Max Rambles

They're Making Escape from New York In Space

2012-01-26T16:32:00.000-05:00

Seriously. Watch this new trailer for Lockout, it's just Escape from New York but in space instead of New York. And that sounds absolutely awesome. John Carpenter's classic is one of my all times favourite films, and Lockout is written by Luc Besson, the guy responsible films like The Fifth Element, Léon: The Professional, and Taken. This movie is going to be derivative, superficial, possibly even forgettable, but I'm excited for it all the same. who doesn't like to see an archetypal badass break into a maximum security space prison to save the president's daughter?

The Liebster Awards

2012-01-20T09:30:00.000-05:00

The other day an old friend of mine commented on a recent post saying he was nominating me for a Liebster Award. At first I took this as just a few kind words but upon further research I've discovered that the award is real! Sort of!

Stemming from the German word for "dearest," a Liebster is a pay-it-forward, feel-good award for under-known blogs (ouch?). Basically the system works like this:

1) You get nominated for the award
2) You make a post accepting said award (you're reading this now)
3) You nominate five other blogs you enjoy that are under read (less than 200 regular readers)
4) The cycle continues

A quick Google search reveals the many winners out there, and by definition they're sure to be awesome-but-unknown blogs. My friend John over at Tauroscatology nominated me on his blog, so I guess that means I can't nominate him. Regardless you should check his stuff out because he's a great writer, and I'm sure the other blogs he nominated are fantastic too!

On that note, here are my nominations (in no particular order):

1) The Daily Protagitron - My good friend Martha's awesome blog about awesome things like movies, beer, books, knitting, etc. I always enjoy keeping tabs on what she's up to via her blog and it's a great way to find out about new, interesting stuff I hadn't come across on my own. And again, she writes about movies, books, and beer people. It's great!

2) Textual Relations - Maybe the least regularly updated of the blogs I'm nominating, Textual Relations covers books, academia, feminism, and Internet culture. If you know/care about my blog/opinions enough to be reading this sentence then you can probably understand why I'd enjoy reading about all those things. If you're at all interested in any of those subjects then you'll love this blog.

3) JusticeBlawg (specifically posts by Johanna under the name lawunion) - I recently featured Johanna's post about The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo on this blog, and this seems like another good opportunity to mention her work. Johanna's quickly becoming one of my favourite voices to read on the Internet as she's both well thought out and opinionated (a sorely rare combination) AND approaches her subjects with a candour that is beyond refreshing (both in terms of its source and the context in which it arises). It's a bit on the academic/lengthy side (hell, so is this recommendation) but if you're into that this blog/author is well worth your time.

4) Experience Points - Not totally sure if this qualifies as an "under read" blog as per the Liebster rules, but I'm realizing now that I don't really gravitate towards unknown blogs. Insert self-reflective comment about "I shouldn't only pay attention to loud voices in a big crowd" here, etc. Anyway, Experience Points is a wonderful blog that takes an "intelligent but not humourless" look at video games. This blog has definitely helped inform some of my Games As Art posts in the past and continues to be a great source for serious commentary and discussion of one of my favourite mediums.

5) ... Ok I'm throwing in the towel now. I seriously cannot come up with any more blogs I know that are criminally under-read and shouldn't be. If I can think of another blog then I'll post an update to this later, but for now that's it for my Liebster nominations. I feel like on some level I've failed the Internet as a blogger today by not being more up on other awesome but unknown sites, and for that I apologize. I'll do better in the future, I promise.

As something of a compensation I am going to give props to one of my favourite (though definitely not unknown) blogs, Topless Robot. There Rob Bricken and his cohorts post hilarious, snarky comments on geek news, daily lists of amazing things you never knew you wanted to read about. It's a wonderful place to lose yourself for a few hours and come out on the other side more uselessly informed about nerd/pop/Japanese culture than you ever wanted/needed to be.

Anyway, that's it for my Liebster noms! Here's hoping you enjoy the blogs I've linked to, let me know in the comments if there are any I missed that I really ought to mention, I'm sure I'll think of some within moments of posting this piece!

This Website Blocked

2012-01-18T11:02:00.000-05:00

MaxRambles hasn't actually been blocked, but if the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) or the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) are passed then this blog would be at serious risk of being blocked in the United States. Today MaxRambles supports countless other online outlets in protesting SOPA and PIPA. If you're not familiar with the bills then please inform yourself about these very dangerous pieces of legislation. If you're a citizen of the USA then please write to your local media and (more importantly) your elected representatives. There must be a clear message that this kind of proposed online censorship is completely unacceptable.

For more up-to-date information on today's protest please visit www.reddit.com, which includes links to informaiton about the bills and a news feed with updates being posted throughout the day. Alternatively Google has set up a convenient hub for information on the bills and getting in touch with your local representatives.

Over-thinking It: Batman's Politics

2012-01-16T09:00:00.000-05:00

As a lifelong fan of Batman above all other superheroes, I've often been troubled by the political implications of his crusade against evil. Many times I've found myself awake late at night, tossing and turning as I struggled with the inconsistencies between my purported liberal notions and the Dark Knight's (sometimes) disturbing conservatism. It's enough make even the most strident bat-fan wonder: should I enjoy Batman so much? Can I justify my affection? As I grow older and more introspective this has become perhaps the most tumultuous ideological debate of my life, ranking alongside my choices between boxers or briefs, 7 Up or Sprite, and butter or margarine. Now more than ever - with Bruce Wayne staunchly on the side of the 1% as the heir of a billion dollar dynasty - I find myself questioning my allegiance to the Dark Knight.

A few illustrative examples from Batman's history will demonstrate the kind of conservatism I'm talking about:

1) Batman is tough on crime.

Everyone knows that today's Batman is above the outright killing of criminals. The Dark Knight's compassion is so important because it's what separates him from the criminals he fights; without it, he'd just be a guy in a bat suit out beating people to death. However what a lot of non-fans don't know is that Batman was originally a pretty cold-blooded killer. There are many instances in his early days when Batman straight-up slaughtered his enemies, including his first appearance in Detective Comics #27. There Batman remorselessly punched a guy into a vat of acid, and then callously referred to it as "a fitting end for his kind." That's cold!

Batman as he was originally depicted was not above killing in any way, shape, or form; even today he sometimes play fast and loose with the no-killing rule. In particular I'm thinking of the infamous scene at the end of Batman Begins where the caped crusader leaves villain Ra's al Ghul to die on a runaway train, saying "I'm won't kill you but I don't need to save you." That's getting into a serious moral grey area there, Bats. Also, while the modern Batman tends to avoid murdering criminals outright, I've never heard of him publicly opposing the death penalty. Seems to me like the caped crusader is less anti-killing and more just doesn't want to get his hands dirty.

2) Everyone is potentially Batman's enemy.

Batman has a plan for how to take down everyone. If anything bad happens, Batman will have predicted the possibility and have a contingency plan ready. He's prepared for any scenario, up to and including bringing down any of his so-called allies should the need arise. This has been the setup for numerous stories, including Tower of Babel in which Ra's al Ghul steals Batman's contingency plans and uses them to decimate just about every other major superhero. Some choice examples of Batman's nefariousness include giving the Flash light speed seizures, making Aquaman hydrophobic (i.e. afraid of the water he needs to live the way we need oxygen to breathe), and using science to overload every organ in Superman's body simultaneously. Wow. Needless to say, the other heroes are less than impressed by Batman's, ahem, foresight.

It's more than "If you're not with us you're against us." It's "If you're not me then you're probably an enemy." I'm pretty sure the Lannisters employ a similar philosophy, and Game of Thrones fans know how well that turns out. Batman is the epitome of self-assured, paranoia-inducing isolationism, which brings me to my next point...

3) Batman knows what's best for you.

This is the "Big Brother" factor. It goes hand in hand with the whole "crazy-prepared loner" syndrom described above, in that Batman basically thinks that he knows better than everyone else in the world. Take The Dark Knight for example. First Batman uses some sort of cellphone radar system that allows him to audibly/visually spy on every person in Gotham in order to find the Joker. It's ludicrously invasive and reprehensible, but Batman's modus operandi has always been a purely Machiavellian "the ends justify the means" kind of deal. Even Lucius Fox calls out the whole operation for going too far, and this is the guy who gave Wayne (who he'd never met before) a military arsenal for basically no reason ("Spelunking"). Not exactly careful planning there.

But even the radar thing pales in comparison to when Batman decides to take the rap for Harvey "Two-Face" Dent's sudden murder spree at the end of the movie. The general idea is that the people of Gotham can't take the truth about Dent because it more or less proves the Joker's thesis on human nature; as such the best thing is apparently for Batman and Commissioner Gordon to hide the truth and pretend the caped crusader is a violent killer so the city can rest assured that good people do exist in the world.

Ignoring the whole 'put the city at ease by convincing them the guy who prowls the streets at night dressed like a bat is a murderous psychopath' thing, let's consider Batman's foreboding statement that "Sometimes the truth isn't good enough." The truth is dissatisfactory and so Batman just decides to cover it up and pretend it's something more convenient? That's rewriting history, authoritarianism at its finest! Also, since the whole thing makes everyone in Gotham think that Batman's a murderer it more or less makes him the city's ruling crime lord (which is actually another one of his contingency plans in the comic Batman: War Games). And with that interpretation in mind Commissioner Gordon's involvement in the cover up starts to look a lot like a "better the devil you know than the devil you don't" type scenario. In one move Batman and Gordon position themselves the puppeteers of Gotham city's law enforcement and the de facto heads of its criminal element. It's a disturbing, artful, and an effective solution all at the same time, and it doesn't paint a pretty picture in terms of demonstrating Batman's politics.

Conclusion

So what's a liberal-minded Batman fan to do? Write to DC Comics in protest of the ideology they're exposing to impressionable young minds? Occupy my local comic shop? Or maybe I should just put less mental energy and political thought into superheroes? Chime in dear reader and let me know, because the only thing more important/worthwhile than this article is your opinion on it!

Guest Post: Men Who Hate Women

2012-01-05T17:43:00.000-05:00

I'm starting 2012 off a little differently here at MaxRambles by featuring my first ever guest post. Back in December I went to see David Fincher's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo with my friend and fellow blogger Johanna. Based on the like-named 2005 novel by Stieg Larsson, TGWTDT shows an unusual pair of detectives investigating the murder of young Swedish girl over 30 years after the fact. In case you're not familiar with the source material, the story is primarily about sexual violence against women. The film features an extremely graphic rape scene that I've heard some say might be the most visceral depiction of sexual violence ever put on film. Either way it definitely deserves a trigger warning.

While I did know the scene was coming, Johanna did not and so was unprepared for the devastatingly brutal scene (for the record I would have warned her if I'd known she wasn't expecting it). Her piece below is a response to both the scene and the larger film from a feminist perspective. It's not my typical thing and I don't fully agree with some of the points Johanna makes, but that said I think she's largely spot on in her critique of TGWTDT and so I'm happy (and frankly a little flattered) to be featuring it here on MaxRambles.

I do want to warn you that Johanna's piece is very much a response to TGWTDT and as such is geared towards readers who have seen the film. It's brimming with spoilers and doesn't waste much time explaining things, but if you've seen the film you'll be just fine. If you enjoy the piece then please let us know in the comments, and if you want to read more of Johanna's writing you can follow this link to her contributions on JusticeBlawg.org (she writes under the shared name lawunion but always signs her posts). And now, without further ado...

Men Who Hate Women

*spoiler warning, and trigger warning for sexual violence*

I just went to see the recentlyreleased American film version of TheGirl With the Dragon Tattoo. Having avoided the explosively popular books,and never having seen the Swedish films that were based on them, I knew nothingabout the storyline and was completely unprepared for what happens in the film.David Fincher’s The Girl With the DragonTattoo contains the most explicit, brutal and devastating scene of sexualviolence that I have ever seen. Technically I didn’t really see it, because itwas unwatchable, but what I did see (and hear) is burned in my brain, and itwas enough to have a full picture of exactly what was going on. After that Ididn’t relax for the rest of the film and, two days later, I haven’t quitegotten out from under the cloud that it put over me. While that scene wasparticularly disturbing, it was not a thematic anomaly within the film. It ispreceded by another sexual assault that I thought was bad enough, and issandwiched within a story about missing and murdered women, victims of amisogynistic father-son serial killing (and raping) team. Needless to say, Iwasn’t too surprised when I read that the English translation of the Swedishbook’s original title is “Men Who Hate Women.” I guess the publisher figuredthat wouldn’t sell as well.

The trouble that I’m having, and hope to work through a bitin writing this piece, is whether or not the graphic depictions of violenceagainst women in the film are redeemable, in that they are both necessary anduseful to a discussion of misogyny and rape culture, which the film seems to beinterested in having.

TGWTDT is, in myopinion, very clear about the power dynamic that is inherent in sexual assaultand other forms of violence against women. Lisbeth Salander, the survivor ofboth of the scenes of sexual assault that I referred to above and, it issuggested, assault by her father during her childhood, is a ward of the stateand prohibited from controlling her own finances. Early in the film she isassigned a new social worker, and very quickly he takes advantage of hisposition of power to coerce her into performing sexual acts in exchange for themoney that she needs to live, and which she should be able to access freely.The first time this happens, she is forced to give him oral sex. The scene isstomach-churning, even more so when he states that her obvious reticence is aturn-on. However, it demonstrates a number of things. One is that any coercedsexual act is assault, regardless of whether or not it is physically forced.Sure, she could have turned and walked out of the office without acquiescing,but her situation was such that to do so would have meant total impoverishmentand probably institutionalization. That is not a choice, and so she wassexually assaulted as certainly as if he had physically held her down andforced himself on her (which, unfortunately, is what happens later). It alsoshows that sexual assault is about power, not sex (although perpetrators ofsexual assault clearly derive sexual pleasure from that power). After sufferingfurther sexual violence from this man, Salander reveals that she recorded herrape and forces him to watch it. He appears to be visibly distressed by what hesees, which could be read simply as his panic about the situation that he is ingenerally, but I would prefer to think that it is the film’s way of showingthat, as a sexual offender, he recognizes how disgusting his actions were whenhe sees what it really was: one person forcing himself upon another, physicallyweaker, incapacitated and unwilling person. While he may have felt powerfulduring that act, and taken sexual gratification from that feeling of power,forcing him to watch that recording dispelled the illusion.

If by this point the audience had not understood that thereis a connection between power relations and sexual assault, the film providesanother opportunity when Daniel Craig’s character faces Martin Vanger, a serialrapist and murderer of women. He explains to Mikael (Craig) that he likes towatch the hope draining from the faces of his victims, and it is only when theyhave realized that they have no chance of escaping their fate that he becomesaroused. In other words, he is sexually aroused by the feeling of completecontrol and dominance over another party. That’s what it’s all about. So, allof this is to say that the film does a pretty good job of depicting anddiscussing sexual violence without sexualizing it. The rape scene is nottitillating in the least; there are no lingering shots of Salander’s body, noromanticization or shying away from what is going on. It is very clearlyviolence, and for that I give the film some credit. Does that make itredeemable? After quite a bit of thought and a few discussions with somefriends, my answer is no.

One of the problems with the film is that while one of themain characters is experiencing all of this sexual violence, the other isbecoming involved in an intriguing mystery, which becomes the central narrativethread. The assaults occur relatively early in the film, and are ostensiblyused as a plot device, giving Salander a motive for helping Mikael “catch akiller of women.” The result is that instead of meditating on sexual assault asa systemic problem, it simply incorporates it as just another aspect of a storythat is, ultimately, about entertaining the audience. This is the point that Ihad the most difficulty coming to terms with because if I believe that film isan important and relevant medium through which to discuss broad societalissues, which I vehemently do, how can I reconcile my feeling that there issomething inherently exploitative or “problematic” about including so muchexplicit violence against women in this film?

Here’s how: film absolutely can be used as a progressivetool to comment on and engage with issues like sexual assault, however in orderto do so the film’s commitment must be to that discussion entirely, in contrastto TGWTDT, which is amystery/thriller that happens to contain a bunch of sexual violence. In TGWTDT, the climax of the film,narratively speaking, is when Mikael is captured by Martin, and facing imminenttorture and death. If this were a film about sexual assault, the film wouldhave had to centre on the rape scene. For me, and for a number of others thatI’ve spoken to, it did; I mostly shut down after that happened. However, othersthat I’ve spoken to didn’t seem to have been impacted by it in the same way atall. This applies predominantly to the (self-identified) men that I’ve spokento about it, and I say that not because I think that men can’t understandsexual violence, or aren’t impacted by it, but because I think that theaudience is encouraged to identify with Mikael, and that it is less likely thatmen will resist that identification. The result is that the sexual assaultsfade into the background as the plot moves forward, with the audience gettingthe vague sense that they have somehow “dealt with” sexual assault as an issuebecause for a few minutes they were forced to engage with it, and to feeluncomfortable.

There is a rich tradition within Hollywood of churning outliberal “issue films” (see Schindler’s List, Crash, etc.) that claim to makeimportant statements about oppression, while actually just maintaining theaudience’s complacency by leaving them with the self-satisfied sense that theynow “understand racism.” I would argue that TGWTDTis operating in the same way with regard to sexual assault, and that is why Iultimately cannot forgive it for its violence.

I think that there is a lot more to say about TGWTDT, in terms of Salander’s charactermore generally, which has been lauded as an exceptional depiction of feminism.I haven’t read the books so I can’t speak to how she is written, but based onthe film alone I’m not convinced of this. She certainly has a great deal ofagency, and is remarkably intelligent and independent, I give the writers that,but I was left feeling very conflicted about the scene in which she takesrevenge on her social worker. She tattoos “I am a rapist pig” on his chest, andviolently inserts a dildo into his rectum, which is unquestionably sexualviolence in itself, and I cannot accept the message that sexual violencejustifies further sexual violence. It is a scene of great catharsis, and it isvery tempting to think, “Fuck yeah,” but that is precisely what makes meuncomfortable. I don’t want her actions in that scene to be associated withfeminism, because that is not what feminism is to me. There may be an argumentto be made on other bases for her as a strong, feminist character, I don’tdiscount the possibility, but I haven’t heard one yet. I also acknowledge thatthere are many other aspects of the film deserving of discussion, and as athriller I think that it succeeds; but therein lies the problem, because thereis nothing thrilling about rape.

- Johanna

It's Time

2011-12-02T09:30:00.000-05:00

I don't really like the idea/want to get in the habit of citing Gawker as a good authority on social issues, but in this case they're dead on: the US absolutely does need ads like this one:

Getting Stoked for 'Shame'

2011-12-01T10:00:00.000-05:00

I've been meaning to write about the upcoming movie Shame for a while now. The sophomore feature-length release from director Steve McQueen, Shame stars the incredible Michael Fassbender as a sex addict living in New York. When his younger sister (played by the increasingly daring Carey Mulligan) moves in with him, Fassbender's life begins to spiral out of control.

What's gotten me so excited for Shame is the bold approach distributor Fox Searchlight is taking with the film: they're embracing its NC-17 rating. More than that they're wearing it like "a badge of honour." This move is unusual in the extreme and it's strange but inspiring to see such a brave step forward coming from a member of the Fox family. Here's an incredible quote from Fox Searchlight director Steve Gilula:

I think NC-17 is a badge of honor, not a scarlet letter. We believe it is time for the rating to become usable in a serious manner. The sheer talent of the actors and the vision of the filmmaker are extraordinary. It’s not a film that everyone will take easily, but it certainly breaks through the clutter and is distinctive and original. It’s a game changer.

The NC-17 rating has traditionally been a death mark for films that push the limits of social norms. When a film gets this rating most theatres typically won't play it, fearing public backlash against deviant content. Germaine Lussier over at /Film explains it best:

When a film gets branded with an NC-17 rating, most studios do one of four things. They re-cut it hoping to get an R-rating, release it unrated, doom it direct-to-DVD or suck it up and go for it.

That last option is a rarity because embracing the NC-17 rating means fighting an unfair, almost pornographic, connotation. The MPAA website itself explicitly states “NC-17 does not mean ‘obscene’ or ‘pornographic’ in the common or legal meaning of those words, and should not be construed as a negative judgment in any sense. The rating simply signals that the content is appropriate only for an adult audience.” But that doesn’t stop major theater chains from not playing the movies, major video distributors from not stocking the movies or TV channels from not advertising the movies. It’s a huge mountain to climb.

The resultant battles between filmmakers (at every level of the process) and the MPAA over ratings have been well documented. This phenomenon has spawned an interesting (albeit very one-sided) documentary, This Film is Not Yet Rated, that everyone who's interested in film should see.

Now to see a major indie distributor like Fox Searchlight coming out in support of a film that's been branded with the NC-17 rating is both refreshing and encouraging. Hopefully it's a sign that the stigma associated with the rating is deteriorating and that we'll be seeing more daring and unique cinema as a result.

Anyway, I bring this all up now because the red band trailer for Shame has been released and it is, in a word, electric. It's embedded below, but seeing as it's red band I'll warn you that it's definitely NSFW. The score and the acting are the highlights of this minimalistic but powerful taste of what we'll see. Without a single line of dialogue Fassbender manages to establish an incredible sense of tension and forced restraint. On top of that the music evokes memories of The Social Network and There Will Be Blood, two of my favourite film scores.

The trailer's gotten me excited for a film I would already have gone to see solely for the cinematic-political reasons stated above. Shame has received great reviews and this trailer gives credence to that buzz. Hopefully this film's success will match its quality so that it has the opportunity to positively impact the entire industry.

Red State

2011-11-24T10:00:00.000-05:00

Red State is the latest film from Kevin Smith, the writer/director of 90's classics like Clerks, Chasing Amy, and Dogma. Set in an unnamed (but distinctly Texas-like) small town in the southern USA, Red State is about a familial religious cult known as the Five Points Church. The cult espouses some rather extreme interpretations of the Bible, particularly with regards to homosexuality, and has a distinctly holier-than-though type mindset. An incident early in the film results in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) being called in to raid the Church compound, and the ensuing conflict is the basis for most of the film.

As that brief plot summary indicates, Red State conflates elements from the real-life stories of the Waco siege, the Manson Family, and the Westboro Baptist Church. The film attempts to tell "both" sides of the story, intermittently showing the perspectives of the ATF force, the people of the cult, and the surrounding community. Given that kind of humanized engagement with highly controversial political topics, it seems natural to assume that Smith would use the opportunity to take a stance on the issues. At the very least you'd expect some sort of coherent message, something to give meaning to a story about belief-based hatred and killing. And I guess we sort of get that. Eventually.

In what is surely meant to be a P. T. Anderson-esque haunting monologue near the conclusion of the film, John Goodman as the head of the ATF force explains his prior actions to his superiors by stating that "People just do the strangest things when they believe they're entitled... But they do even stranger things when they just plain believe."

... Ok?

This half-hearted attempt at depth fails to justify or add weight to the events of the film. It feels less like an explanation and more like an observation, and doesn't really do much to make sense of the proceedings. I'm not trying to suggest that movies have to be comprehensible as a rule. Rather it's clear that Smith is trying to take a political stance in this film, and unfortunately his writing fails to convey his position. The entire thing just feels unintentionally senseless and aimlessly political.

On that note, I can't help but feel that Red State would have been more topical around 2004 or so. "What's that you say Kevin Smith? The Patriot Act is bad? Oh, do tell me more!" Granted the topics covered in the movie are still alive in the American political landscape, but they're more like the basic context behind today's headlines. Given the fact that we're firmly entrenched in the post-Bush era, the conversation surrounding these types of issues has evolved in significant ways.

Maybe it's just that the politics don't fully resonate with me because I'm Canadian, maybe these issues really are the kinds of things keep Americans up at night. But I don't think so. I think that people have more or less gotten used to the fact that the Westboro Baptist Church is objectively evil, and that the political/corporate powers-that-be are maybe a little out of whack. With regards to that last one, I think people have not only gotten used to the fact but moreover have become fed up and started to do something about it, but I digress. That's a whole other discussion, and for now it's enough to say I don't think Red State says much that we don't already know, and says it poorly at that.

It's not that the movie is bad per se, on the contrary it's quite well made in many regards. The cinematography, lighting, special effects, and sound design are all incredible. Moreover the acting is perhaps the strongest ever featured in a Kevin Smith movie. John Goodman puts in a great performance, and Michael Parks is absolutely mesmerizing as the paternalistic cult leader. In a lot of ways Red State is the most mature thing Smith has ever produced, exhibiting real vision and control as a filmmaker.

Given all these positives it's especially tragic that the writing is so disappointing. That's usually Smith's one reliable strength, but here it's underwhelming and strictly functional. The minute-to-minute dialogue between the characters is natural and effective in driving the plot forward, but it never really adds up to anything. Nothing in the script establishes much of a perspective with the exception of the aforementioned monologue. Even there, where Smith speaks directly to the audience through Goodman's character, the closest thing we get to a message is a vague sentiment that extremism is bad in any form. Given that I suppose it's appropriate that Red State is moderate to the point of irrelevance, but that's way more cynical than I wanted to be about this movie.

(Originally published in The Weldon Times)

R.I.P. Anne McCaffrey

2011-11-22T17:43:00.001-05:00

I just learned from Topless Robot that Anne McCaffrey has passed away. The author of over a hundred books, McCaffrey will be sorely missed by fans of science-fiction and fantasy.

Anne McCaffrey, 1926-2011

McCaffrey leaves a wonderful legacy behind and hopefully her works will continue to be enjoyed for years to come. The Dragonriders of Pern series was particularly important to me when I was growing up and so I was sad to hear the news. If you're at all interest in sci-fi/fantasy then I strongly recommend picking up either Dragonflight or Dragonsong and letting yourself get lost in Pern.

PS: It might be wrong/insensitive to say this right now, but I don't see myself getting another opportunity: the photo of Anne McCaffrey on her Wikipedia page is the worst photo I have ever seen of a person, ever. Like, wow. So unfortunate.

The Way the Occupy Cookie Crumbles

2011-11-21T08:43:00.000-05:00

Occupy Sesame Street

A commenter over at The Onion's AV Club who writes from the perspective of Sesame Street's Cookie Monster has put together the most coherent and concise explanation of the Occupy Movement that I've seen. I'm reposting it here because it's both hilarious and so clear that it needs to get spread around as much as possible. Lately I've noticed too little understanding and too much misinformation about OWS going around for my liking. Especially with regards to the reasons behind the protests and the "lack of clear goals." This short piece doesn't pull any punches and gets right to the heart of the issue by responding to the far-too-typical "You're just complaining that you're poor" critique.

Anyway, enough talk, here's the post:

Yes, there always going to be rich and poor. But we used to live in country where rich owned factory and make 30 times what factory worked make. Now we live in country where rich make money by lying about value of derivative bonds and make 3000 times what factory worker would make if factories hadn't all moved to China.

Capitalism great system. We won Cold War because people behind Iron Curtain look over wall, and see how much more plentiful and delicious cookies are in West, and how we have choice of different bakeries, not just state-owned one. It great system. It got us out of Depression, won WWII, built middle class, built country's infrastructure from highways to Hoover Dam to Oreo factory to electrifying rural South. It system that reward hard work and fair play, and everyone do fair share and everyone benefit. Rich get richer, poor get richer, everyone happy. It great system.

Then after Reagan, Republicans decide to make number one priority destroying that system. Now we have system where richest Americans ones who find ways to game system - your friends on Wall Street - and poorest Americans ones who thought working hard would get them American dream, when in fact it get them pink slip when job outsourced to 10-year-old in Mumbai slum. And corporations have more influence over government than people (or monsters).

It not about rich people having more money. It about how they got money. It about how they take opportunity away from rest of us, for sake of having more money. It how they willing to take risks that destroy economy - knowing full well that what could and would happen - putting millions out of work, while creating nothing of value, and all the while crowing that they John Galt, creating wealth for everyone.

That what the soul-searching about. When Liberals run country for 30 years following New Deal, American economy double in size, and wages double along with it. That fair. When Conservatives run country for 30 years following Reagan, American economy double again, and wages stay flat. What happen to our share of money? All of it go to richest 1%. That not "there always going to be rich people". That unfair system. That why we upset. That what Occupy Sesame Street about.

(Via SF Weekly. Thanks Sarah!)

The Internet Has Isolated The Essence of Sadness

2011-11-15T13:08:00.000-05:00

Apologies in advance for the ridiculously emo title of this post. Also for the infinite sadness you might feel in a few moments.

About a month back I came across an interesting post on reddit by user KhaoticLegacy. Apparently Thai insurance commercials are generally short films unto themselves that depict tragic human stories meant to evoke compassion, heartbreak, and a very strong sense that you need life insurance. Like, yesterday. This Google search pulls up a whole bunch of them so you can see for yourself (thanks tiexano). Anyway, KhaoticLegacy noted that if you take any one of these ads and use YouTube Doubler to change the audio to the music from the (much adored) Dead Island trailer, what you end up with is the most sad thing ever. Every time. For real.

Check out this one example:

It's uncanny how well this works with every single Thai insurance ad. Seriously, here's another "favourite" of mine (make sure to mute the Thai ad). The first time I watched on of these videos I was instantly transformed from a grown, reasonably competent adult into an angsty, "misunderstood" teenager. Equally devastating is the mashup of the Dead Island trailer music with the already heartbreaking opening montage from Up! that you can find here if you're just feeling too chipper today.

This strange but mesmerizing phenomenon raises a number of important questions:
1) Why are these instantly depressing videos so strangely compelling? What does it say about the human condition that we can enjoy the experience of sadness?
2) Have the composers of the Dead Island trailer music found the perfect combination of notes to instantly evoke simultaneous feelings of compassion, futility, and despair? Can it make anything sad? Is that dog dead?
3) What is the deal with Thai insurance commercials?!

These questions and more plague me while I continue to find new, more poignant combinations of internet videos with the Dead Island trailer music...

Editor's note: I've been meaning to post about this one for a few weeks, sorry for the delay Chris!

Batman is the 1%

2011-11-14T19:11:00.001-05:00

Definitely my all-time favourite Dorkly bit.

Usage-Based Internet Billing Is a Good Thing

2011-11-12T12:44:00.001-05:00

My dad wrote a great piece for the Toronto Star explaining why UBB is, contrary to popular opinion, a good thing. The article makes it pretty clear why UBB is not just fair for the average user but also necessary for businesses. A lot of the negative attention that UBB attracted earlier in the year was largely misinformed and came in response to Bell's bad plan for implementation. My dad's piece is a good explanation of a largely misunderstood issue and definitely worth a read if you're interested in Canadian broadcast issues. It'll be interesting to see what happens on Tuesday when the CRTC releases their revised decision about UBB.

Games As Art: PBS Off Book

2011-10-27T12:02:00.000-04:00

Just a quick post to share this sweet video that I found over on Kotaku. It's the latest in a series called "Off Book" by PBS Arts, and it features a number of people in the video game industry talking about why they see video games as an artistic medium. They raise some interesting points, particularly about the meaning of interaction and emotional inspiration, that are great contributions to the ongoing debate about games as art. Plus they describe Portal in a way that I completely hadn't considered but that is so interesting it makes me want to go back and play that incredible game all over again for the umpteenth time. That alone would make the video worth posting, but here it's just a minor point in the larger discussion.

One thing in the video I found particularly interesting was the description of the Jason Rohr's game Passage. The basic gist is that the game presents a world that you are free to explore, but only for a short time before your character dies; in that time you can get a partner who explores with you, but eventually dies shortly before you do. The concept and execution are simple and yet the game invites an emotional reaction by emphasizing a sense of the impermanence and unimportance of human existence. This use of interactivity to present an emotional concept is an elegant demonstration of the potential/truth of games as art, and demands further investigation. I'll see if I can get my hands on a copy of Passage, it sounds like a short but worthwhile experience/experiment.

The Big Picture: Frankenstein Conquers the World

2011-10-13T19:46:00.000-04:00

Over the summer I started watching a weekly video series called "The Big Picture" over at The Escapist. Basically the gist of the videos is that one of the Escapist's regular contributors, MovieBob, has free range to rant about whatever strikes his fancy each week. Topics have ranged from a set on Hollywood History to the revolution in animation that is encapsulated in Yogi Bear's collar (seriously, watch that one, it's AMAZING).

Considering that content description and the fact that the series' subtitle is "A Hard Look At All Things Geek," it's really no surprise the videos strike my fancy more often than not. I've been planning to feature an episode here on the blog, and I think last week's installment presents the perfect conflux of MovieBob's style with a number of my personal interests. I hope you enjoy The Big Picture: Frankenstein Conquers the World.

Ok, now that you've seen that I want to present a quick commentary on why I selected that video in particular. First and foremost it's about a movie I have never seen, and one that features Frankenstein's monster no less. This immediately piques my interest since Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is one of my all-time favourite novels, and I love to explore its various adaptations (even though most of them are kinda crap). I realize now that I haven't talked about Frankenstein at all on this blog, and perhaps that's something I need to rectify in the near future... Regardless though, that fact alone has me curious, but the hits don't stop coming. On top of that the movie is made by Toho of freaking Godzilla fame, and I've made no secret of my love for all things big, radioactive, and green.

So the movie features a giant, radioactive monster that's (inexplicably) referred to as Frankenstein stomping around Japan and generally acting like everyone's (read: my) favourite king of the monsters. That's more than enough to sell me, but wait! There's more! MovieBob rightly tells us how this is one of the only movies to really dive right into the darker aspects of Japan's 20th century history, featuring not only their alliance with the Nazis in WWII but also the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima as major plot points. Holy shit!

I've mentioned before how one of the reasons I find Godzilla so interesting is the fact that he's more or less a cinematic manifestation of the social/cultural/political/psychological scars left on the Japanese populace by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These are some of the darkest moments in modern history and the orignal Gojira was a clear attempt to negotiate the literal and figurative damage done. Regardless of the increasingly ridiculous and irreverent latter films in the series (although I would argue they build off the initial framework in interesting ways) that first movie dealt with some very serious subject matter via metaphor, leaving the real context off-screen in the hearts and minds of the audience.
Frankenstein Conquers the World eschews subtlety altogether and dives head-first into the historical fray. The movie not only deals with the bombing of Hiroshima as a historical fact and incorporates it as an integral plot point, it moreover depicts this event on film. Seriously! You saw the video above, you know as much as I do, even MovieBob is stunned by this choice. On the one hand this honestly doesn't sound nearly as tasteful or clever as the approach taken in the Godzilla franchise; there the idea of nuclear power was the plot rather than merely an event driving it forward, and the actual history was respectfully left to the audience to remember. On the other hand, Frankenstein Conquers the World is unique in its explicit response to such a horrifying event a scant two decades after it actually occurred! The movie was made in 1965 so the damage done was still very much fresh in the minds of the Japanese populace, and yet Frankenstein seems to use the event as a mere justification for getting a dude to stomp around miniature sets. Hell, the bombings are (rightfully) still a touchy subject, so it's incredible to think that they were depicted on film at all so shortly after occurring, and moreover that they were used in such a (seemingly) irreverent way.

So Frankenstein Conquers the World has shot right to the top of my "To Watch" list, number one with a bullet! I don't expect it to be deep, artistic, or even good for that matter, but I do expect it to be an "interesting" take on Frankenstein and a uniquely explicit look at Japan's response to the bombing of Hiroshima. I expect it'll play on a lot of the themes and concepts that I find so captivating about the Godzilla franchise, albeit a little less tastefully. Finally, I expect to have a good time enjoying some classic "MAN-IN-SUIT" action (Frankenstein fights Baragon!!!).

This post ended up being more about Godzilla (again) than about The Big Picture or even Frankenstein, but I think it served its purpose. I wanted to give a shout out to one of my new favourite video series and also talk about a movie that I really want to see, and I'm always happy to talk about Godzilla. Plus now I have a few new post ideas in the bank. Anyway, take my advice and check out The Big Picture, it's pretty damn awesome (again I specifically recommend the one about Yogi Bear's collar). And if you've seen Frankenstein Conquers the World or have a different opinion on Godzilla or whatever then, as always, let me know in the comments.

Never Thought I'd Be Afraid of a Graphics Editing Program

2011-10-12T09:32:00.000-04:00

At the recent MAX 2011 fest (what the...), Adobe unveiled a prototype for an upcoming feature in Photoshop: unblurring. I tried to sum up how this new technology works but Geekosystem's Eric Limer does so better than I ever could have: "The algorithm actually calculates the movement of the camera during the time the shutter was open and uses it to retroactively correct the blurring that occurred. Impressive."

Fuck yeah that's impressive! It's like the future is now, and without any shitty motion controls!

Watch the video below for the announcement. Listen carefully to the crowd and you can hear the astounded cries of "That's impossible!" and "Holy shit!" and "Witch! Burn it! Burn the witch!"

(Via Geekosystem)

India's $35 USD Tablet Computer

2011-10-10T10:30:00.000-04:00

In Hindi the word "aakash" means "sky"

A few days ago news hit about the release of the Aakash tablet, a computer that costs less than $35 USD per unit to manufacture. The idea behind the computer is to introduce modern communications technologies into India's rural communities, and specifically to facilitate the education of children living in poverty. At a press conference for the release of the computer, Indian Human Resources Development Minister Kapil Sibal announced, "Today we reach to the sky and demonstrate what is possible ... Let me send a message, not just to our children but the children of the world ... This is for all those who are marginalized."

Initially envisioned as a $10 solar-powered device, the Aakash is nevertheless an incredible technological achievement. The computer offers a colour touchscreen, 2 GB of internal memory that's expandable via an internal microSD card reader, 256 MB of RAM, and two USB slots. In terms of software the tablet runs off a version of Android 2.2 and features word processing, web browsing, video conferencing, and multimedia capabilities.

I'm no expert but given the $35 production cost (and price point for students and teachers) I am positively flabbergasted by those stats. On the one hand it really drives home the disparity between production and consumer costs of devices made by certain popular electronics producers. On the other hand, it's an admirable humanitarian gesture on the parts of both developer DataWind and the Indian government (granted I'm ignoring a multitude of potential/probable ulterior motivations, but lets just focus on the warm and fuzzy aspects of this news for a moment, shall we?).

(Via reddit)

Some thoughts on the "decline" of men

2011-10-06T15:34:00.001-04:00

William J. Bennett's recent opinion piece on CNN.com, "Why men are in trouble," is an interesting read. The gist of the article seems to be that men aren't so obviously/distinctly the dominant sex anymore, and that's a bad thing. Today's "men" spend too much time playing video games, watching movies, listening to music, and generally enjoying an extended adolescence. We've lost sight of the values of marriage and religion and are out of touch with "Masculinity."

Even if we ignore the egregious problems with Bennett's basic premise, a cursory glance at his "evidence" shows a textbook example in how to skew statistics. He complains that "Women's earnings grew 44% in real dollars from 1970 to 2007, compared with 6% growth for men," as if this clearly demonstrates that men aren't upwardly mobile enough anymore. It's not like that stat (if it's accurate) could be a result of general societal trends leaning towards the correction of gross gender inequalities. Oh no! It's most certainly an indication that the new generation isn't manly enough to make sure it's earning more money than women. Bennett admits that "Men still maintain a majority of the highest paid and most powerful occupations," but warns that "women are catching them and will soon be passing them if this trend continues." Heaven forbid!

Speaking of which, apparently we men are also losing the piety contest: Bennett notes that only "39% of men reported attending church regularly in 2010, compared to 47% of women." Those uppity women-folk are starting to catch up with us here in the corporeal world, and if we don't man-up soon they'll have a stranglehold on the sweet hereafter as well!

Moreover, Bennett says that if we don't believe his stats we should listen to the "many young women" he's apparently spoken with, all of whom are "asking, 'Where are the decent single men?'" I'd hazard a guess that such fabled 'good guys' are somewhere with the kinds of women who wouldn't give Bennett the time of day, but that's just me. It boggles the mind to think that Bennett took a few poor women's dating woes as evidence of the "tragic" decline of patriarchal values, yet that seems to be the implication.

But Bennett's all-star line-up of "evidence" doesn't stop there: he goes on to cite Hanna Rosin's "seminal article, 'The End of Men'" (which actually might be where he cribbed many of his stats). Rosin asserts that women are taking over traditionally male-dominated roles, and Bennett takes this as a sign of a multi-generational failure in masculinity. He (again) blames video games for distracting young men and disrupting their sense of what it means to be a man, and furthermore accuses their fathers of failing in their Platonic duty to raise "Men." In a clever move that I assume is meant as a subtle rejection of Bennett's argument, CNN.com has included a link in his piece to another article by Rosin entitled "Are women leaving men behind?" There she makes clear that her point is not "feminist gloating" but rather an empiric societal shift.

It's not any kind of value judgment. It just is. Women are in so many ways filling the roles that men traditionally filled ... I talk about the "end of men" not to make [men] feel hopeless and doomed to failure, but to open their eyes to the idea that gender roles are more fluid than ever, and that they do not have to fill some particular expectation. If you are prepared for it, then the end of a particular kind of macho can be a relief, not a curse.

Clearly Bennett sees the decline of traditional masculinity as a sign of the apocalypse, and to be honest that's not exactly surprising. He's an old white guy with a successful career behind him and so it makes perfect sense that he supports the "historical" dominance of the patriarchy. I'm making a wild generalization, granted, and I should clarify that I don't think that Bennett or all old white guys are horrifyingly sexist or anything like that. I'm just not surprised that Bennett's in support of traditional masculinity because it significantly informed the world in which he was able to become so successful.

My real problem with the article is that it asserts that male dominance is over and explicitly says that's a bad thing. It's ludicrous to think that women have suddenly taken over and are now beating men in the gender war or somesuch nonsense. There continues to be widespread gender inequality in society (and I'm really only talking about North America here), especially when you start talking about career opportunities and professional earnings. Hell, the very fact that a major website like CNN.com is willing to host this kind of argument is itself a sign that traditional masculinity and patriarchal values are still deeply imbedded in our society. That's not meant as an individualized criticism of CNN.com (again I don't think they agree with Bennett). Rather the fact that it's worthy of posting (because he's a successful, influential person) is indicative of a larger framework of values.

Bennett cites some (assumably) valid statistics about how conditions are improving for women but takes them as signs that the very foundations of society are crumbling before our eyes. Implicit in that analysis are the beliefs that men should be in charge, that traditional male dominance over women is a good thing, and that the position and benefits men have enjoyed in the past are right. These are repugnant beliefs that I am not willing to accept, and Bennett takes them for granted, assuming them as natural principles. He doesn't even bother to make them explicit as ideology because he does not see them as such. That is among the many problems with his position, and with the larger value set that he is representing when he talks about what he believes it means to be a man.

Anyway, that's all the rant I have in me right now. Not sure if this had much of a point beyond calling out Bennett's argument as abhorrent. For the record, I'm not even sure why I bother getting angry about/critiquing this kind of nonsense. I suppose it's productive insofar as it's a mouthpiece for my personal politics, but beyond that... who knows? Feel free to let me know what you think in the comments.

(Via Kotaku, oddly enough)

(10/8/11: Minor gramatical edits because I'm sloppy sometimes)

Schrödinger's Cat in Under 2 Minutes

2011-09-29T08:57:00.001-04:00

Not a lot of commentary today, just found a cool video explaining the basic idea behind the "Schrödinger's cat" thought experiment. I've always been a fan of this particular pop-paradox, so I figured I'd share with the group. Enjoy!

(Via Geekosystem)

Dead Island Trailer to Get Feature-Length Adaptation

2011-09-28T11:11:00.002-04:00

Back in February I flipped out over the outstanding trailer for the videogame Dead Island. Since then the game has been released, and while it's received generally positive reviews the final product isn't exactly groundbreaking. The trailer, on the other hand, has continued to garner critical acclaim. First it won a Gold prize at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity (yeah, I hadn't heard of it either, but still). Now the franchise has been optioned by Lionsgate for a feature film adaptation, and it seems pretty damn clear that the trailer is the primary influence for the movie. The announcement press release reads,

Like the trailer that will serve as its primary creative inspiration, the film DEAD ISLAND will be an innovation of the zombie genre because of its focus on human emotion, family ties and non-linear storytelling. Said Drake of the property's acquisition, "Like the hundreds of journalists and millions of fans who were so passionate and vocal about the Dead Island trailer, we too were awestruck." He continued, "This is exactly the type of property we're looking to adapt at Lionsgate – it's sophisticated, edgy, and a true elevation of a genre that we know and love. It also has built in brand recognition around the world, and franchise potential."

So yeah, they're making a movie out the clear Dead Island trailer. I have kind of mixed feelings about this. On the one hand it's kind of ridiculous to think that they're making a trailer (that it should be noted had almost nothing in common with the game it ostensibly represented) into a movie. Writing that out feels like I'm describing a bad Mad TV / Cracked.com sketch. It also reeks of creative bankruptcy, like taking the whole remake/reboot phenomenon to its natural extension. The idea just leaves me feeling kind of... dirty...

On the other hand, the trailer was FUCKING INCREDIBLE. If they can capture the same kind of pathos and emotional resonance that made the original trailer so good then I'll be first in line on opening night. The press release seems to indicate that the powers-that-be have at least some sense of what made the trailer so good, namely "its focus on human emotion, family ties and non-linear storytelling." I don't actually care if we get anything like the simultaneous backwards/forwards storytelling like we saw in the trailer. As far as I'm concerned the key aspect is the original's tone, the sense of tragic inevitability that made the trailer so devastating. Granted the non-linear nature of the storytelling had a lot to do with evoking that sentiment, but I don't necessarily think it's absolutely necessary for the film to be successful.

Time will tell if this movie ends up being more along the lines of the incredible trailer or the fun but relatively unemotional game. Fingers-crossed that it's the former. For now, take a few minutes to re-watch the trailer (at the top of this post) and remember what all the fuss is about.

The Ballad of Mike Haggar

2011-09-18T17:23:00.001-04:00

Over a month after it was first brought to my attention, the incredible Ballad of Mike Haggar still leaves me speechless after every viewing. I don't care if you're not interested in video games, poetry, or general geekery, everyone should bear witness to this amazing video. And if you just so happen to be very much interested in all those things (and if you're reading this blog then the chances of that are pretty decent) then this awesome epic will quite simply blow you away. The only possible downside is that it might leave you semi-catatonic, but trust me: it's worth it.

Did you watch it yet? Good. Now watch it again.

In other news, let this stand as my second "apology for not posting" post. This fall is gearing up to be among the busiest I've ever had and so my time/energy for posting has been at an all time low. But I have not abandoned this blog! Far from it, I am positively bursting with ideas/opinions/etc, I just need to schedule some time to write them. I should be settling into a routine in the next week or so and then I'll make sure to get this blog back in business.

So if you've stuck with this blog (or even this post) long enough to be reading this then thank you, I promise not to make you wait much longer for some good old Max Rambles-brand pretension and attitude.

A Lannister Always Pays His Debts...

2011-07-18T09:55:00.001-04:00

Hey everyone. So remember when I said back in April that there'd be a "brief" interruption in my blogging schedule while I was writing my first year law exams? Well, as you can see, that turned into three month long, unexplained hiatus. I figure it's about time I give a bit of an explanation, and a statement about the status/future of this blog.

So, first thing's first, what have I been doing all this time? Well, a few things: I've been working for a professor doing research on the state of Internet/e-commerce law in Canada (way more interesting than it sounds, to me at least); I've also been enjoying the summer sun, spending as much time outside as possible; mostly, however, I've been reading the A Song of Ice and Fire books by George R. R. Martin.

If you've been living under a rock for the last few months then you may not have heard about HBO's latest show, A Game of Thrones. Named after and based upon the first book in Martin's saga, the show's first season was a huge success. Going forward the show will continue with the events of A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, the recently released A Dance With Dragons, and the unreleased final books in the series. As a result of the show's success, sales of the books have skyrocketed, and I have very much been caught up in the excitement. I started the first book right after finishing my exams in mid-April, and am currently halfway through the fourth book.

I won't bother to get into why I'm loving the books so much (I'll save that for a later post) but if you're interested/curious then I strongly encourage you to read this article. It avoids spoilers but contains just enough info on the basic premise to get you into the first book, and is a great way to whet your appetite.
Suffice to say these books have been taking up a great deal of my time. Specifically I've been feeling far more inclined to read them in my spare time than I have been to blog.

That doesn't mean Max Rambles is over. I fully intend to get back to this in the coming weeks (possibly with a post or two on the Ice and Fire books), although not necessarily immediately. For the moment I'm quite enjoying spending my days working, reading, and relaxing. I will get to blogging in my own time, most likely when I finish the books Martin has currently released. At that point I'll start back up posting the latest and greatest things I find online, and providing scathing pseudo-intellectual critiques of movies.

Until then, I'll leave you with what I think is a hilarious song called "Damn It Feels Good To Be A Lannister." And yes, in case you hadn't figured it out by now, I am fairly one-track minded these days. Cheers for now!

'The Governator' Trailer Wreaks Havoc on Reality/Human Consciousness

2011-04-04T14:06:00.003-04:00

This.... THING.... simply must be seen to be believed:

My first thought, naturally, was that this had to be some sort of joke. A cruel prank James Cameron was pulling on his old buddy Arnie at this momentous point in his already legendary career. But no, it is real, terrifyingly and unapologetically real. More than that, I'm starting to think it might be the perfect weapon, politically and commercially speaking.

Lets break it down:
- It's a cartoon about former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger retiring from politics (which is actually happening)
- He decides not to return to cinema, instead choosing to become a private citizen (which is... sort of happening? Does voice acting count as returning to film? I don't even know)
- When evil robots that can transform into what look like Smart Cars (suck it, Michael Bay) attack, Arnold is forced back into action
- With the help of his team of teenagers (interns?) he runs a complex military facility which houses his weapons, including a combination Kaneda's bike from Akira and Arnold's own hog from Terminator 2: Judgment Day
- Apparently Arnold's now some sort of cyborg/Power Ranger? Also he's been training with Neo from The Matrix?

Those are the facts, presented with minimal commentary. So the question then becomes, how do you make fun of that? Seriously, Arnold's an old dude, he's gained a lot of weight since he went into office (as referenced in his cameo in The Expendables); he's more than likely concerned about his image now that he's returning to... entertainment. This cartoon is literally the most ridiculous thing he possibly could have put out, and seems to predict all possible mockery. What do you say about something that is totally serious about being completely ludicrous? He's subverted any possibility of satire or derision by making it totally clear that he knows. What do you say to that?

The thing that really gets me about The Governator, though, is how fucking mind-bendingly meta it is. Upon retiring, Arnold has decided to make a cartoon about him retiring. Does the Arnold in the cartoon make a cartoon in the cartoon about him not becoming a politically themed superhero? (Note: if that story becomes an episode somehow I want royalties. You are my witness, the Internet) I'm having a mental Crisis on Infinite Earths just thinking about the possibilities. Large Hadron Collider be damned, Arnold Schwarzenegger's cartoon about his own retirement is going to create a black hole that swallows us whole, at least culturally.

On an unrelated note, I hope you'll excuse me if this is the last post for a while. I'm about to go into exams and so I'm probably not going to be posting for a few weeks. Cheers till then!

Captain America Trailer; Or, How I Learned To Stop Hating and Get Behind The Shield

2011-03-28T08:53:00.000-04:00

I've never had particularly strong feelings about Captain America, but historically I've written him off as another 'boy scout' superhero like Superman. These two characters, symbolic of Marvel and DC comics, have always bored me because they're just so damn wholesome. They're good guys because that's the right and just, and there's not much more to their characters than that.

Superman in particular has never interested me in his pure form, although he can be interesting when you start to mess about with his origins or situation. Mark Millar's miniseries, "Red Son," for example, imagined Superman if his spaceship had crashed in Soviet Russia instead of middle America. That change made for a hugely interesting read because it explored the character as a sociological object, originally created by and emblematic of America but now stripped of that identity. It was an incredible concept but it did fall apart as a narrative, collapsing under the weight of consistency and the need to similarly reinvent every other DC superhero (the Soviet Batman was particularly far fetched, though still interesting). Likewise I felt that the much maligned Superman Returns was intriguing for how it took Lois Lane away from Superman and depicted him struggling with the loss. This put the man of steel in a distinctly human position of frailty, caught between their feelings for another person and the reality that they have moved on. The result were some truly creepy shots of Superman floating outside Lane's house and using his x-ray vision to stalk her, but that was infinitely more interesting to watch than to see him struggle against an evil enemy only to inevitably come out victorious.

I know I'm in the minority, but I'd much rather watch a super-human being struggle with being human than beat the crap out of some other equally far-fetched entity. I never enjoyed comics for the "Kapow!" fights, I loved them because they put characters I could relate to in situations that spoke to my own life metaphorically. That's why I always loved flawed characters like Batman, and was completely disinterested in characters like Superman.

I always sort of assumed that Captain America was basically the Marvel equivalent of Superman. I never really read Captain America comics, but he was always mentioned tangentially in the other Marvel titles. Spiderman, for example, was always a hugely relatable character in that he continually struggled with human issues. He dealt with school, girls, bills, etc, and on more than one occasion he dealt with guilt over his own actions. In particular I remember a few times when Parker would express his shame by referring to Captain America as the epitome of moral righteousness, saying that "Cap' would have found a better way, but I'm just a man." Spiderman coped with his guilty by recognizing his humanity in the face of Captain America, the "unstoppable force" of goodness. The Cap' was literally so good that he was beyond mere humanity, he existed as a conceptual totem of justice, and that was exactly what made him so overwhelmingly uninteresting to me.

The trailer that was released last week for the upcoming Captain America: The First Avenger, completely changed my mind. Take a look at it below and then I'll explain how and why:

I watched this trailer and I thought, "Yeah... That actually looks kinda worthwhile...," which was a complete 180 from my previous stance of "Captain America, pfft, that's just another crap flick Marvel is crapping out in order to get to The Avengers, which is only worth thinking about because of Joss Whedon." I was prepared to ignore Captain America completely and probably would have, but something in this trailer changed my mind. At first I thought it was the novelty of seeing a superhero use a Luger pistol, but it's actually more than that.

Rob Bricken over at Topless Robot puts it best:

But the thing I like most of all is that line "Because a weak man knows the value of strength." That's something I never considered about Captain America before, something I never saw or realized reading all those Avengers comics in the '80s. The reason he's so compassionate and determined to help the weak and powerless is because he was weak and powerless himself.

The fact that Captain America was once weak makes him more than just righteousness incarnate, it makes him human. As soon as I heard that line Cap' stopped being a concept and started being a character. Moreover he suddenly started to be one that made sense in a way that was separable from his overt Americanness. Let me try to explain that last bit...

Captain America is known for his shield. That's his symbol, his "totem," if you'll excuse the reference. There's a meaning to that object that I never realized before but makes total sense in light of the fantastic line about weakness and strength. At one point in the trailer the pre-super Captain America is shown trying to defend himself from a bully in an alleyway, and he grabs a trashcan lid to shield himself. I initially thought the scene was just a throwaway reference to the Cap's eventual transformation, but the more I thought about it the more I like the scene for how well it establishes his character.

Captain America never forgets about what it means to be weak, which is why he tirelessly uses his strength to defend those around him. That trashcan lid Cap' grabs in the alleyway, and to a greater extent the famous shield he eventually holds, act as symbols of Captain America himself: they are objects of strength that protect the weak from those who prey upon them. That is exactly what Captain America does, that is his very reason for being a superhero: he stands in front of the weak and protects them. That idea is elegantly conveyed by the image of him as a weakling using a trashcan lid as a shield, and then brilliantly summarized by the line explaining why he of all people ends up being chosen to become the ultimate hero.

I still don't know very much about Captain America, but at least now I know he's worthwhile. Apparently he's also got some sort of "hero out of time" angle to his character that I am aware of but haven't rationalized conceptually, but frankly that doesn't much matter. I once thought Captain America was nothing more than a boy scout who symbolized American righteousness in the abstract, and to a certain extent I still do think that. But now I see that the Cap' is actually quite well fleshed out in terms of his design and character. He is a guardian of the weak, literally embodied by the shield he carries. The trailer has made me respect the character conceptually, and has gotten me excited to see the movie.

If that's not effective marketing then I don't know what is.

The Reasonable Reaction To Splice

2011-03-25T12:17:00.000-04:00

This image pretty much sums up my reaction to Splice, as described in my review:

Incendies

2011-03-19T11:23:00.000-04:00

Many reviewers have likened the Oscar-nominated Incendies to a Greek tragedy, and that comparison is - in a word - apt. The movie tells the devastating story of how the Lebanese Civil War forever altered the lives of Nawal Marwan and her children. Without getting into spoilers, the narrative serves as an allegory for the reproductive nature of hatred. It explores how violence has a rippling effect that hurts everyone it touches, and how forgiveness and love are required to end the resultant suffering. But while that might sound like the perfect setup for a hopeful drama about finding a way to end cycles of hatred, nothing could be further from the truth. Rather than focusing on solutions, Incendies instead depicts the most horrifying possible outcomes of hate begetting hate in self-perpetuating patterns. Make no mistake, this is not an uplifting movie. It is a brutal experience that wallows in the misery and pain that human beings cause one another.

It makes sense that Incendies was nominated for an Oscar, but it is unsurprising that it did not win given how unflinchingly tragic the movie is. Towards the end the story becomes so harrowing that it is only bearable for how obviously contrived it is, and that is both the movie's finest moment as well as its greatest failing.

I'm really straining to avoid spoilers here, but suffice to say that at Incendies' climax it's revealed that all the pain the characters suffer is not meaningless. It is made abundantly clear that the whole story is figuratively about the effects of endless cycles of hate, and the kind of work that is required the resultant suffering. In one sense it's the perfect ending, because it gives greater significance to everything that's come before. Even the most distressing scenes in the film become strangely beautiful when their context in the whole meaning becomes clear.

On the other hand, the way in which this is achieved is so quick and blunt that it makes the artifice so painfully obvious the whole experience loses some of its tragic tone. The climactic transition is marked by M. Night. Shyamalan-esque twist that you can see coming a mile away, and it's quite literally the most horrible thing that could possibly happen. I spent the last few minutes leading up to it silently begging the story not to go where I rightly suspected it was headed.

But the problem isn't with what happens per se. It's over the top, granted, but it actually does make sense in terms of Incendies' overall tone and thematic structure. Rather the problem is with how the final piece of the puzzle is presented. As I said, you can see it coming form a mile away, but it's just so horrible that you don't actually expect the movie to go there. Once it does you're left amazed at the level of depravity the film has stooped to and the overabundance of human suffering, and above all else stupefied by the utter tactlessness with which the surprise conclusion is presented.

And that's just it: the ending of Incendies is so contrived and clumsily presented that it brings you out of the filmgoing experience. Everything fits, artistically speaking, but it's just so obviously art that it actually makes the entire experience less affective. Right up until the big reveal I was absolutely devastated, the movie had reduced me to an emotional wreck; but as soon as the big picture was revealed I suddenly didn't care anymore. I couldn't. None of it seemed real anymore.

Since seeing Incendies I've discovered that it's adapted from a play called Scorched, and from what I've read online it sounds like one of the primary differences between the original play and this film adaptation is the way the ending is handled. Liam Lacey calls the film version "stripped-down," and takes issue with the loss of "the playwright's poetic language." Both critiques make a lot of sense given how rushed and poorly written the film's ending comes off. Again, the issue with Incendies isn't the content so much as it is the form, and it's actually somewhat relieving to hear that the original play succeeds exactly where the movie fails. At least one presentation of the powerful story lives up to its poetic design.

I thought Incendies was a stellar film and I'm glad I saw it. That said, I never want to see it again. Ever. I could be tempted to go see a good production of the original play, Scorched, but even that's a maybe at best. It's an incredible tale and a true modern Greek tragedy, in every sense of the comparison, but frankly I don't need that kind of unhappiness in my life.

Nuclear Boy

2011-03-18T11:46:00.000-04:00

Above is a video that (I assume) has been created to educate Japanese children about what's going on with the Fukushima nuclear power plant. It simply must be seen to be believed. On the one hand it's admirable that there's an effort to inform the children and put the crisis in terms they can easily understand. On the other hand, the video's summation of what happened at Chernobyl (at 1:45)... Well, lets just say it's quirky.

Props to Liz for the link.

RIP Michael Gough

2011-03-17T12:45:00.001-04:00

Michael Gough, 1917-2011

From /Film comes the sad news that actor Michael Gough has passed away at the age of 94.

Mr. Gough was best known to many (myself included) as the original Alfred in Tim Burton's Batman and its three sequels. He was not only the most consistent aspect of that series but also its best feature. As a rule he improved every film he appeared in by virtue of honouring the film with his presence.

He will be sorely missed.

Happy Irish Stereotypes Day!

2011-03-17T10:15:00.001-04:00

Today is March 17th, and as such people around the world (myself included) are wearing green and embracing alcoholism. To slightly assuage my guilt over the matter, I'd like to share a few links identifying and debunking Irish stereotypes.

I don't know about you, but my alcohol abuse today will not be in honour of the Irish as much as because I am clearly a lush who takes advantage of any excuse to drink and be merry with friends. Please be safe, drink (relatively) responsibly, and keep an eye out for those around you.

Cheers!

Godzilla is American: A Response to "Japan's Long Nuclear Disaster Film"

2011-03-16T08:43:00.001-04:00

Peter Wynn Kirby has an opinion piece in the New York Times called "Japan's Long Nuclear Disaster Film," discussing the Godzilla movies and the dangers of nuclear technology. It's an interesting article with some in-depth historical insights that are worth reading, and it reminded me of my old post about Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla and kaiju films generally. However I had some major issues with Kirby's approach to the subject of Godzilla as an expression of anti-nuclear sentiments, and I wanted to discuss them here (mostly as an excuse to talk about Gojira again).

Firstly, I want to point out how Kirby seems to completely miss the environmental message that is so integral to Gojira and its immediate sequels. The 1954 film explores where Gojira came from, and in stark contrast to the 1998 remake, the original monster is a natural phenomenon as opposed to a product of nuclear technology. Rather Japan's testing of nuclear bombs is responsible for awaking the creature from centuries of hibernation, precipitating its attacks on Japan in retaliation for interrupting its slumber. Throughout Gojira there is a running discussion as to whether or not to use the Oxygen Destroyer, a weapon that kills all life in the sea and is therefore capable of eliminating the monster. The characters debate whether or not the cost is justified, and moreover whether or not they even have a right to cause such horrifying destruction to kill a beast that they irresponsibly awakened. It's heavy stuff, and the theme of humanity's negative impact on nature carries on throughout the entire series. Kirby talks about the dangers of nuclear power and how Gojira discusses such fears, but he misses the intertwined environmental message. This doesn't ruin his point, but it does make the whole piece come off a little hallow and humanist, although that's far from the worst part of his argument.

Kirby spends a lot of time talking about an American thermonuclear test near Bikini Atoll in March 1954. Without re-hashing the details too much, the detonation ended up being significantly larger than predicted, and a Japanese tuna trawler called the Lucky Dragon No. 5 was covered in radioactive ash from the explosion. The men on board were horribly injured and returned to Japan with radioactive fish that famously ended up finding its way to the Tsukiji Market in Tokyo. The whole incident caused something of a scandal in Japan and, as Kirby puts it, significantly impacted the psyche of the "nation fixated on purity."

The historical breakdown is a fascinating read, and it's obvious how this kind of thing would inform the country's sentiments towards nuclear technology. In terms of informing Gojira, I'm not sure how significant an influence the scandal could have had given that the film came out only a few months later. It's clear, however that the incident impacted the 1998 American remake, the opening scene of which featured a Japanese fishing boat being attacked by a giant lizard that was itself the result of French nuclear tests in French Polynesia. Wow. It's honestly worthy of a post in-and-of itself, but for now I'll just sum it up as food for thought: American filmmakers, remaking a Japanese movie about the horrifying effects of nuclear power, recast America as the victim of French imprudence. Recall now how the Japanese original also depicted the Japanese as being responsible for the nuclear testing that awakened the monster, as opposed to, say, the nuclear activities of other nations.

That brings up my biggest problem with Kirby's piece: it completely ignores the American nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In talking about Gojira as a response to nuclear technology, that isn't just a forgetful omission, it's downright offensive. The uncomfortable silence on those events reflects the article's complete ignorance towards America's role in the scar on Japan's cultural psyche. It's not as though the Japanese people were just presciently mindful of nuclear technology in the abstract. The horrifying destruction unleashed upon the country had a lasting impact that is measurable in the success of Gojira. It's telling that American audiences received a "jingoistic, shoot-em-up, stomp-em-down" while Japanese audiences "watched Gojira in sombre silence, broken by periodic weeping," although the article does nothing with this captivating insight. The article also critiques Japan for its "unusually shoddy record for nuclear safety," which isn't necessarily wrong; but in an article that ignores America's nuclear bombing of Japan, the accusation comes off as both hypocritical and callous. Moreover the article touches upon how the series is coloured a sense of "the profound vulnerability of Japan," but does nothing to acknowledge the role of the bombings in engendering/exacerbating such fears. It's not as though the country's entire complex about nuclear technology was engendered by some radioactive fish, Japan was given a very good reason to be afraid of nuclear technology long before the Lucky Dragon No. 5. Kirby's skirting the issue of America's impact on the cultural setting that produced Gojira is insensitive and hard to believe, particularly in a piece about how America should take recent events as a sign of the dangers of nuclear technology.

There's a lot to be said in the examination of American attitudes towards Gojira, and I might eventually write an entire post to the subject. The Japanese original was remade within two years as Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, and many changes were made in order to make the film more palatable for American audiences. Some of these changes included the addition of an American main character, the removal of an incestuous subplot, and the complete removal of debate about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Almost 60 years later, it's startling to see an article that continues this incredible wilful ignorance of America's responsibility in Japan's fears of nuclear technology.

- - -

On a more sombre note, it's impossible to talk about this stuff without thinking about the tragic events going on in Japan right now. I'd like to point you all towards Google's Crisis Response page, a resource centre for realtime updates, information on how to get in touch with people and organizations in Japan, and a place to make donations. If you are able then please consider giving, the Japanese people need all the help they can get in such difficult times.

Max Rambles Does New Orleans Part 2

2011-03-15T09:43:00.001-04:00

The promised second half of my photos from New Orleans:

Bourbon St. has its own rules

Bourbon St. doesn't beat around the bush

New Orleans: a blissful heart-attack waiting to happen

Games As (More Than?) Art: Reality Is Broken

2011-03-11T07:57:00.000-05:00

This isn't a traditional Games As Art post in that it's not about a video game. Rather I'm writing about a book I recently heard about, Reality Is Broken by Jane McGonigal. The basic premise behind the book is that video games are good for us, they make us better people in our real lives. The website for Reality is Broken describes the book as such:

"Drawing on positive psychology, cognitive science, and sociology, Reality Is Broken uncovers how game designers have hit on core truths about what makes us happy and utilized these discoveries to astonishing effect in virtual environments. Videogames consistently provide the exhilarating rewards, stimulating challenges, and epic victories that are so often lacking in the real world. But why, McGonigal asks, should we use the power of games for escapist entertainment alone? Her research suggests that gamers are expert problem solvers and collaborators because they regularly cooperate with other players to overcome daunting virtual challenges, and she helped pioneer a fast-growing genre of games that aims to turn gameplay to socially positive ends."

In the video below McGonigal explains her premise at a recent TED talk:

Jane McGonigal speaking at TED

I won't talk about McGonigal's ideas too much given that I haven't read Reality is Broken yet, and I don't want to purport authority on something I haven't yet fully considered. A post over at Boing Boing seems to have done a good job of that. However, based on what I'm reading the core premise seems completely plausible, and is indeed confirmed by my own experiences.

Given that my parents had the good sense to buy me edutainment style games like Math Blaster and Treasure Galaxy, it seems trite to say that video games can have a positive effect on players. My problem solving and critical thinking skills were undoubtably improved by my enjoyment of video games, and not exclusively ones that were designed to promote education. There's no doubt in my mind that my gaming habits improved things like my abilities to tackle unfamiliar problems, accept failure, and retry with greater knowledge. The idea that such talents could be more effectively harnessed in the real world in ways that make us happier and solve real problems is exhilarating, nay, intoxicating.

I first heard about McGonigal's book via a recent post by Tycho over at Penny-Arcade, and an accompanying comic. While the specific example might not be the best one possible (my hours playing video games have done nothing for my plumbing skills), the point is exactly right: if I can see and understand a problem, there is a good chance I will feel capable of solving the problem. I have spent a significant proportion of my life facing new problems and solving them with the means available to me. The effect that time has had on me is not negligible, and the potential it has created/expanded is palpable.

Max Rambles Does New Orleans

2011-03-10T06:30:00.000-05:00

Diehard Max Rambles fans (they exist, I'm sure of it) may have noticed that the second half of February featured a sudden drop-off in posts around here. Some of that is because I got a little busy in school for a spell, but a lot of it is because I took a road trip down to New Orleans. A bunch of my classmates and I hopped on a bus and went down to volunteer with Rebuilding Together New Orleans to help restore houses damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Additionally we got the chance to see the city, experience the culture, and find out what it's like to spend 100+ hours on a bus. It was fun times!

Anyway, the point of this post is not to tell you what I was doing as much as it is to explain why I wasn't posting. However, I do want to share a little bit of my trip with you all. To that end I'm including a bunch of the more artsy (read: people-less) photos I took from the trip. Some of these are pretty cool, and give a sense of what the French Quarter is like. I'll be splitting the photos across two posts, so tune in again early next week for the rest of these:

Canal St.

An abandoned building in the financial district

Jackson Square

Pirates Alley Café

Existential Crisis

2011-03-04T17:27:00.001-05:00

That's what I feel like every time I watch Requiem For A Dream.

Been out of town, new posts impending, I promise.

Zombies and the Dead Island Trailer; or, Holy Shit Effective Marketing Batman!

2011-02-16T18:45:00.004-05:00

I've made no secret of the fact that I like zombies. There's something about them that just appeals to me on a (ahem) visceral level. Maybe it's the confluence of post-apocalyptic social dynamics with the pure uncanny terror of seeing the dead come back to life (especially the reanimated corpses of your friends and family). Admittedly that sounds a little weird when I type it out like that, but when the zombie genre is done right it explores themes of desperation, loyalty, resilience, theology, and triumph and tragedy alike. It's just such fertile grounds for examining the human condition. Moreover the idea of great masses of people suddenly becoming mindless killers is a concept that seems to gain more figurative weight with each passing day.

All that said, the zombie genre is one that has also frustrated me in recent years. The market is, without a doubt, over-saturated with the undead (that's almost ironic), and as a result there's just so much cash-grab crap to sift through that the good stuff seems increasingly few and far between. The Walking Dead TV series, for example, was among the great disappointments in the fall. Despite the involvement of Frank Darabont and the potential displayed in the pilot, the show's narrative meandered about without really accomplishing anything until the finale. At that point it pulled a thematic 180 that left me cold, and frankly I don't much care if or when it comes back. A new series in one of my favourite genres made by a film maker who I hugely respect, and they managed to lose me within six episodes. Not a good sign.

Sidebar: I really should do a piece on how great The Mist is...

I don't want to sound completely negative, there have been some great zombie flicks in the last few years. As I wrote in 2009, Zombieland was great fun, and took a new spin on the satirical side of zombies. Also the British mini-series Dead Set, while not necessarily bringing anything new to the table, proved that the genre still has some legs in terms of social metaphor. The series depicted a zombie apocalypse from the perspective of the cast and crew on a season of Big Brother. Turning the lens on reality TV made for some great fun, but the true appeal of Dead Set was in its high production values and fearless approach to narrative. Seriously, for a good old scary time watch the entire series in one go, it's not much longer than a feature film and definitely worth the time.

But all of this is just to get to the reason for the post: the trailer released today for the upcoming game, Dead Island. It feels slightly, well, icky to dedicate an entire post to a marketing promotion, but this trailer is worth it. I found it over at Kotaku, and they called it "The Most Heartbreaking Zombie Vieo Game Trailer You'll Ever See." By no means an understatement, but I think Joystiq does it better when they say that with this trailer the game goes from "completely off our radar" to "has complete dominion over our minds." That does sum up the effect nicely. But don't take my word for it, give it a look yourself:

Now that's how you market something about zombies. Gore, pathos, tragedy, desperation, it's all there! They even go so far as to show the violent death of a child in a marketing tool! Twice, technically. Dead Island now has my full attention by virtue of its excellent trailer alone. This video is the best thing to happen to the zombie genre in years, and if the game can live up to even half the potential seen here then we'll all be in for a real treat this fall.

What if The Legend of Zelda was a John Hughes Movie?

2011-02-11T10:14:00.000-05:00

I've had an astoudingly busy week, so I hope you'll forgive me for the lack of posts. I promise to make up for it over the weekend/rest of the month. In the meantime, please enjoy an amazing fake movie trailer that's been making the rounds in the blogosphere. It mixes numerous things I love:

1) Movies trailers
2) John Hughes movies
3) The Legend of Zelda
4) The classic New Order track, "Bizarre Love Triangle"
5) MIDI music

Customizable Button Mapping for Disabled Gamers

2011-02-08T07:32:00.002-05:00

Update: Added a title to the post. Whoops :S

A few weeks ago I posted about how Sony San Diego's upcoming MLB '11: The Show will include an "Association for Disabled Virtual Athletes" mode. Basically the game will be playable using only one button, making it accessible to disabled players. Anyway, this morning I read on Joystiq that developer Visceral Games plans to patch customizable controls into the PC version of their recent Dead Space 2.

The patch comes in response to an online petition and a forum post by Gareth Garratt, a player living with cerebral palsy. Garratt has been playing through Dead Space 2 on his PC using a mouse as his primary input device. Frustrated at the inability to program a "walk forward" command to one of the mouse buttons, Garratt posted on publisher EA Games' forums. There he complained about his difficulties with Dead Space 2 and asked the developers to acknowledge the needs of disabled gamers.

Garratt playing Fallout 3 by using his chin to manipulate the mouse

Garratt's post directed readers towards an already existing online petition that asks game developers and publishers to include custom button mapping in their games. At publishing the petition has received almost 25 thousand signatures, and evidently it took less than that to convince Visceral Games to support the cause. Executive Producer Steve Papoutsis has told Joystiq that the PC version of Dead Space 2 will be receiving a patch that will allow players to re-map the games controls to the mouse. For the full release head over to the original post over at Joystiq.

I don't know if it's just that I only recently started paying attention, but it seems like 2011 is proving to be a great year for disabled gamer accessibility. The original Dead Space was hugely enjoyable, and so I've really been looking forward to Dead Space 2. The sequel garnered excellent reviews, so I was already thinking about picking it up (eventually). This news gives me one more (altruistic-ish) reason to buy the game and support developer Visceral Games.

In Appreciation of Good Television

2011-02-04T11:56:00.001-05:00

I was browsing the internet this morning when I came across a banner ad for... this:

Now, I admit I may have been tangentially aware of this show's existence, but until today I had never been confronted by the pure, unrelenting truth of the matter. There's really a show called fucking Cougar Town, and what's more it's not even on Fox! Somehow I find this more appalling than the existence of Dance Your Ass Off, although I recognize that the reality show is probably more indicative of the apparent cultural apocalypse. But come on, seriously. Seriously. Cougar Town? Wasn't that a joke on 30 Rock a few years back? How did this happen? Where did we go wrong?

Honestly, I'm playing it up a bit. I don't actually consider this a sign of the end of days (culturally or otherwise). If there were such a thing we'd have passed that road sign years ago, at breakneck speed and probably drinking at the wheel. However the bald fact of the existence of Cougar Town (shudder) made me realize that I'm long overdue in making a post about the amazing TV shows I've been watching recently.

Sidebar: how many people read the title to this post and saw the Cougar Town picture and stuck around just to see if I was blogging while drunk again?

This fall I was made aware of the wonderful show, Community (actually someone told me about in the summer but it generally takes me a few months to appreciate anything brilliant that people recommend to me. Thanks Sandy). It's a show about a study group at a community college (featuring Donald Glover and the incredible Chevy Chase). That's the premise to get a bunch of character archetypes together anyway, really the show is about television. It's too reverent to be a satire, but basically the narrative is little more than a set up for a lot of jokes in appreciation of TV. And not just good TV but all TV. M.A.S.H. and Friends are treated equally by Community's writers, who clearly just love culture in all its forms. The show spent an excellent first season (self-awarely) going through the motions of the typical romantic will-they-or-won't-they plot, but then ditched that in season two in favour of episodic genre spoofs. They've done the zombie apocalypse, they've done the mystery thriller, they've even done Apollo 13 (and yes that's a genre now). The dialogue is so densely packed with TV and film references that it demands multiple viewings, and that's a heavy emphasis on multiple. Not since the glory days of Arrested Development (RIP) had I found myself laughing so hard at new things every time I rewatched old episodes. Truly, Community is one for the books, a rare contemporary classic in a sea of otherwise unexciting and horrible television (see above).

Or so I thought. Then last week I finally took another long overdue recommendation (thanks everyone, you know who you are) and started watching Archer.

Archer is a cartoon about a James Bond-esque super spy named Sterling Archer. Or at least that's his character type in the general sense, really he's a buffoonish womanizer who sometimes manages to get the job done in spite of himself. He works for his mother (voiced by Arrested Development alum Jessica Walter) at the International Secret Intelligence Service (ISIS) and goes on international espionage missions. The whole thing is a great spoof of Bond and spy movies generally, and each episode holds new hilarious surprises (the Skytanic one is particularly great). The show features an outstanding voice cast, including the aforementioned Walter as well as H. Jon Benjamin, Judy Greer, Chris Parnell, and regular appearances by Jeffrey Tambour (also of Arrested Development fame). As with Community, the writing on Archer is incredible and demands multiple viewings to catch all the nuanced and self-referential jokes. There aren't many episodes and so I managed to get completely caught up in no time, so I highly recommend you dive into Archer immediately. It just began its second season with a stellar opening that guarantees the show will only get better.

And you know what? I take that "sea of unexciting and horrible television" comment back. Despite shows like Cougar Town, television actually is pretty damn good right now. Community and Archer are among my favourites, but there's also shows like Modern Family and Parks and Recreation, both of which I'm told are fantastic. I'm also partial to the more traditional but still quite good How I Met Your Mother, and while I can't speak for it now I will vouch for 30 Rock circa 2008. For all the reality schlock we have to sift through, there really is some good stuff going on out there. What's more, everything I've mentioned here is at least somewhat popular and successful! As you can probably tell I'm a diehard Arrested Development fan from way back, so I am acutely aware of how important it is for something to be not only intelligent and hilarious but also bankable. Good people are getting paid to write good shows, and we are reaping the rewards. That's not something anyone should take for granted.

It's a good time to be a fan of intelligent humour on TV. To that I say this: fuckin' bangarang.

Max's Epic, Long Overdue Review of Inception

2011-02-02T08:08:00.001-05:00

This past summer I saw Christopher Nolan's Inception. Much like with Red Dead Redemption, I started writing a review but got bogged down by laziness, life, etc. Now I have finally returned to the subject to put in my two cents on one of the most popular films of 2010. Have faith in the title of this post: it is the very definition of epic. I don't use that word lightly. Consider this the authoritative take on Inception. Scroll down below the epic poster to see what I thought.

And the verdict is...

Inception = Total Recall meets Ocean's 11.

Seriously, that's it. That brief comparison pretty much covers Inception. No more, no less. Contrary to popular belief, the movie was just... mediocre. It wasn't the incredible, mind-bending, high-brow science fiction masterpiece I hoped it would be, but it also wasn't terrible. It was just sort of ok. If anything it was underwhelming, except for the awesome fight sequence featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt (although even that doesn't really hold up with multiple viewings). It wasn't worth all the confusion, frustration, and exasperation so many people felt, but it also wasn't a "best picture" by any means. It wasn't even worth this long a post, it was just ok. Although it did give the internet an endless well of ammunition for hilarious memes, mostly due to its (meagre) soundtrack.

There, done. I wanted to finally put up my thoughts for the sake of posterity, now I can move on. If you want to read something epic about intelligent subject matter I suggest you go back and read my rant about Watchmen. Lets all just shut up about Inception, watch Primer again for our sci-fi glory fix, and hope The Dark Knight Rises ends up being awesome. All signs so far point to yes.

Olenka & the Autumn Lovers

2011-01-30T23:33:00.001-05:00

This past weekend I visited Sackville, NB, and in case you didn't know it's a veritable hub of Canadian culture and general awesomeness. I went to see a Julie Doiron show (at a curling club!) and on the way I shared a car ride with silver-haired vixen named Olenka. The trip was pleasant enough, filled with laughter and good conversation, but little did I know the girl in the big fur hat had some serious talent in her. I checked out her MySpace page the first chance I got, and I really like what I'm hearing.

Olenka & the Autumn Lovers have a great sound that features stellar instrumentation and beautiful vocals as well as some of the best songwriting I've heard in ages. Olenka's lyrics are evocative, poignant, and concise, a rare combination that makes for great songs that leave you wanting more. Seriously, my only "complaint" is that the tracks are too short, I keep find myself wishing they would go on longer. But then I suppose it's a pretty minor criticism to say the songs are too to-the-point and effective in their brevity.

Check out Olenka & the Autumn Lovers, just by the stuff available online I can tell this is an act I'm going to keep an eye on. I'm including a stream of "Motel Blues," which boasts some of Olenka's best vocal and lyrical work. You should also check out the video above for "Mama's Bag" made by Southern Souls (another awesome new discovery for me, score!)

Very Cool: MLB '11 Includes Mode for Disabled Gamers

2011-01-26T07:22:00.003-05:00

Baseball and video games super-fan Hans Smith

Sony San Diego's upcoming MLB '11 will include an "Association for Disabled Virtual Athletes" mode that allows the game to be played using only one button. Basically the player controls batting or pitching and the computer handles things like fielding, running, etc. The point is to make the game accessible for gamers who are only able to use one button on the controller.

The idea came from a fan named Hans Smith, who has cerebral palsy. An apparent super-fan of baseball and video games, Smith contacted Sony a number of years ago to express his appreciation of the MLB: The Show series. The developers made an avatar for him and included it in MLB: The Show '10, and this year they're going a step farther by including the new mode Smith conceived. Now disabled players around the world will be able to enjoy the game like he does.

ESPN.com has the full scoop, but I just wanted to give this story a nod. It's really great to see this kind of awareness and step towards inclusion by a major developer. I don't know enough about either sports games or disabled gamer issues to evaluate the mode, but its existence at all is a good sign. It seems difficult to imagine this type of mode being excluded from future releases, and eventually I'd hope to see it become a standard feature for all developers. But even if it's just a one off it's still a great move by Sony's San Diego studio.

In a related story, Kotaku reports that Forza 3 has won the 2010 Accessible Mainstream Game of the Year award. Given out by the AbleGamers Foundation, the self-explanatory award exists to promote awareness and accessibility in gaming. This year's winner, Forza 3, features a myriad of customizability options for disabled gamers, including an "auto-break" feature. This helps colour-blind gamers enjoy the game as normally the on-screen breaking guide is based on red and green coloured prompts. Additionally it allows the game to be fully playable using only two-buttons, as seen in the video below.

It's great to find out that there's an award promoting developers who include these kinds of accessibility options. It'll be interesting to hear if MLB '11 wins the award next year, and if not to find out what game beat them out. Just a really solid couple of mid-week stories that I felt were worth sharing.

Robert Burns Day

2011-01-25T14:10:00.001-05:00

Happy Robbie Burns Day! To mark the occasion I want to honour two things I love: poetry and haggis. Scotland's famous sausage is one of my favourite meals, and no one appreciates it better than Mr. Burns did in his "Address to a Haggis." I'll let the verse speak for itself, and I hope you'll join me in enjoying some delicious haggis, neeps, and tatties sometime soon

Address To a Haggis

Burns Original			Standard English Translation
Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o' the puddin-race! Aboon them a' ye tak your place, Painch, tripe, or thairm: Weel are ye wordy of a grace As lang's my arm. The groaning trencher there ye fill, Your hudies like a distant hill, Your pin wad help to mend a mill In time o' need, While thro' your pores the dews distil Like amber bead. His knife see rustic Labour dight, An' cut ye up wi' ready slight, Trenching your gushing entrails bright, Like onie ditch; And then, O what a glorious sight, Warm-reeking, rich! Then horn for horn, they stretch an' strive: Deil tak the hindmost, on they drive, Till a' their weel-swall'd kytes belyve Are bent like drums; Then auld Guidman, maist like to rive, 'Bethankit!' hums. Is there that owre his French ragout, Or olio that wad staw a sow, Or fricassee wad mak her spew Wi perfect scunner, Looks down wi' sneering, scornfu' view On sic a dinner? Poor devil! see him owre his trash, As fecl;ess as a wither'd rash, His spindle shank a guid whip-lash, His nieve a nit; Tho' bluidy flood or field to dash, O how unfit. But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed, The trembling earth resounds his tread, Clap in his walie nieve a blade, He'll make it whistle; An' legs, an' arms, an' heads will sned Like taps o' thrissle. Ye pow'rs, wha mak mankind your care, And dish them out their bill o' fare, Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware, That jaups in luggies; But if ye wish her gratfu' prayer, Gie her a Haggis!			Fair full your honest, jolly face, Great chieftain of the sausage race! Above them all you take your place, Stomach, tripe, or intestines: Well are you worthy of a grace As long as my arm. The groaning trencher there you fill, Your buttocks like a distant hill, Your pin would help to mend a mill In time of need, While through your pores the dews distill Like amber bead. His knife see rustic Labour wipe, And cut you up with ready slight, Trenching your gushing entrails bright, Like any ditch; And then, O what a glorious sight, Warm steaming, rich! Then spoon for spoon, the stretch and strive: Devil take the hindmost, on they drive, Till all their well swollen bellies by-and-by Are bent like drums; Then old Master of the house, most like to burst, 'The grace!' hums. Is there that over his French ragout, Or olio that would sicken a sow, Or fricassee would make her throw-up With perfect disgust, Looks down with sneering, scornful view On such a dinner? Poor devil! see him over his trash, As feeble as a withered rush, His thin legs a good whip-lash, His fist a nut; Through bloody flood or field to dash, O how unfit. But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed, The trembling earth resounds his tread, Clap in his ample fist a blade, He will make it whistle; And legs, and arms, and heads will crop Like tops of thistle. You powers, who make mankind your care, And dish them out their bill of fare, Old Scotland want no watery ware, That splashes in small wooden dishes; But is you wish her grateful prayer, Give her a Haggis! (Via The World Burns Club)

Word of the Day: Perspicuous

2011-01-24T15:27:00.004-05:00

I just came across the word "perspicuous" for the first time in my life. As the context did not make its meaning obvious I decided to look the word up in Webster's dictionary. This is what I found:

per·spic·u·ous

adj \pər-ˈspi-kyə-wəs\

Definition of PERSPICUOUS

: plain to the understanding especially because of clarity and precision of presentation perspicuous argument>

So this puzzling new word, amusingly enough, is meant to connote clarity and ease of understanding. Not since "pedantic" or "resistentialism" have I been so amused by the meaning of a newfound word. I felt I just had to share. Enjoy, and have a great day.

Games As Art: The Ending of Red Dead Redemption

2011-01-23T13:56:00.002-05:00

Author's note: I wrote most of this post back in June but failed to publish it. Then in the fall Rockstar released the Undead Nightmare DLC, causing me to return to the game and subsequently this article.

Note: Major spoilers for Red Dead Redemption

Rockstar Games's recent Red Dead Redemption is a sandbox-style game set in the old-west that players explore in the role of outlaw-turned-family-man John Marston. The game is comprised of a multitude of tropes and images from western films that the developers both lovingly recreate and actively critique using a post-revisionist lens. Red Dead presents Rockstar's most introspective examination of the violence that characterizes their games. This is particularly true of the infamous Grand Theft Auto series, which has garnered worldwide media attention for the freedom it gives players to commit depraved acts. Through Red Dead and the character of John Marston, whose story is explicitly one of redemption, Rockstar directly addresses the moral divide between their interactive fantasies and the often mundane reality we inhabit. Never is this made more clear than in the final missions of the game when players are given the unusual opportunity to reap the fruits of their labour by continuing to play beyond the climax through a sort of "ever after" sequence.

The bulk of Red Dead sees John Marston tracking down and executing his former gang members. Government men have abducted his wife and child and in order to get them back John has to do the law men's dirty work. When players finally eliminate the last of the outlaws they witness the Marston family reunion and then continue to play through a series of domestic missions as the characters begin to put their lives back together. Objectives in these missions include herding cattle, delivering grain, and scaring crows away, all of which are a far cry from hunting down bandits. The real meat of this section is the introduction of John's teenage son, Jack, and the development of that relationship.

Jack admires his father's gun-slinging ways, much to John's dismay. The boy is enamoured with romantic fantasies from the novels he reads, and he wants to "be a man" like his father by going on adventures and fighting bad guys. Many of the missions in this section of the game boil down to reverse tutorials whereby the player teaches Jack how to complete basic day-to-day activities on the family farm. John uses these lessons as an opportunity to try and dissuade the boy from choosing a life like the one he had, explaining that gun-slinging and murder are neither moral nor admirable.

John's interactions with his son present an overt dialogue about the nature of violence and the differences between a normal life and a fictionalized dramatic one. Jack repeatedly glorifies fictional accounts of "heroics" in the wild west, including killing and vengeance like that which characterized earlier sections of the game. The boy complains that the menial tasks of farm-life are boring, and John responds that reality isn't like the stories in adventure novels. He tells his son that it's easy to enjoy exciting tales because they excite the imagination, but that people tend to hate actual drama because it's frightening, dangerous, and unpredictable. John tries to teach John how to appreciate their everyday activities despite their subdued and repetitive nature, and his attempts compromise the final missions of the game.

Through this conversation between Marston and his son Rockstar directly addresses the expectation of and taste for violence in their games.

Virtual Shackles on the end of Red Dead Redemption

The developer anticipates the frustration of many gamers at the tutorial-esque missions at the conclusion of Red Dead, and Jack vocalizes their concerns with his demand for adventure. The boy is characterized as being obsessed with fiction, with his head more in his books than his real life. Over the course of the late-game missions, however, Jack comes to appreciate the value of commonplace activities and (after a close encounter with a grizzly bear) the relative safety of a "boring" life. By the final missions Jack begins to openly critique his father's propensity for guns and violence, and quips that he will write a story called "The Day John Marston Stops Shooting." Johns responds, "I don't think that'll sell, people like shooting in them things," and thereby gives voice to the developers responsible for games so often criticized for their violence.

Through Red Dead, Rockstar actively engages in the moral debate about violence in video games. Never is this more apparent than in the conversations between John and Jack, in which the developer adresses the depravity of the game's content. However the dialogue also draws attention to the differences between fantasy and reality, and the state of commercial entertainment. Rockstar's stance is less a defence and more an indictment of the audience, not going as far as to blame players for the violence in gaming narratives but definitely acknowledging their role in its propagation. The morality and politics thus embedded so deeply in Red Dead's narrative make it much more than just another violent game from the developers of Grand Theft Auto. This discussion is just one more reason why Red Dead Redemption is a fantastic game, firmly rooted in the tradition of revisionist Western cinema and well worth your time.

More Thoughts on The Social Network

2011-01-20T08:15:00.000-05:00

When I reviewed The Social Network I focused a lot on the movie's incredible score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. I said then and still think now that the music is one of the most unique and memorable aspects of the film, adding to if not defining the sense of impending doom that pervades throughout. After posting the review I received a number of complaints for focusing too much on the music, and also for not mentioning Aaron Sorkin's script. I want to take a quick moment to address a few of those concerns.

With regards to my focus on The Social Network's soundtrack, I maintain that it is among the most original and emotive scores in recent memory. The music stands on its own and gracefully improves the film, and moreover is itself improved by its relationship with the visuals. It will be a damn shame if it doesn't win the Academy Award (or is absurdly disqualified for its use of Edvard Greig's "In The Hall of the Mountain King"). Still don't believe me? Fine, don't take my word for it, check out a recent article over at /Film on what the opening scene could have been. You'll recall that the final cut uses Reznor's chilling "Hand Covers Bruise" to juxtaposition naïveté and dread right from the start. Well evidently the original choices for the soundtrack included Paul Young's "Love of the Common People" and Elvis Costello's "Beyond Belief." I think it's safe to say we ended up with the best option.

Finally, on the subject of the script, I did not mean to sell Aaron Sorkin short. I consider him to be one of the finest contemporary screen writers and I always thoroughly enjoy his work. The only reasons I failed to mention him in my review were that I was working with a tight word limit and, frankly, I didn't think The Social Network was his best work. The dialogue is great, don't get me wrong, but I really felt that Sorkin had delivered better material in the past. To a certain extent I still feel this way, but having seen the movie again over the holidays I will admit that the script is better than I initially thought. More than that the film as a whole actually got better with multiple viewings, but the dialogue in particular impressed me more than the first time around. It's quick witted in a way that is completely unnatural but never so much so that it feels that way and draws you out of the experience. I still don't think it's Sorkin's finest work, but that just speaks to his great potential.

On that note, I want to leave you with a scene from The West Wing, a show that consistently demonstrated Sorkin's incredible talent for dialogue. Annoyingly I can't embed the scene but follow this link to watch it in all its awesomeness. For the uninitiated, this scene comes at the end of the first episode and shows the first introduction of the President, played by Martin Sheen. It's a longer clip but totally worth watching. Sheen's "I am the lord they god" speech still blows me away every time I watch it, it's just so fucking brilliant. Enjoy.

True Grit

2011-01-18T07:38:00.002-05:00

I should start this review with the disclaimer that I have never read Charles Portis' novel or seen its 1969 film adaptation starring John Wayne. With that said, I thought the Coen Brothers' True Grit was one of the best movies I saw in 2010.

True Grit is told from the perspective of Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld), a young girl attempting to track down her father's killer. As the film begins she tells us that "Nothing comes free in this life," and at the end she says, "Time just gets away from us." These maxims bookend a story that is appropriately matter-of-fact in its presentation. Despite what the trailers may have led you to believe, True Grit is neither a heroic western (like the John Wayne version) nor a poetic musing on the human history (like No Country For Old Men). It's actually much more similar to the Coen Brothers' absurdist comedy, Burn After Reading. There are moments of both heroism and horrifying violence but True Grit shows it all with a sardonic wit that takes similar pleasure in victory and tragedy alike. The result is a film that feels strangely and refreshingly realistic in its depiction of the "wild" west.

For a movie that is ostensibly about a manhunt, True Grit spends an awful lot of time showing people arguing about bargains. As one character memorably says, "I do not entertain hypotheticals, the world as it is is vexing enough," and indeed a good portion of the film is dedicated to the sorting out of facts. We see debates about everything from bullet trajectories to obscure legal concepts like replevin, and at all times the answer lies in the minutiae. Similarly detail oriented are the few occurrences of violence in the film, all of which are unflinchingly realistic and shown entirely onscreen. In a world where nothing is certain, True Grit makes it clear that the devil is most certainly in the details.

Yet in spite of this focus, the film is remarkably relativist in its morals. Characters talk about "the Law" a lot but rarely are we shown much in the way of justice. Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) is supposed to be a US Marshal, but he is accused of killing men in cold blood and admits to bank robbery; La Boeuf (Matt Damon) is a seemingly incompetent Texas Ranger who sexually harasses and physically assaults the 14 year old Ross. Despite their flaws, however, these men become heroic in the eyes of Ross and through her the audience: Rooster's irreverent attitude towards violence and death is the source of much laughter, as are La Boeuf's feeble attempts to be a knight in shining armour. Interestingly this benevolent characterization is also extended to the villainous "Lucky" Ned (Barry Pepper), who likewise charms the viewer through his interactions with Ross. Not so much that we don't cheer for Rooster in their inevitable duel, but enough to be noticeably unusual.

True Grit juxtaposes a story about its own details with a truly complex understanding of morality, and the effect of this mixture of elements is a film that feels true-to-life in a way few others have achieved. All of the characters are remarkably human in their strengths and flaws alike, and the story's detail-oriented telling makes it all the more believable. Even the climactic gun battle is shot so that it feels more like a documentary than a John Wayne movie, and the maxims that bookend the film make it clear that this sense of realism is exactly the point. True Grit tells us that life is sometimes cruel and always short but that in and of itself is no tragedy; the movie treats existence as a unrestricted mess that we all share with no value but what we ourselves make. This objective approach is what makes True Grit seem so real, so accurate in its portrayal of human interactions. As a result the film is amusing, horrifying, and uplifting all at the same time, and tells a story that is compelling for its very humanity.

The Coen Brothers' True Grit is a great cinematic achievement that should not be missed.

Welcome to Max Rambles 3.0

2011-01-16T00:56:00.003-05:00

Update: The fancy new aesthetic is now matched by a fancy new domain name! Max Rambles can now be found at www.maxrambles.com. It just keeps getting better!

Ahoy! What you see before you is the new and improved version of Max Rambles! I've been saying there would new things around here for a while now, and with this update I'm officially making good on that promise.

No longer are my thoughts constrained by a Blogger template. Gone is the oft-complained-about white text on black background design. No more will my website be comparable to an old Geocities page!

You might find yourself asking, why 3.0? Well dear reader, it's a little known fact that Max Rambles actually began as a lowly LiveJournal page. Yeah yeah, I know it's embarrassing, but those days are long gone now and look how far the site has come! In the beginning it was just a place for me to develop my non-academic thoughts while I was still in undergrad. The more coherent pieces were published publicly on the off chance that someone might stumble across the site and bother to read its contents. Eventually I started posting some of the better stuff on Facebook and got a decent response. The result was the birth of the old Max Rambles page that you knew and had a love-hate relationship with. Now I've taken the next step and transformed the site into something that's actually aesthetically pleasing!

I would like to give a shout out and thank you to Sarah over at Textual Relations. She maintains a fantastic blog and has an incredible eye for web design, and the new Max Rambles would not have been possible without her considerable efforts. I strongly recommend you check out her site. Your eyes are forever indebted to her, that much is certain.

Stay tuned for more posts as I continue to try to work this into my law school schedule. I've already off to a strong start for 2011 and I intend to keep up the momentum for as long as possible. The goal is to keep up with content that at least matches the presentation in terms of quality. Thanks for reading and putting up with my archaic aesthetic for so long, and bookmark this space for the many updates to come! I promise I'll continue to make it all worth it.

Anal Retentive Ramblings: Using Two Spaces Between Sentences

2011-01-15T14:48:00.003-05:00

I was sitting in bed hungover on this fine Saturday morning, perusing reddit's top links, when I came across an interesting article over at Slate. Technology columnist Farhad Manjoo's "Space Invaders" is a great tirade against the use of two spaces between sentences. Considering that I'm not a typographer it's kind of a strange thing to get frustrated by, granted, but the practice has always irked me. I can't tell you how many papers I've edited where the bulk of my effort has been dedicated to deleting fucking extra spaces. It is beyond relieving to find that I'm not alone in my frustration, and furthermore to be vindicated in my writing habits.

Manjoo gives an excellent breakdown of where the mistake came from, how it continues to be propagated, and why it's just plain wrong. Unsurprisingly it's of the same origin as the QWERTY curse, namely sloppy answers to the physical problems with early typewriters. This video from Daily Cup of Tech gives a decent breakdown on the historical details:

The point is that using two spaces between sentences is wrong. It's an obsolete solution to a problem we no longer have and yet people persist with it under the misconception that doing so is proper writing technique. It isn't, so stop. End of discussion.

Now if I can just find a good article that justifies the oxford comma...

Quick Comment: Quebec Students Attracted to English

2011-01-13T15:09:00.001-05:00

Teachers in Quebec are wondering why so many students in the province decide to switch to English after high-school. They've actually commissioned a study to try and determine the reasoning behind the mysterious phenomenon.

Quick guess: it's because they want to make money.

Granted I'm just hypothesizing without any real facts to stand on, but the correlation between things young people want and cost seems pretty clear. It makes sense that young people would want to have a decent grasp of both French and English since bilingualism is unequivocally an opportunity providing asset. Unless you want to pigeonhole yourself in a career that is exclusive to Quebec, learning English is just a good way to give yourself options. To me the statistics don't signal a general departure from French language/culture, as the Quebec teachers seem to see it. Rather this says that Quebec youths are cognizant of the realities of Canadian business and don't want to be sold short. They want to speak English so they can compete with the rest of the country instead of becoming isolated in an insular province.

What riles me is the predictable reactionary call to extend mandatory French schooling past high school. Of course any validation of the English language is immediately a threat to Quebec culture and should be regulated out of existence. It's not as though that logic is exactly what creates a turn towards English at the earliest opportunity possible. The only thing accomplished by prohibiting English teaching is to hold back Quebecois youth from being able to work at the same level as the rest of the country. It's regressive thinking that is outdated and foolhardy and it does nothing to improve matters for the province of Quebec.

Reaction to Gabrielle Gifford, Sarah Palin, and Christina Taylor Green

2011-01-11T16:32:00.006-05:00

A brief recap for those who haven't heard:

March 2010 - Sarah Palin released an image that listed the names of Democratic Representatives who voted for health care reform in Republican districts. The image further showed a map of the United States with gun crosshairs over the districts of each of the named House Democrats, and advised her supporters to "Take A Stand."

January 8, 2011 - Gabrielle Gifford, the Democratic Representative from Arizona, was shot point-blank in the head by one Jared Lee Loughner. Six other people were killed by the gunman, and 13 were injured. Gifford was among the House Democrats "targeted" on Palin's map.

I don't really want to get into the details of the actual event. Frankly I just don't feel that I'm well enough informed to do so, and there are many sources available online that are better suited to the task. If you would like more information about the assassination attempt on Gabrielle Gifford you can check out some of these sites, or do a Google search. What I would like to talk about is a particular reaction to the news that popped up online.

Independent blogger Obama London was tracking the posts on Sarah Palin's Facebook page following the attack on Gifford, and they noticed something incredible. While the page moderators scrambled to remove posts criticizing Palin and blaming her for the shooting, one commenter posted something beyond abhorrent that the moderators chose not to take down. The post read:

"It's ok. Christina Taylor Green was probably going to end up a left wing bleeding heart liberal anyway. Hey, as 'they' say, what would you do if you had the chance to kill Hitler as a kid? Exactly."

For clarification, Christina Taylor Green was among the six people killed by the gunman who attacked Gifford. Green was nine years old.

I'm not sure what there really is say about that comment individually. It's clearly the product of an extremist with little thought as to the impact of their statement. The author is clearly an aberrant who represents nothing by their own misguided sense of reality. However, that in addition to the discourse that has arisen over the shooting itself give rise to a larger point about the 'us-and-them' mentality that pervades American politics.

In the wake of Gifford's shooting, politicians and commentators alike have sought to push the blame to the other side. On the left side there is the argument that the right needs to stop using violent rhetoric to incite their supporters, as well as the argument that the American gun culture (enshrined by the right) is to blame. Both are valid points. On the other hand, the right (specifically Rush Limbaugh) is accusing the left of shifting the blame away from shooter Jared Lee Loughner in order to make a political point. While it deliberately skirts the issue, there is some misguided truth to that argument too.

The problem is that all of these arguments fail to address the antagonistic atmosphere of American politics that engenders attitudes like the one that approved the death of Christina Taylor Green. The person responsible for that disgusting and reprehensible comment has been so indoctrinated by an us-versus-them mentality that they actually see the death of a child as a good thing, a victory even. All it takes is the thought that Green would grow up to support the other side and suddenly she is an enemy, comparable to the leader of the Nazi Party. Those who are playing the blame game (on the right and left alike) are doing nothing to dispel the culture of hostility that is behind these kinds of attitudes, rather they are encouraging it.

Sarah Palin and the right wing generally are not responsible for the attack on Gabrielle Gifford. Even the crosshairs map, which strains the limits of political discourse and verges on inciting violence, does not direct voters to go out and kill House Democrats. Certainly Palin and her representatives should have exercised more caution, common sense, and compassion before posting such a repugnant piece of political garbage. This critique could be extended generally to the entire spectrum of right wing rhetoricians, and some are soberly acknowledging this fact. However none of this puts blood on their hands, as so many are saying online. Jared Lee Loughner is an individual who is clearly deranged, and no one but him is responsible for his actions. Everyone else should just be united in shock, horror, and sadness at this terrible tragedy.

I wish Gabrielle Gifford and her family the best in this difficult time. My deepest sympathies to the families of the six people killed during the shooting, including Christina Taylor Green.

Update: I just found a video of Jon Stewart saying some very intelligent things on this topic

Happy Holidays: Zombie Attack Edition

2010-12-25T12:06:00.000-05:00

Here's wishing everyone a safe and happy holiday, even in the face of a zombie attack. They're more likely every year! Take a few minutes and watch this video for some tips on how to ensure your holiday spirit isn't hampered by the living dead:

And on a final note, it wouldn't be another one of my sporadic posts without a promise to start posting more regularly. But this time I mean it! Look for more snark and wit from MaxRambles in 2011!

PSA: New Girl Talk Album Available For Free Download

2010-11-16T07:57:00.002-05:00

Girl Talk has released his new album, All Day, and it's available to download for free right now via his label, Illegal Art. Also, it's great.

The Illegal Art download page lists the following license information:

"All Day by Girl Talk is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license. The CC license does not interfere with the rights you have under the fair use doctrine, which gives you permission to make certain uses of the work even for commercial purposes. Also, the CC license does not grant rights to non-transformative use of the source material Girl Talk used to make the album."

PS: I know things have been spare here, again, to say the least. With a little luck this should be changing soon.

Max Rambles Mix Tape Vol. 3

2010-10-23T12:18:00.000-04:00

So it's been a while since I've posted a mixtape, and since I moved to Halifax I've been listening to a lot of great new music. With that in mind I threw together a quick mix of mostly new things, though Josh Ritter and Futurebirds have shown up at least once before. This one's a shorter playlist than usual, not quite EP brevity but certainly not the length of an LP.

Anyway, enjoy! Click Here and scroll to the bottom of the page to download the mix. Here's the tracklist:

Day One - Sarah Slean
I See A Fox Drinking Wine Outside A Bar In France - Pat LePoidevin
Snow is Gone - Josh Ritter
Never Satisfied (Revisited) - Jackie Greene
Teen for God - Dar Williams
My Skateboard Will Go On - Anamanaguchi
Years (By One Thousand Fingertips) - Attack in Black
The Late King Henry - The Wooden Sky
APO - Futurebirds
The Gardner - The Tallest Man On Earth

It Gets Better Project

2010-10-20T16:45:00.002-04:00

Today is Spirit Day and in recognition of that fact MaxRambles is purple. Around the world people are wearing purple clothing to honour all the teens who have committed suicide as a result of hateful anti-LGBT attitudes. In light of this I want to recognize the It Gets Better Project, which collects videos of people expressing their support to LGBT teens.

Huge numbers of LGBT teens experience bullying and have no support system to turn to when they consider taking their own lives. The It Gets Better Project is an effort to speak directly to these youths, to encourage them that no matter how dark things may be life does get better, and to show them that there are people in the world who support them. As Harvey Milk said, "You gotta give 'em hope," and the It Gets Better Project explicitly strives to do just that. Many people have contributed videos to the project's YouTube page, including public figures like Hilary Clinton and Neil Patrick Harris.

Hatred is a terrible force that can have devastating consequences and today we remember the young people whose lives it has tragically claimed. Even something as seemingly inconsequential as wearing purple clothing is at least a statement against hatred and a show of support for its victims.

The Wooden Sky 10/15/10

2010-10-19T00:17:00.005-04:00

This past Friday I had the honour of seeing The Wooden Sky perform at The Seahorse Tavern in Halifax, NS.

The folk-rock band played tracks from their two LPs, When Lost At Sea and the sublime If I Don't Come Home You'll Know I'm Gone. Their sound covers a huge spectrum with both energetic, danceable numbers and slower, more pensive tracks. Whether I was moving my feet or just bobbing my head slowly, throughout the entire night the performance was captivating. These guys are nothing if not earnest and on top of that they've got some great songs at their disposal, and all in all it makes for a very good live show. In an incredible closer after a full electric set The Wooden Sky were joined by opener Yukon Blonde as they came out into the crowd and finished things off with a couple of acoustic sing-alongs. Highlights of the night included an exuberant cover of "American Girl," a haunting rendition of "Something Waiting For Us In The Night," and the acoustic performance of "Oh My God (It Still Means A Lot to Me)" in the midst of the audience. It was a show to remember and one that left me wanting more great tunes, as any good concert should.

I was first introduced to The Wooden Sky last summer at the Hillside Festival in Guelph, ON. There I saw them play alone and accompanied by The Acorn, and both sets were among the highlights of an incredible weekend of music. There's truly nothing like hearing fantastic music in the great outdoors under the sun. Ever since I've been listening to their albums on repeat and eagerly awaiting another chance to hear them play live. Friday's show only reiterated how great these guys are and made me want to see them as many times as possible.

The Wooden Sky have made a real impression on me this year and I strongly recommend giving them a listen. I'll be featuring a track of their on an upcoming mixtape, but in the meantime check out their MySpace page and the video below of their best songs:

Dar Williams' Many Great Companions

2010-10-14T00:13:00.009-04:00

Dar Williams is an American folk singer-songwriter who's been active since the early 1990s. She's released around eight or so albums, and has worked with the likes of Joan Baez, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and the Indigo Girls. And until very recently I had never heard any of her work.

This week saw the release of Many Great Companions, a collection of Williams' greatest hits from the span of her career. It also features a disc of new acoustic recordings of some of her songs with special guest collaborators. I got a hold of the collection and sat down to give Williams a shot, and I must say I'm extremely glad I did.

Williams is quite the lyricist, covering topics like religion, sexual politics, adolescence, and love with remarkable maturity. She's at times poignant and introspective, as in the fantastic "Spring Street" or the introspective "After All." Other songs, however, demonstrate her serpent's tongue and brilliant sense of humour, as with the hilarious "The Pointless Yet Poignant Crisis of a Co-ed" (tragically absent from the greatest hits album). In her more subdued moments she reminds me of other great female sing-songwriters like Sarah Harmer and Ani Difranco , but when Williams unleashes her biting satirical edge she enters a class all of her own. It’s been a long time since I’ve encountered a folk singer who's so adept at translating social politics into catchy tunes, and I will definitely have “The Christians and the Pagans” stuck in my head for days to come.

Many Great Companions gives a broad cross-section of Dar Williams' career, and seemed like a fantastic entry point for uninitiated listeners like me. For fans who already own the “best of” material here, the disc of new acoustic takes makes this release a worthy addition to any collection. Evidence of that fact can be found below via two mp3s of the new acoustic tracks.

Dar Williams - “As Cool As I Am” acoustic (with Gary Louris from The Jayhawks)
Dar Williams - "If I Wrote You" acoustic (with Gary Louris from the Jayhawks)

Update: FYI Tomorrow there will be a live acoustic set and Q&A with Dar Williams on LiveStream at 12:30 pm ET

Happy International Suit Up Day 2010

2010-10-13T18:03:00.001-04:00

Things you should take from this post:

1. I am a fan of How I Met Your Mother.
2. Suits are awesome.
3. Yes, I am wearing a suit right now.

I don't mean for this to sound like an advertisement for the show, but it is great, and any excuse to wear a suit is ok in my books. Here's to looking sharp:

The Sociopathic Network

2010-10-06T17:18:00.005-04:00

David Fincher's The Social Network paints a cynical, foreboding, and above all else compelling portrait of contemporary youth culture. The film depicts the beginnings of Facebook, the internationally successful social networking website that has redefined how people interact both on– and offline. Set in the first decade of the 21^st century, The Social Network examines how the advent of the Internet as a dominant social force empowers able young minds in the face of traditional institutions of privilege. The result is a power struggle between the new generation and the old order for control of the future, and the casualties include friendship, honour, and morality.

In The Social Network, Facebook’s origins are told via flashbacks as details are recounted during lawsuit depositions. From the beginning the website’s co-creator, Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), is shown alone and on the defence against friend and foe alike. On one hand he faces accusations of intellectual property theft from the over-privileged Winklevoss twins (both played by Arnie Hammer). At the same time Zuckerberg fights a legal battle with his one-time best friend and co-founder of Facebook, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield). Right from the start we know that while the website is successful it destroys the relationships of everyone involved in its creation. The Social Network explores what makes the website such an intoxicating and destructive force.

Facebook is depicted as an unprecedented source of social power, the ultimate commodity of youth. Zuckerberg sees the potential to attain status among his university peers and stoops to any means necessary to achieve it. As Napster co-creator Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) says, “This is our time,” in reference to the young innovators who have the knowledge to reshape the world using the Internet. Those with no established privilege suddenly have the opportunity to overthrow the social hierarchy, and the proposition is too great to let anything like morality stand in its way. Zuckerberg steals from the Winklevosses and cheats Saverin to create something new and cool, and all the while we know of the legal battles that result from his behavior. The Social Network shows how our contemporary social landscape was formed while giving the poignant sense that something was irreversibly lost in the process.

The brilliant soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross perfectly captures the sense of dread that pervades The Social Network. The opening track, “Hand Covers Bruise,” uses dour, resonating bass notes set against a delicate piano and hair-raising strings to initiate a sense of innocence and impending doom. The central thematic conflict is reflected in the soundtrack as rising electronic beats demonstrate the excitement of the young programmers achieving social dominance. Meanwhile a nightmarish industrial take on Edvard Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” evokes the failure of the old order. Not since There Will Be Blood has there been such an original, evocative, and atmospheric motion picture soundtrack.

The Social Network is a captivating film that paints an extremely cynical portrait of the people behind Facebook. None of the characters are depicted positively but none are cast as complete villains either. Instead they all look like victims of a general lack of conscience and foresight. The movie could be worth seeing for the soundtrack alone, but in context it makes an already great film spectacular. Don't miss The Social Network, easily one of the best films of 2010.

Check out these sites for more reviews. Click here to download a five track EP of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's incredible soundtrack to the film.

HDR Imaging is Stunning

2010-09-27T21:09:00.002-04:00

A few weeks ago a San Francisco based studio called Soviet Montage Productions produced the world's first high dynamic range video, as seen above. For those of you who have never heard of HDR (i.e. most people), it basically refers to images that display greater light and dark values than traditionally possible through conventional methods. There are numerous ways to accomplish this but the simplest is to capture multiple images of identical content at different contrast levels and then merge them. If that sounds like gibberish then maybe the image below (c/o Wikipedia) will help to explain:

An HDR image (above) and its source images (below)

As you can see the products of HDR imaging are, in a word, stunning. For a better explanation of the technique(s) involved check out the fascinating Wikipedia article on the subject. Below you can see an example produced by photographer Andrew Rees. His video is a black-and-white HDR time-lapse of Cardiff, Wales, and as Gizmodo points out it looks very much like a sketch pad come to life. Simply breathtaking:

I just wanted to share some of these incredible sights and the corresponding Wikipedia article. I'll leave you now with an amazing shot of New York City at night, one of the most impressive examples of HDR imaging I've seen thus far. I only became aware of this photographic technique a few weeks ago but it's quickly become fascinated by the potential it displays (ha). It's more vivid and lifelike than anything I've ever seen, and I'm very curious to see what intrepid artists (especially cinematographers) can do with it.

(Shamelessly stolen from Geekosystem and Gizmodo)

Hilarious Video: Test Your Awareness

2010-09-24T13:20:00.001-04:00

Check out this hilarious video. See the comments section for my thoughts, I don't want to spoil the punchline.

Trolls: Activists for the 21st Century?

2010-09-23T00:28:00.001-04:00

Over the last week "trolls" from the 4chan boards have staged multiple highly-coordinated web attacks on the likes of the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America, and the Tea Party. Official websites for both the MPAA and the RIAA were brought down by massive DDoS attacks, and TeaParty.org was flooded with new users who spammed the photo section with images like this exceedingly NSFW photoshopped image of Sarah Palin.

The 4chan community is notorious for their online exploits, including inventing Lolcats, hacking the 2009 TIME 100 list, and bringing down stock in Apple with premature rumours of Steve Jobs' demise. The website is founded on the ideas of freedom of expression and anonymity, and as a result its users' content and actions are often unidentified and shamelessly perverse. In a recent trend 4chan users have committed acts of social-justice minded vigilantism, including tracking down animal abusers. The latest attacks on the MPAA, RIAA, and Tea Party are motivated by each organizations actions against the public and general assholery.

The actions of the 4chan board are a modern form of mob justice, but increasingly they have become a form of organized and militant protest. Their attacks are hugely powerful, fueled by internet users from across the globe united in their hostility towards heartless corporations, political hate-mongers, and common standards of decency. Is this a new form of political activism for the 21st century? A site for unrestricted international outcry against any and all forms of douchery? Or is this just meaningless trolling, plain and simple? Is there a difference? Time will tell, but either way the 4chan boards have made a name for themselves by displaying what can be achieved via the internet, both for ill and for good.

For further reading check out The Atlantic for some great recommendations on trolls, hackers, nerds, etc. Weeks ten and eleven in particular are relevant to this post.

From Around the Web - 9/19/10

2010-09-19T20:28:00.000-04:00

There's nothing I particularly want to rant about today so I decided to save my energy and just post a few links. I felt that would be best for all our sakes. Also, it's International Talk Like A Pirate Day and I was extremely tempted to write this whole post in pirate-speak. I got one sentence in before I decided that was a terrible, horribly irritating thing to do. When I found myself looking up the word "avast" in the dictionary I decided to take my own advice and give up on the gag. I feel this will be best for all our sakes. Without further ado here's what's interesting elsewhere in cyberspace:

Retina Displays: One step-closer to a reality for consumers, still tragically ridiculous in appearance

Some interesting statements by one of the poor bastards facing charges from the RIAA for downloading music. Also a site for discussion of new media and copyright issues

Bill and Ted 3. Seriously, it might happen. Maybe the most exciting thing I've read this year.

A series of articles predicting twelve things that will be obsolete in ten years. Very futurist, very cool

Amusing videos: Tornado in Brooklyn + two idiots that give the double rainbow guy a run for his money. Also, even Cthulhu is getting in on the Old Spice phenomenon

Toronto, my home, I weep for you

Homophobia, Blood Donation, and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

2010-09-12T14:31:00.000-04:00

Earlier this week Madam Justice Catherine Aitkin of the Ontario Superior Court ruled in favour of Canadian Blood Services (CBS) in their suit again Torontonian Kyle Freeman.

In 2002 Freeman informed CBS via anonymous email that he was a gay man who had donated blood numerous times between 1990 and 2002. The organization traced Freeman's identity and sued him for lying on question 19 of the blood donor questionnaire, which asks, "Male donors: Have you had sex with a man, even one time, since 1977?" Freeman countersued, arguing that the question violates his right not to be discriminated based on his sexual orientation as guaranteed under section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Question 19 is meant to identify men who have sex with men (MSM), as many reports indicate an unusually high prevalence of HIV/AIDS among MSM. In Canada CBS indefinitely defers (read: permanently restricts) the donation of blood from men who have had sex with men, even once, since 1977. In his countersuit Freeman also sought to have the ban struck down.

The repercussions of this decision are extensive, as it both sets one bad precedent and maintains another. Aitkin's ruling states that the Charter does not apply to CBS because of its bureaucratic structure and the organization's distance/independence from government. Many fear that this will allow the government to ignore the Charter altogether by creating "independent" bodies to carry out governmental tasks. One Globe and Mail reader commented that the Eldridge case sets a seemingly relevant precedent with regards to the Charter most definitely applying to such organizations, though I don't see any evidence this was considered by Aitkin. It's pretty terrifying to imagine any government operating outside the Charter, but especially so given our current political climate. I would hope to see this ruling get overturned by the Supreme Court, though who knows if it'll get that high or go that way.

Also disturbing is the fact that MSM will continue to be openly discriminated against under this ruling. To my mind this is a significant and easily avoidable failure to promote equality and quash persistant homophobic stereotypes. Admittedly I don't know much/anything about the science behind all this, but it seems obvious that screenings should seek to identify the degree and safety of potential donors' sexual activity. For example, Italy and Spain screen for the level of safety involved in all sexual activity. Similarly Australia, Japan, and Sweden screen based on the number of partners one has had in the last year. These seem like relevant questions to ask in order to identify high risk donors, not questions as to the nature of the sex one is having.

AIDS is not a "gay disease" or some ludicrous punishment for "amoral" activities, it can be and is transmitted among heterosexuals who don't use caution and/or protection. If a man has only been having sex with one male partner for a significant period of time then how is he a high risk? He poses no more threat to the blood supply than any man who has only had sex with one woman for a significant period of time. To discriminate against MSM is archaic, ineffective, and prejudicial, and I am sorry to see it authorized in this fashion in Canada.

Max Rambles: Not Dead, But Different

2010-09-05T10:08:00.000-04:00

I'm going to start this post by listing a few of the things I have done since August 5th:

1. Quit my job, thereby eliminating my primary source of funding and free time for blogging
2. Travel extensively for pleasure, including my first trip to New York City
3. Feel guilty about neglecting this blog
4. Ignore many, many emails
5. Pack up all of my worldly possessions and drive them 1,792 km (that's 1,113.5 miles for my American readers) to relocate to Halifax, Nova Scotia
6. Live through a hurricane
7. Begin law school

So yeah, it's been kind of a busy month. There were always things I wanted to blog about, and I felt like I should put up a post explaining my absence, but time just seemed to get away from me. It's really easy to keep up a regular posting schedule when you're getting paid to sit in front of a computer for nine hours a day, most of which you spend doing nothing. But when you suddenly find yourself with a lot free time and the simultaneous need to prepare for a significant life change, blogging fall kind of low on the priority list. Anyway, so that's where I've been. Now lets take a moment to discuss where I'm going.

I'm starting law school. That's kind of a daunting proposition, but I'm really looking forward to it. Despite the fact that everyone tells me how first year law is going to kick my ass, I think I'm going to be able to handle it. That said, I figure it will take up the vast majority of my time and mental energy. So where does that leave Max Rambles?

The short answer is I'm not sure. I want to say I'm going to keep posting, albeit less often than I used to, but I can't make any promises. I can say that I am going to try to post once a week at a minimum, even if that only amounts to a short post linking to something cool I saw on Geekosystem once every seven days. That much I should be able to manage.

So that sort of gives you all an idea of what I've been up to and what I'm hoping to do with this page in the coming months. For now I guess we'll just see where it goes and hope for the best. Who knows, maybe law school will turn out to be super easy and I'll start blogging like every day again. More realistically I'll probably end up doing my best to get one post up a week, and most of them will be short and to the point. Kind of contradicts my titular propensity to ramble, but hey, I'll do what I can.

Thank you all for reading thus far, and I hope you keep coming back. More than that I hope to post things that keep you coming back. I'm going to aim to post something new every week on, say, Sunday evening. Yeah, that seems like the most realistic proposition. Anything beyond that Sunday evening post (ha!) I'll consider a bonus, and I leave it to you to judge whether or not it actually is one. Please do let me know.

Google, Verizon, and Net Neutrality

2010-08-05T17:48:00.006-04:00

There's a lot of talk going on right now about a possible agreement between Google and Verizon for prioritized data transfer. The New York Times stated that the two companies are negotiating a deal that would allow Verizon clients to access information stored on Google's networks more quickly than other online content. Bloomberg further reports that this agreement applies only to the Verizon mobile network, not to broadband internet. If such an agreement were realized it would stand in direct opposition to the net neutrality principle that Google has repeatedly championed in the past. Both companies have issued statements denying any discussion of priority data transfer, with Google stating that it remains "committed to an open internet."

The details are still quite murky so it's hard to say exactly what is going on here. The Times and Bloomberg could both be completely off their rocker, though that seems somewhat unlikely. They were at least correct in pointing out that Google and Verizon are indeed talking about net neutrality from a business standpoint. But it would be a dramatic change of face for Google to be pursuing any sort of data prioritization policy. As Mashable points out, the two companies are more likely doing just what they say they are: discussing an official agreement on the terms of net neutrality. It is kind of a hot topic right now. Marvin Ammori posting at Balkinization does a great job of outlining how bad it would be if the allegations were 100% correct. I encourage you to give his piece a read, as well as some of his older posts about net neutrality and especially the discussions at the F.C.C.

Rather than jump to apocalyptic conclusions, lets take this as an opportunity to consider the value of net neutrality and the need for government regulations to preserve it. Right now it's easy to take it for granted that the internet is unregulated in terms of our ability to access all content equally, but that could easily change. We are incredibly lucky that companies as powerful as Google (generally/publicly) favour a philosophy so geared towards the consumer, and this event demonstrates how easy it would be for the rug to be pulled out from under us. Unless specific government regulations are set in place the control of internet access will fall on the providers. Net neutrality needs to be government policy, not just philosophy, and this all shows that the F.C.C. negotiations might not be enough to ensure that in the U.S.

Heroes in Law: Judge Barbara Crabb

2010-08-04T10:27:00.001-04:00

It's not often that you can hold up someone in the legal system as a shining example of awesomeness, but today I have the pleasure of doing just that. This post is about U.S. District Court Judge Barbara Crabb (on a side note how amazing is it that there's such a thing as Judgepedia?!). Last week Judge Crabb ruled that three characters "created" by Todd McFarlane were actually derived from characters previously created by Neil Gaiman.

The dispute originates with issue #9 of McFarlane's Spawn comic book series. Released in 1993, the issue was guest written by Gaiman and introduced a set of "Medieval Spawn" characters into McFarlane's universe. In 2002 a US federal court found that Gaiman was a co-copyright holder of three of these characters, namely Medieval Spawn, Angela the angel bounty hunter, and Count Nicholas Cogliostro.

Spawn #9, featuring Angela

Gaiman further questioned the origins of three characters in the 1999 series Spawn: The Dark Ages, believing them to be imitations of his Medieval Spawn characters. Judge Crabb ruled in favour of Gaiman, determining that Dark Ages Spawn and a pair of female angels, Domina and Tiffany, were derived from the characters the Gaiman created.

Judge Crabb made it awesomely clear that she had taken the case seriously, describing and utilizing the official mythology and logic of the Spawn universe in her ruling. The decision is available in full here, and is totally read-worthy, but here are the some of the more relevant passages:

Much as defendant tries to distinguish the two knight Hellspawn, he never explains why, of all the universe of possible Hellspawn incarnations, he introduced two knights from the same century. Not only does this break the Hellspawn “rule” that Malebolgia never returns a Hellspawns to Earth more than once every 400 years (or possibly every 100 years, as suggested in Spawn, No. 9, exh. #1, at 4), it suggests that what defendant really wanted to do was exploit the possibilities of the knight introduced in issue no. 9.

...

If defendant really wanted to differentiate the new Hellspawn, why not make him a Portuguese explorer in the 16th century; an officer of the Royal Navy in the 18th century, an idealistic recruit of Simon Bolivar in the 19th century, a companion of Odysseus on his voyages, a Roman gladiator, a younger brother of Emperor Nakamikado in the early 18th century, a Spanish conquistador, an aristocrat in the Qing dynasty, an American Indian warrior or a member of the court of Queen Elizabeth I? It seems far more than coincidence that Dark Ages (McFarlane) Spawn is a knight from the same century as Medieval (Gaiman) Spawn.

McFarlane has been instructed to provide Gaiman an accounting of money earned from any comic books and other merchandising in which Dark Ages Spawn, Domina, and Tiffany appeared. He has until Setpember 1st to comply.

Spawn: The Dark Ages

It's unfortunate to see artistic disputes like this, especially from people as talented and passionate as Gaiman and McFarlane. McFarlane has tweeted "COMMENT: Neil Gaiman has the absolute right to defend his position. That’s one of the great privileges we all have in this country. TODD." Gaiman described his reaction to the victory on his blog:

I wish I took some kind of joy in this, but I don't.

At this point all I hope is that Todd can do an accounting for all the comics I wrote for which he paid no royalties, and the rest of it; and that he'll settle up and I will make some comics charities very happy; that his comics company will finally come out of bankruptcy; and that I can forget this forever.

Gaiman also provides further reading about the case via Maggie Thompson's blog and his own archives.

Bringing this post back to the positive angle, Judge Crabb clearly did her homework and then some. She dove head first into the incredible universe that McFarlane (and Gaiman) created and took it seriously. More so, it seems, than some of the series' authors. She used logic, evidence, and critical thinking to elucidate exactly why Gaiman deserved copyright interest in the Dark Ages Spawn characters, and even stated it in the terms of the Spawn lore. As someone who is seriously considering a career in law, I can say that Judge Crabb is the kind of legal practitioner that I would hope to be. She made the right call for the right reasons, and what's more she made it awesomely. A true hero in law.

(Via Geekosystem, where you can see some side-by-side character comparisons to judge for yourself)

This Actually Exists: Titanic 2

2010-07-30T10:05:00.003-04:00

No, this isn't a trick. Your eyes do not deceive you. This is the real deal: Titanic 2. As in a sequel to the movie Titanic. You know, the one James Cameron made? About the boat? That sank? "I'm the king of the world" and all that jazz? Yeah, there's gonna be a sequel, and no, it is not taking itself at all seriously. Take a look at the official plot synopsis:

On the 100th anniversary of the original voyage, a modern luxury liner christened “Titanic 2,” follows the path of its namesake. But when a tsunami hurls an ice berg into the new ship’s path, the passengers and crew must fight to avoid a similar fate.

Seriously. A fucking tsunami (!) "hurls" an "ice berg" at the boat? Like, oh my god. My mind reels at the problems with that premise. First off, it's completely ludicrous, in an awesome way. Second, just what the fuck is an "ice berg"? Since when can "ice" be used as an adjective? The word "berg" is actually the short form of iceberg, so are they trying to say the boat gets hit by an icy iceberg? Granted I'm nitpicking, but come on, it's fucking Titanic 2! How can you not have fun with this? The producers clearly are.

When I first heard about the movie I had a conversation with a friend about how the "antagonist" of the film is clearly an evil, sentient iceberg. The result of that conversation was the picture you see below:

That seemed like an appropriate thing to include. Anyway, I was inspired to post this morning by the release of the trailer for Titanic 2, and you can watch it in all its glory right here. Enjoy, I know I did, particularly the line "Looks like history's repeating itself." Classic.

Awesome In The 90s: Will Smith

2010-07-28T16:54:00.001-04:00

He's as confused as you are that this look went out of style

I recently found myself reminiscing with a friend about the '90s, that magical and perplexing time when music was "alternative" and boy bands were socially acceptable. The world was still innocent and people were more accepting of others. Lilith Fair was good. Truly it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Perhaps the greatest thing about the '90s was the popularity of one Will Smith. This so-called "Fresh Prince" was a veritable force of nature that appeared in and dominated just about every imaginable form of media. You couldn't skateboard to the local CD store without being assaulted by billboards advertising his latest entertainment endeavor. Now, I know that you're thinking "But Max, Will Smith is still popular now!," and to an extent you are correct. It's true that Smith continues to appear in major blockbusters and remains one of the most powerful stars in Hollywood. But even in that he is but a shadow of his formerly transcendent self. Allow me to elaborate:

Second only to Thriller?

Back in the '90s it seemed like Smith was constantly in the public eye. He was featured in a major motion picture almost every year in the decade, including veritable classics like Enemy of the State and Bad Boys. Smith starred in the one-and-only American classic, Independence Day, AKA the movie that was advertised using the best acronym ever, ID4 (this point has been agreed upon by top scientific minds). On top of all that he also contributed to the soundtracks for two of his summer blockbusters, Men In Black (acronym: MIB) and Wild Wild West (epic music video above).

I have spent countless hours mourning the days when I could listen to the radio and hear Will Smith's voice "rapping" the title of his latest summer flick over-top of some old Stevie Wonder music. For this alone the '90s were truly the time of kings.

All that is to say nothing of Smith's non-movie-related musical releases, in which he continued to celebrate his being an irrefutable badass. I remember purchasing his 1997 debut, Big Willie Styles, alongside a copy of Our Lady Peace's Clumsy, and then listening to Smith's album like way more. His humbly titled follow-up, Willenium, was notable for its inclusion of the aforementioned Wild Wild West song and for closing off both the decade and millenium in style with "Will 2K." Way to class it up, Will.

How many other celebrities can list coining the term

"Jiggy" among their career achievements?

Last but certainly not least I should mention Smith's success on television. It would be impossible to forget his turn as the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which has been cemented in the cultural consciousness by countless public renditions of the Carlton dance by bad dancers. That and the continued popularity of the show's theme song, produced by none other than (gasp!) Smith himself! A man of many talents indeed! The show ran from 1990 until 1996 before Smith moved on to work exclusively in film, and the world has felt a little more empty ever since. I take solace, however, in remembering the show's greatest moments, including a crossover with yet another '90s gem, Blossom. If you click here you can watch the TV event of the decade in Spanish on YouTube. Whoa!

I believe that with this post I have proved both that Will Smith was more awesome in the '90s and that human existence in general was better because of it. I will leave you with Smith's classic 1998 single, "Miami." Enjoy, and (as always) make sure to "jig it out y'all" whatever the hell that means...

Apocalypticraft

2010-07-26T17:25:00.001-04:00

Tomorrow marks the release of Blizzard's Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty, the long awaited sequel to the real-time strategy (RTS) classic Starcraft. Released in 1998, the original Starcraft is widely considered one of the best games ever made. It continues to be played to this day, particularly in Korea where it has spawned a hugely popular league of professional players. Sort of like how my dad never got over The Beatles, the gaming world never really got over Starcraft, and so the sequel looks to be the most anticipated and significant releases in recent memory.

Some friends of mine put together a funny video to depict the sheer personality-devastating power of Starcraft 2. It's pretty funny, reminiscent of both Animal House and Mega 64, and probably more true to life than you'd like to believe. Check out more of their stuff at Annex'd.

The Max Rambles Mixtape Vol. 2

2010-07-22T08:21:00.000-04:00

I'm long past due for another music-related post, and so with that in mind I happily present the Max Rambles Mixtape Vol. 2. This one's a fair bit peppier than the last one, and frankly more eclectic. There's everything from east coast Canadian rock (Sloan, Thrush Hermit) to classic funk (Tower of Power) to chiptune punk (Anamanaguchi). Here's the tracklist:

She Says What She Means - Sloan
King of Spain - The Tallest Man On Earth
Courage - The Tragically Hip
MJB - Futurebirds
Brick House - Tower of Power
Take a Chance - The Magic Numbers
Thy Will Be Done - Handsome Furs
Not What You Think It Is / Stop Signs (Live) - Dan Mangan / Shane Koyczan
At My Expense - Thrush Hermit
Airbrushed - Anamanaguchi
Ginger - Lilys

Visit Megaupload to download the mix, type in the security code at the above right and click on the "download file" button immediately below. You'll have to wait like 30 seconds and then click on the "Regular download" button to save the mix. Unlike last time around the tracks on this mix will show up as separate files. As always enjoy and lemme know what you think or if you have any recommendations!

Discovery of the Day: Apple Has a Dystopian Torture Chamber

2010-07-19T10:25:00.002-04:00

Disclaimer: the title of this post is sarcastic, Apple does not actually have a torture chamber... At least not one we know about. I wouldn't be surprised if they have a special place designed for the likes of Jason Chen and Bill Gates. But I digress...

I was reading Geekosystem this morning and came across a post about the wireless testing facility that Apple revealed last week in the wake of all the iPhone 4 reception controversy. Geekosystem's Michael Suen (aptly) notes that the so-called "Infinite-Loop labs" would make a great Half-Life level, but I noticed something else. An eerie similarity that borders on the uncanny...

Note: the remainder of this post will make a lot more sense if you have seen Terry Gilliam's 1985 masterpiece, Brazil. Even if you haven't seen the movie (get on that) you should still be able to see the creepy similarity, and to be honest the imagery is no less terrifying when put in context.

Apple...

... Brazil

Apple...

... Brazil

The images above show the horrible torture chambers seen towards the end of Brazil and in Cupertino, CA. Clearly Apple has built a room of horrors for some sinister purpose beyond the comprehension of our relatively virginal minds. Or to test their shoddy cellphones. Same difference.

Steve Jobs, hard at work on all your favourite Apple products

Anonymity Online: Blizzard and Real ID

2010-07-14T09:14:00.000-04:00

I've been reading a lot about last week's Real ID debacle, and its broader significance in terms of identity on the internet. In case you were more concerned with things like the World Cup finals, early last week video game juggernaut Blizzard announced that they would be implementing a program called Real ID that would force users to identify themselves by their real names when posting on the company's forums. This move directly effected a significant portion of the gaming community, as Blizzard is the developer of hugely successful international franchises like Starcraft and World of Warcraft. The response from gamers and internet users alike was overwhelmingly negative, and many expressed fears of privacy invasion and abuse. By the end of the week Blizzard announced that as a result of the feedback they would no longer be going forward with the Real ID program on their forums.

At first I didn't pay much attention to Blizzard's announcement given that I don't play WoW or post on their forums. When the proverbial shit hit the fan, however, it became impossible to ignore as more and more people started weighing in on the issue. On Saturday I listened to the latest Invisible Walls over at GameTrailers.com and became incensed as I heard Shane Satterfield talk about how Real ID could help clean up the internet. He argues that by making people identifiable and accountable we will develop a communal sense of propriety online like the one that purportedly exists in real life. Even if Satterfield weren't wrong he'd still be missing the point, as the consequences of Blizzard's plan would have far exceeded their stated aims. If you start forcing people to identify themselves online you force the real world upon them, with all its prejudices and limitations. Users are effectively robbed of the ability to have a unique online persona, and that is not a scenario we should accept under any circumstances. The possibility for identities that exist beyond physical and spatial constraints is perhaps the most valuable aspect of online interaction, and anonymity is an integral aspect of that phenomenon.

The immediate ramifications of Real ID are pretty much universally negative, beginning with the exposure and vulnerability of users who accepted its terms. In one of the uglier episodes in the debate about this new program, a Blizzard employee attempted to demonstrate the Real ID program in good faith by using their real name on the message boards only to have their detailed personal information posted by a user. This included his phone number, names of his relatives, and his address, though not all of the information was correct. While unfortunate, this does provide an example about how easy it would be for users to be preyed upon by malicious entities. You wouldn't even need to post anything to see the real names of users, and that kind of openly disseminated information is a risk. This seems especially true given that video games have led to acts of violence in the past by unhinged individuals. It simply baffles me that Blizzard would produce such an opportunity for its customers to be exposed in this manner.

Along those same lines, another evident negative to Real ID would be the outing of minority gamers. Ethnic groups, women, etc., would be exposed and left open to targeting and abuse by the same trolls Real ID was intending to stop. Susana Polo at Geekosystem notes that the current atmosphere online suggests we need anonymity to protect these groups, and that this points to an internal problem of accountability and acceptance. While true this doesn't mean that the Real ID program would do anything to promote tolerance among users, but would certainly give direction to the hatred. Satterfield argues that message board trolls would clean up their act if identified, but this perspective fails to address the core issue behind the attitudes and assumes that all such users see their beliefs as unfavourable. Polo wisely advises against Real ID in favour of greater responsibility within the gaming community, asking users to stop ignoring and thereby perpetuating examples of hatred and intolerance.

While these are certainly serious concerns, the most evident victim of Real ID would be the conversation itself. Many have commented that the Blizzard forums would see a massive drop in participation following any implementation of Real ID, and there's no doubt that's true. Whatever discussion remained might be more polite, but it would definitely be less diverse in terms of the number and range of its voices. Whatever thoughts might gestate on the board would be restricted to the point of irrelevance by the very design of the creative space. By limiting the voices you render the conversation effectively impotent, and that is the absolute last thing we should be doing.

The internet is an environment with real post-human potential, and virtual entertainment is one of the most vibrant sites for interactions that explore this new horizon. Communities are founded here regardless of countless "real world" factors that might otherwise deny their formation, and their anonymity enables them to function on their own terms. I'm not going to justify the discussions of online communities because frankly I don't have to; uninhibited debate never requires a defence. People like Sean Brooks and Clay Shirky study and endorse the positive effects of online communities, and both argue that there can be real value even in that which isn't necessarily intelligent or polite in a traditional sense. To disavow that potential because of trolls and hate-mongers simply isn't a justifiable action as the quantifiable loss would far outweigh the supposed gain. It's fine to allow for "real life" identification in cyberspace, and indeed many choose to use their legal names for their online presence. But to make it the rule is quite another thing, and any such action would be a significant step backwards in terms of progressive discourse.

As it stands Real ID isn't happening and that is a good thing, but we shouldn't let it be the end of this story. Anonymity is an important facet of the unique cultural phenomenon that is the internet, and this event demonstrates how easily it could be lost. We can bring "reality" into the fold at any time by identifying ourselves, and likewise there should always be an option to abstain from doing so. Real ID would have taken away that choice and that is not something I am prepared to accept, no matter the reasoning. I'd rather wade through a thousand message boards filled with hateful trolls (the Ain't It Cool readers come to mind) than see compulsory identification programs aimed to "clean up the internet." Progressiveness trumps propriety every time.

Jesus in Portuguese Playboy

2010-07-08T16:03:00.003-04:00

I'm going to present this without comment. It's better that way. Check out the link for the context and consequences.

(Via Geekosystem)

Games As Art: Roger Ebert Admits He Was Wrong

2010-07-08T10:02:00.001-04:00

I'm already a week late to report this, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention here that Roger Ebert admitted he was wrong to dismiss video games as a potential site for artistic expression. He didn't go so far as to say it that games are art, mind you, but he at least acknowledged that he was wrong to write off the medium without "being more familiar with the actual experience of video games." Which is exactly what I called him on, along with countless other gamers and open-minded people.

The title of Ebert's "apologetic" blog entry still conveys a distinctly judgmental and dismissive tone, but I suppose you can't teach an old codger new tricks. If he wasn't such a great and influential writer it'd be easy to ignore him and his dated opinions about video games, like I do with my dad. But this is Roger fuckin' Ebert we're talking about, the dude bleeds film criticism. It's just too bad that he's positioned himself so completely on the far side of the generational divide. I would love to hear his thoughts on something like Ico if there was a way for him to truly understand it. Alas, I'm not holding my breath on that one.

Cool Stuff: Creative Collaboration

2010-07-05T16:39:00.000-04:00

Apologies for the absolute dearth of content around here lately, I've been out of town a lot and generally otherwise occupied. I've got a few things I'm working on that'll hopefully come to fruition soon, but for now I wanted to share this really cool argument/video:

Clay Shirky, an American writer and theorist on internet technologies, has an interesting perspective on the value of creative collaborative activities on the internet. This includes everything from knowledge databases Wikipedia to memes like Lolcats. He sees the internet as a significant leap forward in terms of human culture, comparing the hours spent actively utilizing it to those spent passively watching television. In describing the inherent worth of even something as trivial as Lolcats, Shirky argues that "the stupidest possible creative act is still a creative act. Doing something is different than doing nothing."

Check out the video below, it's well worth four minutes of your time, even if it is a passive interaction. I for one am on board with him, and I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.

(Via Geekosystem)

Toy Story 3

2010-06-29T09:12:00.000-04:00

I went to see Toy Story 3 last weekend and it was (surprisingly) the most touching theatre experience I've had this year. I didn't think any movie could top the first scenes in Up for sheer devastating poignancy, but damn was I ever wrong. The last ten minutes of Toy Story 3 are an ongoing emotional sucker punch that will make you beg the movie to stop if only to save you the indignity of publicly weeping like an infant. What makes this experience unique and wonderful is that for all the choked-back tears Toy Story 3 just feels... right.

Toy Story 3 is about growing up. That's technically true of both the previous films in the series, but never so much as in this final entry. Andy, the owner of the featured toys, is ready to go off to college and needs to decide which of his possessions to bring, store, or throw away. This puts the toys in obvious jeopardy, especially given that they've been largely abandoned during Andy's adolescence. Some begin to devise means of escape to avoid becoming garbage while others steadfastly maintain that their role is to support Andy, whatever that means. The nostalgic bond between toys and their owners has always figured prominently into the Toy Story movies, and that trend continues here with both parties trying to decide whether to hold on to each other or move on. Of course the toys have an incredible adventure that provides the bulk of the excitement, and it's great, but the transition towards maturity is the real heart of the story. I won't spoil anything here, but trust that Toy Story 3 nails the perfect balance of painful relinquishment and knowing acceptance in a powerful coming-of-age tale.

While glorious overall, the movie is not without its flaws. The pace seems rushed, and at times it feels like the filmmakers tried to fit a bit too much into the story. New characters are underdeveloped and the major talents voicing them are all but wasted (Timothy Dalton and Kristin Schaal have tragically minuscule roles). But all such issues pale in comparison to the overall quality and power of the narrative. Toy Story 3 is a busy, exciting film that will leave you simultaneously fulfilled and wanting more, and its few problems are easily forgivable.

Despite my fears that the movie would prove unnecessary and overly-indulgent, Toy Story 3 is both the perfect close to a fantastic trilogy and also a great film in its own right. You don't have to see the preceding films to enjoy it, though doing so would certainly give some additional context. This movie is about the experience of growing up and letting go of the past, something we all experience in our lives, and should speak to every viewer on at least some level. Pixar has truly outdone themselves (once again) with Toy Story 3, and in my mind it tops all that came before it. Not to be missed at any age.

Futurebirds

2010-06-28T09:19:00.001-04:00

Cover of the upcoming Futurebirds LP, Hampton's Lullaby

I know I'm on a bit of a music kick lately but bear with me, it's all awesome stuff and I have some geeky posts in the pipeline. My latest obsession is the "psychedelic country" band, Futurebirds, and I've had them on heavy rotation for the past week or so. They sound like an awesome cross between Yeasayer and Dr. Dog, particularly on tracks like "MJB" (available below) off their self-titled EP. The band's upcoming release, Hampton's Lullaby, is due on July 27 and I was lucky enough to give it a spin early.

Futurebirds present a really amazing conflux of divergent musical styles. They're not an indie or jam band by any stretch of the imagination but are clearly influenced by those genres. Most intriguingly they experiment with distinctly country sounds, recontextualizing them in ways that aren't exactly country/alt country but are definitely of that ilk. This is something very interesting and, for lack of a better word, psychedelic. Tracks like "Happy Animals" and "APO" really open up and let you get lost in them, someplace between a honky tonk and a lucid dream.

Not that the bands are at all similar but the whole effect reminds me of Radiohead in a lot of ways, especially in terms of how Futurebirds's songs often sound too big for their production. Each track on Hampton's Lullaby sounds like the CD format is barely able to contain the music for all its sheer epicness. I have a really hard time imagining these guys playing at a rock club, to me it seems like they'd have to play an outdoor venue for the setting to fit their sprawling songs. If they can get the effects to sound right then these guys must put on a hell of a live show, and I for one am excited to check em out if they ever make it to Canada.

Futurebirds is the best new band I've heard in a really long time. I'll be very surprised if they don't get huge attention and acclaim come the July release of Hampton's Lullaby. Definitely check em out, MP3s and relevant links below:

Johnny Utah
MJB (via hearya.com)
MySpace
Stream or Digitally Download the Futurebirds EP

Dan Mangan and Shane Koyczan

2010-06-22T10:48:00.003-04:00

Shane Koyczan (left) and Dan Mangan (with guitar)

I recently came upon a post at chromewaves.net that reminded me how awesome it is whenever Dan Mangan and Shane Koyczan perform together. I first heard Koyczan in the fall of '08 when a friend played me a recording of his poem "My Darling Sara," and I was immediately struck by his clever and poignant lyricism. A few months later Mangan's song "The Indie Queens Are Waiting" popped up as a track of the day on CBC Radio 3, and I quickly became a huge fan. I actually included his fantastic "Road Regrets" on my recent Max Rambles Mix Tape Vol. 1.

At some point in early '09 I stumbled across a live medley of Mangan's "Not What You Think It Is" and Koyczan's "Stop Signs." Both pieces are incredible in their own right, but together they form an unforgettable and unparalleled whole. Mangan's song perfectly accentuates Koyczan's poetry and combined they're positively transcendent, and the track continues to blow me away every time I listen to it. Now I've stumbled upon a second medley of Mangan's "Tragic Turn of Events" with Koyczan's tragic "Move Pen Move," and it's every bit as powerful as the first.

Below I'm including the two medleys as downloadable MP3s, as well as Mangan's "Road Regrets" and Koyczan's "My Darling Sara." These two artists are among the very best working in Canadian today, and you'd be a fool not to check them out.

MP3s:
Tragic Turn of Events / Move Pen Move (Via chromewaves)
Not What You Think It Is / Stop Signs (Live) (RapidShare, click Free User)

Dan Mangan - Road Regrets (via chromewaves)
Shane Koyczan - My Darling Sara (via House of Parlance)

LOL: ThinkGeek Served Cease and Desist for Fake Product

2010-06-22T10:48:00.000-04:00

ThinkGeek, the popular online store for original geek clothing and paraphernalia, was recently served with a cease and desist letter by the National Pork Board. The claim states that the website infringed upon the NPB's trademark on the slogan, "The Other White Meat" (umm, gross). It's true that ThinkGeek used the phrase "the new white meat" in advertising for their product, Canned Unicorn Meat. However it's also true that the Unicorn meat is a fake product launched as an April Fools day prank, and thus protected as a parody.

I'll bet the lawyer(s) at the NPB are really embarrassed right now. I would be too if I outed myself as a humourless moron in such a dramatic fashion. To celebrate this memorable occurrence ThinkGeek is offering $10 off any purchase of $40 or more until June 30, just enter the code PORKBOARD at checkout.

It's days like this that I really love the internet.