Nitpicky Gamer: Mission: Runway

In every Nitpicky Reviewer post, I put on my critical top hat, wave my elitist cane, and chauffeur sarcastic verbiage with full intent to tear apart a piece of media as if it were supposed to be art. True, I'll never realize that criticizing games made purely for dollars doesn't mean anything.

The last few times I reviewed a game, I took notes while I was playing. This time, I'll be making notes directly into the blog. Hopefully I'll end up with a post that does not feel like a rewrite and hasan't forgotten any jokes.

First thing I thought when assigned Mission: Runway: 'Ah shit, at least I'll get a decent blog post out of it.' I'm pretty sure this game is about modeling based on the reality TV show Project Runway. I just finished another review for a game based on a TV show, Dancing with the Stars, the worst game ever released to the public. And the public was charged for it.

First thing I thought when the splash screen came up: Hotties! Hell yea, I get to look at models all week. Wait. Why is there a stoned, tired, sick-like-an-overdose, hippie princess lurching in the back? She looks lost, high, sad and beaten, and like n evolved form of the little girl from The Ring. She's even wearing the same white dress. I can't mix sexy and nightmarish. I'll get sick or feel really guilty.

The girl in front, the main focus, isn't even real. She has more Photoshopped brush strokes than a Van Gogh rip-off. Her eyes look swollen and her hair copy-and-pasted. Her boobs look flat even though some digital artist tried to make semi-circles above her dress line. She has a certain Gestalt: the sum of her pieces is a paper-doll project from a fourth grader with a pole-dancing mother.

I've never seen a girl so real and so airbrushed.

Upon entering the main menu, I was instructed to create a profile. A flashing asterisk at the bottom of the interface tells me I should start typing. Instead of the default mouse cursor, the simple arrow, I wave around a severed hand. Not the Adobe white glove, a fucking dismembered, I-love-The-Addams-Family, calloused and thick man hand. Ready to slap a bitch that missteps on the runway. That hand could tear up the whole game with the full-hand or backhand slap command. Shit, how awesome would it be to play game where the goal is to slap through terrible user interfaces, beating their structure, smashing their poorly chosen fonts, and eventually wringing the neck of the apathetic jackass that programmed them.

Clicking on the highlighted row does nothing. Less than nothing.

So. The beastly five-finger I'm waving around keeps highlighting all the rows in this interface, even the one with my instructions. Usually something highlighted is something to click, but what about the flashing asterisk. The game has temporarily stunned (not awed) me. Not being one to click around, or go with the easy solution to just start typing, I sit, stare, and just think about what I want to do. Do I click? Do I just start typing? Which will serve me better? Which am I supposed to do? I don't know, so I just sit there. I actually start to feel a little fear, a nervous ping on the backside of my melon; I want to find out what happens when I click on a highlighted row, but I have this wary feeling that I'll fuck something up.

I do it anyway. I'm both saved and extremely disappointed; clicking on any of the highlighted rows does absolutely nothing. I proceded to type my name: Leggy Blond. (Flight of the Conchords, baby).

Now I'm choosing my avatar. Honestly, I'm still blown away by how much better this is - looks, feels - than Dancing. My point of view is nested in the center of a circle of wannabe models. Or wannabe 3D models. Maybe the designers were self-deprecating, the models aren't supposed to look good because they aren't actually models. An arrow pointing left and an arrow pointing right are fixed by each side of the focal model. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THEY DO. Fortunately, the game designers thought ahead, realizing that the large portion of their audience would be confused by such a little-known convention; a hint box appears when my mouse rolls over an arrow.



In case I didn't know what to press after deciding which model to represent, the 'Check' button also has a hint box.

Really, though, does 'OK' tell you any more than the check mark? I imagine: "Alright, I'll play with this girl. What do I do now? Oh my God, I'm so confused. How do I continue in this game?? This game sucks! I don't know what to do! Wait, there's a huge check mark. I wonder what it does. I don't want to press it because something terrible might happen. What if it exits the game? I'll just let my mouse hang over it while I think. Oh, a hint! OK, it says. OK what? I'm going to kill myself."

After selecting my avatar, I am brought to the list of episodes I will compete in throughout the season. The name of each episode is some kind of pun. For example, the first episode is called 'Freestyle Style.'

Others include:
Miss Mission Runway
Alternative Reality, an episode with alternative-style fashion
Everyday [sic?] a New Design, an episode focused on everyday clothing styles
Business Sense, an episode showcasing business formal.

Will somebody tell whoever made these titles that a pun isn't a pun IF YOU USE THE SAME WORD. A pun is a play on words. Not a play on word.

Thankfully, I'm not completely disappointed. There's an episode called Fashion of the Opera. Ok, I am disappointed.

To the Stars is another episode dedicated to designing an outfit for the Oscars. I kind of get it, but I think it should be For the Stars.

One episode name makes up for them all: Life's a Beach. That's right, punned the phrase 'Life's a bitch.' It's for the kids, mother, it's for the kids.

I select the first and only available episode: Freestyle Style. The host introduces my competitors, and, oddly, I can't tell if they are standing or sitting. They have slightly bent legs, but look like they are standing and leaning forward. Kind of like they're about to shit.

The instructions are given in paragraph form at the bottom of the screen. Halfway through the first paragraph, it flashes to the next. And when I say flashes, I mean the whole screen skips and refreshes, not just the text box. I may have finished the first paragraph, but I was steudying the setting. There's a check box at the end of each paragraph, so I assumed I would click it when I finished reading and that it wouldn't continue without me. So much for conventions. Maybe that's why there's a hint box on everything. The outsourced programmers just don't know our conventions. It confuses them, they over-reinforce us, and then they still get it wrong. I blame on the company that chose to outsource.

In the introduction to the first episode, 'everyday a new design' I am told, in a block of supposedly-spoken text to dress normal... but not be limited by my imagination. I'll let that sink in...

After the show's introduction ends. it's time to dress the model.

Wait. I just realized that I don't play as a model in this game, I play a fashion designer. I just voided half the jokes I've used so far.

So, I want to spend time trying out different outfits, seeing what the game has to offer, but the model is just standing in her underwear and I feel like a fucking pervert in a room full of game testers guys. Any second, I'm going to get a hand on my shoulder followed by the words 'Move on Chris, it's just a character model'. Fuck you, buddy- she's hot!

The interface is surprisingly, fairly intuitive. Yes, it is surprising that it appeals to any bit of my intuition. Fortunately, the interface uses pictures instead of words - clothing lists would really become tedious. Unfortunately, the pictures don't match clothes. For example:

Here's what I chose:
And here's what I got:


Also, take a look at the buttons that designate clothing styles:
1) Obligatory raonbow gradiant.
2) Skull for 'Alternative' clothing
3) Flower for 'Girly' Clothing
4) A hand-fan for glamrous clothing? No one's used a fan like that since Shakespeare died.
5) A golden star for... being good in class? I don't actually remember.
6) A douchey smiley face with a baseball cap giving you a huge thumbs-up for being such a bad ass. That woud be 'street wear.' Only those with the baddest asses rock out in street clothing. Congratulations for having the balls to be the poorest-looking model in town.

I wanted to see what the model looked like from different angle, so I clicked and dragged around her - a norm in most character creators. Nothing. Above the model are two arrows, one pointing to the right and one to the left. They look like perfectly good rotation buttons. I click to the right and my model turns black! Wait, no, this is a new model now. See, there's a new name above her head, in obscure, white font between the arrows. The girl looks identical, except her skin and the sound of her name are more black.

I cycle through the models. They all are the exact same height, have the exact same hairdo - it must be fake on some of those girls - and nearly identical jawlines.

Four small buttons hide in the bottom right of the screen: zoom-in, zoom out, rotate left, and rotate right. Rotating the girl reveals that the game's 3D modelers are either ignorant foreigners or feminist revolutionaries. I'm staring at a model with a big booty. I'll go with... outsourced unprofessional. And I guess outsourced implies a certain ignorance to the target audience's culture.

Fuck it, let's walk the runway.

First let's reinforce how stupid the developers think we are:


After tooling around for so long in the dressing room, I am supremely curious on how the game plans on judging my choices. In the ideal fashion game, the artificial intelligence would probably have long lists of clothes that don't match; an algorithm that judges poor color combinations; and, of course, some simple check to see if I wore the correct style the episode called for. I don't have those expectations for this game.

After confirming that I do, in fact, want to strut my junk down the runway, our mute announcer spells out: "We've seen some great designs [sic] now lets see how each model fared on the runway!" But momm-y, they haven't been on the runway yet. What's this lady talking aboouutt? I think they were going for 'fares on the runway.'

My model walks the runway first and then each model from each other designer follows, one at a time. The techno was pumping and both the judges and photographers were excited.

What can I say that they aren't saying right now?

Most photographers handle the boredom by taking pictures of their rivals on the opposite side.

The walks lasted about a minute and a half each and looked like they had been edited by the programmer's toddler. Random frames of disarray appeared between each cut. Some shots would linger and some were cut short - but don't get me wrong, there was no sense of flow. At one point it even cut to the same angle. You could tell because it skipped, as if were cutting away, and then the same angle loaded back up, a few pixels off center.

It wasn't until the third walk I realized my dismembered hand was covering the click-to-skip button. I must have saved half an hour when I finally used it.

This girl is a professional waitress that just fucked up her chance to be a real model.

This doesn't mind showing up in her jammies.
This girl's booty is so fly, it makes straight lines go jagged.

Now the judges will tell me how I did...

Holy shit, they just ripped me apart. What the hell did I wear that got me booted off the first show?

For a second, I thought they were going to murder me on stage.

Back at the main menu- hey wait a minute. Where did all of these options come from? Now I can practice dressing models outside of competition, look at my currently-empty photo album, and examine my wardrobe, complete with the design that just got me booted. All this for losing! And... when do I get to take photos? It says it is empty because I have not taken any photos in the photo booth. So, where is it? Maybe I have to win first. Or at least pass the first week.

This game is going down. I begin my second tour de campaign mode in the same episode: Freestyle Style; normal clothes. This time I'll follow a simple rule: pick clothing from the same category. This time, my model will only wear clothes from the 'Girly' category.

Delving deeper into the clothing styles, I see that there are actually quite a bit of designs, though they all look like variants of wrapping paper.

Moving on to jewelry... I take everything back. There's only one necklace to pick from. Wait. Ok, help me out here.

In the make-up section, my eyes feel like a 256-color processor trying to differentiate between a million shades of peach. My eyes can't tell the difference between these colors. I'm clicking the right arrow button, cycling through, and I can't even tell what I've looked at and what I haven't looked at. Sometimes the shades will cycle whole rows at a time and sometimes it will rotate over only a few shades at a time. I honestly can't tell.

Well, now I'm curious. I screenshot the first row and then click the right arrow. Comparing it to the screenshot... it moved one square to the right. I click the right arrow again, and it moves back. I can't believe it. The whole time it was rotating over one color.

Next time, just cut out the last color.

The ability to change models' hair style instantaneously is unsettling. I find myself wondering if all models are bald and they just change wigs every day.

By the way, this is what spiked hair looks like:
Yes, it cuts right through the hoody.

I submit my second design. Once again, the judges are stupified.

The model walking after mine wore an outfit designed by 'Tiffany,' a girl with no crotch.

I skip through the rest of the models to the judges.

What the fuck? What did I do wrong this time? My outfit looked way better than those other bitches.

I was so apparently bad that two of the three judges said the exact same thing. "Who will be the first loser? Sadly I think it will be you."

How do you win this fucking game?

Wait. Woah! I'm moving on to the next week! They didn't boot me after all! They booted some dude with a pink cowboy hat. What a scare. Two of those three judges really had me going.

This game accurately portrays the lack of emotion in the fashion world. The judges are stoic. The photographers and respectful and the crowd quietly golf claps. When my avatar is criticized, she puts her hands near the front of her face, does a shake left and a shake right, but is otherwise OK. When a designer is voted off, he or she just sits silently, staring off into a depressing void.

I think I've gone on long enough, I'm going to try and beat the game now. I don't seem to be getting very far - I've been told I know how to pick out a good outfit when shopping with girls - maybe it's all the movies I've watched - but it doesn't seem to have translated over to the game. On the other hand, maybe I just don't understand the subtle complexities of fashion. In any case, I'm Googling a walkthrough.

(A few days later.)

I'm on the second to last 'episode' and I am totally stuck. The two other models have been wearing completely different outfits each time I try to beat it, so I'm not picking up on the style I'm supposed to use.

I'm on the 'pick out an outfit for your host to wear out at night' show. How 'bout a black trash bag and duct tape. Shit, this isn't anything like the 'Life's a Beach' episode in which I just have to put on some kind of swimming suit to pass. I don't know what they're judging! I wore a bunch of 'alternate' clothes and 2 of the 3 judges gave me a thumbs up. I tried it again the next round, only changing a few things, and all the judges dumped me.

So, now, tying desperately to win, I start copying the other two contestants. I recreate one's all-silver outfit. Amazingly, randomly, the model wears the same outfit again, right after I've re-created it. There we are, walking the runway with the exact same outfit. Guess who gets voted off. Me. This fucking game.

I mean, you can't expect much from a game that isn't even proof-read: (You may need to click on the picture to read it; I'll have my own site one day, but for now, bear with me.)

Itit? Re-tarded.

A bit Dj Vu?

"You really took it to the mountain?"

I think he meant Hasta Manana. And since when are Spanish words capitalized?

Finally, after 20 hours of wages that will never be earned back by the game, I beat it. Celebrate with me.

Nitpicky Moviegoer: The Dark Knight

Now that a few weeks have passed, let's get serious about The Dark Knight. In every nitpicky review that I do, I point out movie flaws that the majority of the world gives no shits about. In this case, judging by the record-breaking sales, absolutely no one cared about the little things- including myself. Only in retrospect, now, a month after the viewing, can I bring back up the details I ignored.

Before I begin, I assume everyone has watched this movie. There will be spoilers.

This review will seem extra picky, because the movie was so good. But, like the director that created it, it isn't perfect. Am I the only one who thought half of Memento was a psychology lecture?

To start off, let's talk about one thing Batman did that was so utterly ridiculous, it strikes deep fear into my heart about the stability and mental resistance of my own mind. The fact that I did not question this impossibility makes me wonder how long I would last if aliens started brainwashing the planet. Could I resist their advanced mind-mushing techniques? I'm not so sure.

About halfway through the movie, Batman extracts a fingerprint originally pressed on a bullet from its bullet hole. (The bullet had been removed from the scene.) It's not even from the original bullet hole, though, he reproduces one - I think - because in some sort of montage-like explanation of the process, he fired five other bullets into similar material to see if the damage matched the damage of the first bullet. He then arbitrarily picked one of the reproductions and... what the fuck am I even talking about? What the fuck was this movie showing me? What the fuck-fuck?

Not only that, the fingerprint wasn't from the Joker, it was from a random guy who lived in some apartment. It was a set-up to get Batman to go to that apartment where decoy sniper fire was set up so that the Joker could assassinate the Mayor from the ground.

The Joker is so fucking smart! He was so intuitive, he knew that Batman was going reconstruct a fingerprint from a shattered plaster wall, leading him to the scene, where he could only helplessly watch the assassination attempt from above. Is there anything else he could have thought of? I mean, Batman could have also released deadly android birds from the rooftops; each honed in on the unholy scent of a man who hasn't washed his hair in three years. That's reasonable.

But wait, there's a loophole here. The reason Batman had to reconstruct the fingerprint from the bullet hole in the wall is because the Joker took the original bullet from the crime scene. He did that so neither Batman nor anyone else could trace it. Yet he still made the fingerprint a decoy?

Another scene confused me even the second time I saw the movie: when Batman and the Joker play chicken. Well, it's sort-of chicken, Batman's on a super-powered motercycle and the Joker is just standing there, and he wants Batman to hit him. It's not really chicken if some guy wants to be hit. Still, Batman chickens out, unable to kill the bad guy, which is appropriate to his comic-book history, so he swerves out of the way and then... crashes? He had so much open room to direct his bike to. I guess he thought too hard about crossing the line he never crosses, and became a nervous wreck.

Come on, how does Batman wreck his bike? And then he lay there in his super-stiff bat suit like a frozen hot dog. I understand his bat suit afforded little movement, but the restriction didn't show when he fought, only when he lay on the ground. Don't you think the director unnecessarily exaggerated his immovability? Those are three of the largest words I've ever used together in a sentence.

Later, Christopher Nolan decides to bring pop conflict into the movie. He brings up the as-of-now highly controversial subject of spying on everyone for everyone's safety. The Big Brother thing. Batman creates a system of SONAR images transmitted from every cell-phone in Gotham so that he can see and hear pretty much everything. It has a great interface, representing Gotham in its entirety on only about 50 TVs, and the program follows whatever you thought you just heard with only a few keyboard strokes. If you look closely, you'll see that one of the screens shows a person in a bathroom- how appropriate to the issue of privacy.

The director asks the question, should we jeopardize the privacy of every person in a city to find a 'terrorist'? Lucius Fox, Batman's trusty assistant, says that he will resign as long as this system is in place, after they get the Joker. Hard to say if he really disagrees. In the end, the voice-tracing, city-imaging, spy web helps them capture the Joker.

So what's Christopher Nolan's conclusion on protecting the privacy of citizens? That privacy can be ignored if the threat is too large. Well, thanks Christopher, you've gotten us nowhere. You've just repeated the same conclusion - and confusion- of everyone involved in this debate. How do we know if a threat is too large? I don't think the government will spend a billion dollars on a cell-phone-based tracking system and then BLOW IT UP after the currently most-wanted terrorist is found. There's always going to be a terrorist, so the system will always be up and running; i.e. voiding our privacy.

So, once again, thank you Christopher Nolan for bringing up a sensitive issue and offering... absolutely nothing.

Close to the end of the movie, Mr. Nolan breaks a scriptwriting rule: never avoid conflict. At the same time, he breaks one of my rules: don't bullshit the audience. In the tense, who-will-blow-up-who, boat scene, he cuts to that huge, rough-as-hell prisoner like four fucking times. Each time, he sneers and looks ugly. I get it, he's going to stand up and cause havoc, take the detonator and blow up the other boat; he doesn't want to die and no one else will follow through. He's the only one mean enough to actually press the button. The time comes and he uses his scary bulk and his understanding of fear and politics to convince the man holding the detonator to give him the detonator. And like the badass he is... he throws it out the window?

This twist is not some 'unforeseen surprise,' it's a lie. Like, I go to the doctor to visit my dying great-grandmother and the doctor tells me she passed away. Of course I believe him. He's a doctor telling me someone died. If he says 'just kidding' it's not like he tricked me, like I'm an idiot for not picking up on it, there's no way I could have known. It's a lie. Films that lie instead of offer clues suck.

Take this puzzle for example: Billy found a blue building block. What color is the building block?

Uhh, blue?

NOPE, ITS PURPLE!

There has to be hints or the game is ruined.

The reason Mr. Nolan concluded this scene like he did was to give audience a ray of hope in a dark movie. Or at least that's what I read in a review, I never thought the film was 'too dark.' I mean, Batman has always been dark and Mr. Nolan does a great job keeping him that way. This scene is a cop out. I know it was rated PG-13, but imagine how crazy it would have been if Batman was holding the Joker by his feet from the top of the unfinished skyscraper; and suddenly one of the boats exploded. That would have been intense. He may have even dropped the Joker, forgetting his anti-killing cree, and then, of course, the Joker would have laughed his way to the pavement. Whether you like my alternate ending or not, don't avoid conflict, scriptwriting 101.

Jim Gordon coming back from the dead? See the previous paragraphs about pointless puzzles.

This movie is the best comic book movie I've ever seen, besides Sin City, which was just like a moving comic book. I LOVE how Christopher Nolan makes so many comic-booky, i.e. corny and unbelievable, remnants of Batman's history make complete sense. Despite the small things I've pointed out, Nolan has achieved greatness by making Batman almost logically exist. He undoubtedly made Two-Face logically exist. The person he loves the most dies as he tells her she'll be all right. He flips his shit. And the face in oil! What a great way to explain Two-Face's charred left side. In the comic book, some mafia thug threw acid on his face in the courtroom, somehow 'coloring within the lines' and magically disfiguring only the left side of his face. Nolan makes it make sense.

And, my God, did Heath Ledger become the Joker.

I have to stop while I'm ahead, these posts are about tearing movies apart, breakin' them down, revealing their true colors! not complimenting them. I must. not. break. down. and describe how awesome this movie was.

Great Connotations ep. 6: I didn't do it! in more or less words.

In every Great Connotations post, I examine the meaning behind the everyday word choices that people make. People can say the same thing a hundred ways, but the specific way they say it reveals a lot about their personality and what they're really trying to say.

So, the other day I picked up a shift from my girlfriend as a waiter at my old job because she had important plans. A number of new workers seem to have been hired since I've left, but then again, restaurants generally have a low retention rate.

There was a new waitress working that night who seemed a little shy - it was only her third or fourth shift. She seemed very nice, and I'm sure she was, but she always had a worried look on her face. Maybe she had a test or a project hanging on her consciousness, or she had a rough day, or she's generally pessimistic - a feeling I got as I talked to her, but not what I'm discussing today.

Anyway, I was punching an order in with my fingernail on a very sturdy, hardly-registering, 'touch' screen computer when she runs by me into the kitchen with a small stack of dirty dishes.

A few seconds later a plate crashes to the ground.

She walks out, turns to the first person she sees, me: "Were you the last person to put up a plate? Because a plate just broke." She was about to place the plates she had been carrying in the dirty dishes bin, but the previous stack had toppled.

First of all, a broken plate can rattle a new employee. It's obviously much less embarrassing in the kitchen and not on the main floor, but, for some reason, no matter what you drop or where you drop it, or how many of it you drop, if you drop it in a restaurant it will be really, really loud.

Like any self-conscious employee, knowing half the staff heard the plate shatter; knowing she stood right in front of it when it dropped; she wanted to let someone know that she didn't do it.

She asks me 'Were you the last person to put a plate up?' At first, it seems like she's throwing blame at me to cover up for herself. But, I don't think she was trying to pin blame on me, or anyone else, she was just un-pinning it from herself. This is reinforced by the second sentence "Because a plate just broke." She says, I didn't break it, you didn't break it, no one broke it; the plate broke itself. All the blame is the plates and none of the blame is ours. So, are you or I sweeping it up? Don't worry about it, the kitchen staff will.

It's important to note that she left out how the plates broke. She goes from 'putting up a plate' to 'the plate broke.' She left out what I explained: that the dish bin was so full that the last mother-fucker to stack a plate on it should have been a little more fucking careful! Don't add to the four-foot tower of plates rocking back and forth next to the over-powered, thirty-seconds-flat, rumbling steam bath of a dishwasher. Just don't stack your mother-fuckin' plate up there!

She could have said everything I just did, but she didn't. What does that tell me about her? One, she's non-confrontational. She chose to disperse blame into the unknown.

Also, since she didn't discuss it further, with me or anyone else, we didn't waste trivial effort in finding the plate-breaking dunce. I mean, who cares? It was an accident. After she relieved herself of the guilt by confiding her innocence in the nearest co-worker, she probably doesn't care who did it either.

The situation is over and what have we learned? I dunno, she didn't want to be labeled a plate breaker?

Let me ask you a question.

If you're at work, let's say you're doing opening duties for a restaurant: pulling chairs off of tables, cutting lemons, organizing cups, making sweet tea, etc.; and your manager walks up to you and says "Don't forget to make the sweet tea," and, obviously, you knew you had to make sweet tea, it's been ingrained in your mind since the first week you started the job and you've never forgotten, I mean, who could forget the sweet tea?, that would cause a meltdown in the South, a Revolutionary War between customers and floor-staff, where we would lose and they would waste a lot more tea, well... What do you say back to your manager?

1) No shit, Sherlock.
2) What the fuck do you think this gallon of sugar I'm carrying is for?
3) Have I ever forgotten to make sweet tea before? Douche-bag.
4) Of course I'm going to make sweet tea! I always do.
5) You've gotta be fucking kidding me. Just go away, I've worked here longer than you.
6) Yes sir.
7) Sure will.

If you've thought about, or actually said, any of the top five, you're just like me, just like this girl, and just like a lot of people. It makes you feel like an idiot. Like you're forgetful and untrustworthy.

But, in reality, the manager doesn't know everything. Maybe yesterday another server forgot to make sweet tea and sweet-tea fiends jonesing for their fix boycotted and picketed the entrance causing the restaurant to lose hundreds of dollars. He just wants to make sure that doesn't happen ever again. But we get so offended.

On the other hand, some people are a bit too controlling, in the sense that they love to double-check every-one every-second of the day because they haven't learned to trust people. They're too much upstairs and not enough in the living room sharing the love or the television remote.

So, the new waitress is kinda like me, and you, and now that I've picked apart two sentences she said to me, I think I can sympathize and empathize with her more. Even though I'll probably never work with her again.

The English Language Needs a New Word.

I don't know what it will sound like or how to spell it. I just know that again and again I run into the terrible grammatical predicament of he/she. If a writer does not know the sex of a referenced person, they , he/she, he or she, hi, ho hum, ek, ugh, too many options. All look bad.

We need a word that replaces he/she.

Any suggestions? It has to be short and easy on the tongue, because it will be used all the time. I never studied linguistics, though I'd like to, but from what I understand, the point of grammatical rules is to make language sound more elegant. Even though English doesn't sound nearly as elegant as some languages, like Spanish, yet more elegant than Chinese, IMHO.

Hit me. Hit me!

Nitpicky Moviegoer: Vicky and Christina visit Barcelona

Woody Allen tells everyone that the life of an artist is better than your life. Artists are erotic and beautiful. They paint during the day and fuck in the evening. They live in large houses in the most beautiful parts of Europe, even without any apparent source of money.

He wants us to know that we all have doubts about settling down into a stable relationship. The better choice is to live free, take chances with love, even if love grew from a one-night stand with someone you absolutely hated the day before.

People with knowledge of the internet, people that plan ahead, and are successful at business make for a boring relationship. Who needs these new advances in technology. Maria Elena, played by Penelope Cruz, deters Christina, played by Scarlett Johansson, from using a digital camera for her photographs. She gives her a film camera, instead. It's all about the dark room.

You know what? Fuck you Woody Allen. Take your pretentious, doubt-causing, home-wrecking, PG-13, anarchic love home to your wife - who happens to be your sixth spouse, former stepdaughter, and 35 years younger than you.

This movie is your steamy, dreamy life-story. With included fantasies of a third partner, who, may or may not really exist your life. It's not that I'm jealous you can do this. Art. Sex. All Day. It's that you make a movie about it, almost bragging, and if not, at least trying to convince the rest of the world that this lifestyle works; it's what we're missing from our life. Well, it's not. And it doesn't work unless you're super rich.

What pisses me off is the way it ends. Doug, Vicky's husband, walks off the screen toward the audience with Vicky and Christina following a few steps behind. The narrator, who sounds completely out of place through out the whole film, sadly explains that Vicky will be pursuing her life with her husband. The one she cheated on and wanted to leave for the sexy painter, Juan Antonio.

It compels the audience to say "Aw. She shouldn't do that. It's not what she really wants. She wants a fiery love affair with an artist who always seems to need a girlfriend, as charming as he is." The audience thinks, "I have doubts about my relationship. I'm a lot like Vicky. Maybe I should do something daring. There's this really hot guy at work who always looks at me. Hmm."

As for the narrator, he should not exist. He's in the film for two reasons: to make it quirky like Wes Anderson and to explain all the stuff old-man Allen left out. For example, the audience would never guess that Vicky and Christina are best friends unless we are told that. They don't act like best friends. They don't look like best friends. They are completely different from each other and disagree over and over through out the film. They only hang out in the beginning. Sometimes you wonder if they even practiced their lines together. It's stupid.

Woody Allen's characterization of Doug, Vicky's husband, baffles me. Vicky 'loves' him and wants to marry him because he offers a stable future. Most of his traits degrade his stereotype. He has a hard time understanding free-love and the three-way relationship between Christina, Maria Elena, and Juan Antonio. He mainly talks business at the dinner table. He works for 'Global Enterprises.' COME ON. WHAT THE FUCK IS GLOBAL ENTERPRISES. COULD YOU HAVE THOUGHT OF ANYTHING LESS ORIGINAL.

He is also shorter than Vicky, unlike the dashing Juan Antonio. It's very flattering. He is less romantic in bed. He awkwardly initiates sex, while Juan Antonio is so natural.

But Woody Allen fucked up, I assume. I mean, he gave Doug all these negative characteristics and ended the movie on a depressing note about Vicky's future. So, Doug's virtues almost seem like a mistake. He is deemed uncreative and unadventurous, yet he finds a way to leave work and fly to Barcelona early. His idea is to elope in the beautiful city of Barcelona and still have an extravagant wedding in New York City when they return to the States.

Towards the end of the movie, he thinks of creative ideas for their house and for gifts while they browse the street market.

He is in tune with Vicky's feelings about half of the time. He notices Vicky's emotional distress over the phone and in most conversation, but seems oblivious to her sadness after they marry. He hardly questions Vicky's bullet wound.

Vicky is such a bitch, anyway. She bitches about Juan Antonio for the first half of the movie and complains about lost love throughout the second. She's one of those people you want to pull aside by the arm and say "Shut the fuck Up" to.

I feel that Woody Allen just sped through the script. Well, he is one of the most 'productive' filmmakers alive.

--

Positive Notes:

Penelope Cruz does a great job. Just like Volver, she plays a Spanish drama queen perfectly. And it isn't annoying, it's really exciting.

I liked how the love triangle between Christina, Juan Antonio, and Maria Elena progressed and started to believe in it. Maybe a relationship like that is possible. Just not with two men and one girl. That would be weird. And not look as good on film.

To be honest, I'm glad I saw it. It was my first Woody Allen film. It had a more distinct flavor than the majority of Hollywood movies, but I won't call him an auteur.

I just wish that some filmmakers wouldn't make films about their opinions. Mr. Allen, create a story, don't gloat about your lifestyle and try and persuade preteen girls to emulate it. And please, learn to focus your camera.

Talking to Strangers

To me, there is nothing more awkward than sitting next to someone for a number of hours on, say, a bus, and not, say, saying anything. Knowing that the conversational potential with another speaking machine is right there, inches from you, rubbing against your arm, afraid to make eye contact, bothers me.

If I have the isle seat, I won't dare look towards the window, unless I know the other person is already looking out the window or I know we are passing an eye-catching landmark - something that gives me motivation for the crime. I mean, I don't want the people to think I'm looking at them. They're checking on me with their peripheral vision and wondering, why is this guy staring at me? You know it, you can't look out the window if you don't have a window seat. That's why everyone wants the window seat. That and it makes a decent pillow.

Headphones are the sliced bread of self-conscious people. Put on the music, close your eyes, and forget about your neighbor.

Recently, I've decided to get rid of my fear of talking to strangers, of invading their space or opening mine to them, at least a bit. I can't sit in awkward silence anymore. I can't sit right next to someone and completely ignore them for hours.

Now, I throw a few words toward them, mainly greetings: "How ya doin'?" "Where ya headed?" "You have a cute baby." "Sup."

After the small talk, I feel less awkward when stepping over my neighbor on the way to take a leak in the back of the bus. My neck has increased degrees of freedom. I have a smaller chance of getting left at a rest stop when stuck in line. Sometimes, I get some food out of it. Sometimes, I realize just how nice people are.

I feel the same at the movie theater. Once, out with my roommates, I struck up a conversation with the lady next to me before the movie started.

"Did you see this because of Will Smith."

"Yea-ea, I love Will Smith," she said, sweetly.

"Me too."

Ironing out our informal, short-term relationship as movie-going neighbors increased my comfort zone by a foot or two allowing me to comfortably enjoy the whole movie - if it hadn't sucked, of course.

When she left to get popcorn, still pre-movie, my roommates turned to me. "You're one of those guys? The guy who always talks to person sitting next to them?"

"No, no, no. I just started doing this," I explained. "I feel totally awkward ignoring someone right next to me for a few hours, so I try to say a few things. I'm not like my grandma who will talk for hours."

I didn't mean that. My grandma isn't one of those 'talkers' who will ramble on forever about her life. She's very sweet, usually asking more than telling, all in favor of spreading the love.

The lady returned with a boat of popcorn and lots of napkins. She handed me a napkin and offered popcorn.

"Oh, no thanks."

"You sure?"

Well, I couldn't hurt her feelings, could I?

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On the other hand, certain people are harder to strike up conversations with. Like good-looking girls. I know what you're thinking and it's not because I'm nerdy, you're nerdy, he's nerdy, we're both socially awkward because we spend too much time inside and on the computer, or whatever other stereotype you can summon- er, think of; it's hard because I think that, you know, everyone's looking at this girl. No one has the balls to say anything. And even if I just strike a friendly conversation, I assume that most people assume that I am just talking to the girl because she's good looking. And I think, maybe she thinks the same thing. He just thinks I look good, that's why he's talking to me. I guess I mean that it's only hard to do if you think way too much. Like me. And you.

So, this also happened on the bus. In fact, I don't know how good this girl actually looked, but she was wearing a sweet outfit- one of the outfits that make a person (guy and girl) go Damn! that girl looks good, even before you see them. It just radiates some kind of style. Like anything bought at American Apparel. Anyway, she got on the bus in Greenville, where I got on.

We didn't sit next to each other, the bus was packed and the few people that fit found their way next to a road-weary, bus veteran. Seriously, I only go from Atlanta to Greenville and back on Greyhound; an easy-going two-and-a-half hours. Going anywhere else takes an exponential amount of time. Some people take weekend bus rides across country. Those people have buns of steel.

So, the story could have ended there. Instead, about fifteen minutes from unloading my baggage, hopping on Marta, and finally seeing my girlfriend after a week, the bus suddenly starts making a terrible fwup-fwup-fwup-fwup noise and leans to the left. At first I thought the driver had drifted a little too far to the left and entered the riveted, 'wake-the-hell-up' lane. And then I realized it was a flat. I clutched the seat in front of me and mimiced the driver's looks as he made his way across six lanes to the right shoulder. He then pulled over and almost everyone, all a bit annoyed, exited the bus to get some fresh air.

The girl and I ended up sitting side by side on the guard rail. I knew it would be a while before any help arrived and I had two easy-to-learn card games in my bookbag. All I had to do was ask. Time would pass quicker, it would be fun, and, important to my interests and my future, I would get to study how a person acts and reacts to a new game, what was easy or hard, what she laughed at and what caused her frustration. It would be great. But I didn't ask.

After a while, I started thinking about it more and I had to ask. But I couldn't ask someone to play a game after sitting right next to her for over twenty minutes. She would think I had been planning it the whole time. I was, sort of.

Also, our bus driver let everyone know that a back-up bus would arrive soon.

You know, just to clarify, I probably wouldn't have asked anyone else on the bus to play. Many were much older than me and call me cynical, but I felt like I would have to do more explaining than playing.

Knowing that I had chickened out, I strongly planned to ask her to play if we sat next to each other. I had to do it. Fear would not win. She found a seat a few minutes before I did because she had no bags to place under the bus. When I entered the bus, I looked around at the ten or so seats available. One was next to her. So, I took it.

Before I was even completely adjusted in my seat, she was already pulling out her headphones. Because this had become such an affair in my head, I was actually a bit nervous. What's so hard about asking someone to play a simple card game? Anyway, I acted quickly to catch her before her music started playing.

I reached into my bookbag's front pocket and pulled out Fluxx. "You wanna play a game?" I asked. These are the first words I had spoken to her during the whole trip. It made sense at the time.

"No thanks, I'm fine." I don't even know if she really heard what I asked. It was an automatic response like when a homeless person approaches me on the street. 'No thanks.' I don't always know what they are asking for or offering, but I usually don't want much to do with it.

I shoved the deck back into the front pocket of my bookbag and pulled out my Gameboy DS from the middle area. It had the Simpsons in it, but I didn't have any headphones that worked. I switched it out for Puzzle Quest, a game I could play without sound, and hit buttons until a puzzle opened.

I couldn't concentrate well. I just poked away at gems. The weird rejection from someone I knew nothing about to play a stupid game that would have been a pain to play in the dark- it was evening now- something that means nothing but had been built up in my head just because of the fact that talking to someone you don't know is so-freaking-hard; I'm wondering what she's thinking, lucky her, she has music, am I a weirdo or does she really just not want to play a game? Not with a stranger who could have started a conversation an hour ago, who could have at least started with a greeting, an introduction, not a question to play a game she's never heard of, fifteen minutes from drop-off, on the way to see her boyfriend.

After beating one puzzle, I couldn't play anymore. My head was buzzing too much. I put it away, closed my eyes, and let my head rest against the back of the seat. I couldn't do it for long, though, so I sat up and opened my eyes. My arms felt longer than usual draped into my lap. My hands were holding each other. I looked exactly like the sexual-stalker stereotype used so often in as-weird-as-Hollywood-will-go movie flicks. You know, he sits on the bus, eyes open wider than normal because he's so self-conscious, his arms are folded in his lap. His face is unassuming, giving a false sign of harmlessness. I felt like that guy.

She gets a call from her boyfriend and she exchanges terms of endearments, arrival plans, and I-miss-yous. I had already texted my girlfriend, but I made sure to call her again and exchange my own terms of endearment loudly enough for her to hear; to at least erase the 'scary man' label from the terrible stereotype she probably imagined me as. Now I was just a socially awkward, video game playing, skinny guy that shouldn't have sat next to her. Feels better.

I felt even better a few minutes later when this blog post began forming on my mind.

We arrived in Atlanta, I went one way to Marta and she the other to the Greyhound Kiss-ride.

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So, that's what this post is: a comparing of good and bad reasons to talk to strangers. Should I? Should I not? Should I have been nervous when asking the girl to play the card game? Are other people like me?

I know I'm not supposed to end with a bunch of questions. A weak protagonist makes a bored audience, right? Well, I dunno. This is a sentence.

What every video player needs: A button that rewinds the movie 10 seconds

What'd he just say? I totally missed it because

1) You were talking
2) I was talking
3) An ambulance was passing
4) The actor slurred his words
5) The actor has a thick accent
6) Something really funny happened
7) A mosquito flew by
8) Someone dropped a pen.

Instead of painstakingly dragging the playhead to the correct spot, which becomes harder the longer the video, just click the 'Rewind 10 seconds' button. Honestly, I'm so lazy that sometimes I'll just go on watching the movie or show without going back to see what I missed.

DVD players and their large, usually unorganized remote control, have the ability to skip back pretty easily - if you can find it. This idea is something I really want for all my online video players.

A keyboard shortcut would make it even easier. Moving the mouse ruins the cinematic feel by bringing up the player's interface and sometimes exiting fullscreen viewing. '[' , 'K', '<', could all work as keyboard shortcuts.

So. A few ending questions.

Is it already implemented somewhere? (i.e. did I just make a pointless post?)

How do I make this happen?