As you may or not be aware, I’ve been absent both here and over at harrysaxon.com for some time. My excuse is fairly solid; I’ve been on vacation, during which I got married in Las Vegas to my girlfriend of 15 years.
Today I finished publishing the photos from the whole trip over on Flickr. Now that that first task is over post-vacation, I hope to be posting more, here and possibly over at harrysaxon.com in the coming weeks.
Though there’s still four hours of video to edit together as well…
I am a Red Sox fan.
This is the year that I, a lifelong baseball fan, was finally willing to come out and admit that fact. It’s been something I’ve been hiding from everyone but my (soon-to-be) wife for many years, and my decision to come out of the closet this year was a difficult one. I’m not joking. It got me reflecting on how complicated our sports allegiances can be.
You might ask what baseball has to do with Not a Planet’s usual material. Well, frankly it’s in part because we’ve lost a couple of our authors and I’m in a very busy month, as I’m getting married in a little over a week, so I post what I can. But frankly, NAPA was never intended to just be about the geek/SF/gaming world, but about being on the fringe of the mainstream. And there’s nothing less mainstream in Canada than being a baseball fan.
When Microsoft first unveiled their plan for the “live” 1 vs. 100 adaptation of the NBC game show for XBL a year ago, I was a little dubious, as I suspect many were; certainly the announcement was greeted with a wave of relative apathy. I’ve never watched the NBC series, but I gather it’s something like this: One player plays against 100 players in a multiple-choice trivia game. If the single player gets a question wrong, he’s finished. Each time they answer a question, those in the 100 who got it wrong are eliminated. Every 10 people who are eliminated move the single player a rung up the prize ladder, and they’re given the choice of continuing or cashing out. There’s some sort of “Lifelines”, which are de rigeur in these modern game shows – use the 100’s most popular answer, or the player with the highest score’s answer, etc. If you can beat all 100 you win the big prize. If you fail, the prize money is split among the remaining members of the 100. If you cash out, you get to walk away.
Maybe I’m missing some of the subtleties, but that’s the gist; truthfully, I hate these overwrought game shows with their dramatic pauses, and never watch them. But playing them is different, it turns out, and all I learnt about it I gathered today from playing the Canada-only (more on that later) beta of 1 vs. 100 on XBL, and I was absolutely blown away. This is the first thing I’ve really seen that embraces and explores what the modern age of online consoles could bring us that is unlike what we’ve experienced before.
I’ve been exceedingly busy over the past few weeks, and even more busy this month, what with getting married at the end of it. Many of my friends have noticed, as a result, my relative absence on Xbox Live the past few weeks, and mentioned it to me. While I can’t deny that having a very busy schedule has kept me away from my 360 these days, there’s another cause to my absence; the explosion of great games that have appeared on the iTunes store for the iPhone and iPod Touch.
I just want to briefly recommend a few of the iPhone games that have most sucked up my gaming time in the past few weeks.
CBC is reporting that Paramount is bringing 300 residents of Vulcan to Calgary for an advanced screening of the new Star Trek movie. Residents of Vulcan, Alberta, that is.
The small town southeast of Calgary has capitalized for years on having the same name as the homeworld of Spock. For several months residents had been lobbying the studio to stage the world premier of the much-anticipated prequel in their town. Spock himself, Leonard Nimoy, even added his voice to their cause. Paramount wound-up choosing the Sydney Opera House in Australia instead.
As a gesture of goodwill, the studio will be holding a special screening of the movie in Calgary for some of Vulcan’s residents on May 6th – two days before the North American premier. Actor Bruce Greenwood, who plays Captain Christopher Pike in the film, will also be on hand for the event.
So. Tomorrow evening Dollhouse fans look forward to a guest appearance from Whedon fan-favourite Alan Tudyk as the designer of the Dollhouse, but they’re facing the episode with some trepidation as well, as it may be the penultimate broadcast episode of the series. The “decision” to not air the 13th episode, “Epitaph One”, news that was muddled when it first leaked (many sources were reporting at the time, as I mentioned in part 1, that Alan Tudyk was slated to appear in the 13th episode) in some ways appears even more muddled, as the rumour now is that the 13th episode is set in an apocalyptic future and is simply unsuitable for a season finale. In addition, Tim Minear clarified the nature of the 13th episode on Whedonesque.com, and it was produced by the studio with the full understanding it wouldn’t go to air, as the network order had aready been filled. In short, it doesn’t appear that not airing “Epitaph One” indicates a decision to cancel the show; on the other hand, if the network had a great faith or liking in the series they probably would have picked it up anyway.
I’ve been using Dollhouse and the speculation surrounding it as a jumping point to discuss Whedon’s past, most specifically Buffy, The Vampire Slayer. Part nostalgic look back at the series after recently re-watching it, and part analysis of some key themes and innovations that Whedon introduced to network television, I’d like to conclude the series with a look at the ending of Buffy, and why the very thing that make Whedon’s series so acclaimed makes it very difficult to sustain an audience for his shows.
Warning: SPOILERS
Lately I’ve been beginning to wonder if the Devil (played by the gleefully malicious Ray Wise) might actually be succeeding (if slowly) in turning Sam (Bret Harrison) to the dark side on Reaper. Not through any obvious, direct means like repeatedly encouraging him to do bad things, or trying to wear him down with a cynical world view, or pitting him against his half-brother last week in a soul-catching contest. Rather, it’s the result of a subtle manipulation of circumstances that makes it seem as though Sam is doing it all on his own.
In season 1, Sam operated on a fairly straight-forward basis: he didn’t like the contract that bound him to the Prince of Darkness, he wanted out of it, he kept Andi in the dark, but he did his job. Sure he whined about what the Devil put him through, but that was the extent of it.
With the new Star Trek reboot just around the corner, I thought it was fair to take an unflinching look at where the franchise has gone before in film – especially the moments that were so bad the audience couldn’t help but flinch.
5) The 5-8 minutes of excessive trippy cloud special effects and gratuitous reaction shots as the Enterprise creeps toward V’Ger in Star Trek I: The Motion Picture
Okay, it’s a weird alien cloud, you’re amazed, we get it. 1-2 minutes would have done it. This was a lame-duck copy of what Kubrick did with Dave Bowman’s journey at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
4) “Don’t mince words, Bones, tell me what you really think.” Jim Kirk in his condo in The Wrath of Khan
Perhaps The Shat’s most foppish and needy delivery of a line of dialogue. Ever. Pity it was there to mar an otherwise incredible film.
“The Variable” is a landmark episode for Lost for far more reasons than the mere fact that it’s the 100th episode of the celebrated series. Once again, the writing team has hit us from out of nowhere with new revelations and, finally, the backstory of Daniel Faraday, the Island’s resident physicist and bundle of nervous energy, as was clearly telegraphed in the first few seconds of the episode when we finally get explicit confirmation that Eloise Hawking is indeed Faraday’s mother.
Continue reading for more yummy goodness in today’s episode, but I’m putting the break early; it’s heavily laden in spoilers.
Having just arrived in Canada we were thinking of purchasing a new car but my Google search must have got intermingled with the release of the new Star Trek movie and found this interesting little vehicle.
Until shuttle crafts become available on the general market I think the Nissan Terranaut will do for our tech travelling needs for the time being. Nissan announced its Terranaut concept at the 2006 Geneva Motor Show; it would be a “three-seat SUV for explorers and scientists designed to cross ice, deserts and other remote hostile environments with its 19-inch puncture-proof Goodyear tires”. There are two regular seats in the front but the single seat in the back can swivel 360 degrees and is surrounded by USS Enterprise-inspired consoles.
harrysaxon
