The Subtlety of Grandness

Things were looking so great on Montlake. Romar has his best team since Nate Robinson and Brandon Roy were balling on the floor (and this 2009 group is arguably better). UW is coming off its first outright Pac 10 championship in a couple of generations. Sure, we lost Jon Brockman and Justin Dentmon, but we got one of the best high schoolers in the country in Abdul Gaddy. Isaiah Thomas was the Pac 10 Freshman of the Year. Venoy Overton is the Pac 10s most suffocating defensive player. Quincy Pondexter is the only senior, but he’s come of age and is approaching B-Roy territory in terms of talent and experience. And UW is so deep that pretty much every player could start at any other school in the conference.

And then this happens….

Damn you, Sports Illustrated! Damn you!!!!!!

I’m on an Inspector Lewis binge of late, courtesy of Netflix. I remember watching Inspector Morse a decade ago, starring the late, great John Thaw. Based on the Colin Dexter mystery novels, I liked to think of that show as Murder in Middle England(TM). Oh, Middle England, that idyllic, almost fictional place where Oxford dons indulge in murder while quoting Greek poetry. Lewis was Morse’s subordinate as well as his foil; a blue-collar detective trying to keep up with his classically-educated partner. Now, years later, Lewis has his own show, and this time he’s been given a Cambridge-educated subordinate. I prefer Inspector Lewis to the CSIs and NCISs of the world. You won’t find any zany high-tech detective work here (and, as a corollary, any obligatary nerdy characters who do all the fancy enhance-this-grainy-cell-phone-image-into-a-pristine-billboard-sized-color-photo fantasy tech). And on top of being a good show, Inspector Lewis makes lush use of the always beautiful Oxford as a setting. Having been there twice, I enjoy remembering wandering around the colleges and finding a nice English meadow to lay down in and stare up at the sky. It’s how I recharge my spiritual battery.

I’m a bit bemused by everyone diving headfirst into Dragon Age this week, because I’ve already been there. Back in July I was one of three people outside of EA/BioWare to be given the full game for preview purposes. I blew threw it in about 60 hours, and loved every second of it. Now that the game is out, I’m diving back in. It’s staggering how many different ways the plot can unfold; which characters will you keep? Which will you kill? What path will you choose? It’s all good. This is easily BioWare’s best and biggest RPG, and as a fan ever since the original Baldur’s Gate, that’s saying quite a bit.

And gaming gets even crazier this week with Modern Warfare 2. And, no, I haven’t played that one yet.

I feel like I need to give this movie a do-over because I fell alseep about 2/3 of the way in. It was actually engaging me, but the problem was that I’m still exhausted from my whirlwind trip to Michigan (see the following post) and the combination of the dark theater room combined with a lot of dark scenes just killed me. Still, I remember enough to know that this quirky movie is definitely not for everybody. The humor is hit and miss, not to mention very subtle at times. “Inspired by a true story,” it says at the beginning, it’s difficult to make out just how much of this is for real and how much is fantasy. I have no doubt the military must have blown some cash in the 80s on trying to develop paranormal warfare, but the truth is probably weirder than we can imagine. It did feel awfully weird that this movie begins in Ann Arbor, where I just was on Friday. It’s a sign.

If you’ve wondered where I’ve been the past few days, the answer is Michigan. Actually, flew out Thursday and back Friday, but going cross-country twice in less than 36 hours has a way of really screwing your body up, so I spent all of Saturday in bed. It’s Sunday and I’m still exhausted. I had a 20 hour day on Friday, beginning with breakfast and a drive around Ann Arbor to a 5 hour flight back to San Francisco that got me in bed around midnight Pacific. Now I have a big decision to make.

Anyway, proof I was there.

Photo © Parris

GRRM had a book signing in Belfast today, and he brought along Maisie Williams (Arya Stark), Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark), Richard Madden (Robb Stark), Kit Harrington (Jon Snow), Alfie Allen (Theon Greyjoy), and Ron Donachie (Ser Rodrik Cassel).

Greenlight the damn series already, HBO! And GRRM, write like the wind!

I love magazines, which is a big problem because I don’t like to throw them away. My room is filled with stacks of them. I like having them around no matter how old they are, because they’re time capsules. There’s nothing I like better than cracking open a Time or a Newsweek from a year ago or 20 years ago. It’s like getting a synopsis of the major news of the day, as well as the cultural and popular trends. You can even learn a lot from the ads. (My favorite are magazines from the 70s; there’s a ridiculously silly amount of faux wood paneling on every consumer product out there). For a history major like me, magazines are a treasure.

My favorite magazine is The Economist, which is a fantastic read if you’re interested about, well, anything, from global events, politics, business, and science. It’s smartly written and brilliant, and at the very least you owe it to yourself to get the annual Holiday issue. Next up is The Atlantic, probably the most prestigious American magazine around; it’s founders were guys (and gals) with names like Emerson, Longfellow, and Stowe. It published Mark Twain and Emily Dickinson. And while the current stable of writers such as James Fallows and Robert D. Kaplan aren’t quite Mark Twain, they remain insightful and intelligent. The Atlantic is something you should read if you’re interested in the idea that is America. And then there was my guilty pleasure: Entertainment Weekly. I’d been a fan of EW since it’s debut in 1990. In the pre-Internet age, it was the way that a kid in the Northwest corner of the country could keep up with the latest movies, music, and books on a weekly basis. It was such a revelation when it appeared; here was the equivalent of Time or Newsweek, but for popular culture. Over the ensuing decade, it became a constant companion anywhere I went. And I was so proud and gobsmacked the day I found out that one of my compatriots from The Daily was on staff by reading her byline.

And then I canceled my EW subscription on Saturday.

It’s sad to say, but the magazine doesn’t speak to me anymore. It’s not because Aintitcool and Televisionwithoutpity and MSNBC all feed my constant fix for information about movies and television. I’m a purist. I like print. I like paper. I like being able to roll up with a magazine anywhere, in any position, whether it’s dangling upside down on the couch or sitting on the porcelain throne or in those “please stow all electronic items at this time” moments during takeoffs and landings. And you already know I love throwing magazines into a stack in my room, in case the Big One should hit San Francisco and, centuries from now, when the archeologists finally get around to digging up the remains of my place they can discover a treasure trove of magazines. The reason I killed my EW subscription is the fact that the magazine is no longer interested in me, probably because I’m not a teenage girl. How many times can the editors shove a Twilight cover or mention on the cover? What’s with all the pages devoted to “Where can I buy that scarf that Leighton Meester wore in that episode of Gossip Girl?” Why is there so much more focus on gossip and celebrity? Screw that. In its race to appeal to the People demographic, EW left behind longtime fans like me. If we wanted People, we’d buy that stupid, vapid, empty calorie magazine.

Of course, the problem is that I’m such a longtime fan. As in, I’ve been reading since 1990, which means I’ve got to be more than 25 and probably (*gasp*) over 30. I’ve never understood the lavish devotion to the “tween” set uber alles. They don’t make money. Guess who bought a luxury sedan, a 50-inch plasma, a high-end PC, and a second iPhone in the past two years? Probably not them.

So I’ll stick with The Economist and The Atlantic. And you know what’s really great about The Economist? Here’s a magazine that not only refuses to dumb down its content, but it’s practically the only magazine in the industry whose advertising revenue grew last year. And they not only grew, but they grew by a sizzling 25-percent. In the meantime, every other magazine is dying or desperately trying not to die; Time, Inc., which publishes EW, has laid off hundreds in the past year. Here’s a hint, EW: There’s a lot of money to be had in catering to people who like to be well informed.

Month three of the blog arrives. This is post #70, so averaging slightly more than one per day. I’m happy with it.

This is also a big week, though I can’t explain exactly why right now. I am leaving on a jet plane for a couple of days, though.

Also got my scanner dusted off and working again. My Dell is really turning into the digital hub of my life. Busy scanning documents now, not to mention shredding sensitive ones. (I’ve got a Fellowes shredder for that!) I love Canon’s LiDE line; excellent image quality, USB-powered, and very portable. I remember back in 2003 I could slip it into my old LiDE into a messenger bag  along with my old Pismo G3 PowerBook and scan documents and books at the UW libraries. Very handy. Though one complaint I have is that the CanoScan software needs serious updating in terms of its visual look. It looks like a Windows 3.1 app.

Wow, things have changed since I first played Left 4 Dead 2. I was up at Valve in May, prior to the announcement, to get the scoop, and at that time I played through the entirety of The Parrish campaign, which was awesome because Valve only had the first two levels playable the following month at E3. Those two levels comprise the demo that’s available now, and Valve’s done some tinkering. The biggest change is the hazmat zombies don’t seem to be around anymore. Instead, we’ve got the new riot trooper zombie, who is awesomely tough because of all that armor. You can’t shoot them in the front; they’re only vulnerable from the rear. I also like the new weapons; they feel more “real” than the spray-and-pray guns of the first game. The visuals are also a lot more polished, but that’s not surprising since I played on builds that were compiled the morning that I visited. Can’t wait for the rest of the game.

About 20 years ago I amassed the entire Robotech RPG collection. I was a huge Robotech fan, and the RPG books from Palladium were absolutely wonderful. I never really played, but they were chock full of so much information and detail that they were pretty much must-haves if you were a fan. Then, I put them in storage when I went off to college. And–you can probably guess what’s coming–the parentals threw them out/sold them so they could turn my bedroom into a sewing room. Every now and then I get the urge to reform the collection for nostalgia’s sake, but complete sets rarely appear on eBay, and when they do the price isn’t worth it. You can’t even buy them from Palladium anymore because it ran out of stock in the early 90s and the books haven’t been reprinted since.

And then this week I found out that someone had scanned the books and turned them into PDFs. As soon as I discovered that I warmed up the bit torrent client and grabbed them. The quality is pretty good save for Book #1, which is a bit low-res but still totally readable. Ahhhh, 1989 here I come!