Stolen Recognizer

Avenue Q at Lower Ossington Theatre

2012-01-26T00:56:00.000-05:00

I went to see Avenue Q with Sarene, Mike, Clarence, Adrian and a few other people I didn't know.

When I arrived, I learned that Deborah, Patrick, Eugene, Mallory and a few other people I did know were already coming to see it.

This is because Kira, whom I didn't know that well but know a bit better now, is in the show.

The show was amazing.

I'd been looking forward to seeing it since the early 2000s, and in the time I'd been waiting:

1. I'd bought my mother the soundtrack CD
2. I'd tried and failed twice to see it on trips to New York City
3. Everyone I'd sung in choirs with had seen it and kvelled ceaselessly
4. I'd given up my seat to see it in Toronto years later, to a friend who deeply regretted seeing it in my place, having found it uninspired and upsetting
5. I'd started singing and acting in community theatre
6. I'd gone from being an early-twenties B.A. graduate to being a mid-thirties double-bachelor, gainfully employed and in a stable relationship with a girl and two cats
7. I'd loved and lost and loved and lost and loved
8. The Internet has gone from just being used for porn to being used for farmville as well.

Many other things have happened in that time, but sticking to the "working memory" rule of 7+/-2. I decided to stick with that list.

So let's talk about what happens when I finally see the show. Sitting in the seats, they pipe in only the finest of Muppet-and-CTW-related music - from "Put down the Duckie" to "Reading Rainbow", my youth and early adolescence descended upon me in waves, disarming me to any immediate shortcomings of the show.

Not that the show really had shortcomings. The one substitute player, in the role of Trekkie Monster, delivered flawless timing and tone. All of the performers were amazing, though it took me a moment to warm up to Adam Proulx's portrayal of Princeton (his "Rod" was immediately charming, however, and that made it much easier for me to get into the spirit of Princeton). Brian was lost a little bit in the sound balancing - his voice didn't have the same piercing quality as the puppet performers, which threatened to drown him in the cartoony soundscape. And I was also a little guarded about the necessarily-racist portrayal of Christmas Eve. Honestly, her lines are written exchanging Ls and Rs; she's sort of an amalgam of every crass bit of Full Metal Jacket, South Pacific and Mickey Rooney from Breakfast at Tiffany's.

There's something resonant, however, about the initial disgust with the broad portrayal of the human characters. The audience is presented with an immediate cognitive dissonance. You are asked to overcome your initial revulsion with the portrayal in the show, approaching it from a critical perspective. You overcome your aversion to the subversive messages in the songs - that racism is A-OK (in small doses), that the Internet is for Porn, that Schadenfreude is natural and to be celebrated - and start to listen to them like you would a stand up comedian.

Now, no comedian asks you to take their messages and preach them out in the world. But they do, at their best, challenge you to think of their absurd conclusions and what your own absurd opinions were on the subject matter when you walked in and took your seat. The late Patrice O'Neal and Chris Rock are particularly adept at this, getting the audience to follow them down a winding path, accidentally drawing a horrifying conclusion about themselves. It's not that they mean it; it's just that self-examination yields some troubling outcomes.

So, dark comedy would shine out of the writing.

But the greater part of the magic was the effortless way that the players directed my gaze - I started, as an actor, obsessively trying to watch their presentations, their faces, their body language - to the puppets themselves. With their eyes focused on their puppets, Kira and Adam and the rest were clearly stepping out of their own shoes and investing themselves in the puppets' stories. I couldn't help but follow along.

I'm glad I saw the show when I did. Had I been who and where I was when the show premiered almost ten years ago, I would have squirmed my way through it. This time I just watched, and laughed -- too loudly -- and occasionally gave in and sang.

Drive

2011-11-03T17:38:00.000-04:00

A little like Brick in a car, via Parker.

A lot less talking. A lot fewer characters. Less stylized; less affected. (Not saying that's universally good or bad; it worked for this story, is what I'm saying.)

The bottom line is that you've got young master Ryan Gosling being a guy-good-at-a-thing, driving a car around LA, and he gets "mixed up" (to put it glibly) in a series of elaborate relationships regarding money, power, obligation and ultimately life and death. You've got Carey Mulligan as a girl on the edge of his perception. And you've got Bryan Cranston, Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman using their veteran acting skills to build an amazing tapestry of criminal hierarchy, with just a hint of affectionate Jewish comedy bubbling under the blood-streaked surface.

It's an excruciatingly intense two hours. You could cut yourself on Gosling's precision, and in this sense it's almost worth watching right after Brick to contrast with Joseph Gordon-Levitt's scattered, obsessive, brainy mile-a-minute internal patter.

But it was suggested to me that a much better way to dull the edge of this film's knife-twisting atmosphere in LA is to follow it with The Big Lebowski. And that is what I'm going to do the next time I host a movie night: Drive and Lebowski.

I'm so excited for this notion I could plotz.

Attack the Block

2011-08-22T01:29:00.000-04:00

Predator.

Bromwell High.

Assault on Precinct Thirteen.

The London Riots of 2011.

Doctor Who.

I really, really wasn't ready to enjoy this movie quite so completely. I really reacted viscerally, emotionally to the mugging at the beginning of the movie. I fell right into the director's trap, almost rooting for the invading alien when the kids to whom my friend, a teacher, referred as "the kind of kids I teach" - meaning poor, at-risk, with violent tendencies - were up against it.

Beautiful manipulation, and it barely took anything.

Of course, the movie was much more topical than may have been intended. Once the cops get involved, in callous opposition to the embattled erstwhile antiheroes, you start to feel unusual about your convictions. Should we be so cavalier about the arrival of "the cavalry"?

A little like Moon and Hobo with a Shotgun, this movie is part of a growing body of evidence that the cheaper you make it, the more personal and the freer from the machinery of spectacle-building, the more awesome the overall experience.

It's why the first Iron Man felt like a real movie, and the second one like a colouring book.

X-Men: First Class

2011-06-14T02:20:00.000-04:00

This was a film with an end in mind - somewhere it had to reach, beats it had to establish before its runtime was up. Xavier had to be crippled, Magneto evil, Beast blue, the lines drawn. This definitely detracted from its fundamental goal, as a movie, of being coherent and not shattering suspension of disbelief (how did Mystique know to put a dopey helmet on Shaw in order to perplex Azazel?) but not interfering with the other fundamental goal of providing a set of action set-pieces, tearful dramatic beats, and superpowered soap opera that near-summer movie-watchers and X-Men fans craved like taquitos.

So it was fun in the theatre, in a '60s James Bond or Austin Powers sort of way. Some lazy storytelling and trope-indulgence - killing Darwin, really?! why didn't he "adapt to survive" by not being the lone African-American in an action movie - and some really half-assed characterization (Rade the eternal Russian, and Ironside acting like Ric Olie from The Phantom Menace) made me roll eyes and grit teeth, and invoking the power of Hannukah Magic was really silly.

And Beast's blue face looked like a Zathras costume, mustn't forget that.

But all of that doesn't matter. Tears in McAvoy and Fassbinder's eyes as Magneto completes his arc with the helpless, despairing Kevin Bacon looking on, reaching desperately for his helmet (and really, the superpowers in this movie MATTERED to the storytelling, in a fascinating way) felt real. Mystique's internal struggle felt honest. Submarines being torn from the water and flights of missiles being plucked from the air made up for the shocking weakness of the special-effects battles in X3.

This felt like a movie taken seriously. And while it is very important not to take everything about the X-Men seriously, it is important always to look like you are. Consequently, this worked, as an X-Men movie.

Countermeasure Public Launch

2011-06-14T02:11:00.002-04:00

My A Cappella choir Countermeasure had a two-hour public launch concert/event that combined us with the Art Battle crowd for a visually and stylistically heterogeneous start to our career as our own thing.

The set list was ambitious, and sometimes we weren't quite able to reach our goals. Musically, I know we have a lot of work to do. But artistically, the show was a success.

This post will expand.

My Fair Lady (Alexander Singers and Players)

2011-06-14T02:10:00.000-04:00

From February to May of this year, I was involved in a production of the Alexander Singers and Players, a musical and community theatre group with whom I've now performed in six shows, going back to 2006.

It was worth my time, and to say that you have to realize just how much time I didn't have, and how much it's worth to me.

It meant that I didn't get to post here, and that I didn't see a lot of movies or read a lot of books. But I did dance a fair bit.

This post will expand.

Black Swan

2011-01-27T01:44:00.001-05:00

So it's been a couple of weeks since I've seen The Black Swan and I've calmed down a little bit. Thoughts a bit jumbled post-hoc, but here's what I thought, in no particular order.

First, that I can a bit callously but affectionately think of it as descended from Fight Club, for obvious reasons, but also from Full Metal Jacket (so I'll call it "Full Feather Tutu"). At its core, you had a message of an artist -- or a human, or a soldier -- pursuing the obliteration of self to give a truly selfless performance. As a performer, and an off-and-on Kendoka, I related very viscerally to her experience. How many times has a music teacher, coach, whatever, shouted at me to turn off my brain, to stop watching myself and just let my heart move me? At least, like, three.

At a high level, there were a number of surprises in the cast, all good. Characters came in with clear "entrances", and there were subtle, creepy inside jokes based around the casting. Winona Ryder's character is stolen from; Winona's shoplifting fiasco was massively publicized. Murders real or imagined; Mila Kunis' role in the baffling sequel to American Psycho, which originalliy featured similar ambiguity. Barbara Hershey's clearly broken character, and her visibly jarring face, subsequent to obvious plastic surgery, perhaps raising a question of a perpetuation of a cycle of abuse. And while there was no outright discussion of anorexia, the camera lingers for a moment on the loose skin and musculature of an older dancer's back midway through the film. It's impossible not to think of both character and actress, in that moment. Conflation of life and art was a loudly telegraphed theme of this movie. Perhaps unintentional was the subsequent disclosure of Natalie Portman's pregnancy by and engagement to the film's choreographer Millepieds.

Obviously this extended to the whole structure of the film, which followed most of the same dramatic beats as the ballet Swan Lake, which is sketched out by the choreographer -- as played by Vincent Cassel, whom I'd mostly known through his roles in Ocean's Twelve and Irreversible, but who's also Monica Bellucci's husband -- early enough in the film for the audience to play along with the game.

Body Horror was all over this movie. Darren Aronovsky is a huge fan of that idea -- Requiem for a Dream was wrapped around it all the way through. Interestingly, it intersects with Kafka's approach in a funny sort of way, with rather than a man becoming a cockroach, a woman becoming a swan. This invites consideration of the Ugly Duckling, although the "ugliness" of the Black Swan herself was actually a sort of repressed carnality, which then calls up all those questions so tritely trodden on in The Da Vinci Code, about sacred versus worldly, religious and intellectual orthodoxy versus the "evil" impulse of human lust. As for the "horror" itself, the movie had some amazing gimmicky shock/jump moments; tension was maintained with fairly expert acumen.

Three more things I want to touch on: first, the question of Black Swan in the context of Nicholas Taleb. Something totally unpredictable? But maybe also something you planned to happen and chose to maximize? Something only possible in "extremistan"? Something real but almost never really glimpsed? A question of a fading elite, with diminishing crowds in the ballet perhaps representing a "thanksgiving event"?

Second, the transformation. How real was Lily? Was her tattoo something that could ever REALLY be allowed on a dancer? Why did she have a tattoo so explicitly tied to a single ballet; didn't she think she'd ever dance The Nutcracker? You'd need a lot of concealer to tread that (though I suppose if Nina could have covered her scratchy scarring/emerging feathers, Lily could have obscured her wings). Pursuant to that there's the amazing transformation Natalie helps Nina undergo, by totally changing the character's physicality in the last scene of the movie, fully embracing the character and disappearing into it, but doing so twice -- both Natalie AND Nina disappear, leaving only this alien creature of supreme sensuality and power. Chilling.

And the third thing, the name "Nina". Yeah, I know it means "child". I know it's one of Columbus' three ships. I also know it's slang (at least, Dr. Dre uses it thus) for a 9mm automatic pistol, a concealed, dangerous weapon. But the weirdest thing is how it lines up with two Ninas in my own life: one of whom is a dancer, and another of whom has undergone a dramatic physical transformation. This movie is full of weird resonance with the real world and the world-within-a-world of the Swan Lake ballet's story. It's only fitting that it should still be stuck in my head weeks after I've seen it.

Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition

2011-01-26T11:46:00.001-05:00

(originally posted to RPG.net's "Other Games Open" forum, about 10 minutes before it was posted here.)

I played Twilight Imperium last weekend and it got right under my skin. The thing is-- while I don't want to say "brilliant", or even "innovative", I do want to say "inspired". A full-on game of conquering a whole damned galaxy, or at least the important parts of it, that's not even a wargame per se: it's almost more of a "civilization" game, with "points" given for the development of technology, culture, political influence and diplomacy.

We played for three hours (and it was our first game, so we really only went up to turn three, six or so victory points) but the overall effect was absolutely breathtaking. Taking a page out of Cosmic Encounter, you have a distinct set of individual successor empires with wildly distinct feels, using only subtle variations within the rules.

But taking a page out of Race for the Galaxy and (as Third Edition calls it, "its greatest new influence") Puerto Rico, there are "non-conflict-based" ways to improve your empire and get ahead in the victory point race.

If I were to consider a fourth edition of Twilight Imperium, I'd think that the best new mechanic to roll into it would be the card-driven wargame mechanic of games like Twilight Struggle and Labyrinth. Those "influence" points on worlds all over the galaxy should be somehow factored into the way points are scored; Political Events don't seem to happen quite often enough to really make a difference. On the other hand, early expansion seems to make a really big difference. Here, racial starting numbers of ships (The N'orr, for instance, with their huge army but single carrier) can swing the game wildly.

But in its cosmic-encounter-like looseness lies a type of wide-open freedom that, even with my often analytically-paralytic group of Enderian calculator knights, allows for a tremendous amount of story-telling and role-playing in the context of a board-based strategy game about building a galactic empire. So, it wins.

Comics, week of January 26th.

2011-01-26T00:34:00.000-05:00

Shortly, we'll be getting Squideye and The Bitter Guy back online for the new year. For now, these are the comic books I'll be checking out this week:

BOOM! Studios
Incorruptible #14 -$3.99
- I'm along for the ride; interested to see where it all winds up.

Dark Horse
Star Wars: Legacy - War #2 (of 6) -$3.50
- I refuse to bother with Legacy War until it's in trade. And at half-price books. SO burned out on fricking Adolescent Rebellion Skywalker and his BS.

Image
Skullkickers #5 -$2.99
- This thing is consistently awesome. Just gets better with each issue. And I like Zub; Zub's the man.

Marvel
Deadpool #32 -$2.99
- I like laughing and being happy. Anyone else interested in these things should be fed a steady diet of Deadpool comics by Daniel Way.

Fantastic Four #587 -$3.99
- This is the one where they kill off Ben Grimm, right?

New Avengers #8 -$3.99
Secret Avengers #9 -$3.99
- Immonen could draw paint drying and I'd just eat it up. Brubaker could write a story about paint drying and I'd be gripped. I wish they'd work together and make the One True Avengers comic. In the meantime, I'll keep up with both I guess.

X-23 #5 -$2.99
- I got a friend who's a pretty big fan. So I pick 'em up with some regularity. Marjorie Liu makes things more interesting than they'd be in the hands of a male writer doing a typical "Wounded Girl" comic.

Thinking back on "Reasons to be Pretty"

2011-01-12T12:51:00.000-05:00

I think I might actually have reviewed this site somewhere else, but as she was mentioned in a recent Ontario press release, I checked out the wikipedia page for Piper Perabo trying to remember whether she'd played a police officer in the play I saw in preview on my last trip to New York.

Looking up the play, however, I saw that it had in fact premiered before the on-Broadway run I'd seen at the Lycaeum theatre. And in its original cast? Nick Sobotka (Pablo Schreier) and Kim Pine (Alison Pill)!

Woulda been cool to see them onstage. Of course, at that point I had seen neither The Wire nor In Treatment or Scott Pilgrim, and so I wouldn't have been confronted with baggage associated with their roles. Either way, that play was pretty darned good.

Piper, of course, I knew from other work, but her character didn't ring of her Lost and Delirious role, which is cool. (She co-starred with Jessica Paré -- now a big part of Mad Men -- and, to an extent, Jackie Burroughs in that movie, which was awesome.)

Seven Wonders

2011-01-08T11:03:00.000-05:00

I played the board game "Seven Wonders" last week with Danny, Eugene, Laura, Samy, Rob and the "team seat" of Ora and Mary-Ellen. Most of us were learning the game for the first time, but it's not terribly complicated. Eugene is a great teacher, and he was willing to step us through the rules without belabouring the details before they're needed.

If I had to fall back on the old "X+Y" paradigm for elevator pitches, I'd say that the game felt like playing Race for the Galaxy but using the mechanics of Guillotine. I love both of those games, so this isn't a bad place to be, though it doesn't quite capture the pure experience of either one completely.

Like Race for the Galaxy (one of my favourite games ever, just on the strength of its theme of "building an empire" and the extreme variation from game to game, which forces players to make a plan but improvise frequently -- strategy plus disruption!) it gives each player a distinct "starting point" -- in Race for the Galaxy it's a home world, which lessens in importance as you go, but in Seven Wonders it's the "ancient wonder" (Colossus of Rhodes, Hanging Gardens of Babylon, etc.) at the heart of a bronze-age city-state -- and lets you expand your empire using a variety of additions, represented by cards, each of which gives you the capacity to more easily acquire other additions in subsequent turns. At the end of the game, based on how much of your "wonder" you've built, and how many additions you've accrued, you score points.

But like Guillotine, every player has access to the same batch of cards, and this access rotates around the table, giving each player a crack at the cards in turn. There are three sets of cards that make their way around the table, and once these sets are exhausted, the game ends. But thematically, Guillotine is one of the most accessible, whimsical games I've ever seen. You play a bunch of executioners during La Terreur, trying to collect the most prestigious collection of heads. The nobles to be executed are lined up, the Guillotine blade makes its way around, giving players the next noble in line -- unless they monkey with things by playing the "action" cards in their hand (tripping nobles, making Marie Antoinette talk about cake and sending her to the front of the line, etc.).

Guillotine is so simple and easy to grasp, conceptually, that it's incredibly fun. Race for the Galaxy, on the other hand, doesn't make sense for the first two games while players try to figure out what on earth all the icons on the cards mean, how they interact and so fort. It's this complexity (because of the similar "empire-building" themes) that Seven Wonders shares that makes it less simple than Guillotine, and consequently not as much of a "game for everyone". And unlike Race for the Galaxy, which lets you develop wildly divergent types of empire, your Seven Wonders empires are fairly limited to libraries, quarries, marketplaces and stuff.

So it's somewhere in the middle, and not quite perfect for either geeky conquerors or unconvinced non-gamers, but it's still fast and fairly simple to play. I'd give it another try to see whether it will hold my interest like Race for the Galaxy, and I'd love to try it with people who don't play too many games. But it's not going to appeal to as many people as Guillotine, I don't think -- it's just a bit too dry -- and I don't think it's going to show itself to have as much depth as Race for the Galaxy.

But those are pretty tough acts to follow.

Louie

2011-01-06T02:50:00.000-05:00

Louis C.K.'s new FX sitcom -- a sort of companion piece in tone to "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" and really, if not for Community and 30 Rock being an NBC block, would make up the best hour of television conceivable -- really works for me in a single sentence: "Dr. Katz but in live action". It's just a very patient sort of show, stunningly non-judgemental; not a lot of laughs but the kind of pathos that only humour can really evoke. It's pretty great.

Highlander: The Source

2011-01-03T18:26:00.000-05:00

From the all-caps Papyrus opening title cards with half-assed narration to the pop-song soft-lit ending makeout with half-assed narration, this movie was a rough ride. True to its low-budget roots, I suppose, but with an insane mess of characters, an ex-nihilo macguffin involving the decay of the world and some kind of astronomical alignment (I'm sure Zeist was in there as well) to the hilarious fast-motion swordfights with the inside-joke spouting nemesis all just begging to be set to Yakkity Sax, this was brutal.

If you're in the mood for an Uwe Boll movie without the big name actors slumming it, it's worth an hour of your time. However, this entails being in the mood for an Uwe Boll movie. Fair warning.

World's Greatest Dad

2011-01-03T12:08:00.000-05:00

Picked this one up at a 3-for-$10 at the Rogers' Video on the way to Eugene's New Year's Eve party, but to be honest I'd been trying to see it for a while. Bobcat Goldthwait, whose comedy is a heck of a lot deeper and smarter than that high-strung Police Academy character I knew him as before (thanks, Meeplemart Steve, for showing me the way there), wrote and directed this movie as a sort of Robin Williams vehicle, and a sort of story about loneliness, isolation, and broken and reconstituted families. I heard about it on Adam Carolla's Podcast last year ('09, actually, at this point), and it sounded dark and twisted enough to stand up to Bad Santa in my "Fiasco Comedy" shrine.

Well, like I say about so many movies, it's not quite as funny or sharp as Bad Santa. That's not a huge strike against it, though; it's going for something a little bit different, though it's still morbidly fascinated with weird sexual obsessions and characters so unrepentantly loathsome that you worry how you'll be able to stand an hour and a half of them.

In this movie, though, the loathsome character is the kid, Kyle (played by Spy Kids' Daryl Sabara, who was charming and awesome in that, and is riveting and awful in this), and as most of the promotional material indicates, Kyle is more of a supporting character: it's Robin Williams' character Lance that is the focus of this film's proceedings. Lance is Kyle's frustrated father, frustrated teacher, frustrated writer who just can't make it work, but tries like crazy not to take it out on people, though Kyle pushes him to his absolute limit. Midway into the proceedings, Lance takes advantage of a horrible (if inevitable) tragedy to bolster his writing career, his teaching career, and his love life.

There's not a whole lot to say about the narrative, as it's generally a simple morality fable about being true to yourself and the people you love, or hate, but either way being honest. There were a lot of "what does that expression mean?" moments from supporting characters -- the kind of awkward pause that can be a tremendous source of humour, but if not carefully managed can make you wonder exactly what a given expression means. I point to shows like Lost or Arrested Development, or films like Iron Man, as examples of works that are carefully enough directed and edited to ensure that no glance, no expression and no pause by an actor is divergent to the story; that they all mean something, and by paying attention to them, we get a sense of what the character is thinking or what their goals are.

But World's Greatest Dad isn't a movie about characters' calculated ambitions; unlike Bad Santa this isn't a movie about well-intentioned schemes and scams that take people into dark and dangerous places. This is a movie about messy people, their messy lives, and what can come to them if they're willing to be lying bastards and play into people's wishes and expectations. The trick, of course, is that to do so is to be so contemptibly insincere as to make honest relationships completely impossible. So there you have the movie's simple dilemma and its concept.

It's not for everyone, but it's oddly sweet. Robin Williams is a totally different kind of father from his character in Mrs. Doubtfire, and he's worth watching in this exercise in nebbishy ambition. It's a bit hard to find -- never got a really wide release, not exactly filling the video shelves and oddly not on Canadian Netflix -- but I'm glad I dug it up.

The Fighter

2011-01-01T16:57:00.001-05:00

So only a few days after reading The Power of One, wherein a kid boxes his way to self-esteem with really good grasp of how to describe the sport to an uninitiated observer (yeah, he has some superpowers, but the book's kinda magical realism anyway) I went with my family to see "The Fighter", a pseudo-biopic about a welterweight boxer named Micky Ward (Marky Mark) and his brother, a wired, dissipated mess of an ex-fighter named Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale). His family, his love interest and most of the town of Lowell, Massechusetts all figure into the story bit by bit, as does HBO to a surprising degree (there's a movie within the movie, which is to say the actual "America Undercover" episode about Dicky Eklund, which is right there on the IMDb for your reference).

David O. Russell directed the movie, and tonally, the film was a lot closer to Three Kings than it was to "I Heart Huckabees". And I'm very glad for that; the trademark of that earlier movie was a deep, dark scenario constantly presenting visceral bodily threat, and yet the whole time, it stayed watchable thanks to charismatic leads and weirdly-textured background players (Spike Jonze in Three Kings, and most of the population of Lowell, specifically the teased-hair, denim-clad legion of sisters in The Fighter). The sheer amount of time I spent laughing largely got me over what I saw as the sort of stock template into which the "inspiring" true events were slotted.

Acting was pretty good all-'round; Christian Bale, unlike Leonardo DiCaprio, can take a larger-than-life role with a wacky accent and, without the viewer having to suspend disbelief, infuse it with all the raw charisma and physicality that it needs. Dicky was really the titular fighter in the movie; every time you saw Bale move, you saw the razor-sharp reflexes, instincts, authority and guile that Micky couldn't find. Every time Micky went into a fight, you saw loss and failure all over his face. You saw intimidation, you saw defeat, and that was really cool; Mark Wahlberg (now that I'm not being dismissive I'll use his non-Funky-Bunch-era name) actually undergoes a journey throughout the movie; though we see it sort of in montage, the arc from "stepping stone" to "contender" is at least clearly communicated in psychological and physical language, in the way Micky stands, in his expression -- there isn't a belabouring of BIG PERTINENT DETAILS with too much third-party explication or otherwise "wackity schmackity doo".

I liked the interpolation of the HBO documentary, which made a suitably David O. Russelly sort of comment on the nature of biographical filmmaking which sort of -- in a VERY lightweight way -- echoes season five of David Simon's theming for "The Wire", without quite getting into Charlie Kaufman territory. Insofar as the way a story is told and reported can create impressions not only in the viewer but in the subject; it's sort of a Heisenberg principle for journalism, because the camera itself is a character.

I think, in fact, that that's the trouble I had with the movie. For the first half, while the HBO documentary is filming, we see a clear camera, a clear perspective; we see the director of the piece in shots with Micky and Dicky, we occasionally pull away to show the camera, and eventually it culminates in most of Lowell watching the feature on TV in bars, houses and a prison rec room. And we're aware of this representation. And then we watch as the movie morphs into a Typical Hollywood Boxing Movie, teasing us with notions that it might be The Wrestler, or maybe even Million Dollar Baby, but is really basically Rocky 2.

Maybe that's the idea -- to leave people cheering, feeling good, voting at Oscar season. But it abandoned the perceptiveness and perspective that made the first hour really smoulder.

In the end a really good flick; no damage quite as traumatic as the in viscero bullet-cam from Three Kings and lots of cute banter (much of it supplied by Amy Adams, fully loaded and unvarnished as a self-respecting, self-aware server at the local bar, and the myriad Eklund/Ward sisters). It sort of handwaves the "one to grow on" lessons about the damage crack and ambition can do to a family, a town., and so forth. Breaking Bad is out there, you can't really compete with that show's depth on the matter, so it was probably a good plan not to get too maudlin about it. And the fighting gives you the basics, though it really only comes into play in the last little chunk of the movie. I would love to have seen more attention to detail given to the camera crew of the HBO Sports team. That would have provided the sort of conceptual continuity, and believable detachment, that the movie needed in order to earn its happy ending.

Yeah, the ending comes right out of "real life". But the facts are no excuse to tell a story in a predictable, pat fashion. The actors didn't let us down, and maybe the direction didn't either, but the structure needed work. Sometimes it's not a matter of technique, it's a matter of attitude and strategy.

An Education

2010-12-30T02:57:00.000-05:00

Because I never need to sleep, I popped "An Education" onto the XBox via Netflix tonight. Actually, this is a lie: I did it because I'd seen Rosamund Pike absolutely break my heart and kill with her eyes, her voice and just about every weapon you don't have to check on an airplane in "Barney's Version" last week, and because someone I once knew told me that it was a really, really good movie.

I think I'd agree.

I used the "star" thingy to give it four of those star thingies, because in a way I didn't think there was much to that last ten minutes after she asks Olivia Williams for a favour. Same sort of thing as in The Power of One (see my blathering about that last week), where, wonder of wonder/miracle of miracles, the smart kid gets everything they ever wanted.

Well, it's hard to begrudge certain kids that. Like The Power of One, the protagonist in An Education is standing in for a real, live person, who grew up fifty or so years ago and wanted to go to Oxford and was smart and witty and maybe teased a bit and learned his or her most important lesson from a series of adults of varying levels of duplicity and protectiveness. Jenny's stunning, flawless poise and her near-perfect rebuttal and dissection of each and every patronizing argument thrown her way was also a bit of a nice contrast to the simple solutions of Shadow of the Giant and Victim of Circumstance, about which I've blathered more recently. Every adult, from her adorable parents (yo, Alfred Molina, you make everything good, and Cara Seymour with your mix of mischief and earnestness, just spot on) to her Olivia Williams teacher (flashed me back to Rushmore, actually) to -- briefly -- Emma Thompson's headmistress just falls like domino after domino before her.

Until Emma Thompson gets to be the meanest she's ever been, though, with a single line that reached into my chest like she was Mola Ram.

Now, the whole other side of things, where you'd expect Jenny to be in over her head with Peter Sarsgaard, Rosamund Pike and Dominic Cooper's gang of worldly bon vivants, she STILL shows breathtaking poise and control, and it's very clear that Sarsgaard's enigmatic David doesn't know exactly what he's gotten into. For all that he tries to keep his own situations under tight control, he's no match for Jenny.

Really, Carey Mulligan -- Jenny -- is given every opportunity to completely carry this movie, and she does, and everyone involved looks and does great, and it's all basically very great. Nick Hornby actually wrote it, and it's very nicely written, and I suppose the pat conclusion couldn't veer that far from the memoir on which it was based. Still -- everything right up to the end was so damned good. I guess not every movie can be Bad Santa, and end with a dynamite scene that is so rock'n'roll that you just want to lift the TV over your head and sing an AC/DC song.

I think I'm gonna go watch Bad Santa again.

Shadow of the Giant

2010-12-30T02:33:00.002-05:00

Shadow of the Giant is Orson Scott Card's swan song (well, he left one loose end) for the "Earth after Battle School" slice of what it's probably safe to call "the Enderverse", stories about a group of ambitious, self-righteous, tactically-prodigious children and the straw men they fight from time to time.

I've been a fan of the stories for a while, truth be told. The first book about child-admiral Ender Wiggin, called "Ender's Game" and read by every self-respecting kid that's ever aced an IQ test, high school entrance exam or real-time strategy game (and mandatory reading among remote pilots of USAF "Predator" drones, if my co-worker Colin is to be believed) was a fast-paced, focused story about the exigencies of war and the believably surprising emotional and cognitive maturity of six-year-olds.

Also, the author, a sometime Mormon missionary to Brazil, hadn't yet succumbed to the Brain Eater -- a condition affecting writers of primarily military science-fiction wherein their political views first veer wildly to the right, and then infiltrate their work bit by bit -- when he wrote that concise epic and its first set of sequels (though those were, admittedly, a lot less fun). Set a few thousand years down the road, the "Speaker for the Dead" books were a meditation on the nature of first contact with aliens. Some cool ideas but got dry and preachy, to the effect of "the meaning of life is Roman Catholicism".

So after entering the early stages of the Brain Eater, Card wrote a series about Ender's cooler, smarter friend Bean, a genetically-tweaked underdog who secretly made sure Ender wasn't killed or foiled or otherwise deprotagonized -- oh, wait. As expected, the "I, Jedi" approach to a, what do I call it, "retquel" maybe, is a little hamhanded and transparent, if at first harmless. It initially posits Bean as having not just a huge role in Ender's success at Battle School, but also as having an incredibly dangerous, malevolent nemesis who for some reason never appears in Ender's version of the story. The first book -- the "retquel" itself -- was called "Ender's Shadow", and the series continued from there, until it finally wound its way (as is this review; I'm getting there!) to this last book about Bean, about the kids at Battle School and their adventures/conquests back on Earth, and their collective solution to Earth's erstwhile predicament.

It's got a few touching moments. Certainly the story gets the parent-and-child, brother-and-brother, husband-and-wife and teacher-and-student relationships' cathartic, climactic moments out of its system by the end, and I definitely felt a pang or two, particularly at the parts where Graff and Bean get a quiet moment over e-mail, or Ender and Peter finally reach the last chapter of the original Ender novel. I suspect some people may find the author's preoccupation with BABIES, DAMMIT to be a little bit too reminiscent of his mouth-foaming pro-Proposition 8 agitation. And this deserves a special mention: from the "ex-gay" character of Anton ("Now I'm having babies the old-fashioned way!") to the straw-man Achillophile Randi (you win no prize if you can guess whom the author is awkwardly needling here) to the bizarre pro-America digression when talking about space funding to Petra's tiresome harping on how important it is to pretend to believe in God even if you intellectually feel, at a deep level, that you don't, Card's brain eater threatens to derail everything.

Thankfully, it doesn't. Barely. His skill at keeping action, narrative, and dialogue moving gets him over those weird bumps and into the home stretch, resolving just about everything (I'd say...90% of the story, which is a joke about babies).

In particular, the gigantic game of what I will now call "Riskwank" (a genre constantly popularized and repopularized, particularly by Tom Clancy in his Red Storm Rising and later Jack Ryan books -- basically, looking at a map and imagining how World War 3 would play out if the author were running things, 'cause as a red-blooded, right-thinking American Christian he's much smarter and ballsier than the clowns in charge right now) that formed the backdrop for the story wound to its inevitable conclusion (ie. we know that Ender's brother, murderous-sociopath-but-he-grew-out-of-it Peter, will eventually become Hegemon of the world in more than a "title-only" way). It had been growing tiresome in Shadow Puppets, particularly as it had a "bad in the box" (this is how I will describe characters like the aforementioned Achilles, much like the "character" Mr. Dark from Fables 12, who pop up ex nihilo to waste our time and provide a presumably "memorale" antagonist for the overpowered, wish-fulfilling author-insertion protagonists) manipulating all the players in the game with moustache-twirling subtlety, decidedly wearing out his welcome. The Riskwank was much easier on the brain in Shadow of the Giant, because it was evolving out of a pre-existing scenario, even if we did have to trudge through Shadow of the Hegemon and Shadow Puppets to get said scenario established.

So, if you feel that you have to read any more books than the original Ender's Game (and to be fair, Ender's Shadow wasn't terrible, but it definitely didn't feel necessary) you could do worse than to kill a day or two each working through the Shadow series. Just know what you're getting into. It's like watching a season of 24: well-crafted, full of power fantasies and too-competent, too-decisive characters, and profoundly political: trying to posit a simple, logical, direct solution to the fact that the world is just too complicated for the author to understand.

Barney's Version

2010-12-26T23:02:00.000-05:00

Heartwarming family movie with a little bit of an edge. Nothing near the savvy, knowing vitriol of the book (which was itself rife with contradictory footnotes from the protagonist's erstwhile-estranged son) but told the same basic story, got most of the characters largely right (giving Barney's father and wife larger roles, worthy of Dustin Hoffman and Rosamund Pike, respectively, who delivered back-to-back home runs) and filled the Montreal section with the requisite urban texture.

The cameos and extras deserve comment, particularly from me. Montreal Yiddim from my Shaar Hashomayim choir days, like Burney Lieberman and Jason Lipstein, pop up vividly in the background. Canada's best directors from Egoyan to Cronenberg to Arcand, not playing themselves, are casually bullied by Paul Giamatti's abrasive almost-Richler character Barney Panofsky, to their visible delight. The Alzheimer's theme, which permeates the novel, is quietly introduced into the movie as it goes along, which costs the movie some of the novel's humour and also some of its darkness.

But more profoundly, the movie sands off some of Barney's more loserish, nebbishy qualities. He doesn't have the scene with Duddy Kravitz which shows him to be no Duddy Kravitz (and what I wouldn't give for a Richard Dreyfuss cameo to have been crammed in); he doesn't have the ongoing resentment for McIver, or the go-forward, Garp-like "rest of the story" bits for the other characters from his entourage; and Blair is no longer a draft dodger he'd taken in. Barney is not the novel's arch-schlemazel. Instead, he's more carefully blended with Richler's persona, and as the movie tends toward its climax, it wears its heart on its sleeve.

I mean, it's also a murder mystery, ish. And it pulls that part off just fine. But in the end, unlike the novel, it's not about the unreliability of memory and its two narrators. It's a movie about being a bit of a mess but still doing right by the people you love, even when you fail. My mother made it clear that it's more for "Jewish Guys" than for women, but I think the movie did a better job of protagonizing Miriam than the book, even with Minnie Driver's appropriately insane turn as The Second Mrs. Panofsky.

Polarizing? Clever? Schmaltzy? Perfect for the annual Jewish Family Christmas Movie ritual.

The Power of One

2010-12-26T22:45:00.001-05:00

Just got to the end of "White Messiah (with punching)", also called "The Power of One" and essentially a roman-a-clef with a little bit of magical realism, a lot of punching, and a whole mess of Avatar.

It was gripping, mostly. I mean, for the most part it was a story about surviving the depths of degradation and coming out stronger. And boy, did Protagonist Kid come out strong! Able to speak English, Afrikaans, Zulu, Shangan, and a half dozen languages fluently. A flawless boxer, mathematician, and logician, and "angel" to about a zillion African tribes. However, based on the author's website, largely biographical. Hard to believe, and at times hard to swallow, but it's clear that if there were any opportunity to show PK failing or being further humiliated, we'd get it. It's not supposed to be a hagiography, really. But it gets laid on pretty thick.

And so here we have the dilemma. In the wake of seeing Avatar, which came across loud and clear as a work of Colonial Literature or whatnot, and with a clear mandate of decrying apartheid, racism in general and colonialism, The Power of One read like a book that didn't know what it was trying to do. After a fashion it was Ashitaka-style "seeing with eyes unclouded by hate", sure. But you don't go around having every non-white character sacrifice their lives for PK's own life, for his education, for his comfort on a train ride, for his ability to impress a bunch of people with a concert, without sounding like you're writing about The Great White Hope.

The book exuded love for Africa, of course. The landscapes, the tribal cultures and language (I really would like to learn to understand Zulu, after reading about its inherent poetry). Still, for all the author's protest, there's a quiet tolerance and even quaint yearning for the braivleis and tiekkidrai and other aspects of Boer culture -- yeah, he's just a kid, but he doesn't go around saying "let's go full-on postcolonial and truly empower the Black Africans". Maybe he's trying to suggest a kind of middle ground. Maybe he's just naive.

Still, the characters were memorable, if a bit cartoonish. The boxing matches were fascinating, as good as any I've read (which doesn't extend that far -- I may need to read more Hemingway, but certainly it stands up well next to Hammett). The mysticism was potent and invigorating. And the matter-of-fact tone was at odds with the slightly unnerving themes.

I recommend reading it. But reading it, and then thinking about it.

Impact: Victim of Circumstance

2010-12-26T22:21:00.000-05:00

Last week I finally got to see one of Vikki Velenosi's shows outside of the context of the Alexander Singers and Players. The show, from Impact! Theatre, was in the "forum theatre" style, which was a little unusual. While there's a narrative, characters, and a linear sequence of events, there's also the opportunity for members of the audience to meddle and interfere with the proceedings.

The first time through, it was a fairly straightforward emergent fiasco. A touch of the "after school special" to the tone, but Vikki gave an insanely controlled and nuanced performance as the "voice of reason" character. I was very impressed with how controlled she was able to be -- every other bit of the play threatened to veer into the sanctimonious.

And unfortunately, on the "forum" run-through (after the "default, worst-case" run was done), people injected their most facile, after-school-special solutions to the scenario into their participation in the play. Everyone who came up to take on a role basically simplified things as much as possible, ignored character motivations and existing information, said "no", broke every rule given for the format. There was nothing safe about it; it was just an exercise in forcing a wish-fulfilling agenda onto the scenario.

Eventually, I protested when it started to ring too false. So I was called up, and all but shouted down by the other participants.

I don't know what I think, in the end. It's an interesting format, but improvisation relies upon trust. The format was just too ill-defined, the audience underprepared, and ultimately there was no trust, the rules unclear as to consequences and parameters, and it left me with a bitter taste in my mouth.

Not to say that the actors, director, writer, and so forth don't deserve credit for a compelling scenario. Definitely gave me something to think about.

Online.

2010-12-22T02:17:00.000-05:00

Vinnie, you suggested that I write a general-purpose blog, focusing on culture and commentary. I'll continue to maintain other blogs related to personal goings-on and mad brainstorming, but I'll talk here about things I see.

Tron: Legacy was wide-released last friday with a per-theatre average revenue of greater than fourteen thousand dollars. I'd seen the first movie when I was in pre-school, and I'd read the picture-book adaptations even before that. I played the video game in arcades back in New Jersey and again in Toronto. Twenty-five-plus years ago I was riding my BMX with bright yellow tires around the track near my house, pretending that the yellow line was the bike's Light Wall.

Was I excited to see the film? Well, I'd seen the trailers, particularly the first major theatrical trailer, set to the tune of Daft Punk's magnificent new track from the soundtrack album, "The Game has Changed."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9szn1QQfas

This is the track, and the set of images, to which I keep returning when I think about the film. The movie has a very transparent set of tropes -- MacGuffin, Dragon, "Yeehaw" Dogfights -- that don't add a lot to the core story, and in some cases drag it perilously close to "Star Trek: Generations", a movie made out of reverence for an old cast, with only a subset remaining, and an ill-defined conflict dragging the previous hero to his nemesis.

Nowhere near that bad, really.

But what I would have done to make the whole thing more satisfying at the climax? Put the laser discs back into the pivotal scene, man. Quorra was a frisbee superstar. I would have liked to see her step up into that role, and given Tron and Flynn a final "Greetings, Program!" moment that we'd been waiting for since we first heard that they were actually getting Bruce Boxleitner and Jeff Bridges to revisit their iconic 1980s computer superhero characters. And really, not give CLU claim to that line. That's Flynn's line, dammit.

So, occasional emotional and dramatic missteps aside, I am glad that the movie was made and that I saw it.

Cheers,

[^]

Following up

2010-10-05T12:54:00.002-04:00

The ignite talk went well.

Things are fine.

Few others have died.

Surgery, misadventure, alienation, jerkitude, but through it all, some singing, some dancing, and some pushing of lead.

(No painting, of course).

Oh and hello.

not that I am going to start shooting bears or anything

2010-01-14T16:00:00.001-05:00

"Let the man of learning, the man of lettered leisure, beware of that queer and cheap temptation to pose to himself and to others as a cynic, as the man who has outgrown emotions and beliefs, the man to whom good and evil are as one. The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. There are many men who feel a kind of twisted pride in cynicism; there are many who confine themselves to criticism of the way others do what they themselves dare not even attempt. There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes to second achievement." -- The Bull Moose

So, like, dream big.

The most interesting blog in the world

2010-01-14T15:07:00.003-05:00

XKCD: http://xkcd.com/621/

Things that happened in the past 30 days:

- Gabriele's death.

- Mark's death.

- Sam's death.

- Haiti.

- CitizenLab's identification of the hacking attempts on Google and other private companies.

- Google's threatened pullout from China.

- With Jay/With Conan. (Ratings stunt is my guess.)

- Turkish/Israeli diplomatic flap, and it wasn't me visiting TBG's parents.

- SATBG got a show up and is about to do another.

- Much press for The Bitter End.

I'm working, now, not schooling. Currently not flying, but singing. Working largely deals with planning, budgeting, scheduling, timelining, coordinating, ego-salving, bureaucracy-dancing.

I'm not exactly creating anything at the moment, unless you count SATBG. New things going into and out of brain are a rarity. Occasional FB/OPSp status updates in haiku form.

Music: we've got Acappellooza on Sunday the 31st at George Ignatieff Theatre. I'm with the VJs for that one. Cabaret begins rehearsals in late January.

Thinking Work: may present an Ignite-style talk on Citizen Lab. Will elicit Doda's assistance.

Back on my head, now.

Five Millennia Later

2008-06-18T22:21:00.003-04:00

LiveJournal. I just kept on hanging on, and I guess I'm still hanging on, but I'm going to claw my way away a bit at a time.

Well, so I graduated in '07. Now I'm working, and flying, and singing, and wearing glasses. I'm acting, I'm living on my own, and I'm so very close to almost being creative.

In short... I'm going to try documenting my life shamelessly again. Welcome! Maybe I'll tidy up the layout too. It's been a while.

It's been too long.

Just this: Happy Birthday, your Holiness.

First post in a while...

2006-03-05T15:00:00.000-05:00

Installed the blogger widget on my dashboard. Well, the "official" blogger widget. Anyway, just getting a submission done for a project course. Good stuff.

got it

2005-08-20T14:40:00.000-04:00

Here's how I know I'm wasting my time.

I don't think I've get to submit a single assignment, or piece of work (except for the occasional comment in class or answer on a test, which are scarcely considered in the scheme of evaluation) of which I've ever felt proud.

I think this is basically how one figures out that they're in the wrong field. I don't feel good about the work that I do. I don't feel good about myself when I do it. I just don't do this well.

I take no pride in my work. I think that's how I know that I'm doing the wrong work.

tough love

2005-07-26T12:23:00.000-04:00

Well. Well well.

That was a marathon of programming right there. Learning new stuff is sometimes as much fun as cramming a shoe into your ear. But sometimes it can be rewarding.

with a little help

2005-07-25T00:47:00.000-04:00

Talked to C.

What a difference a friend can make.

this one

2005-07-24T15:25:00.000-04:00

I haven't been back to this particular blog in a little while. But it feels like, for the first time in, well, some time, things aren't in bad shape. Except for the myriad ways in which they're not great. But I've finally got some ideas and some tools to work with.

The essay didn't go so well, that one from last semester. I don't want to talk about it anymore, but it's behind me and I'm moving on. For all intents and purposes the coursework in the political science minor is done. I just wish I'd shone like I'd been hoping to.

Math, this semester, is challenging. I have started something of a regimen, one which I hope will actually see me not losing the "easy marks", and I've got a much better rapport with my professor than has ever been the case. This means I don't feel bad asking questions, for instance.

Web programming? That'd be the kicker. The assignment is big, I don't feel comfortable asking or answering questions to or from other students or the prof. And for a while I'd been pretty well stuck as far as tools went -- eyestrain, lack of motivation and time, and grindy, grindy performance from my Main Box.

Right now, I'm in possession of a couple of edges I previously lacked. I've got glasses. I've got a portable computer which works fairly well, far from distractogenic locales. And, if necessary, I can ask C for advice, though I know I'd receive a much longer answer than I was hoping for.

Those two are the biggies. Math and Web. The "smallies", namely music and work (which aren't small in terms of their impact on my life, just in terms of the sisyphean obstacles they seem to represent) are going reasonably well. I'm Treasurer (cf Neil Schweiber: "Tell me about it. I was elected treasurer of my middle school; I didn't even run!") and I am psyched about the new 'ductor. And I'm documentist at work, which I think I can do pretty well.

Web programming. Back to it.

Booked

2005-07-23T17:50:00.000-04:00

Well, look at this. I seem to be operating on a new platform.

renewal

2005-06-12T21:43:00.000-04:00

Hm.

Things have started up for the summer. Well, they've been going for almost a month. Two courses in school -- Vector Calculus, and its evil sidekick Web Programming. This week we've got some evaluation happening in the math domain, and next week, the web assignment's being handed in. I may well put it up for people to try playing with.

The maths, once again, are about floating three-dimensional shapes. The professor makes the pain less acute.

The programming is very tangible. You see the results very quickly. For now, we make toys. Soon we make the clockwork on which the toys rest.

Music's going slowly. The choir is auditioning a new conductor -- we're in the process of having them run rehearsals, to get a sense of their vibe with the choir. Part of the trick is that there's a certain feeling we're trying to replicate, something involving an "older, cooler kid" with respect to the rest of the group.

Dunno whether that unfairly biases us against younger and less cool candidates.

speaking up

2005-03-03T00:36:00.000-05:00

I've been speaking up in class of late.

Either I'm understanding a lot of what's going on,
or I'm becoming so disillusioned that I feel
like it doesn't matter at all.

Whenever Prof. Chambers teaches us something new,
I feel inspired. Today, discussing Nietzsche, and even
in tutorial dissecting Marx,
I felt that there was something
to embrace in each thinker's thoughts.
Something to embrace personally, if not on
a broader scale of "goals in the world".

I think I even "got" what we discussed in ML and
Algorithms today. ML was about anonymous functions,
pattern matching, and the word "and" for mutual recursion.

Algorithms began discussion of Network Flow problems,
and since it was only the first lecture,
I wasn't yet confused by the end.

I guess I almost feel okay.

back on track?

2005-03-01T01:27:00.000-05:00

This semester is slightly different.

Instead of just singing, I'm working too. That is on the other page when it's discussed at all. Within these confines I'll be focusing on school and music.

School, for the newcomer, consists both of Computer Science and Political Science. In the former category, the current semester includes the repetition of a course which proved overambitious of me to attempt to salvage last semester: Programming Languages. In that capacity, however, I've managed to complete the first assignment and midterm with a reasonable expectation of having done medium-well to well.

This semester also sees me biting off courses in Algorithm Design and Databases. Both are a bit sticky so far. More on those in the coming week or so.

Musically, I'm down one choir. No longer able to stretch myself as thinly on campus, I've dropped my commitment to the Varsity Jews and focused on my tenure with Onoscatopoeia. What this means is that I'll only be spending Monday nights until 7:00pm, and not Thursdays as well, wearing my vocal cords threadbare. For love.

Politically, I'm looking around. I don't think anyone I know will be surprised to know that I'm disenchanted both with Israeli political orthodoxy and with the Canadian Liberal Party, and that I'm trying to figure out where I fit in the spectrum; while I espouse the viewpoints and goals, in general, of the two aforementioned entities (ie. I believe that Israel should exist, and should attempt to end the all-but-declared war within and without, and I believe in socially progressive but financially restrained government) I don't think that their current incarnations can continue to command my loyalties, which means either I try to change them or I try to find a better fit for myself.

I was fairly outraged at the behaviour of the students and guests in attendance at the Hart House Debate tonight, with apology to co-ordinator J. I'm glad I went, but the jerkiness of all in attendance, except for the debaters, speaker and judge themselves, was in full force, with the Arab Student Coalition boorishly turning their chairs around when the guest speaker (Israeli Ambassador Baker) spoke, and the Hillel crowd laughing loudly scornfully at those students.

I'm considering (and I've already come up with an acronym, "SHED" -- students for hopeful, earnest discussion) some kind of initiative to have this debate take place on campus without so much bullshit. Both sides are unwilling to tell anything resembling the truth.

Janice Stein's lecture on Humanitarian Intervention (I'm taking a class with Janice Stein) was wrenching today. It was painful and hopeful and inspiring and depressing. We spoke of Rwanda, Srebrinica, and Somalia. We learned of the roles of Canadian soldiers, generals, and politicians in those affairs, and how we seem to make some difference even with the paucity of our government's commitment to maintaining our military as an instrument of statecraft. (Sometimes I really, really like school.)

re-wired

2005-01-17T02:47:00.000-05:00

New semester.

New course load.

New job.

New repertoire.

New outlook? Not sure. The courses, beside the two carry-over Political Science classes, include CSC401 (Natural Language Computing, aka "munging giant swathes of text in Python"), CSC343 (Databases, aka "welcome to db2, here's your accordion") and CSC373 (Algorithms, aka "if it were any more theoretical, it would be theological").

Music is a little more "directed" this semester. It's all about a series of recording sessions, which should encompass about 10-14 tunes, all of which appear fairly difficult. Onoscat is definitely giving its members a push.

And, er. Dude. I just realized that song I'd been trying to identify for about 4 months was in fact a Sneaker Pimps tune, "How Do". There we go. Much better.

personally?

2004-12-20T01:28:00.000-05:00

The CSC324 exam is in seven hours. I will be asleep for about five of them. I will do my best. It probably won't be good enough. But that's not really what matters, at this point. What matters is that I give everything I've got.

(The other consideration -- namely, the overdue essay -- will wait a little longer. Tomorrow, I have just the one apocalypse.)

silence is brazen

2004-12-18T13:36:00.000-05:00

A non-decision not to post does indicate what you think it does.

Breakdown of routine. Lethal breakdown of routine.

I've salvaged CSC263 final exam from the wreckage -- I think that course has gone OK. I'm somewhat less clear on 363. Hopefully that's gone okay.

324 is nothing but wreckage. This exam needs to be all but perfect in order for there to be anything like a recovery. I don't even know what to say about that.

108 paper just hasn't come together. I need to assemble and conclude that sucker the second this exzam is overwith on Monday.

Musically, the concert went fine and I'm glad that's done, but I'm fairly sure I'm staying out of committing to two groups next semester. It's a tough call.

Finally, there's some work-related stuff, not school-related, for me to describe, but that's not going up here, that's going on the LJ where applicable and staying quiet where inapplicable. Plus, anything that happens at work is likely to be on Tim's blog anyway.

Rough. Rough semester. I'm revising next semester accordingly. I still want to finish in the summer if possible.

yeah yeah yeah what condition

2004-11-23T02:03:00.000-05:00

Have to resolve the issue with the CitizenLab paper.

Have sent an e-mail. Feel better.

frustration

2004-11-16T22:54:00.000-05:00

And in chronological order:
1. not getting the 263 assignment all-the-way done
2. getting to class 10 minutes late, having Prof. F seize 25% from the assignment as a consequence
3. finding out about Prof. Lafferty's lecture 1/2 hour into it
4. realizing I didn't understand much of anything Prof. Lafferty was saying
5. realizing just how bad my school schedule is for the next two weeks
6. lock fell off bike, fell apart, DOA
7. essay not done (but getting there)

And getting better:
1. The music was fun, the weekend was... wacky. Sauna. Rum. Learned some JB and picked me up a solo, at least a verse thereof.
2. The music last night was unbelievably fun. A little thang called M-Pact. Glad I stayed. "I wish" brought me to tears.
3. The essay is getting there.

ml in and prolog to begin

2004-11-11T23:43:00.000-05:00

Maybe I'm *writing* about 324 all the time because for some reason I don't enjoy doing all the work.

Well, I handed in the ML thing, and though I think I got the type inference correct, I don't think I'm going to do so well on the programming. Though I'm glad I wrote up the testing schemes.

I need to get cracking and fast on my POL108 essay. It will take a lot more work than my 320 essay (due next wednesday), which is important but I can definitely get written... though I think I really need to dress to impress on the next 263 assignment (due tuesday) and DEFINITELY on my 363 assignment (due friday).

There's a lot of music happening, though. Tomorrow night is the VJ concert at Beth Tikvah. On Saturday afternoon I go up to the Hart House Farm with the HH Jazz Choir, 'till Sunday morning. We have *that* concert just a little later.

I'm not sure if I regret joining VJ, but it's definitely eating into my "passing school courses" time. And I need that time! That was the whole idea.

Gotta be up at 6. No rest for the zonkèd.

version one point 0

2004-11-09T09:14:00.000-05:00

Firefox has released version 1.0.

I'm normally a big fan of Versions 2.0 but I'd highly recommend to anyone not yet using Firefox that they check out the Firefox page and get with it.

Despaaaaairing about Assignment 3 for CSC324. I'm really not acing this class.

update

2004-11-03T22:49:00.000-05:00

The tests went variously.

I passed them all, but the one I was sorta worried about turned out to be... a 100% after curving. Fun!

The one I was feelin' good about, something in the sixties, but might get into the higher sixties if I can argue convincingly.

The one I was not so sure about, baaaaad scene. We'll see what happens there.

The game programming deathmatch will get started soon. Some people were thinking of doing some Tabletop RP stuff as a prelude to RPG game design. Might be fun. I shall bring my mad GM skillz to play. (I have very few of those.)

I attended an Election Party with the Political Science Student Union. It was interesting to see the spectrum of interests etc., but the spectrum of political outlooks was... well, binary, with fewer zeroes than ones. We looked at Kant and Herder and, for once, we're seeing philosohpers some of whose ideas are *entirely* untenable. Though, between the two, there's a powerfully compelling synthesis to be seen. Stylistically they're different; their messages are in some ways thus, but it's cool to see the thread that binds Kant's universalism and Herder's hyperrelativism.

Finished Scheme, though I know I'll have to review it for the final. In class, we're done ML though I still need to do the assignment we're using it for. PROLOG starts tomorrow. Yikes!

televised and diagnosed

2004-10-27T23:22:00.000-04:00

Now that makes twice this week I've been on TV. Sunday, singing the National Anthem. Tonight, on TVO's "Going Global", with my POL108 class. Thursday is the midterm for CSC263 (10am, 8 hours away) and the callback for the National Anthem singery.

And I'm taking salmeterol-fluticasone and Biaxin for what turns out to be a Bronchitis infection, a big chunk of the reason I've been so brain-dead and strung-out the past few weeks.

And I handed in my CSC363 with a brief reprieve based on my illness.

Yay.

musical update of dooooom

2004-10-24T23:21:00.000-04:00

A few of us TX alums (Sahra, Matt, Meg, Dave, I) went down to the ACC, we were looking for a gig to play.

We sang the national anthem while warming up. The CBC guys there saw us; filmed us; put us in a segment.

We went into the Pt(78) lounge under the ACC, gave 'em our renditions of O Canada, and The Star-Spangled Banner.

Apparently liking what they saw and heard, they called us back.

I'm reviewing solutions to the second assignment. Good Lord some of that stuff is complicated. I should check out the Graph, Lazy, and Verification problems -- though the Calculator thing has usage of "Apply" which makes a difference...

two for now

2004-10-24T01:40:00.000-04:00

There are two extant challenges facing me at the moment, besides the ideas for the game programming club's upcoming competition. (I'm currently thinking: "Paddletech", "By a Very Thin Thread", and "Ping Semeitai!") They are the midterm on CSC324 -- with all Sorts of Scary Scheme Syntax to digest -- and the assignment for CSC363 -- with all sorts of Turing Machines to explain and work out.

Not a ton of progress made on either, at the moment.

Singing was fairly busy today, and will be likewise in the morning. With the Varsity Jews I sang at a Bar Mitzvah at Holy Blossom Temple today. That was sort of neat. I had to solidify the two songs we were singing; I really didn't need to have the binder with me since that didn't make any difference whatsoever; I was too nervous to look at it. And I practiced with a subset of Tonal Ecstasy Alumni (Matt, Sahra, Meg and Dave) for an audition tomorrow. Basically, in case there actually is a hockey season this year, the Air Canada Centre will need a few people (or groups thereof) to sing the National Anthems before various games. This little quintet is hoping to be one of those groups.

I guess we'll see.

The computer assignment and midterm really should have taken some precedence. But I'm trying to make them coexist, and along with that, to have some time to be otherwise creative.

And yet, still sick and unendingly exhausted...

I belive a :P smiley is in order.

graph theory

2004-10-22T01:55:00.000-04:00

If you ever get a chance to see or here Prof. Derek Corneil speak, I highly recommend it. He is awesome. He makes graph theory.... connect (I hate myself).

I met Profs Roweis and Balakrishnan today, not realizing that they were, indeed, they. Funny. And I saw Prof Wilson, playing chess with Michelle.

Michelle, as it turns out, is Prof Deibert's CitizenLab honcho in the area in which I'm working on my paper. So I am... subordinate to her.

Oh dear.

not real news

2004-10-21T01:59:00.000-04:00

Being pretty sick influenced me to miss two fairly important lectures today: Prof C's lecture on Kant, and Prof P's lecture beginning the idea of complexity theory.

I need to sit down tomorrow morning before school and write out the following on the Major Calendars (the portable one, and either the Big Desk One or the Little Dresser One):

1. The due dates of all assignments for all courses -- 108, 263, 320, 324, 363
2. The dates of all tests for all courses -- 108, 263, 320, 324, 363
3. The office hour schedules for all courses
4. The Study Sections for all courses, and what'll need to be covered and when
5. A "homework catch-up" for all courses as well.

Also going to grab some transcripts for me mother, viz her SSHRC proposal.

And then?

Tomorrow... Derek Corneil gives a little speech; I'd missed both the Microsoft and EA sessions this week due to sickness and urgency of 324 assignment. I will start the 363 assignment tomorrow night after Varsity Jews choir and Synagogue choir. I will start studying for the 324 and 263 midterms on Friday.

I've gotten to the point where the assignments aren't ever going to be "late" again. Now I just need to unlearn the concept of "too early", as M R has suggested. In Hillel's words, "If not now, when; if not for myself, then for whom?"

Or, as per the Categorical Imperative, I must act in such a way as to be able to will that the maxim for my action be a universal moral law. Which basically means "whatever you have to do, get it done with time to spare" is really how I hope people would think in general.

So I should think that way in particular.

Hmm.

state

2004-10-20T13:59:00.000-04:00

Question 2 is half-finished.

Question 3 is done.

Question 4 is in progress.

Question 5 is being attempted.

Questions 6-8 are apparently lost causes.

That's 35/75 if all goes right.

That's bad.

324 > 320?

2004-10-20T07:52:00.000-04:00

I barely slept and feel awful. Not awful enough to be able to justify not finishing the 324 work, but awful enough not to be able to attent Political Science 320 in which Kant's Grounding on the Metaphysics of Morals will be presented by Prof. Chambers. I've asked her whether I'd be able to make the class up later, or attend office hours to that effect, and I've asked somebody in the class whether notes would be obtainable.

But to be honest, though it causes me spiritual pain to miss this lecture, it really is the only thing that can be defended, both medically and academically.

we meet again

2004-10-19T21:36:00.000-04:00

Okay, so that digression into 263 wasn't altogether productive, and I'm getting back to 324. We learned the basics of ML today, and dweeby me managed to figure out what "ML" stands for. Also, we got to see Strong Typing in action, Java-style. I actually liked the little historical discussion on Algol 60: I didn't realize how far back all of those syntactical decisions went, which look so lame and illogical in C and Java.

Algol 60's history tells us something profound: that it used to be even worse, and that they had to beat the lexical structure with a stick to make it look more like pseudocode. And then C came along and made it look like Machine Language again (no, that's not what ML stands for...)

ow, Mr. T

2004-10-19T09:18:00.000-04:00

Well, so Clubber wins the first round again. I didn't get much of assignment 2 done at all, mostly due to anxiety and exhaustion. I need to go hand in the vestiges now, but I'm not losing hope.

I just need to start the next assignment right away.

Dammit.

ADDENDUM: And whatever I'm handing in, it's NOT GOING TO BE LATE.

an uphill battle

2004-10-18T22:04:00.000-04:00

Hmm... unfortunately this is the part where I confront my assignment from "Class 263", the class that beat me last time. But just like in The Legend of Zelda, Custom Robo or Super Monkey Ball 2, one defeat does not a story make. Just like in Rocky III, I shall harden and inure myself and rise to Class 263's Clubber Lang of an assignment... and I shall defeat it, as Robocop beat ED-209.

With a massive handheld cannon.

more victory

2004-10-18T08:37:00.000-04:00

We're on a roll: I've crammed more working programs into my "submit" directory. I've managed to make little "selector" programs, though I need to specify my by-contract stuff.

All in all, I think I'm getting the hang of the basics.

Now for a school day... then the theory questions. Ack!

SCOOOOOOOOOOOORE!

2004-10-18T02:54:00.000-04:00

WOOOOHOOOOOO!

I did it! First try, no errors, wrote the recursive procedure I needed for assignment 2 part 2.

I did it.

I can do it.

Take that, sense of crushing despair.

and still going...

2004-10-18T02:24:00.000-04:00

Well, making that blog entry didn't get the procedure written. But that doesn't mean I'm giving up. Forward!

(note: I submitted this post via e-mail. Isn't zhat veird?)

curse, then recurse

2004-10-18T02:14:00.000-04:00

I've written some recursive procedures now. I am attempting to generate my own such procedure ex nihilo. Wish me luck, all. I think I can do it. The logic looks sound. The question is, can I do it instinctively, at 2:15am, or should I sleep so that I can meet my sadly underestimated commitments tomorrow? Because I really don't want to deal with those commitments. I'd rather try to get my work done. It seems like I never can.

But this part, at least, I will get done. Because I now know how to do it. You know what? I'll keep at it 'till 2:30 and then call it a night.

progredio

2004-10-17T17:05:00.000-04:00

I've made a bit of headway -- basically kicking a couple of stupid MS things out of my system config, and then getting a bunch of assignment pages loaded. And so I march onward! I've managed to do some fun compound procedures and tracing, and that's encouraging. I was able to point a fellow student to PSFTP so that he could upload/download files to his CDF account.

Bryce has generously offered to give me Scheme guidance, though he'd personally rather work on the game we're trying to concoct. (for which X-Men Legends has suddenly become a dramatic inspiration!) I may take him up on it, but for some reason I can't formulate my questions in a useful way right now.

Oh well.

I'm hitting the Allowed Procedures List to figure out what I can or can't use on the assignment questions. That will help focus my reading. :P

And the printer's not only nearly dead; it's really most sincerely dead. Further tongue-protrusion.

things get worse

2004-10-17T04:23:00.000-04:00

Printer just died. I can't print out the new specs to the assignment which have been revised again, just a few days ago, and it turns out that my old version of the assignment was missing big chunks.

This whole semester is starting to go downhill. My body's falling apart, my schoolwork is falling apart, my relationship fell apart a while ago but is still subjecting me to stress, and this whole rant really belongs on the Kinra blog... or LJ... or something.

Anyway, I know that I can wrap my head around this stuff, but I've just re-read the specs and it's jarring. They want rationale; do they want proof? Why doesn't Prof. M have any autonomy in how this class is taught and run? There are mysterious TA cabals, capricious decisions by Prof. P, and bizarre and byzantine methods of deciding when we get access to the course materials.

Ack. For now I just want to try to finish these assignments. And yet no further progress has been made.

et alia

2004-10-16T23:59:00.000-04:00

I've made a minidecision, which is to expand this blog's purview to include Political Science mumbo-jumbo I may encounter in my journey to the west. Oh, and note that my little essay project is gonna fit in along the border between the two (POL and CSC) which is as it should be.

So, I guess I should congratulate myself on cracking a little bit of the assignment, specifically the "min-max" thing where you get a list of values and can return the minimum or the maximum thereof. I've done a little "cond" thing with gt/lt ops and a little "car/cdr" thing and I'm going to mush them together in a joyous union.

And... let's see. I figured out a lot of the assignment for CSC263. The programming part, though, with its consequent testing, is going to hurt like hell. So it's still going to be 324 for a few hours at least.

Scheme!

Schemes I'm Scheming

2004-10-16T16:11:00.000-04:00

I'm mucking about with Scheme on the road to completing the second programming assignment in CSC324 at the University of Toronto.

More as, well, this story develops or something. So far I've convinced myself that I can competently compose Lambda expressions and do a bit of listy stuff. If I can get car-cdr recursion happening, I'll be a happy recognizer indeed.

Unpleasantness

2004-10-16T04:24:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure that this was the most forthright way to get a blog started. Kant would be irked; I'm not exactly doing this in a categorical-imperative above-the-board way. Still, I have a blog, called "recognizer", here on blogspot now. And so I can participate in the conversation on this forum as well.

Good work.

But evil.