looking, like they're from another planet. You might be surprised to hear that a Google search of "aliens plant bananas" yields 526,000 results in 0.29 seconds. Bananas may be the proof we need that we are not alone.
Recycling for the planet is one thing, but what about recycling what our own body produces for ourselves? A quick Google search of "lose weight by drinking raw sewage" gives you 153,000 results in just 0.32 seconds. It's obviously an idea worth considering.
To writers everywhere, I am begging you this last time to please stop this insanity, or so help me I will Google "[your name here] is completely brain dead", thus proving forever that somebody needs to pull your plug.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
The Great Game Throwdown: RPGs
Both the LastBestAngryMan and The Philosophy of Time Travel are way ahead of me here, but this marks the final installment of the Great Game Throwdown.
Being nerds of the highest quality, we have saved the best, Role Playing Games, for last.
5 - Planescape: Torment (PC)
One thing you'll find in common with most of these choices is the quality of the stories told.
What's kind of sad is that not many heard this particular story.
Made by the RPG kings at BioWare (now a part of the EA conglomeration), Planescape: Torment was designed on the same Infinity Engine on which the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale games were built. The world of Planescape, however, is a far cry from the prototypical stuff one associates with the Dungeons and Dragons franchise, and I think this probably hurt sales of the game.
Correction: Astute reader Dhruin correctly points out that the game was actually made by Black Isle Studios using BioWare's Infinity engine, not by BioWare itself.
The Nameless One, pictured here with his sidekick, Morte the floating skull
But that's too bad, because the story is nothing short of awesome. One of the major themes deals with "consensus reality", the notion that if enough people believe in something it becomes real, and that's really what the Planescape universe is all about. The game capitalizes on this in very clever ways, and in the end it is one of the more tragic plots I've played in a computer game.
A terrific game, and one I wish I could play again.
4 - Final Fantasy VII (PS1)
One of the things I've kind of been struggling with when doing these lists is what exactly the notion of "great" is.
For the most part I've been posting games that are great to me personally. Games, like music, are usually a matter of personal tastes.
But there are certain bands that whether we like or not, we can't deny they had a major impact on music in general. The same holds true for certain games.
Final Fantasy VII isn't my favorite game in the Final Fantasy series (that would be FF IV, which was actually FF II here in the US. I know, it's confusing), but it has to be considered one of the most important games in the history of RPGs, if not video games period.
The game had such enormous impact and such a complex storyline, unprecedented at that time, that it introduced an entire generation of gamers to the possibilities of the video game medium. When critics attack video games as nothing but murder simulators, it is games like FF7 that gamers present as their defense.
The iconic moment of Aerith's death in the game is one that anyone who has ever played the game remembers perfectly, and is often cited as the moment people realized that video games could be so much more.
Aerith, a gaming icon
Final Fantasy VII proved that this is a medium that can move people, and a medium that can move people can surely be considered art.
Yes, art. And I don't think the importance of FF7 in this argument can be understated. It's a game about which people have written books and graduate theses. Countless articles have been written about the game's impact. People still write fan fiction and chat about the game.
Is it a great game? I don't know. It's not really a sandbox like some of these other games, and you're kind of forced step by step through the story. But the story was unprecedented, the emotional impact real, and the significance, I believe, yet to be paralleled.
3 - Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (PC)
The Elder Scroll games have built their reputation on being insanely open-ended. On the one hand that usually means the main story isn't particularly tight (at least I found that to be the case with Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall). But it really doesn't matter because the game is more like a huge sandbox anyway.
Portals to other dimensions are great space savers for your closet or garage
I know LBAM picked Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind on his list but I've got to go with Oblivion for the following reasons:
- Story felt tighter and more interesting.
- The side stories/quests were better quality for me.
- Game was significantly less buggy.
They're all great games and you can easily get 100+ hours of gameplay out of any of them.
2 - Chrono Trigger (SNES)
The best game ever to come out on the Super Nintendo, hands down.
Chrono Trigger has a terrific plot line that actually uses time travel and makes it not suck. Wonderful, clever characters. For my money the best soundtrack a video game has ever had. Multiple endings. A mode where you could start the game from the beginning with all of your existing experience and gain access to even MORE endings by beating the game at different times in the plot line.
I've always wished they'd release an updated version of this game for the Nintendo DS or something. I'd buy it the second it became available.
You know it's the final battle because there are, like, LASERS in the background
A sort of sequel, Chrono Cross, was released on the PlayStation and was a decent game in its own right, but it didn't capture the pure magic of the original. If you can find this anywhere, even on an emulator, I really encourage you to do so.
1 - Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (PC)
Here's the thing about BG2: everything I said about every other game in the list applies here, and then some.
Did BG2 have the incredible cultural impact that FF7 had? I highly doubt it. But for me it's the coming together of dozens and dozens of other great design ideas into one flawlessly executed package.
Great story? Check. Great characters? Check. Great soundtrack? Check. Open ended enough to feel like you're not boxed in? Check. It goes on and on.
The hand painted backgrounds still look good
Even the expansion pack, Throne of Bhaal, which ends the story once and for all, is incredibly satisfying. But BG2 is capable of standing alone. This is BioWare at the height of their powers.
Worst Ever - Neverwinter Nights
Maybe it's harsh. Maybe the game wasn't really that bad. Maybe it's simply crazy for me to criticize the same company that produced the Baldur's Gate games.
But I remember sitting at GenCon in Milwaukee the year this game first got demoed. I remember being blown away by how easy it looked to create your own adventures, control your own story, etc. BioWare was selling this as the game that was going to be able to bring the tabletop experience to computer gaming. I left absolutely convinced that Neverwinter Nights was going to make it possible for my friends to play D&D together forever, wherever we might end up.
I realize now that translating the tabletop experience to a video game is just an impossible goal. The developers probably knew it too. It was probably just a marketing ploy. But none of that makes the end result any easier to swallow.
It's not just that the multiplayer aspect of this game fell way below the hype and expectations. The single player game is actually several steps backward from games like Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, games the same company made.
The storyline is cookie cutter. The combat is elementary. You can only control one character plus one sidekick. The initial release of the game had a horrendous bug that crashed your game after the 4th chapter. The dialogue trees would repeat themselves. None of the attention to detail and careful QA was in Neverwinter Nights that we say in every other game made the company up to this point.
BioWare would bounce back with Knights of the Old Republic, which barely didn't make this list (it would come in at 6th). They made another classic with Jade Empire after that. Now that the company has been purchased by EA, I'm skeptical that they'll ever release a really excellent game again, but I'm willing to wait and see.
But Neverwinter Nights was truly a low, low point for me. Not only did it fail to deliver on what was promised, it failed to deliver on anything really fun.
Being nerds of the highest quality, we have saved the best, Role Playing Games, for last.
5 - Planescape: Torment (PC)
One thing you'll find in common with most of these choices is the quality of the stories told.
What's kind of sad is that not many heard this particular story.
Made by the RPG kings at BioWare (now a part of the EA conglomeration), Planescape: Torment was designed on the same Infinity Engine on which the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale games were built. The world of Planescape, however, is a far cry from the prototypical stuff one associates with the Dungeons and Dragons franchise, and I think this probably hurt sales of the game.
Correction: Astute reader Dhruin correctly points out that the game was actually made by Black Isle Studios using BioWare's Infinity engine, not by BioWare itself.
But that's too bad, because the story is nothing short of awesome. One of the major themes deals with "consensus reality", the notion that if enough people believe in something it becomes real, and that's really what the Planescape universe is all about. The game capitalizes on this in very clever ways, and in the end it is one of the more tragic plots I've played in a computer game.
A terrific game, and one I wish I could play again.
4 - Final Fantasy VII (PS1)
One of the things I've kind of been struggling with when doing these lists is what exactly the notion of "great" is.
For the most part I've been posting games that are great to me personally. Games, like music, are usually a matter of personal tastes.
But there are certain bands that whether we like or not, we can't deny they had a major impact on music in general. The same holds true for certain games.
Final Fantasy VII isn't my favorite game in the Final Fantasy series (that would be FF IV, which was actually FF II here in the US. I know, it's confusing), but it has to be considered one of the most important games in the history of RPGs, if not video games period.
The game had such enormous impact and such a complex storyline, unprecedented at that time, that it introduced an entire generation of gamers to the possibilities of the video game medium. When critics attack video games as nothing but murder simulators, it is games like FF7 that gamers present as their defense.
The iconic moment of Aerith's death in the game is one that anyone who has ever played the game remembers perfectly, and is often cited as the moment people realized that video games could be so much more.
Final Fantasy VII proved that this is a medium that can move people, and a medium that can move people can surely be considered art.
Yes, art. And I don't think the importance of FF7 in this argument can be understated. It's a game about which people have written books and graduate theses. Countless articles have been written about the game's impact. People still write fan fiction and chat about the game.
Is it a great game? I don't know. It's not really a sandbox like some of these other games, and you're kind of forced step by step through the story. But the story was unprecedented, the emotional impact real, and the significance, I believe, yet to be paralleled.
3 - Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (PC)
The Elder Scroll games have built their reputation on being insanely open-ended. On the one hand that usually means the main story isn't particularly tight (at least I found that to be the case with Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall). But it really doesn't matter because the game is more like a huge sandbox anyway.
I know LBAM picked Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind on his list but I've got to go with Oblivion for the following reasons:
- Story felt tighter and more interesting.
- The side stories/quests were better quality for me.
- Game was significantly less buggy.
They're all great games and you can easily get 100+ hours of gameplay out of any of them.
2 - Chrono Trigger (SNES)
The best game ever to come out on the Super Nintendo, hands down.
Chrono Trigger has a terrific plot line that actually uses time travel and makes it not suck. Wonderful, clever characters. For my money the best soundtrack a video game has ever had. Multiple endings. A mode where you could start the game from the beginning with all of your existing experience and gain access to even MORE endings by beating the game at different times in the plot line.
I've always wished they'd release an updated version of this game for the Nintendo DS or something. I'd buy it the second it became available.
A sort of sequel, Chrono Cross, was released on the PlayStation and was a decent game in its own right, but it didn't capture the pure magic of the original. If you can find this anywhere, even on an emulator, I really encourage you to do so.
1 - Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (PC)
Here's the thing about BG2: everything I said about every other game in the list applies here, and then some.
Did BG2 have the incredible cultural impact that FF7 had? I highly doubt it. But for me it's the coming together of dozens and dozens of other great design ideas into one flawlessly executed package.
Great story? Check. Great characters? Check. Great soundtrack? Check. Open ended enough to feel like you're not boxed in? Check. It goes on and on.
Even the expansion pack, Throne of Bhaal, which ends the story once and for all, is incredibly satisfying. But BG2 is capable of standing alone. This is BioWare at the height of their powers.
Worst Ever - Neverwinter Nights
Maybe it's harsh. Maybe the game wasn't really that bad. Maybe it's simply crazy for me to criticize the same company that produced the Baldur's Gate games.
But I remember sitting at GenCon in Milwaukee the year this game first got demoed. I remember being blown away by how easy it looked to create your own adventures, control your own story, etc. BioWare was selling this as the game that was going to be able to bring the tabletop experience to computer gaming. I left absolutely convinced that Neverwinter Nights was going to make it possible for my friends to play D&D together forever, wherever we might end up.
I realize now that translating the tabletop experience to a video game is just an impossible goal. The developers probably knew it too. It was probably just a marketing ploy. But none of that makes the end result any easier to swallow.
It's not just that the multiplayer aspect of this game fell way below the hype and expectations. The single player game is actually several steps backward from games like Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, games the same company made.
The storyline is cookie cutter. The combat is elementary. You can only control one character plus one sidekick. The initial release of the game had a horrendous bug that crashed your game after the 4th chapter. The dialogue trees would repeat themselves. None of the attention to detail and careful QA was in Neverwinter Nights that we say in every other game made the company up to this point.
BioWare would bounce back with Knights of the Old Republic, which barely didn't make this list (it would come in at 6th). They made another classic with Jade Empire after that. Now that the company has been purchased by EA, I'm skeptical that they'll ever release a really excellent game again, but I'm willing to wait and see.
But Neverwinter Nights was truly a low, low point for me. Not only did it fail to deliver on what was promised, it failed to deliver on anything really fun.
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