Foggy Morning

The picture I have posted above in the "Pages" section, the Courting Cormorants page, was taken one morning when it was foggy and I was out with my bike and camera. I went to the beach to try and capture some cool scenes of nature...and fog.

Those cormorants were a cool little scene I got to witness. Another set of modern dinosaurs up at the beach are the poppa-bears of the birds: the pelicans. It's pretty cool watching as they circle and dive bomb fish. If you have a tripod, time, and patience, you'll be able to capture some very cool pictures.

It turned out that the ultimate grayness of the day made the splashes of the diving pelicans wash out into the background. While my camera isn't quite super high-speed, I was able to get this picture, where on the left side the moment before a pelican hits the water was captured:



Here's a gull scoping me with one of the oil islands in the fog off shore in the background:



Neither of these are as dynamic as my best "foggy beach" photo:



This is the second time this image has graced this website. I have a prize coming to the person who can accurately place the post in which this picture showed up initially.

Random Pirate Notes

I read a few entertaining things about real life pirates recently that I feel compelled to throw out there for my few readers who may not have known these things. In all my intellectual travels I've found that if I knew nothing about something, then my friends and readers usually find that thing interesting.

Since the British navy at the height of the age of piracy that's been made famous though films was made through basically kidnapping stray drunks at the docks in Britain, it was never a long way to go from a legally "employed" British navy officer and "illegal" privateer and pirate. At least the pirate ships had an equal cut between the booty; every person on board got an equal share, captain included. That was one way to stave off mutiny.

And what, you may ask, did most pirate ships loot? The biggest prizes were medicine and sewing needles, clean water and fresh fruit.

Eyepatches are a staple of piracy in the movies, but historically, why would sailors be more apt to lose an eye than, say, meat packers? They wouldn't is the answer, but the eyepatch serves a purpose, a utility as it were. I learned that the leading consensus is that eyepatches were adorned a few minutes before the crew of a ship was about to storm another vessel. The invaders wore the patch over one of their eyes, got to the other ship, and eventually went beneath deck and into the ship. This was before the advent of artificial light, so it was pretty damn dark down there, and it would take the human eye literally a few minutes to adjust from the sunny day to the darkness underneath.

They would simply switch the patch and be able to see in the dark more effectively with their previously covered eye. Pretty ingenious.

There was something else about Port Royal in Jamaica, but I'll get to that later.

Anniversary I Missed

Back in August an anniversary came and went, a 25th anniversary of when a box was opened and things were evacuated from the box. How exciting, you might say. It was in August of 1986 that "The Legend of Zelda" was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Besides the Mario franchise, no other set of characters have come to define a system, a company, and an entire medium like Link, Zelda, and Ganon. Everything good about video games seems to come from this first RPG, well, if you listen to the hoards of now adults who grew up with that original golden cartridge. Like my man Norm.

I'm oversimplifying, but really, the anticipation, the difficulty, the satisfaction, and the entertaining challenge of the original game keep it fresh.

I've read about some of the iterations of the Zelda games over the years, and it sounds like the consensus is that out of the 15 official canon games, there are 15 excellent video game classics of various degrees. Some opinions are mixed, but cases have been made for the quality of each of the canon games, convincing cases.

My own experience has been limited to watching Tony and Norm play both "Majora's Mask" and the cartoony Gamecube "Wind Waker" game. "Wind Waker" turned into one of the more controversial games in the series, but has a devoted following of at least a faction of the brand's fans.

Also, I spent a good amount of time playing one of the best video games in the history of the medium: "The Ocarina of Time". Consistently ranked either Number 1 all time or in the top five all time for video games, "Ocarina of Time" fulfilled all of the promise of the first 3D Zelda game, and even lifted the medium to new heights.

It's one of the few video games I've actually beaten, having done so twice. It's that enjoyable. I even tried hooking my N64 up to my old TV just to see if I could get a game going again in my spare time while we were living in Texas (sadly it didn't work). The game play, graphics, challenge, and ultimate payoff makes it an infinitely re-playable game, and I'm not even a gamer.

The power of "Ocarina of Time" is like the power of Nintendo's Wii: it makes fans out of regularly non-interested folks.

Happy belated birthday Link, Zelda, Ganon, the holders of the Tri-force (respectively courage, wisdom, and power). Looking forward to the watercolor looking Wii's "Skyward Sword" Zelda entry within the next year.

Random Comic Strip Notes

I read the comics in the newspaper, the "funnies" as it were. There are some good ones from the past ("Little Nemo", "Calvin and Hobbes", "The Far Side", "For Better or For Worse") and some good ones that are currently running ("Get Fuzzy", "Dilbert", "Zits", "F Minus"), and I could write a whole lot of crap about the ones I like and the ones I particularly loathe ("Mallard Fillmore" for one, and I find myself agreeing with Christian Slater in Heathers when he goes after "Family Circus").

Here, though, I only wanted bring to attention "Tina's Groove". This strip features a single and independent working server named Tina, and her world. It has it's moments, most of which are witty and incisive and truthful about working in the restaurant industry.

The thing that gets me, if you don't have the strip in your paper, is that Tina bares a close resemblance to Betty Boop, except for her eyebrows.

Tina's eyebrows are perpetually stuck in the exasperated/stressed out phase, the opposite of the "angry V" eyebrow look. They're very expressive, and while the strip is supposedly glorifying the independent working woman, they make her look sadly overwhelmed most of the time. It doesn't really have much bearing over the quality of the strip, as it does things that no other comic strip would do, like have a day devoted to women's flatulence, which is a strength.

It just makes me think. It's a comic strip written by a lady for the ladies, and the hero looks constantly stressed out, even when she smiles. I know the world is stressful for the ladies...that's got to be the point.

Tina retains her groove in the face of this hard and stressful patriarchal society, a society that also happens to be one of the most open and free for women on this planet.

Citrus Heights Movie Salvage

I think I've finally finished the movies salvaged from Dan's house up north. Here's a picture of the bin with the films:



I've written about a few of them. Personal Velocity was one I'd never heard of before putting it in and pressing play. The copy was one of the "For Your Considerations" that we obtained through certain means--a copy given to members of the Academy, the Oscar voters. These are usually bare-bones copies with only the movie on the disc and no art on the case. If you've never heard of the film, you should be in for a surprise.

Personal Velocity is a collection of three nearly half-hour vignettes about women in various areas of New York; one in the city proper (Parker Posey), one upstate (Kyra Sedgewick), and one straddling the City and Upstate (dunno). It was indie and well made, but more like a series of long-form shorts.

Small Time Crooks wasn't what I thought it was going to be. Better, I guess, but I appreciate the "Woody Allen" thing more when he plays a smarter guy.

I'll probably discuss some of these other movies in greater length as my attention gets to them (like Amadeus). For now, though, I've pretty much watched them all (I turned off The Phantom from Space even though they mentioned Morro Bay for a second in the opening moments; it was like that).

"Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" Notes

Rounding out the last of the films salvaged from my brother's house up north, Corrie and I popped in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, hoping to enjoy it.

At least I was consciously hoping to enjoy it. I didn't want it to be like watching Voltron or He-Man, shows I grew up with but watching them now I cringe, barely able to sit through more than a few hundred frames at a time.

But this is a movie, right? Not a poorly funded and animated twenty-two minute commercial for toys, so there's hope that it might have aged well, right?

I am happy to report that it did age well.

There are a few things to which I'd like to speak: Bill and Ted filling the lovable idiot role for their time and place. These two are as ignorant as Beavis and Butt-head, while without the social critique. Their campy antics also play well as a bridge from the 80s, when the film was made and released, to the 90s, the era most resembling the time period in which the film takes place.

To me, Back to the Future is the 80s movie, a movie so entrenched in the times in which it was produced that it actually transcends that time period and exists on a different plane. That's a compliment. There are plenty of 80s movies that are obviously from the 80s and are garbage.

To me the first Bill and Ted movie has never been an 80s movie. Maybe I'm being fuzzy-headed here, but as the story is about a specific type of future, I've always felt that it projected the immediate future that actually came after it, that it in fact is somehow a 90s movie.

Does that make sense? Whatever...

The boys need to pass a history presentation or their band will be broken up as they fail out of school and Ted is shipped off to military school. That the fate of the universe rests on their band making it is far too absurd to be an 80s movie trope. Part of their history project is to explain how specific historical figures would feel about today's world. A helper is sent from the future to help the boys out by giving them their time-traveling phone booth. The helper: George Carlin.

Bill and Ted decide to "borrow" (see "kidnap") certain historical figures, take them to their presentation and get their collective take on modern America, and then return them safely to their respective times.

If executed well, this premise has promise. Fortunately, it was executed rather well. Napoleon slips through first, and we see that he's a dick when he's cheating at bowling or cutting in line at the water-slide park (his "swim trunks" are just his undergarments, which are hilarious and accurate). The first figure the boys grab intentionally is Billy the Kid. A scene good for a laugh has Bill and Ted about to be attacked by a group of large cowboys, and Bill says, "So, we're totally weak, and couldn't possibly fight you," which is actually kind of a reasonable thing to say.

Billy the Kid represents young America for the boys; an entity that would recognize the society of the 1980s, or at least recognize that institutionally it resembles what he left. He's instrumental to some of the plans Bill and Ted have, and they need him from time to time.

During the time when the group of historical figures are left to their own devices in a mall, their own reactions to the modern world begin to manifest. Joan of Arc takes over an aerobics class; Genghis Khan dons football pads and favors aluminum bats to his war-club; Beethoven takes over a music store's display keyboard and makes "synergy"; after getting arrested Sigmund Freud slyly interrogates his interrogator; Lincoln spells out his unusual last name for the police only to be given attitude by the detective.

One last comparison to Back to the Future that I think shows the 80s/90s split in this late 80s flick: the time-travel look. The DeLorean hitting 88 mph activates the flex capacitor, splits space-time open and spits you out on the same spot you started at the new time period. The sparks and laser-light show generated by this time-travel is created by conventional animation by the looks of it. It is quite iconic about what was good about big 80s movies.

If you've seen Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure picture the time-travel: phone booth zooming through tubes that seem to invoke different channels of historical/futuristic space-time. Notice though, using your memory, that it's computer animated. It's easier to notice while you watch, of course.

Their ignorant mispronunciations are also rather funny: "So-crates", "Frood", and "Beeth-oven".

Now, a sequel was spawned called Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, though it was originally titled Bill and Ted go to Hell, because during the course of the movie the two do die and go to hell. When I first saw the movie, in the theater like the first one for the first time, I remember thinking that it was crappy, or not as good as the first one...my aversion to visiting places like heaven or hell in movies was already in place even at that early age, but really just more of a disappointment.

Recently, when reading up on the first movie for this post, I read a synopsis of the sequel and realized 1) how it ultimately ties every loose end together from the first film and almost explains how the future where the Wyld Stallions are the new (basically) deity can come to exist; and 2) how utterly original it is.

In 2004 I read about a movie, and it made me want to go see it. I tried to convince my friends to come and watch it, unsuccessfully at the time, and by the time I was able to find a day to take Corrie, the two of us had to go to Arroyo Grande to see it, it having left San Luis Obispo. The movie: Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. Thankfully that bastion of smart stoner humor has become part of pop culture. Corrie and I went to see the sequel, Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, in the theater in Brooklyn. It's basically a very crass copy of the first, with higher stakes. Besides George W. being made a pot-smoking sympathetic character talking about cock-meat sandwiches, it wasn't particularly original.

So, ...Excellent Adventure and ...Bogus Journey gives two rather random and original time-travel comedies.

Originality is always nice.

Halloween Coda

Halloween is for only a pair of segments in this country: little kids and the drinkers who like to get dressed up. This past Monday Corrie and I enjoyed our evening of making dinner and watching a scary movie with the constant interruption of our buzzing doorbell. (We put the movie on after we turned off our light and were done for the evening.)

For those little kids out with the parents, all dressed up, Halloween is like a precursor to Christmas: gift time. In this case a great many random people you've never met are giving you edible prizes, and not just edible, but candy!

It was almost as fun for us giving out the candy as it was for the kids getting it. I imagine, anyway. How old are we, enjoying chilling at home and traipsing the stairs every few minutes for kids?

Here's a picture of our door and a close up of the sign we needed to put up, just to make it clear. I like how the stairs are visible due to the stairwell light and the porch light being on the same circuit.




The movie we watched was Phantasm II. I bought a four-pack horror/cult collection a few months ago, and Phantasm II was one of the movies...not Phantasm, or Phantasm III, just number II. I watched it alone a while back, and described it as totally weird and out-there for Corrie when we discussed which scary movie to watch.

I don't really consider us owning any truly scary movies. I was talking with my brother Dan, who's writing a list of ten of the scariest movies for a website, and I realized that I'm not sure I could come up with ten movies I find really scary. I guess I've never really been into them as a cinema fan. I can't wait to see his list, though.

I should check out Poltergeist...

Back to our movie...it had some startling moments, a flying shiny chromium orb that cuts ears off before boring through bodies, a negative-image universe where funky Jawa-like creatures are hatched, a badguy only known as the Tall Man, and a scene where hydrochloric acid is used inadvertently as an embalming fluid.

You know, summing it up like that made me realize that, out of context, Phantasm II was pretty bad-ass for a stupid Halloween movie. It probably helped that we didn't know how the story started, or ends, and just got the unmitigated weirdness of the middle.

That's how life is sometimes.