The Commercialization of Christmas

There's always a lot of talk around Christmas about how the holiday has been commercialized, and how people are missing the true meaning of Christmas, and how people should have a stronger appreciation for the religious basis for the holiday. If that's important to you, that's fine. I don't have a problem with anyone's priorities on any subject, as long as it doesn't affect my day.

I'm not religious. Like, at all. And I like Christmas. Is it wrong for me to enjoy the "bastardization" of a holiday that I don't celebrate as it was originally designed? I don't think so; I certainly don't feel bad about it.

When I buy a video game for my sister, or mittens for my mom, or a poster for my brother, I don't feel like I'm disparaging anyone's religious beliefs. I'm not trying to spit in the face of anyone who has a different view on Christmas. I'm just trying to make them happy, and let them know that I care about them. Is it wrong to try to make people happy by spending money on them? We do it all the time:

• Buying a beer for a buddy
• Giving money to a charity
• Paying for dinner on a date

From the other side, do I like getting stuff for Christmas? Yes. Obviously yes. I always like getting stuff. And part of it is the acquisition of new things, usually some kind of toy that I can enjoy. But another part of it is the understanding that these people who gave me gifts care about me.

And that's the other aspect of Christmas, the part that me and the pious can get together on. Christmas is a time to appreciate each other. It's a time when families come together, kids come home from college, people from out of town fly in to spend a few days with their cousins/siblings/parents/children. Commercialized or not, we all still recognize Christmas as a time of year to spend with the people who matter the most to us. And on Christmas Eve, or Christmas Day, we sit around a table with our family and closest friends. We break bread with the people who've shaped our lives, these people for whom we've expressed love, through words and actions and, yes, gifts.

Sounds pretty meaningful to me.

Dead Rising 2 Review - Part One

As you may or may not remember, Dead Rising was my personal game of the year for 2009. I poured hours and hours of time into the game, beating it in six different ways, and it's actually snuck back into my rotation on occasion this summer.

Right up until August 31st. On August 31st, Xbox Live released a Dead Rising 2 prequel game for 400 Microsoft points ($5.00), called Dead Rising 2: Case Zero. To an average gamer, I don't know what they would think of the game. But to me, a big fan of the original game and someone who was jacked for the sequel, I thought the prequel game was a lot of fun. To me, it accomplished everything that Capcom could've wanted:

• It gave players an opportunity to preview the new game in a method that was more interesting than a simple gameplay demo.
  
• It offered a preview of the new features of the game, specifically the crafting system where you use duct tape to combine two items into awesome weapons, like the paddlesaw or boomstick.
• It bridged some of the plot gap between the original and its sequel, and helped to develop the two new main characters.
• It gave players the chance to get a jump start on the real game, allowing them to carry over a couple levels and some cash from the prequel.
  
• It generated buzz for the actual game, and brought in money.
  

Of course, the game had its limitations. It only allowed you to get to level 5, and only had a handful of create-able items. But it offered plenty of zombie-killing ferocity, especially once you find the moose-head (hint: it's in the hunting shack on the wall...okay, not really a hint, it's the answer, but whatever, go get it).

Part 2 of my Dead Rising 2 review will discuss the actual, full-sized game. And I have no idea when I'll post it, so don't ask.

Poetry?

I've never really understood poetry.

I don't mean to say that I don't understand what poetry is; I think I've at least got a grasp on that. I mean that I don't understand what's appealing about poetry over regular writing. What's the advantage of communicating using less forthright means? How does it serve anyone to try to convey your message using innuendo and metaphors, when actual discussion is more complete and easier for the average person to understand?

Let me qualify my standpoint here for a moment. There is poetry out there that isn't bad. There's poetry that, while still more vague than regular conversation, has its own value, by eliciting an emotional response, or offering a general starting point, rather than trying to actually make a point. But these pieces of poetry are few and far between, and aren't the poetry you encounter from day to day.

That poetry is written by some boner friend of yours who thinks he's complex. Or by some girl who thinks her poetry tells you how she's got all these layers. Or, overwhelmingly, by a random internet person, full of doubt and angst, like the rest of us, but "able" to express themselves through twitchy, broken phrases.

So who is it that actually likes all this poetry that's out there?

I ask that question, but I know the answer. I haven't met a single person who likes poetry that doesn't also write their own poetry. And they get their poetry-writing skills reinforced by other people who like poetry and write their own poetry. It's like there's some kind of quietly understood agreement that if you appreciate my poetry, I'll appreciate yours, and we can both seem profound.

It's a clever little way to seem like an artist, which we all want to be (me included). We'd all like to be able to create something that outlives us, some work that people look at/listen to/read and say, "What an amazing piece of work." Poets just seem to have figured out how to accomplish that, without having to actually, you know, be talented.

Rock Band 3 Setlist

The Rock Band 3 soundtrack has been released (view it here). When compared with my Ultimate Rock Band 3 Setlist, there are two overlaps: Cold as Ice by Foreigner, and Werewolves of London by Warren Zevon. I also managed a few band overlaps (David Bowie, Steve Miller Band, Dire Straits, etc), which may not "count" when it comes to predictions, but definitely make me look forward to the game.

Top 5 Guys Who Should've Been Cast in Con Air Instead of Nicolas Cage

We can all agree that Con Air is entertaining. But I submit that, without Nicolas Cage bringing the movie down with every awful line, it'd have been a great movie, one of the classic action films of all time. So, let's replace him. I'm only picking people who were active actors in 1997, when Con Air came out.

1. Lennie James - "Robert Hawkins" from TV's Jericho. If you know him, you know he'd have been righteous. Just imagine him saying this line: "I'm gonna save the fuckin' day."
   
2. Woody Harrelson - It took Zombieland for me to realize that we should've been watching Harrelson in intense action roles for a decade now. Lesson learned.
   
3. Kiefer Sutherland - If only we knew then what we know now...
4. Bruce Willis - I know he was busy doing The Jackal and The Fifth Element in 1997, but I'm sure we could've made time for him. I'd have waited another year or two for Con Air if it meant Willis instead of that ass clown Nic Cage.
   
5. Adam Baldwin - Would've been a tough sell to bill him as a headliner in a cast with John Malkovich and John Cusack, though.
   

So what do we take away from this list? Only that Nicolas Cage is a movie-ruining monster.

Rock Band 3 Setlist....of my Dreams

A friend linked me to this article that outlines some of the new features for Rock Band 3, including the introduction of the keyboard as an instrument, and the use of the harmonized vocals that were featured in The Beatles: Rock Band. Also, they reaffirmed their intention to try to bridge the gap between rhythm games and real instruments, which is a neat idea. There was no mention of incorporating any of the ideas from my Rock Band RPG article from a while ago, but I never really held out much hope for that.

So how about a setlist? The article above named the 22 songs listed below:

Dio - "Rainbow in the Dark"
Huey Lewis and the News - "The Power of Love"
Ida Maria - "Oh My God"
Jane's Addiction - "Been Caught Stealing"
Jimi Hendrix - "Crosstown Traffic"
Joan Jett - "I Love Rock and Roll"
Juanes - "Me Enamora"
Metric - "Combat Baby"
Night Ranger - "Sister Christian"
Ozzy Osbourne - "Crazy Train"
Phoenix - "Lasso"
Queen - "Bohemian Rhapsody"
Rilo Kiley - "Portions of Foxes"
Smash Mouth - "Walkin' on the Sun"
Spacehog - "In the Meantime"
Stone Temple Pilots - "Plush"
The Cure - "Just Like Heaven"
The Doors - "Break On Through"
The Vines - "Get Free"
The White Stripes - "The Hardest Button to Button"
Them Crooked Vultures - "Dead End Friends"
Whitesnake - "Here I Go Again"

Definitely some good songs in there, but that's only 22 of a likely 80+ song tracklist. So what will the other 60-odd songs be? Well, ten to fifteen of them will be bogus-ass songs selected by the game designers that nobody's ever heard of (although they've occasionally found some good stuff). Regarding the other 45-50 songs, I don't have any legitimate guesses, but here are my suggestions/wishes/demands.

Please note that I'm aware that many of these songs don't take advantage of the keyboard. Tough. I did what I could to try to include songs with piano or keyboard, and songs with multiple vocal parts, and songs from different eras and genres. But in the end, it is Rock Band. The focus isn't going to be on hip-hop.

Alabama - "Mountain Music"
Big and Rich - "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy"
Bruce Springsteen - "Glory Days"
Clutch - "The Elephant Riders"
Counting Crows - "Hanginaround"
Cracker - "Low"
Creedence Clearwater Revival - "Born on the Bayou"
Dave Matthews Band - "Stay"
David Bowie - "Young Americans"
Deep Purple - "Perfect Strangers"
Dire Straits - "Money For Nothing"
Dishwalla - "Counting Blue Cars"
Doobie Brothers - "Takin' It To The Streets"
Eagles - "Already Gone"
Electric Light Orchestra - "Evil Woman"
Fiona Apple - "Criminal"
Five Finger Death Punch - "Hard To See"
Foreigner - "Cold As Ice"
Hard-Fi - "Gotta Reason"
Hoobastank - "The Reason"
Jackson Browne - "Doctor My Eyes"
Jason Mraz - "I'm Yours"
Jethro Tull - "Locomotive Breath"
Jonny Lang - "Still Rainin'"
Journey - "Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)"
Lynyrd Skynyrd - "Call Me The Breeze"
Maroon 5 - "This Love"
Matthew Good Band - "Indestructible"
Matthew Sweet - "Sick of Myself"
Modest Mouse - "Dashboard"
Muse - "Knights of Cydonia"
New Radicals - "You Get What You Give"
Santana featuring Chad Kroeger - "Into the Night"
School of Fish - "3 Strange Days"
Semisonic - "Closing Time"
Shinedown - "Heroes"
Sponge - "Wax Ecstatic"
Squirrel Nut Zippers - "Hell"
Steve Miller Band - "Jungle Love"
Styx - "Lady"
The Kinks - "Lola"
The Strokes - "Last Nite"
Toto - "Hold The Line"
Train - "Drops of Jupiter"
Van Halen - "Right Now"
Warren Zevon - "Werewolves of London"
Wolfmother - "Colossal"

By the way, Green Day: Rock Band? Really? We couldn't do better than that? What about Dave Matthews Band, or Electric Light Orchestra? Pearl Jam? Maybe pony up the ten million, or whatever it takes to get Led Zeppelin to release their master tracks. Zeppelin is the ultimate rock band of all time. There's got to be some amount at which they'd cave in.

In the words of a great hero of mine, "Everybody's got a price."

LOST Series Finale and Beyond - Part 2

In case you were wondering, yes, I totally forgot about this. But I do remember most of what I was going to say, so let's jump right in. This post will be about the show itself, and not so much the "beyond" part.

I thought the Lost series finale was entertaining. I wouldn't say it was as good as the show's best episodes (mostly first and second season episodes), but it was satisfying, and more than anything else, it gave us a fairly gratifying wrap on the entire series. I did have one idea, though, regarding the "alternate reality" portion, which we ended up learning was a kind of limbo/afterlife deal.

Couldn't that whole storyline have been made into a movie? Certainly Lost has enough viewers to at least justify releasing a full-length feature; you'd get at least ten million people easy, which translates to at least $80 million. Moreover, that whole path was kind of a stand-alone storyline; it didn't depend on anything happening on the island. The value it brought to this final season was in the questions it brought up, the kind of second-season questions we all had about, "What exactly is going on here?" As far as stories go, it could have been just as effective on its own.

In the end, though, I do think it was ultimately necessary to include that storyline alongside the final season. The reason showed up at the end of the final episode; while the bookend of the close-up Jack's eye was a great move by the show, the finale needed emotionally powerful scenes to satisfy long-time viewers. The confrontation between Jack and Samuel (the man-in-black's apparent name) was good, the farewell between Jack and Kate was good, the bestowal of the island's caretaker role to Hurley was good, but for pure emotion, nothing came close to the final meeting between Jack and his father. The finale needed that emotion, so it had to have the other-dimensional sequence.

Are there still questions? Of course. I don't think any of us realistically expected the show to resolve all of our questions. And leaving Hurley's reign on the island open-ended leaves open the possibility for a future movie; we'd all like a little more Lost. In that regard, I think Lost's writers did a great job. You know the old saying...

...always leave them wanting more.

LOST Series Finale And Beyond - Part 1

So it probably won't make much sense to you, but the Lost series finale has made me come back to my 20 for 30 list and see what I can do to revitalize my efforts.

But not revitalize my efforts towards these twenty goals, at least, not all of them. And my efforts will go towards some other goals, not outlined in my original post. And maybe that's the lesson from my whole experience here. The things that matter when you're 26 may not matter when you're 29. The things that seem important in January may seem trivial in June. Tonight is not the same as tomorrow, is not the same as two weeks from now, etc.

I'm killing the 20 for 30 list. Right now.

I'm going back to the "Real Life Achievements" concept of personal growth. It allows me to cite minimal things I do that matter to me, as well as make note of the big changes/experiences in my life.

Over the course of the week, I'll talk more about the Lost series finale, my thoughts on how the whole show came together, the concept behind the finale (specifically the "alternate reality" portion), and maybe, if I'm feeling particularly forthcoming, I'll let you in on why the series finale made me check my priorities. Stay tuned, I guess.

Twenty for Thirty Update - 4/20

So it's been another two months since my last update, and unfortunately, I haven't completed any additional goals. I've made minimal progress on a couple, but it's not about "moving towards goals;" it's about accomplishing them.

In thinking about some of these goals, though, I realize now that they weren't really my goals. They were goals that seemed considerable and reasonable, but weren't really things that I was going to set out to do, because they're not that important to me. They are:

1) Buy a car.
11) Bench press 200 pounds.
12) Go an entire week without drinking any caffeinated beverage.
20) Have a 60+ second conversation with a celebrity.

I'm debating whether or not I want to replace those four, or just roll with them and see how it goes. I'd be pretty surprised if I were to accomplish any of them, given that they're not actual personal goals. I don't really want to change them, though, since the year is already four months old, and it might marginalize the whole list. I'm thinking what I'll do, actually, is create a new list of twenty every year, removing goals accomplished and those that don't really qualify, and keeping goals that I hold dear but have not yet accomplished. Yes, that's what I'll do.

But for now, I'm going to get to work writing a song.

Lords of the Realm 2 / Summer Reading

First and foremost, any of you who played Lords of the Realm 2 need to listen to this song:



(You can download the track for yourself here)

Now that that's out of the way, let's talk about the other topic: summer reading. Remember when we were in school and we were expected to read on our own over the summer? I say "supposed to" because I know I never actually did, unless I could get away with something I was going to read anyways (Michael Crichton's Sphere comes to mind). But now, as an adult, I've come to appreciate the occasional foray into literature. I've even purchased more than one book in the past twelve months. I've got at least one extremely long road trip, and I'll likely have many other opportunities to get some serious reading done.

So I turn to you, my loyal readers...or reader. Offer me suggestions of books I should perhaps attempt to read this summer. Particular attention should be paid to books in two categories:

1. Books that you yourself own and could let me borrow.
2. Books by Nick Hornby.

I look forward to your suggestions/offerings.

Music Visualizations

So I was listening to some music today at the office (OC Remixes, of course), and I use Windows Media Player at work. I watched the visualization briefly, but it didn't seem to offer much of a matchup to the music. So my question to all of you is, do you guys know of any good visualizations out there? Obviously I'll put Google to work and see if I can't come up with something worthwhile, but I'd be appreciative if anyone has got a visualization they can recommend that really shines. Mostly, I'm just looking for something that does a good job of matching up with the music.

Anybody?

Top 5 Best-Developed Cartoon Characters

Cartoon television shows are a larger part of today's popular culture than I think people grasp. To try to illustrate this, here's my Top 5 Best-Developed Cartoon Characters (based on my own lifetime and experiences). There's also another point I want to make on this subject, but I'll do it after the list.

5. Eric Cartman, South Park

From his hatred of hippies to his lust for authori-tah, we've seen quite a bit of what makes Cartman tick. He's been the featured character on South Park from the very beginning, always the most compelling (and funniest). He also offers the most frequent social commentaries in the show, acting as Trey Parker and Matt Stone's little political machine.

4. Peter Griffin, Family Guy

I actually think we've got a pretty good grasp on the depth of Peter Griffin; there's just not all that much there. Seth McFarlane took the concept of Homer Simpson, magnified the stupidity, and eliminated pretty much everything else. But he's got a whole mess of quotes and one of the most recognizable laughs in the world. Is it possible that Family Guy is the American version of the fake Extras TV show "When The Whistle Blows?" Think about it.

3. Marge Simpson, The Simpsons

Of course Homer Simpson is #1, but over the course of the 20+ seasons of The Simpsons, we've come to know Marge and Homer as one of the more enduring and (surprisingly) realistic couples on television. They deal with legitimate problems, albeit in wild and wacky ways, like infidelity, financial problems, gambling, alcoholism, and raising a family. Our understanding of Marge is really just in those two regards (wife and mother), but it's extensive. And while I'd pick my mom over anyone else's, you could do worse than having Marge as your mother.

2. Stewie Griffin, Family Guy

Stewie has become the star of the show, offering the highest LPMs (laughs per minute) of pretty much anyone on television. But through the various experiences of Stewie, we've found more than just a baby that talks like an adult. He's dealt with a hard-swinging love/hate relationship with his mother, had a bout with alcoholism, and (sometimes) attempted to hide his homosexual tendencies. And try this on for size: the most famous gay fictional character in American culture might be a cartoon baby. So, in case you were wondering why the world thinks we're fucked up, there it is.

1. Homer Simpson, The Simpsons

He's basically got all the development that Marge has as far as a family man, but we've also seen Homer extensively in his work and social environments. Through 20+ seasons of animated mayhem, we've seen Homer in a thousand different situations. While his stupidity has ranged from childish to dense to oblivious to downright brain-dead, I'd venture to say we all feel like we know him. And although we wouldn't really want Homer as our father, we've seen his redeeming qualities and not just his flaws. Remember? The one thing he could offer Marge that other guys couldn't: complete and utter dependence. See? Redeeming.

So what's interesting about this list? All five of these people are, for the most part, physically unattractive. Three of them are fat guys. Compare that to the ratio of fat people in standard, live action television, and you'll find that fat people are either over-represented in cartoons or under-represented in live action television shows. Walk down any street in the country and you'll see that it's an under-representation.

In last summer's "The Hangover," Zach Galifianakis was often called a fat guy. He's not skinny, but he's not really all that fat either. He's just noticeably thicker than the average American actor. Ricky Gervais uses his unexceptional physique as a point of humor as well, and while he is completely unexceptional, he's not a true fatty. And of course, if you've ever seen Dan Castellaneta (voice of Homer) in real life, he's a skinny guy. People who aren't really fat are using fat jokes as if they were, and it's unfair. Get your own jokes, marginally overweight guys.

Are there successful fat actors? Of course. John Goodman is a heavyweight in both senses of the word. Jonah Hill has had an up and down beginning to his career, but he's certainly been solid. Jorge Garcia has become one of the most (only?) endearing characters on ABC's super-hit Lost. But when you look at "headliner" level actors, or even B-list actors who are the stars of their own TV shows, you'll only very rarely find heavy people. Roseanne was a particular anomaly, with a cast that was perfectly middle-America. And at least for a while, the show kicked ass, too.

I guess what I'm saying with all of this is that it seems strange that main characters in cartoons can be as fat as we want, but for live action shows, the main characters had better wear medium shirts. I wouldn't mind seeing an overweight main character/hero sometime, Hollywood.