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“I guess I just like liking things”

June 10, 2014 Tuesday 10: Movies of 1988

I thought I’d mix things up a little by going backwards instead of forwards in this installment of yearly lists. Eventually I’ll run out of years and I’ll have to go sideways, and I don’t even know how that would work, so let’s not worry about that just now.

Here are my favorite movies from 1988:

Bolo!

Bolo!

10. Red Heat – One of Arnold’s lesser known movies, but I thought it was fun.  James Belushi is the American cop partner to Arnie’s Russian cop in the US, and they mess Chicago up something fierce.

9. A Fish Called Wanda – Hey, I just talked about this one! I don’t remember a lot of specifics about this one, actually, other than remembering I laughed at it a lot. It’s got two Monty Pythoners in it, so I’m sure that helped.

8. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels – Honestly, the Ruprecht parts are the best parts. I don’t actually care much about the rest of the movie.

7. Bloodsport – The movie itself isn’t all that great, I know, but the fighting is awesome. Seeing different styles pitted against each other is exactly the sort of thing I like in fighting movies.

6. Rambo III – I’ll admit that this one gets a bump because of the series as a whole, but Rambo rescuing his father figure is a decent idea for a third act.

5. Scrooged – My favorite version of The Christmas Carol, even over the Muppet version, and I know that makes me some sort of monster.

4. Big – I think this one gets bumped up a little because of nostalgia points. If I were to watch it again these days I’d probably think it was just all right.

3. Who Framed Roger Rabbit – There’s no question mark in that title, so I think we’re meant to assume the guy from the Abbott & Costello routine framed Roger Rabbit.

2. Beetlejuice – Tim Burton, Winona Ryder, and Michael Keaton all at (or near) the height of their powers. There’s been talk of a sequel lately, and I know I shouldn’t want one, but I still do if all three of them are involved.

1. Die Hard – Almost a perfect action movie, and I’ll fight anyone who disagrees!

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June 9, 2014 Music Monday: Ingrid Michaelson

Considered alternate title: "How About... No"

Considered alternate title: “How About… No”

A few weeks ago I picked up the album Lights Out by Ingrid Michaelson.  I’d heard her song Girls Chase Boys on the radio a few times and liked her voice and the style of the song. If I’m understanding the song’s message correctly, it’s saying, “Hey, people break up all the time and the world goes on – don’t make too big a deal about it” which might seem flippant to some, but to me seems like mature thinking.

I guess she’s been around for a while (and even had a song featured on Scrubs), but I wasn’t aware of her until recently. I enjoy the album quite a bit – there’s only one song I skip all the time and one that I skip some of the time. Other than that, I really like it a lot.

My favorite song on the album is called Time Machine:

It’s peppy and enjoyable and it has lyrics like this:

If I had a time machine
And if life were a movie scene
I’d rewind and I’d tell me
To run

Perhaps it’s my obsession with time travel and its life-fixing possibilities (hey, you learned the same lesson from Back to the Future, so don’t give me grief), but I really like it. I’ve listened to it on repeat a bunch and I wanted you to hear it.

June 6, 2014 Movie Quotes

If there’s an easier way to profess one’s love for a particular movie than by sharing movie quotes with someone, I don’t know what it is. A person can say “all righty, then” in normal conversation and no one thinks twice about it, but as soon as you stretch out the Ls and contort your face while doing it, the light goes off and you can immediately distinguish the Ace Ventura fans from the unwashed heathens.

When you start taking a look at lists of The Best Movie Quotes Ever, it becomes clear that many of them pretty much serve one purpose: to identify that this particular quote came from a movie. While some folks will slip in a “May the Force be with you” now and then, there isn’t much call for a “Rosebud!” or “I am big! It’s the pictures that got small” in everyday conversation.

My two most-quoted movie lines aren’t anywhere on that list, nor would I expect them to be. I wouldn’t hesitate to bet that I’ve used one or both of these lines at least once a week for years, but nobody who knows me in real life would even register that fact, they’re so innocuous.

batmandoctorThe first one is “Let’s see how we did” from Batman (1989). Here’s a clip of the Joker’s plastic surgeon saying it, and it’s important to note that when I use it, I do my best approximation of the doctor’s (German?) accent. It’s useful for all sorts of things, certainly, but I use it mostly after I’ve made some change in a computer’s setup (I work in IT). Most any situation where I’ve made a change and need to test it leads to me saying this phrase, though. No one ever reacts, which I feel is a sign of success.

The second one is from A Fish Called Wanda (1988). John Cleese’s character is being… encouraged to apologize to Kevin Kline’s character, and midway through he says, “I apologize unreservedly.” It’s around the 16-second mark in this clip, but I’m linking to the whole clip because you should watch it. I use this one both when I’m actually sorry and when I’m sorry, but it’s not a situation where an apology is really necessary. In those second cases it’s funny to me to use it because it’s under-statedly over-the-top in a situation that didn’t really need anything, and that amuses me. Again, no one ever would think that’s funny except me, and it never gets any kind of reaction, and neither of those will keep me from doing it. In fact, just now I’ve considered that “I apologize unreservedly” might be a good thing to put on my tombstone.

What movie quotes do you use often?

June 5, 2014 Indy PopCon Wrap-Up

The first thing I saw at the con.

The first thing I saw at the con.

I’ve been thinking about last weekend’s pop culture convention all week. I should have taken notes while I was there, but I worry sometimes that doing that will take me out of the fun of being somewhere, you know? I don’t know that I have any great narrative to share on the con as a whole, so it seems like maybe bullet points are the way to go on this for me.

  • I don’t know if that Dalek is considered cosplay, but I’m not entirely sure if there was a person in it or if it was a remote-controlled robot.
  • Speaking of cosplay, I guess I knew there would be some but hadn’t thought much about it. I’ve never been around cosplayers before. There were some great costumes! There were a lot I didn’t recognize (mostly anime stuff, I was informed).
  • There was some sort of Democrat gathering going on in the convention center at the same time, and many of us had to walk through their crowded hallways to get to the PopCon. The looks on some of their faces as a blue person or someone with wings or swords made their way through them…
  • I only ended up doing four things on my list. Some of that is because I didn’t understand how to con very well. Next time I’ll have a better plan.
  • There were a lot more booths selling things that I expected. Again, I think it’s because I didn’t know much about cons, but there were a ton of stores and most of them had things I wanted to buy. I literally left the con with zero money in my wallet (which is actually a story for another day).
  • The celebrity guest signing booths were all at one end, so I did see Nicholas Brendan, John DiMaggio, and Ron Glass, but I didn’t have the $40 to spend to get any of their signatures, and I got the distinct impression you weren’t allowed/encouraged to go up and talk to them if you didn’t have the dough for a signature.
  • However, I did sorta quickly approach the Ron Glass table and mutter/stammer out an apologetic “I literally don’t have any money but wanted to say I enjoy your work.” He graciously smiled and nodded, but the security guy stationed there looked like he wanted to feed me my own severed head (and I don’t even know how he would do that). I literally did not go any closer than 15 feet. This was the third-most stressful moment of my day.
  • I need to do a separate post about the things I bought at the con. Sneak preview: Ghostbusters, TMNT, and comics
  • I attended a panel about how videogames have become a larger part of society, and it was interesting, but I thought the guy in the middle talked too much and the other two didn’t really get to have much input.
  • Weirdly enough, watching the panel made me think, “I could do this sort of thing,” so now I have a year to work on an idea and pitch it to the PopCon folks.

I’m going to separate these next things out to draw attention to the fact that these were my absolutely favorite things about the con:

  1. The Ron Glass Q&A – Something very moving struck me during this, but I’m still trying to formulate my thoughts on it. Aside from that, it was very interesting and fun listening to him talk about his experiences on Firefly and Barney Miller.
  2. Meeting Kevin Eastman – I can’t really explain how nervous I was about this. I mean, he’s just a guy, right? No, sir, he is not – he is one of the co-creators of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I mean, I don’t even know him well enough that I would recognize him out on the street, you know? But there I was at his booth, five feet from him, going through the things available for sale, not talking to him even though no one else was there at the moment. But when I chose an already-signed print and gave his wife the money, she asked if I wanted him to sign it, and of course I did. He shook my hand and was very friendly and signed it and even put my name on it and drew a Ninja Turtle head. I told him that I’d been a fan for almost 30 years and thanked him for his work. I asked him who his favorite Turtle was and he said, “Raphael, because he’s fun to write.” And that was pretty much it.  And of course I forgot to ask for a picture together but I don’t know if he would have anyway because some of the guests had specific picture-taking times that you had to pay money for.
  3. Meeting Internet people – I wasn’t in the main hall for ten minutes before someone I knew came up and said hi, a friend from church. She and her husband were there, and we ended up talking for a few minutes. But then I finally worked up the nerve to go look up the people from Twitter that I’d been talking to for a few months but had never met, and they were all great:

So, yes, I had a great time. I’m already looking forward to next year, and in between I might work up the nerve to go to a few other cons.

I will leave you with this picture of Action Comics #1, which is worth (almost?) a million dollars, and it was just sitting right there in front of me:

actioncomics1

June 4, 2014 Lyn Plays DC Universe Online

 

Price: Free to play, paid access to extra powers, DLC and other stuff.
Client: PC and PS3/PS4
Get it from: dcuniverseonline.com

You know that nonsense about Superman being cursed? I’m starting to believe it. This video is take three after two failed videos thanks to technical issues, and even this one has a random disconnect in the middle due to dodgy internet. Okay, so it’s not dying mysteriously in a bucket of soup, but still. Cursed!

Anyway, how’s the game? The game is actually a huge amount of fun even for people like me who have no idea what they’re doing, or what’s happening, or why. The combat is pretty fast, and I am getting old, but even so I rarely get “knocked out” (you don’t die, you just get KO’d and then have the chance to flee once you’re recovered). I”m not far into the game, but so far I’m having a decent amount of fun and the whole thing looks glorious.

One thing I didn’t cover in the video is the character customisation, which is fairly deep. The exception is your actual body – there’s a choice of three faces and three heights but that’s it which is why all the women are… uh… chesty. There’s a ton of costume choices and a pretty good colour editor. Personally I wouldn’t spend a ton of time on the costume design because as soon as you start playing you start collecting new gear which ruins your carefully created look.

I don’t know if I’ll play to the point where I need to pay, but I’m certainly going to be spending more time in DC Universe because it’s just fun, and makes a great change from orcs and goblins.  So if you see me around in Metropolis, wave from a safe distance because I am so bad at this I might just get you killed otherwise.

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