Action!

I just watched "Bolt" and now I feel compelled to talk about it. It's been sort of on my list since the Batman trailers. I now understand WHY it was in that group of trailers (you know, mixed in with Watchmen, Terminator Salvation, and Quantum of Solace).

Bolt, for those of you not in the know, is the story of an ordinary dog raised in a TV studio to believe it's the real world, that he really has super powers, and that he and his human are really fighting for their lives against the evil Green Eyed Man and his henchmen. The hilarious hijinks ensue when he escapes the set and tries to use his powers in the real world.

I don't actually have much to say about Bolt. It's a cute movie. A digitally animated cross between Inspector Gadget, The Incredible Journey, and every Jerry Bruckheimer movie ever made. It has its hilarious moments, and it has its predictable Disney moments (both the good kind and the bad kind). The hilarious moments generally outweigh the sap, though, and I think Sarah and I gave it 4 out of 5 stars. I don't know what you'd give it, but when I tell you it's a Disney movie about talking animals you probably already know everything you need to know about whether you'll want to watch it or not.

Today, though, I just had to mention the opening action sequence. That has to be the funniest parody of over-the-top action movies I have ever seen. (Spoiler Alert, I plan to at least partially describe it.) I was amused and entertained through Bolt's acquisition of superpowers, the introduction of the Green-eyed Man, and the attempted kidnapping of Bolt and his owner Penny. I started laughing out loud when the kidnappers immediately escalated to attack helicopters (naturally) but I didn't really lose it until the attack helicopters dropped their secret weapon ... motorcycles ridden by bug-helmeted black-clad bad guys .... with electric claws. After that it's so far over the top they can't go back, so they keep going further. It's what might happen if an action show producer looked at a clip and said "That's great, but can you awesomize it by another 30%." I'm pretty sure that's just what they were going for there and they completely nailed it. Well done.

Ultimately, Sarah and I enjoyed it. Also, I want a dog (it doesn't have to have super powers, though that would be nice).

Well, *I* was impressed...

I've been turning a number of blog ideas over in my head, but now I'm so mad that you're getting this one instead.

You see, I bought a bag of M&M's this week and I'm very proud of the fact that I haven't finished them off yet. Sarah, mean person that she is, won't recognize this as the startling and impressive achievement I know it to be. She says the only reason I haven't finished off the M&M's is that I've been pigging out on the chocolate chip cookies she baked this weekend. But I've been good there, too! I haven't had more than six a day! I told her this with pride and she yelled at me as if half a dozen cookies is something to be worried about. So I cut back even further and only ate a few M&M's to make up the difference.

This is a big deal, I'm pretty stoked at my self-control here. It's already Thursday and fully half the bag still remains. Plus this wasn't just a bag of M&M's, it was a medium sized bag! I normally get the extra large. I should be getting all sorts of credit and praise for leaving half the bag after five days! That's pretty amazing. I'm getting no recognition at all for my heroic efforts here. In fact, I'm getting mockery.

It hurts, I tell you. I've been trying so hard. It's a struggle, it really is, and I approach her with such pride only to have my efforts belittled. Well, I've had enough. If I'm going to be shamed for eating too many M&M's, I may as well actually eat too many M&M's. Starting tonight, no more restraint. Besides, we're out of cookies.

Local Flavor

When I talk about our recent move to Syracuse, the first question I usually get from those who have been here before is: "Have you eaten at Dinosaur BBQ yet?" As a matter of fact, I have, but not in Syracuse. They opened a second one in Rochester and Sarah made sure to take me there the first time I went for a visit. The original Dinosaur BBQ is on our list, but having been to one already it has not been a high priority. You should come visit us so we can take you and have an excuse to go ourselves.

In the meantime, Central New York has a number of other local delights to offer. Dinosaur BBQ is famous outside of Syracuse. The others are not as well known, but they are delicious. I know because proud residents have pushed each of them on me in the past few weeks.

Thanks to Dave Hauver, who (if I remember correctly) has family in the area, I had already tried spiedies. They're cubes of meat, marinated in a special spiedie sauce, cooked on a spit, and served in a bread roll. It's one of those local loved foods that has a big following here but rarely appears anywhere else. Local grocery stores sell ready-made spiedie marinade, and there is even an entire festival devoted to this food. Unfortunately, Sarah and I just missed it this time around, but if we're still here next year we'll have to check it out (Dave, we'll make sure to let you know in advance so you can join us).

Sarah had also already introduced me to snappy grillers, often called coneys or white hots. They're white hot dogs made from veal and pork. Sarah's family sent them to her while we were living in Georgia. Like the spiedie, I only encountered the snappy grillers outside Central New York because someone who had grown up with this food loved it enough to personally carry it across state borders to share with others.

Then there are the salt potatoes. I met these things at an airgun show that I was helping Sarah's dad to run. More specifically I was selling the tickets (that's right, I can now honestly claim to have "sold tickets to the gun show"). The cooks selling the food used my presence at the door as a way to advertise their wares. It worked out pretty well for me.

The cook really wanted me to eat some salt potatoes so others would ask for them (he'd already fed me snappy grillers and some Hoffman hot dogs). I'd never heard of them and at first thought they were a strange kind of french fry. Fortunately, Sarah realized my error and stepped in to suggest that I really ought to taste these things. She was right. It's certainly not the healthiest food I've eaten, but it was excellent. The recipe involves small white potatoes cooked in salt water and covered in butter. The food is popular enough locally that, like the other foods I've mentioned, salt potato kits are sold in the grocery store. Some of the out-of-state attendees at this particular gun show make it a point to always bring a bag home with them.

I won't be eating the salt potatoes very often, but I'll keep snappy grillers in the fridge for a rainy day. Spiedies will be tough to make without a grill, but it's nice to know the sauce is available in stores when that time comes. It's right next to the Dinosaur BBQ sauce.

I am going to enjoy eating in this state.

Slow Progress

Today is picture day in our apartment. That is, Sarah and I have been putting our pictures on the walls, something we can do now that the furniture is in place and we can be reasonably certain we won't be changing the layout any time soon. Like everything else in this move, Sarah and I have too many pictures. When we lived on our own, neither of us was particularly shy about decorating. They were different styles, of course, but we both managed to fill our walls. My walls tended to have more dragons and more movie posters, while hers had more lighthouses and more Tiggers. We both had pictures of friends and family (and in a few cases, art BY friends and family). We found a workable compromise at the last place without TOO much difficulty. Most of the Tiggers and the movie posters were put aside until we would move into a place with the wall space for them. This is not that place, they're staying packed for another move.

Picture day has not been very much fun. Gratifying, yes, fun, no. The dining room is complete except for one clock that's going to require a stepladder to put up. The entrance way, the hallway, and the guest bedroom are all set. The living room is killing us. But we'll get there.

The rest of the apartment is coming along, too. Some of Sarah's excess furniture has been returned to her father and more goes back tomorrow. We've filled three boxes with donatable goods (in addition to what we cleared out before we left Atlanta) which should leave the apartment this week. We seem to be finding places for everything else. This apartment is a tight fit, but clearly we needed to trim some of our excesses anyway. We still have more boxes sitting out than we'd like, but we're happy it no longer feels like we're living in a storage closet.

Game Faces

For my first post back in much too long I wanted something profound and fascinating to talk about. Recently it has occurred to me that seeking such a topic has added at least a few months to the delay (same reason it takes me so long to respond to birthday emails from friends I haven't spoken to in a while). Therefore, in the interests of simply getting started again, you're not getting "profound and fascinating," you're getting whatever I'm ready to write now (which is at best "curious and mildly amusing").

I play video games. I particularly like multiplayer games (several players fighting each other) and I especially like cooperative games (several players working together to fight other things). As I’ve mentioned before, it’s a good way for my separated friends to spend time together.

The two most recent games to serve this purpose are Gears of War 2 and Left 4 Dead. Gears of War 2 continues the original Gears story of testosterone fueled warrior-thugs fighting testosterone fueled alien-thugs (who may not actually be aliens). It’s a shameless exercise in bad-assery. Left 4 Dead, on the other hand, skips the testosterone clichés and instead focuses on zombie movie clichés. Indeed, it’s pretty much based on zombie movie clichés, deliberately and proudly so.

But I’m not really interested in comparing the games. I’m more interested in comparing the avatars we use to play the games. Both games do avatars a little differently than other games we’re used to. Most shooter games I’ve played, like Halo, give you a character model and let you choose the colors to adorn it. Other games give you a set of tools to craft an avatar yourself. Most of my friends use those tools to craft cartoon approximations of themselves.


Both Left 4 Dead and Gears of War, however, have already made the avatars for you and all you can do is pick one. This allows them to offer detailed character models that are also dramatically different from each other while still fitting into the story context. Considering that each game is highly dependent on cooperative gameplay, this makes sense. I can pretty much tell at a glance who I’m looking at and know immediately who to yell at for getting in my line of fire (or, more accurately, who I should be apologizing to). In the heat of the battle we’ll use character names if we can’t remember who the human player is behind the mask. “Cole you’ve got incoming on your left!” is much easier to both say and interpret than “Red guy with the yellow skull symbol.”

We do try to be consistent, though, because “Diehl” is even easier to interpret than “Cole.” So we play the same characters whenever the games permit. In Gears of War, Diehl is always Cole, Pennock is always Tai, and I’m always Baird. The goal is to reach a point where I see “Cole” and I think “Diehl.”

Apparently we’re being consistent across games, too. It wasn’t planned, which makes it even more interesting. Now two games does not constitute a trend, but I’m going to treat it as one anyway. In Left 4 Dead, Diehl plays Louis and Pennock plays Francis. For those of you who are not familiar with these characters, let me provide you with some pictures:



Curious. Diehl always plays as a black man, and Pennock always plays as the tattooed guy. I wonder what that says about them? Is it video games as wish-fulfillment? Or could be video-games as a chance to be “other”?

Perhaps I shouldn’t wonder too hard. After all, I play Zoe.