How I've been passing time lately

The recent surge in the amount of posting done by Bourgeois Deviant has shamed me into dusting my own intarwebs off and running some material through the pipes. I'll get to some of the observations I've made over the past couple of weeks about all this presidential stuff this weekend. But before I get to that, I wanted to catch up with the random fluff in my life.

TFs: The new series debuted a couple of weeks ago with a 90-minute feature length first episode. I liked it. There was an edge to it, a sense of danger, that's been missing from the series since... well, ever. Also, the voice actor they wrangled for Starscream is in-freaking-credible. It's like Chris Latta re-incarnated. There are certain words and certain inflections that Tom Kenny just nails. (Does his name sound familiar? You might have heard it in conjunction with the voice acting role he's much more well-known for: Spongebob Squarepants.) I'm not sold completely on the animation style, and it's far too early to say whether the storylines will hold my attention, but it's a much more interesting start than anything from Armada/Energon/Cybertron gave us. Oh, and I could not be more pleased that it's not CGI.

I was really and profoundly disappointed in the figures that came out in 2007. After doing so remarkably well with the Cybertron and Classics lines, they really screwed the pooch with the movie line. About the only one I actually like from the movie line is the leader-class Optimus, and it took me six months to actually get it. Hasbro just had miserable problems with distribution, and the eBay vulture jackasses just couldn't get enough of them.

So my collecting in 2007 was largely centered around G1 reissues and Japanese exclusives. The best stuff I got last year: G1 Sixshot, Encore Optimus Prime (another reissue of the original, but the first one I've ever owned), THS-02 (which is well worth the money), Big Convoy (it's a given that I would own a Transformer that turned into a woolly mammoth), the Revoltech Optimus and Megatron figs, and the 2003-ish reissue of Landcross.

For as simple as they are, can I just say that the Landcross set is a hell of a Transformer. It's a character from the latter Japanese series Victory, and is made up of six smaller bots. The figures are all of a sophistication you would expect from any Transformer hailing from the 80s (not a lot of movement aside from what's necessary to go from one mode to the other, not very accurate vehicle designs, etc.). The really fun thing about these guys - for me, anyway - is that each of the six individual robots can combine with any one of the other five (one becomes the lower body, the other becomes the upper) to form a new, larger robot. So you have the six individuals, 30 different permutations of 2-bot combos, and the 6-way combiner. That's 37 different robots, people! The mind boggles.

Rubik's: I was looking for a present for the secret Santa exchange at work last month, and decided on a Rubik's Cube. At the same time, I picked up a Rubik's Revenge for myself. Now, I never had figured out how to solve a cube back when I was first given one in the early 80's, though I did learn the unique art of taking it apart and putting it back together in order. It was unsatisfying, and like most Rubik's Cubes from the 80s, it sat in a drawer or a box until it was finally given away.

Mom brought me a 25th Anniversary cube to play with when she came to visit me at WHC a couple of years ago, but aside from making that checkerboard pattern, I didn't really delve into it at all, and it too sat around on a bookshelf for a couple of years.

Buying the cube for a co-worker and the Revenge for myself tugged on that peculiar thing in my brain that starts obsessing over a thing, and for the past few weeks it's been my mission to once and for all figure out the Rubik's cube.

When you buy a Rubik's these days, you get a little instructional pamphlet that optimistically calls itself "7 Step Solution Guide." Yeah right, I said.

There are two things that are key to understanding how to do a cube, and both of these things I was clued into by the Guide: 1) You need to figure out just what "U R Ui Ri Ui Fi U F" means, and 2) You need to stop thinking about solving the cubes in terms of sides, and think more along the lines of edges. The second one is a pretty fundamental concept to actually solving the thing, but had never really occurred to me. Instead of just shooting for one side, then moving on to another, trying not to mess up what you've already done, think about getting the green pieces all on one side, but making sure that the green, yellow and orange corner ends up in the right space. Surprisingly enough, once you get through this first quantum level of understanding, the little instruction pamphlet actually works.

Now, this being 2008, people have had almost three full decades to work out the math behind the cube. Surprisingly, an optimum solution (what they call God's Algorithm) has been theorized but still not found. But there are a bewildering array of strategies for solving the cube. They have names as obscure and intriguing as opening chess gambits (Fridrich method, Petrus method, ad nauseum), and all are - at this stage in my Rubik's evolution (Rubolution?) - entirely unintelligible. I'm still - and may ever be - at that stage where I can parrot the moves to get a cube from scrambled to not. But I really what to figure out and understand natively how to get pieces pointed in the right direction.

Parallel to this, I've also been discovering the culture that exists around the Rubik's cube. The most popular iteration of this are the Speedcubers. They, as you may have already guessed, try to get the shortest times in solving a Rubik's cube or any of its ancestors (the 4x4 Rubik's Revenge cube, the 5x5 Professor's Cube, pictured above, and even a 7x7 custom-made cube). There are sites that discuss the various solving strategies, sites that show you, step-by-step, how to solve your hopelessly scrambled cube, and even a few places with software you can download and play with virtual cubes as large as 20x20 (!).

So, sitting on my desk right now are unmolested Rubik's Revenge and Rubik's Ice cubes (because solving these things is fundamentally different from solving a standard 3x3 cube), the aforementioned 25th Anniversary cube, and a 3x3 cube keychain. And I'm just getting warmed up.

On NBEs and the BEs that love them

Part I: Preview Screening

So, the one thing I was sure I’d be blogging about several times over the past several months was the new Transformers movie. I do a disservice to the extraordinary amount of mental energy I’ve invested in anticipation by not writing about the movie, about the Transformers in general, and about some of the observations I’ve had about the fandom (of which I am undeniably a part) as the excitement surrounding the movie reached a fever pitch.

First, the mechanics of my experience with the movie.

On June 22, I got in to work and got an email from our Marketing guy. His contact at the Examiner was offering passes to the preview screen. Of Transformers. June 28. Six days before the mass market release.

I’ve never hit the lottery or had anything with a similar level of outrageous awesomeness happen to me. This was the closest to that feeling I’ve ever had. I mean, the Transformers have been a solid obsession with me for the past five years, and I consider it likely that I’m the biggest fan of the franchise among my friends & acquaintances. So when the guy from the Examiner showed up at work with an envelope with my name on it, and in that envelope was a pass for the preview on June 28, it seemed like I’d hit my own special little lottery.

I finally let myself get really psyched for the movie. Those next six days saw me go into a weird state of wanting to immerse myself in all things Transformers, but paying strict heed to my embargo of all things related to the movie – no trailers, no clips, no fora, nothing. For six days, I busied myself as best I could with a sellout show and a new season. I realized that getting to see this movie well before most of the world was a hell of a way to reclaim June 28.

The 28th arrived, and after stopping in Dupont to get Jenn, we headed by cab over to the Loews in Georgetown. We walked in the door at 6:45, went in the direction the folks pointed us, rounded a corner and saw a massive throng of people already in line.

Long story short, the groups who were giving away these passes gave out enough to get 1,000 people in to see this one screening. Problem: The theater where the screening was being held had a capacity of 300. We got in line, and I tried to do a quick count of the crowd that was already there (the line stretched down one side of the 75' corridor we were in, wrapped around and came back about half-way when we got there) and determined that Jenn and I were very close to the bubble. About 10 minutes into our wait, a woman of some official status was counting (out loud, and slowly duh) the number of people in line. Jenn and I were 278 and 279.

The fatal flaw in their counting system was that there was literally no control over folks cutting closer to the front. What would happen was (and I saw this at least four different times, including with the jackass right in front of me) one person would be in line, then at about 7:15 or 7:20 or 7:25, five of this ass’s friends would show up and get in line where he was.

The line starts moving around 7:25 or so, and moves at a slow, steady pace. Around the bend... just 75 feet from the entrance, until we’re in... 50 feet, line still moves... 40 feet, then 30. I start counting people ahead of us... 18, 16, 12, 10.

The line stops dead.

Someone with the theater runs in, presumably to count seats. A few minutes later, he reappears, “We have room for one person.” Jenn encouraged me to go, but there was no way I was going to have dragged her down there, only to not get in. No one else took them up on that offer. Dude goes back into the theater.

At this point, there’s a family of five and a group of three (including two line-jumpers) in front of us.

A few more minutes later, dude comes out again and lets the family of five in. Then they start handing out free passes to a movie called “Hot Rod”. Small consolation.

Jenn and I were the 304th and 305th people in line.

And I can’t remember a time in my life when I have been more disappointed, more crushed, than I was as I was leaving the movie theater that evening. Jenn suggested seeing something else, since we were there already. I wanted, and still want, nothing more to do with Loews Georgetown EVER.

I could go on and on about how intrinsically unfair that pass system was (i.e., if you’re going to admit two per pass, and there are three people in line, you damn well better get two passes from them, before they even get in line), but there’s no point. The end of the story was that after waiting eagerly for three years and standing on line for over an hour, I did not get in.

I made two resolutions that night: Never patronize Loews Theaters (or, at the absolute minimum, never Loews G-town), and never, ever leave the house on another June 28. Two of the past three days named thus have been positively awful experiences.

Part II: The Movie

I bought actual, physical tickets for ourselves after work on Friday the 29th. Guaranteed seats, for the very first performance for which I could get them, Monday 7/2 at 8:00pm. We showed up at the theater at Gallery Place right around 7:00, and lo and behold there was a line there too. I started gritching, but it was not necessary.

The movie started, then ended. And I felt a little empty. Granted, I enjoyed it as only a Transformers partisan can. The designs weren’t one-tenth as bad as everyone had been saying they were (I saw the designs, but thought maybe I was missing something since I didn’t hate them at all, let alone with the visceral, send-Bay-death-threats kind of hatred a lot of people were expressing). It was absolutely thrilling to hear Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime again. The arrival of the Autobots on Earth, beginning with their Protoforms crashing in Tranquility and ending with the scene with the five of them and the kids in the alley, brought a tear to my eye. It was, in my biased opinion, one of the most awesome scenes I have ever seen at the movies. There were more than a handful of moments where I was in awe... the scene with Bumblebee and Barricade, where Barricade’s giving chase, running after Bumblebee, and transforms mid-stride, for instance.

But I felt completely removed from caring about Jazz getting killed. I wished they’d spent just a little more time with the robots, especially the Decepticons (who got no character development). And I wished, above all, that Michael Bay would just learn to tell a fucking story instead of butcherschwammering around with the camera all the damn time.

After the first viewing, I decided I would give it a solid 7 out of 10. As an action film, I had a much better time at Live Free / Die Hard the day before.

Then came the second viewing. Jenn and I went up to visit her cousin and his family in Columbia. Their son (age 11, I think) is a huge TF fan but has (obviously) no recollection of the TFs I grew up with. He kept referring to Bumblebee as “Hot Shot,” a character from the Unicron Trilogy (a series of TF cartoons from 2002-2006) who roughly fits the same mould as the Bumblebee character did back in the day.

Two notes about this viewing: First, it was awesome seeing the film with people who really enjoyed it for what it was... a loud, dumb summer blockbuster. Jenn’s cousin’s wife was sitting next to me and was constantly grabbing my arm at really suspenseful parts. Good times.

Second, and the larger point, is that this actually was a fun film. This time around, Jenn and I both remarked, it was much easier to keep track of the battles, to really just make much better sense of the film all around. It stood up very well to a second viewing. Even the bit with the Autobots hiding in Spike’s Sam’s back yard played better.

The human cast was much stronger than I thought it was going to be. For the next film, they’d do well to keep Sam & his parents, along with Epps and Josh Duhamel’s character. I can do without the Aussie chick and Donut Boy. And since I know they’ve already signed Megan Fox for TF2, I guess there’s no getting around her (I do hope they tone down the make-up a little bit next time around). Since they were going to shutdown S7 at the end of the movie, my guess is Turturro’s not coming back. Good thing, that, since his character, which wanted to be a cross between MiB baddass Tommy Lee Jones and ID4 lunatic Brent Spiner succeeded in getting close to neither.

Part III: Why aren’t fans happy?

Since my first viewing of the film two weeks ago, I caught up on a bunch of the opinions that have been going around about the film (remember, I was on a movie-info embargo until after 7/2). As near as I can tell, there are two main threads to the complaints about the film:

1) The designs of the robots blow chunks, and
2) It’s not G1!!!

For the first gripe, I think that’s ultimately going to fall under the realm of personal preference. I think the designs were hit or miss, but were largely spot on. I do think they could have done a better job with Starscream’s biped mode. But overall I was really impressed with the designs, even if the stills left me a little leery when they were first publicized. I mean, you don’t get much more badass than Barricade.

The second one I present is a generalization of all the other bitching folks have done (aside from complaints about the movie plot or camera work or other mechanics about the movie itself... these two are the more overarching complaints). People complain that Prime wasn’t Prime-like, or other gripes about the characterizations. The problem is that these complaints are based on assumptions people have made based on their knowledge of (and love for) G1. The issue I have with those complaints is this: The movie was intended to be a fresh retelling of the Transformers story. There’s no Ark crashing into a volcano. There are no space bridges, no Iacon, no Teletraan-1. These are not the Welkertron and Optimus Cullen characters from the 80s. Orci et al used the same archetypes for the Autobots, true, but they’re not the same. They weren’t intended to be. To use an analogy from broader popular culture, it would be the same as if people complained (and I’m sure some did) that Burton’s Batman didn’t use the same Pow! and Splat! bubbles as in the original TV series.

All of that said, I think Hasbro’s missing something or skirting around something that is becoming more and more evident: Transformers needs to return to its roots. They need to pick up from the original G1 storyline (pick a spot... between Season 2 and the movie, or after Season 3, or after Rebirth) and spend some quality time invested in fleshing out the original mythos.

Last year, I started trying to map out all the various ways in which the Transformers mythology has twisted and bent from its original roots. It’s too complex a project. I mean, I have something close to a finished product (though with plenty of problems that I might or might not ever resolve) but the very fact that something like this is even necessary is disheartening. I yearn for a central authority to take control of the supporting fiction and make something canonical out of all of it, much the same way as Lucas does for Star Wars.

I want them, once this whole Transformers: Animated thing is out of their system, to go back and look at the core of the mythology and look at what really works (i.e., what elements keep reappearing in line after line, despite the continuity reboots), things like Optimus & Megatron, the Dinobots, the Quintessons, Omega Supreme, Combiners, realistic transformations, the Decepticons as a truly malevolent, dangerous and violent threat (G1 Megatron wouldn’t have ripped Jazz apart even if he could have), frame all those things within the established G1 cartoon universe, get folks like Flint Dille and Bob Budainsky back at the desk, and start doing some quality storytelling. To hell with having 60 characters on screen. We don’t need that. Flesh out a few characters every episode. Give Optimus a small core group to work with. Then do stuff with them. Kill one of them off. Send them on far flung, off-screen missions to give some other characters screen time (and giving Prime and Megatron some new dynamics to work with). Or better yet, have Prime and Megatron as truly awe-inspiring characters who show up every once in a while once one of these core groups muck things up and need a little deus ex machina help. I don’t know. All I know is that Hasbro has been spiraling closer and closer to G1 ever since Robots in Disguise in 2001. They just need to embrace that and get back to what works.

OK, I’m done talking about robots for a while.

Best. Video. Ever.

No, really. If MTV played shit like this, I'd watch. Hell, if anyone at all played this, I'd watch.

Roll out!

It's been officially "greenlighted". It's gonna happen. For real.

[CHECKYPANTZ gets jiggy with it.]

Michael Bay directs. Spielberg's throwing money at it.

If I see it less than four times next summer, I'll be surprised.

Awwww yeah.

Poor Richard's Poker Genius (Subtitled)

#1 Who knew: SU went and got cool.

I wonder if they'll be offering this as a correspondence course in the near future.

#2: Happy 300th Birthday to Benjamin Franklin. You were prescient enough to warn us about the problems a lack of civility would leave us with. Too bad no one in power actually read your warnings. Ah, civil discourse, we hardly knew thee. You magnificient bastard.

#3: G4TV became my new favorite station today. I tuned in around 8:00 this morning, looking to catch a little of Washington Journal. But the cable's been screwed up of late, and C-SPAN's currently unwatchable. So I start tooling down the dial and I stumble across Kaiju Big Battel. If you don't know what Kaiju Big Battel is, then I am a better person for prompting you with this link: Become a better person. Think Japanese B-monster flicks meets American pro wrestling circa 1987.

Following a Fighto!, G4 went directly into an episode of Beast Wars. Without commercials (a few words occassionally for other shows on G4, but no real ads). Fuck'n great. TV made for me. You know, since I seem incapable of watching four hours of 24 in two days, and have thus relegated myself to either a season of going, "now who's that guy again," or ultimately giving up by saying, "well, no, this show really isn't plausible."

#4: I ♥ Atlantic Monthly. They're celebrating their sesquicentennial this year, and in celebration are re-publishing excerpts of articles that have appeared in the magazine over its history. In the current issue, there's a fantastic article from September 1891 by Woodrow Wilson (yeah, the president... he was lowly college professor when he wrote for the Atlantic) about, essentially, pursuing your own genius. I'll provide a link to the article, but you need to be a subscriber to the magazine to read the whole thing. (See update below.) The best part, though, is Wilson's closing paragraph:

The ability to see for one's self is attainable, not by mixing with crowds and ascertaining how they look at things, but by a certain aloofness and self-containment. The solitariness of some genius is not accidental; it is characteristic and essential. To the constructive imagination there are some immortal feats which are possible only in seclusion. The man must heed first and most of all the suggestions of his own spirit; and the world can be seen from windows overlooking the street better than from the street itself.

He's talking specifically about how what we contemporaneously consider good books in the here & now become immortal works remembered through the ages. But taken more generally, I find it to be an encouragement to that inner genius we all possess - in some of us (ahem), it manifests itself in what folks today might call geekdom. I think, especially as we - and I'm talking chiefly of the GenXers among us - went through our latter high school and early collegiate careers, we fought to try to find that balance, finding an appropriate voice for that genius. And Wilson's point was precisely this: fuck appropriate.
Seriously, this article should be required reading for all high school junior english students. At least, that's when I could have benefitted from it the most.

UPDATE (8:44 AM, 18.jan): As a reader points out in comments, dopes like me can pay for the subscription, but you can read it for free. Atlantic is posting the excerpts from their celebration online at this page. The link to the Wilson article can be found here. So go, read!