Hollyworldview

I suppose it’s a "chicken or the egg" type thing. Or maybe not. Maybe they both just started very small but quickly formed a symbiotic relationship, feeding off of each other until becoming the monster we have today.
I’m talking about the philosophy of entertainment media and the philosophy of the average American.
Yesterday I watched "Dan In Real Life" with my wife and parents. Great movie, by the way. But like so many movies, it promotes a concept for relationships that is juvenile. In fact, the overly-dramatic junior high daughter, who thinks she knows what it means to love a boy after knowing him only three days, is the character from whom we ultimately "learn our lesson." It turns out that the dad in this film was wrong the entire time to insist that his junior high daughter doesn’t know what that kind of love is. Turns out he was wrong to keep his daughter from dating this boy she "loves" until they are both a couple years older. Once again, according to Hollywood, adults are stupid and only kids in high school(or now JUNIOR high!) know anything of real value.
The film went back and forth between calling love a "feeling" and calling it an "action". At least they get credit for referring to love as an action part of the time. Of COURSE there is intense emotion that accompanies love much of the time. But if love is nothing more than a feeling, then we can’t love anyone while being angry, hurt or dissapointed with them at the same time. Does that really make sense to anyone?
Movies and songs have been telling us for decades that love is this magical feeling. We don’t want to define it, just keep it a vague warm fuzzy. And people across the US are giving up on their marriages or dating relationships because they’ve "fallen out of love", as if they had no control over it.
In an effort to create drama or "relatable" characters, we see moral standards dropping in movies at an ever increasing rate. And the parallel in the real world is hard to miss.
Now, I should say that I’m an artist. A creator of fiction. I want my characters to be relatable and realistic. I don’t see a problem with flawed characters in fiction, as long as we do not glorify or validate their flaws as acceptable and good. But with parents increasingly expecting others to teach morality to their kids, how do we keep people from gaining their sense of truth, ethics and life expectations from what they see in entertainment media?
I don’t have a clue. I guess it just has to be one parent, one friend at a time, bringing up meaningful topics, discussing the underlying philosophies of music and film over Starbucks or beer and pizza.
We’re the generation of nonconformity, right? So let’s take our place as non-conformists and be willing to discuss the philosophies presented in entertainment, and part ways with them when there’s a better option for real life.

Heroes Hits The Reset Button

I finally caught up on the two hour "Heroes" premiere. Pretty good stuff, although I'm concerned the show has veered from one of its strengths: Character.

In true 90's comic book fashion, this season has seen some major changes in the status quo. Rather than take us deeper into the personalities of these characters, the writers have decided to change their personalities.

Looks like we'll mostly be seeing "evil Peter" this season and Claire may not be far behind. Jessica has found yet another personality, this time with new powers. Nathan has gone kooky on us, borrowing from traditional Christian motifs, yet spouting pop-spirituality ideas about humanity all being "connected" and needing to "save ourselves". (Although the Bible promotes unity and connection to each other, Biblical Christianity, which Peter "seems" to be connected to, is not a "self-saving" philosophy. That's all Oprah.)

Dr. Saresh has gone pseudo-evil and been given powers, too. Thankfully, though, Parkman still seems to be the lovable everyman that I watch the show for. (Don't screw that up, guys.)

For a time, this "shake things up" philosophy worked in comics, too. The death of Superman, breaking Batman's back, Green Lantern goes nuts. But in the long run, we've discovered that respect for the characters and exploring who they ARE, not the crazy thing that happens to them, is what keeps readers coming back.

I don't mind a shake up, but so much changed all at once that the show feels disconnected from the previous two seasons. While it may help to bring on new viewers, and I'll still stick around for the ride, it felt like a slight betrayal of these characters.

Lastly, it was GREAT to see William Katt on the show, but I hope we find out he has superpowers and that we'll be seeing him again. It was a shame to see him leave the way he did.

NeverENDING Nights!

I had stopped playing this game a few months ago because my mouse started freezing up during play and I figured my PC was just getting tired of the game.

A month or so after shelving NWN, my mouse started freezing during other applications, so I've been worried even more about my PC.

But lo and behold, last week I took my mouse with me out of town to use with my laptop and discovered that it is my MOUSE that is defective!

I've been testing my wife's mouse on my PC and haven't had a single freeze. So not only will the "fix"(buying a new mouse) cost less than I'd feared, but I can play my favorite PC game again! Woohoo!!

Game Night!

Game Night
Last Friday I had a blast in Pennsylvania, playing video games all night with my wife's dad and brothers. An HD projector screen, a Wii, PS2, even some SNES and NES games to round things out. The bulk of the night was spent rotating players in and out of "Justice League Heroes", which we nearly beat from start to finish in one night. A couple more hours would have done it, but we were all pretty beat and had other things to do the next day.
The geek highlight of the evening, however, was my bro-in-law’s commodore 64. He had purchased the console on ebay and had a ton of games for it. I only had time to get through a few, but "Forbidden Forest" was easily my favorite.
You play an archer walking through (you guessed it) a forest, and on each stage you are attacked by various threats including giant spiders, skeletons and even a dragon! And that’s just the first three levels!!
This forerunner to Nintendo featured various level backgrounds with layered scrolling to simulate depth of field. Even Ninetendo games weren’t thinking to do that until the second half of the system’s life-span. I was impressed.
The game was also ahead of its time in terms of thematic content. When you kill bad guys, you see blood where your arrow lands. And when you die, you don’t just die. The computer plays this weird psychotic music while a monster stabs/bites/pummels you, blood spraying everywhere. This death sequence lasts at least 5 seconds. (Look at a watch.That’s a long time for such a gory sequence!) Even back then, video games were NOT just for kids!

This is my head

This is my head. An old picture of it, when my hair was shorter. But it's still my head.

I took this picture with a camera phone and missed my face. So it's just my head.

Right now, there's not much in my head, which is why this post is really just a whole lot of me saying nothing.

Course, that seems to be popular these days...

Maybe I should campaign for political office.

Legend Of The Seeker!!

Fantasy Fans Rejoice!!

Terry Goodkind's epic fantasy series is now going to be a TV Series! Even if you've never read the books, go check out the trailer here:

http://www.legendoftheseeker.com/

Looks frickin' sweet!

Sarah's Back!

"Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles" is back for a new season and off to a pretty good start.

I'm wishing right now I could have watched the season finale again before this, as the recap they gave was weak and I felt lost for the first 5 minutes.

I love seeing terminators beat up and looking terrible, yet still pushing on toward their goal. Like some kind of invincible zombie. With the female terminator (crap, I've GOT to try and remember that character's name!) blowing a fuse and going "bad" this episode, we get to see John and Sarah run from her most of the time.

Some great action beats punctuated the episode, although the writing was a little weak at times. While it was great writing to have Summer Glau pleading with John not to kill her (as a trick), it was pretty lame to have John recklessly put the chip back in her head just before they went through with burning her body. I guess it must have "felt like the right thing to do." (Sigh.)

Anyway, I'm glad the show is back. Hopefully some free weekly entertainment again will help me get out of the red in my "fun money" category this month!

Portable Gaming At Last!!

This week, my sister gave me her "hand-me-down" laptop computer. It's a 2005 Dell. Nothing cutting edge, but SUCH a cool thing to have! Primarily, it's cool because I can take my creative work with me to my day job gigs, allowing me to not lose an entire day of personal work while "paying the bills".

But on a blog like this, that's not the most FUN thing to mention! Finally, I can take my gaming on the road! Whether it's a hotel on a road trip, or visiting family out of town, I've got a laptop that (so far) can play my favorite PC games whenever I want!

For me, vacations are about "vacating" my mind, more than anything, so escapist entertainment is a key part of the vacation definition. But often, when we go out of town, I have to leave much of my best escapist entertainment at home, partially defeating the purpose of a vacation in the first place!

So if you can't tell, I'm pretty excited that I can bring Neverwinter Nights and Diablo 2 with me when we go away for awhile, as we'll be doing a for a week, about one week from now.

Anyway, I've spent the whole night downloading, installing and testing software. I totally spaced on doing my podcast, so I need to go to bed so that I'll have the energy to pull that off tomorrow!

See ya!

No More Phoenix GameCon...

I just got a very sad e-mail this week from the producer/organizers of the annual Phoenix GameCon. They are moving out of state and will no longer be running the event. So unless someone else grabs the wheel, I may be missing out on my RPG/Boardgame convention experience next summer! Very sad.

Hopefully SOMEONE will be able to cary on the tradition. It was a fairly good sized convention and I had fun both years that I attended. (I only skipped this year because I went to GenCon.) I'd hate to think that I'll have to start making the trek to ComiCon every year if I want an annual convention experience. That's just way to pricy to do on a regular basis!

Here's hoping the Phoenix GameCon is somehow reborn, better than ever! (Heck, I'll even take reborn "not quite as good"!)

Gustav

I'll be back with a regular post on Wednesday. For now, I hope you guys will join me and take a minute from your day right now to pray for everyone being effected by the hurricane.