Not sure exactly what it is but I jes' luvs me some CSI:NY. I like the vanilla Vegas CSI too but I like this one even better. It could be that NY does great engaging character interaction even better than the original does.
It's also still got a bit more... something significant about it. I really liked how in the first season the mood was downright Gothic (makes sense, being set in Gotham, and all). It happened in the basement, everything was washed out and blue, the crimes were more brutal than ever. Of the three shows this one established itself as the horror-tinted procedural crime drama. Apparently it didn't sell well enough, so several noticeable measures were taken to "lighten up" the show. Brighter colors, more humor, a new penthouse crime-lab for the crew... meh.
But still, the one thing they couldn't "spruce up" were the gritty and dynamic characters. I think I fall for these folks so well because they clearly care so much about each other. In that bleak and morbid world they inhabit the only thing that keeps them living is their undying loyalty to their friends and their unflinching dedication to doing their noble work.
I'm a character guy. Plot's fine and dandy but honestly I can do without it if the characters of a story are complex and engrossing. And this show just plain has the best characters and relationships of aLmost any I've seen. Take Danny Messer and Don Flack for example. These guys are card-board-cutout New Yawk tough cliches transformed into living breathing people like old Geppetto must be their dad.
Anyway... it's good. Check it out!
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Chuck E. Cheese That Was
My boss had his daughter's second birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese's last weekend. I was pretty excited because it would be my daughter's first birthday party, and also it was Chuck E. Cheese's. When I was much younger, I had a lot of birthday's at Chuck E. Cheese and other similar places. Those were the good days of pizza and plenty of unrated video games. So, I guess I was expecting a bit of nostalgia instead of the experience I got.
First, is the kid check in. Now this is by no means a bad thing, and is pretty appreciated now that I am a parent. When you drag your kid in, there is a check-in/check-out booth that stamps you and your kid with black-light ink. The stamp is a number, so if you want to take a kid out of the place, your numbers have to match.
The second thing amiss was the lack of the animatronic band. That was great. You had a whole swath of characters in the Chuck E. Cheese band constantly playing their tunes and telling jokes. Now there was one animatronic Chuck E. Cheese by himself. They did replace the rest with a sort of green-screen dance floor where kids could go dance with a dressed-up Chuck E. and see themselves on a video screen with a digital background. The only problem was that unlike the automated animatronic band that could be a constant (yet repetitive) entertainment, the entertainment for this area was only active when the hosts were present.
The video games were also different. I remember days of Ghosts'n'Goblins sitting next to Rampart and shooting games galore. This Chuck E. Cheese definitely had nothing but G-rated games. Some were fun, such as OutRun SP on a gigantic flat screen, but most of it was definitely lacking. Most of the video games were not replaced by quick-thrill ticket games, such as punch-the-rubber-ducky-in-the-head-by-pressing-a-button game. The most disappointing change to the games was skeeball. Instead of the nice long lanes and wooden balls, the lanes were very short and the balls were a cheap plastic.
The nail in the coffin was just how cookie-cutter the service had become. It was apparent that our birthday time coencided with 2 other birthdays, so that they would only have to do the show once. But, even worse than that was how quickly the whole operation was. Get there at 2:00, pizza at 2:30, Chuck E. at 3:00, clear your table by 3:30. So, if you wanted to stay and play, you had to pack everything up to the cars because now you didn't have a table.
It was a sad day to see such a great childhood memory become so sanitized. I guess that is the way of things with child-snatchers, parent groups suing against violent video games, and the rising cost of teenager help (heh). I don't think I will be taking my daughter there on her birthdays.
First, is the kid check in. Now this is by no means a bad thing, and is pretty appreciated now that I am a parent. When you drag your kid in, there is a check-in/check-out booth that stamps you and your kid with black-light ink. The stamp is a number, so if you want to take a kid out of the place, your numbers have to match.
The second thing amiss was the lack of the animatronic band. That was great. You had a whole swath of characters in the Chuck E. Cheese band constantly playing their tunes and telling jokes. Now there was one animatronic Chuck E. Cheese by himself. They did replace the rest with a sort of green-screen dance floor where kids could go dance with a dressed-up Chuck E. and see themselves on a video screen with a digital background. The only problem was that unlike the automated animatronic band that could be a constant (yet repetitive) entertainment, the entertainment for this area was only active when the hosts were present.
The video games were also different. I remember days of Ghosts'n'Goblins sitting next to Rampart and shooting games galore. This Chuck E. Cheese definitely had nothing but G-rated games. Some were fun, such as OutRun SP on a gigantic flat screen, but most of it was definitely lacking. Most of the video games were not replaced by quick-thrill ticket games, such as punch-the-rubber-ducky-in-the-head-by-pressing-a-button game. The most disappointing change to the games was skeeball. Instead of the nice long lanes and wooden balls, the lanes were very short and the balls were a cheap plastic.
The nail in the coffin was just how cookie-cutter the service had become. It was apparent that our birthday time coencided with 2 other birthdays, so that they would only have to do the show once. But, even worse than that was how quickly the whole operation was. Get there at 2:00, pizza at 2:30, Chuck E. at 3:00, clear your table by 3:30. So, if you wanted to stay and play, you had to pack everything up to the cars because now you didn't have a table.
It was a sad day to see such a great childhood memory become so sanitized. I guess that is the way of things with child-snatchers, parent groups suing against violent video games, and the rising cost of teenager help (heh). I don't think I will be taking my daughter there on her birthdays.
Monday, November 27, 2006
I... Live... AGAIN!
So yeah, the Evil Dead trilogy is pretty awesome. Main reason? The man, the myth, the legend... Bruce Campbell. "King of the B-Movie" he calls himself. Hail to the king. See, I just saw Bubba Ho-Tep and Mr. Campbell turns in a masterful performance as Elvis Presley, atrophying in a Texas retirement home decades after his faked death, struggling against an evil undead creature, and also with his own long life of waste and regret.
See... taking things too seriously is usually a cop-out. Sometimes when we're placed face to face with a profound truth that should shake us to the very core of our being, we'll realize that we can't deny it and that it deserves to not be denied. So we stop. We take a moment (perhaps a moment of silence). We freeze up and get tunnel vision and take a very serious look at this thing that commands every iota of our puny human humility. It's hard, it's touching, it's solemn, and it's over soon.
Well now I'm thinking that that's not really doing these sublime awe-inspiring truths much justice. All too often we treat the really important stuff like a charging Tyrannosaurus Rex: hold still enough and it can't see you, can't get you, can't sink it's claws into you and rend you absolutely apart. Of course it's natural to be afraid of death and by extension be afraid by the realization of death. We'd rather give the idea a nice formal acknowledgment of appeasement and then send it on its way.
That may or may not be a better route than ignoring it outright- just pretending it doesn't exist; I don't know. But, I'm thinking there's an altogether better route than either of those. Make buddies with the T-Rex.
When we solemnly bow our heads in the face of real mortal issues and their psyche-shattering consequences (have I wasted my life? have I missed countless opportunities for meaning and happiness?) we're still keeping them at a distance. We're acknowledging them but we're not becoming intimate with them. We're keeping them distant like our intimidating superior in the workplace when we should really be treating them like our friend. Sure your boss can enforce rules on you, but your friend can change who you are as a person. Your boss rides your ass; your friend touches your heart.
What are your best times with your friends? When you're having fun, right? So why not have some fun with your friend, mortality (or any other really-big-issues). Because then you know it'll really GET to you. It'll really become a part of you and your consciousness. Of course that's terrifying because you don't know what it'll do to you. You suspect that despair is the only possible outcome but the truth is... you don't know, just like you don't know if that girl pouring your coffee at Denny's is a mean psycho bitch or the person who could bring to you lifelong contentment.
Well luckily we have folks like Bruce to remind us that the silly stuff isn't worthless and the serious can't be dismissed. In life they come together all the time, riding the same signal, just varying in amplitude from time to time. So embrace them both because life's better when you have friends.
See... taking things too seriously is usually a cop-out. Sometimes when we're placed face to face with a profound truth that should shake us to the very core of our being, we'll realize that we can't deny it and that it deserves to not be denied. So we stop. We take a moment (perhaps a moment of silence). We freeze up and get tunnel vision and take a very serious look at this thing that commands every iota of our puny human humility. It's hard, it's touching, it's solemn, and it's over soon.
Well now I'm thinking that that's not really doing these sublime awe-inspiring truths much justice. All too often we treat the really important stuff like a charging Tyrannosaurus Rex: hold still enough and it can't see you, can't get you, can't sink it's claws into you and rend you absolutely apart. Of course it's natural to be afraid of death and by extension be afraid by the realization of death. We'd rather give the idea a nice formal acknowledgment of appeasement and then send it on its way.
That may or may not be a better route than ignoring it outright- just pretending it doesn't exist; I don't know. But, I'm thinking there's an altogether better route than either of those. Make buddies with the T-Rex.
When we solemnly bow our heads in the face of real mortal issues and their psyche-shattering consequences (have I wasted my life? have I missed countless opportunities for meaning and happiness?) we're still keeping them at a distance. We're acknowledging them but we're not becoming intimate with them. We're keeping them distant like our intimidating superior in the workplace when we should really be treating them like our friend. Sure your boss can enforce rules on you, but your friend can change who you are as a person. Your boss rides your ass; your friend touches your heart.
What are your best times with your friends? When you're having fun, right? So why not have some fun with your friend, mortality (or any other really-big-issues). Because then you know it'll really GET to you. It'll really become a part of you and your consciousness. Of course that's terrifying because you don't know what it'll do to you. You suspect that despair is the only possible outcome but the truth is... you don't know, just like you don't know if that girl pouring your coffee at Denny's is a mean psycho bitch or the person who could bring to you lifelong contentment.
Well luckily we have folks like Bruce to remind us that the silly stuff isn't worthless and the serious can't be dismissed. In life they come together all the time, riding the same signal, just varying in amplitude from time to time. So embrace them both because life's better when you have friends.
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Crazy Talk
I don't have much in the way of hard-fast BELIEFS. I'm more Engineer than Philosopher. We don't have beliefs we've just got PROBLEMS and GOALS. But in order to work the problem to reach our goals we've got to steal MODELS and ASSUMPTIONS from the scientists.
An assumption is like a belief in that we arbitrarily use them as a starting point. They require faith to be useful. The difference between them is that a belief is arbitrarily regarded as true, while an assumption is only regarded as useful.
Ok so there's my disclaimer and an explanation of the semantics I'll be adopting for the following answer to your question.
I assume there's a purpose to existence. I assume that there is a certain way for me to live my life that will aid in this purpose. Stories throughout history depict that those who are happiest are those have lived with purpose. I have found only corroberating evidence for this (most of it coming from my gut, aka intuition). Therefore my plan is to live life, as best I can, in fulfillment of my purpose.
Because reports from people who are not me about "how to live life" do not completely agree, I assume that it is up ultimately up to ME and my intuition to interpret the information I get from the world and those around me.
Finally to the question at hand... Neither logic (reason) nor my intuition lead me to believe that I will experience an existance remotely similar to this one after I biologically die. What happens to my material remains is easily extrapolated. What happens to my "consciousness" is unclear because it's properties are not understood. At this time my expectation is that my consciousness as an individual human named Matt will cease.
Life, however, will continue after my life. Life will have been influenced by my life, physically and systematically. Therefore it can be said that my after-life is the effect I've had on Life after me.
Perhaps I will remain a disembodied consciousness and get to witness it. Perhaps I'll be an embodied consciousness in some sort of "place" that could be described as Heaven (or Hell for that matter). That remains unlikely, however. We have "places" in this life and the elements of this life are what define them. Once I have left this life it doesn't make sense for the concept of "place" to carry over. And so I take a figurative interpretation to the history's descriptions of afterlife, God, and the soul.
And I look at Life, and the universe as we know it, without time. Regarded as a whole, the universe is infinite. When I cease to be an individual consciousness stuck in the middle of a finite timeline, the perspective shifts (with or without "me") to that of the infinite, timeless, whole.
Infinite, timeless, whole. Everything that is was and shall be. THAT sounds a lot like God to me.
So for now I assume that I, just like you, are actually a fragment of God. Savoring that seems to lead to enjoyment, conflicting with that seems to lead to suffering. Even though our biological processes will stop, the universe (God?) is eternal and so is our existence as part of it.
An assumption is like a belief in that we arbitrarily use them as a starting point. They require faith to be useful. The difference between them is that a belief is arbitrarily regarded as true, while an assumption is only regarded as useful.
Ok so there's my disclaimer and an explanation of the semantics I'll be adopting for the following answer to your question.
I assume there's a purpose to existence. I assume that there is a certain way for me to live my life that will aid in this purpose. Stories throughout history depict that those who are happiest are those have lived with purpose. I have found only corroberating evidence for this (most of it coming from my gut, aka intuition). Therefore my plan is to live life, as best I can, in fulfillment of my purpose.
Because reports from people who are not me about "how to live life" do not completely agree, I assume that it is up ultimately up to ME and my intuition to interpret the information I get from the world and those around me.
Finally to the question at hand... Neither logic (reason) nor my intuition lead me to believe that I will experience an existance remotely similar to this one after I biologically die. What happens to my material remains is easily extrapolated. What happens to my "consciousness" is unclear because it's properties are not understood. At this time my expectation is that my consciousness as an individual human named Matt will cease.
Life, however, will continue after my life. Life will have been influenced by my life, physically and systematically. Therefore it can be said that my after-life is the effect I've had on Life after me.
Perhaps I will remain a disembodied consciousness and get to witness it. Perhaps I'll be an embodied consciousness in some sort of "place" that could be described as Heaven (or Hell for that matter). That remains unlikely, however. We have "places" in this life and the elements of this life are what define them. Once I have left this life it doesn't make sense for the concept of "place" to carry over. And so I take a figurative interpretation to the history's descriptions of afterlife, God, and the soul.
And I look at Life, and the universe as we know it, without time. Regarded as a whole, the universe is infinite. When I cease to be an individual consciousness stuck in the middle of a finite timeline, the perspective shifts (with or without "me") to that of the infinite, timeless, whole.
Infinite, timeless, whole. Everything that is was and shall be. THAT sounds a lot like God to me.
So for now I assume that I, just like you, are actually a fragment of God. Savoring that seems to lead to enjoyment, conflicting with that seems to lead to suffering. Even though our biological processes will stop, the universe (God?) is eternal and so is our existence as part of it.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Monday, September 11, 2006
So, I just watched Garden State.
Of course we fawn over Mathilda, but that was pretty much just an enjoyment on par with a very (very) good piece of candy. Like Dove chocolate, for all my fellow middle-aged women out there: SO truly excellent for an instant, but then gone, and certainly of no nutritional value. (Enjoy it for what it instantaneously is... any more will only get you fat and sad).
Ergo, I've always only kinda felt like I should be in love with Natalie Portman.
Well now of course I am.
But, yes, her character is 100% cliche. Quirky, exciting, unconditionally-loving miracle messiah girl who shows up just when the depressed protagonist needs her. Well ain't that a bitch for what it says about me, the very specific audience member, now enamoured.
Oh well. Does this kind of thing actually happen? I reckon best bet is certainly not to count on it, but not to rule it out all the same (no reason to commit to a cold harsh reality).
Ergo, I've always only kinda felt like I should be in love with Natalie Portman.
Well now of course I am.
But, yes, her character is 100% cliche. Quirky, exciting, unconditionally-loving miracle messiah girl who shows up just when the depressed protagonist needs her. Well ain't that a bitch for what it says about me, the very specific audience member, now enamoured.
Oh well. Does this kind of thing actually happen? I reckon best bet is certainly not to count on it, but not to rule it out all the same (no reason to commit to a cold harsh reality).
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Communion Pt. 1
I'm not an outgoing person but I like crowds. Just being amongst humanity is enough to comfortingly remind me it's still there and I'm a part of it.
I ate ribs with my fellow man (and women). Lots of them (fellows and ribs... more-so fellows). Imagine a mile-long mesquite cloud hanging over a city street and thousands of people frolicking in it; minstrels set up every couple of blocks to keep the passers'-by heads bobbing in time and to enhance the savoring and socializing of those who stay and sit; thousands of choice swine slain and slaughtered for the many-days' feast.
What other word is there for this but sacrament?
We watch TV. We surf the web. We work in cubicles. If we are POLITE we remain still and silent at the movies, on the train, in the elevator, at church, on the street. Are we really ready, as a species to follow this progression of convenience to it's oh-so-efficient-but-"oh-my-GOD" conclusion as a bunch of brains in vats with our entertainment on demand?
Stuff like this says we're not. We must join together. We must be in the same place with a mass of humanity for some shared event. Some fun we can have in the presence of witnesses. They saw it too, they felt it too, and what's better is they saw me enjoying it right with them. We're all in this together afterall, it seems.
It get's me excited to marvel in awe at the precocious whimsey of the meta-organism of which I am a part. It's always a good thing to check in with that Something-greater-than-yourself.
I ate ribs with my fellow man (and women). Lots of them (fellows and ribs... more-so fellows). Imagine a mile-long mesquite cloud hanging over a city street and thousands of people frolicking in it; minstrels set up every couple of blocks to keep the passers'-by heads bobbing in time and to enhance the savoring and socializing of those who stay and sit; thousands of choice swine slain and slaughtered for the many-days' feast.
What other word is there for this but sacrament?
We watch TV. We surf the web. We work in cubicles. If we are POLITE we remain still and silent at the movies, on the train, in the elevator, at church, on the street. Are we really ready, as a species to follow this progression of convenience to it's oh-so-efficient-but-"oh-my-GOD" conclusion as a bunch of brains in vats with our entertainment on demand?
Stuff like this says we're not. We must join together. We must be in the same place with a mass of humanity for some shared event. Some fun we can have in the presence of witnesses. They saw it too, they felt it too, and what's better is they saw me enjoying it right with them. We're all in this together afterall, it seems.
It get's me excited to marvel in awe at the precocious whimsey of the meta-organism of which I am a part. It's always a good thing to check in with that Something-greater-than-yourself.
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