Hats and I have had an interesting relationship so far in my life.
Like many boys of suburbia I wore baseball caps more often than not growing up. It was likely when I was introduced to Indiana Jones that I became interested in wide-brimmed hats like the fedora and the akubra. This interest only grew in the wake of noir detective yarns and films like Casablanca. I’ve been known to wear something similar on occasion, though it tends to be a trilby more than anything else.
The problem is, I’ve been growing more fashion conscious due to living with one of the most up-front and visceral critics in the known universe. While I try not to read too much into everything that’s hurled in my direction for the sake of my sanity and self-esteem (no, playing Magic is NOT boring, it’s the card-sorting and stuff that sucks the most), I do want to walk out the door knowing I don’t look like a giant tool. And apparently, wearing a fedora-style hat in the wrong way is pretty douchey as far as fashion goes.
I’ve talked about this before. And I’m leery of putting my hat on over just about anything that isn’t a suit, now more than ever. Maybe I need to get myself a lighter trilby, to better compliment things like the picture above. But am I fighting an uphill battle? Have men’s hats been entirely ruined by awkward teens trying pull of the Don Draper look and the various profile photos on OK Cupid?
I know there are people who can and do pull it off, and not all of them are senior citizens. I’m just no longer certain I’m one of them.
Remember the old advice “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything?”
Every once in a while I speak without thinking. It’s been known to happen. My emotionality has been a problem many times in my past, and while I have a much better grip on things now, I still occasionally slip up and say what I’m feeling rather than thinking it through. Sometimes I think I’m being clever. Sometimes I just want to express myself. But when it happens, and I look back on what was said, I realize I was a bit of an ass.
Case in point: I uttered the following words at my friendly local gaming store during the last rotation.
“If you run a decklist from some top player on the Internet, nothing personal, but I hate you.”
For a bit of background on why this is the wrong way to approach competitive gameplay in general and Magic in particular, you should be familiar with Timmy, Johnny, and Spike. Here’s an article on these guys and what they mean to the average Magic player.
When you get down to it, not everybody is going to fall entirely into a single category or type, nor is it reasonable to assume other players will play the game you play it. When it comes to Magic, I’m a bit of a Johnny/Spike. That doesn’t mean Timmy players are wrong, nor are those who go fully Spike and are just in it to win it.
Neither I nor any other person has the right to tell other people how to play their games.
Provided you’re not being a jerk, cheating, or otherwise making the game deliberately unpleasant for other people, play the game however you want to play it. Some players just want big, splashy things to happen or to pull off an impossible combo. Others are interested in building their decks in new and interesting ways just to see how they play. And still others just want the glory of victory.
All of these are fine, and none are invalid. For me or anybody else to say otherwise is just ludicrous.
It’s probably part of getting older. When I first started playing Magic almost twenty years ago, there was no Internet to speak of. Folks had to take what cards they had and build what they could. When Scrye magazine or The Duelist arrived with some decklists and advice, such articles could be cited by aspiring professionals and enthusiasts of the game. How are “net decks” any different? In hindsight and examination, I can tell you they really aren’t.
All that said, all I can do is apologize for speaking as I did and hope I didn’t outright offend anyone in doing so. The only basis by which anybody can truly come down on how you play the game is if you’re making everybody around you miserable while playing for reasons outside of normal frustrating from losing. Basically, as long as you’re obeying Wheaton’s First Law, you should be fine.
Charlene shrugged. “‘Bout as long as I can remember. I used to pass it when I went jogging in the mornings.”
Sam was making his way up the overgrowth path towards the house. It was burnt out but relatively intact, sitting in Miller’s Field like a destitute hobo. The barn was also in need of some repair, but was somewhat intact. There’d been talk around town of tearing the house down and rebuilding, but nobody seemed willing to do that. Sam needed an Eagle Scout project, and doing what the adults were reluctant to do seemed like a good place to start.
“I’m sure there’s a reason nobody wants to touch this place.” Charlene was repeating herself, she knew, but Sam could be terribly stubborn sometimes.
“You don’t think it’s just less political than other stuff they want to do?” Sam picked his way forward carefully, avoiding the weeds and thistles that had burst through what had once been a paved driveway.
She rolled her eyes. “Believe it or not, not everything is politics to adults. Pick up the pace, would you? This isn’t how I want to spend my leave.”
He looked over his shoulder and smiled. “Okay. Sorry to drag you out here. Let’s just have a quick look around and get out of here, so I can write up my proposal.”
He headed right for the charred front door, which hung on a single hinge. Charlene moved to follow, but her toe caught on something and she dropped. Cursing herself for not looking where she was going, she pushed herself up from the blackened soil to see the skeletal hand that had tripped her.
Swallowing a mouthful of fear (you’ve seen bodies before, you’re okay, you’re okay), she gingerly turned fully to examine what lay half-buried in loose soil and persistent weeds. If she hadn’t stepped off of the former driveway, she would have never seen it. But there it lay, the bones charred and the skull’s mouth open in a silent, dirt-filled scream.
“Sam? I think we should leave.”
Looking up, she couldn’t see him. He’s already picking around inside. She dug around in the dirt a bit, finding an old Zippo lighter, a ring of keys, and an half-burned, torn, and decaying notebook. Charlene flipped through it; most of it was inconsequential stuff, grocery lists and reminders. Towards the end, as the burns got worse and worse, she found the first evidence something was really wrong.
They stay in the attic, just in the attic, we’re not sure why.
She turned back to see who ‘they’ might be, but there was nothing. She resumed reading forward.
They took my son, my son is not my son, his eyes are dead, why would they do this to a child?
Charlene’s blood ran cold. She turned to the last page.
I’m the only one left, I have to go, I have to leave, I know where the gas line leads out of the house, I’m going to finish this, for my wife, for my son, before they take me, before they take anyone else.
That’s when she heard Sam scream from inside the house.
“Sam!” She dropped the journal and ran into the house. The interior was blackened from fire, the kitchen worst of all as it had been the center of an explosion. She found the stairs, taking them two at a time, feeling them about to give under her feet, deciding not to care.
The attic door was a pull-down panel from the ceiling that revealed more stairs, she took those two at a time as well. The first thing we saw was Sam, backing away slowly from a corner, flashlight in hand. The attic was as burnt as the rest of the house, and little outside light came in through the slats in the walls and roof. His light was trained on the corner, and the figure crouching there.
It looked like a boy half Sam’s age, just over three feet tall, huddled there like it was frightened. It stared at Sam with milkly, colorless eyes, its skin ashen and covered in burns and black pustules. Charlene set her jaw. Is this the son of the dead man outside?
“Sam, back towards me. Slowly. I’m here, it’s going to be okay.”
“Okay.” He took a step back towards the stairs. The creature in the corner growled and moved in response, shifting from a huddling position to a crouch. Charlene felt her body tense.
“Soon as you’re on the stairs, we’re going to run. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Charlene angled her body, prepared to either bolt down the stairs or jump up into the attic. Sam’s left foot touched the top step on the drop-down panel. The creature hissed, and with a movement so fast Charlene would have missed it if she’d blinked, it leaped across the attic and pinned Sam to the floor.
Charlene was in the attic in the next heartbeat. Instinct and training had her grabbing the thing by its left shoulder with her left hand, while her right went to its neck and under its chin. Its putrid hands were around Sam’s neck, and he was choking, barely making out Charlene’s name. Muscles built from hauling 50-pound packs across Iraq and Afghanistan worked in concert, and while the creature was no longer strictly human, it was still the body of a burnt little boy. She lifted it away from Sam, and then moved her left and right hands in different directions until something snapped like a brittle, dry twig.
The blackened corpse went limp in her hands and she threw it away. Sam got up and put his arms around her, crying into her shoulder.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, sis.”
“It’s okay, Sam. I’m here.” Charlene held him close. She felt a pain in her right hand, looked past Sam’s shoulder, and saw the angry red bite in her palm.
*** THIS IS NOT A DRILL *** REPEAT *** THIS IS NOT A DRILL ***
On 20th Oct. 2012, a very special mission will be undertaken. For the first time in almost two decades, veteran Terran Confederation pilot Josh Loomis will don his pressure suit and step into the cockpit of a fighter craft to do battle with the ruthless Kilrathi invasion forces, to protect humanity and raise money for the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
We are calling this operation Extra Life.
Last year, Operation Extra Life raised more than 1.2 million dollars to save kids, but in 2012 our goals, just like the needs of the kids we serve, are much, much higher.You could say they are as high as the sky. And beyond it is where we will fly, lighting up interstellar space with laser fire and rocket exhaust.
For 24 hours beginning at 1000 hours Eastern Standard time, the operation will play through the adventures of our intrepid pilots as chronicled in the Wing Commander series. The simulation will begin with the first iteration, and continue through each one as long as the operation goes on. The operation will be chronicled, live-Tweeted, and possibly even streamed. Updates on this to follow.
The best part is that you can help. Donating online is safe and easy! To make an online donation please click the “Support This Participant” button on this page. Your donation is tax-deductible and ALL PROCEEDS go to help kids back home.
Do your part! Tune in to the operation! Contribute if you can! YOUR PLANET NEEDS YOU!
I liked the first two Alienmovies, and would happily watch either one again given the chance. I’m also a fan of Ridley Scott’s work in general, especially his Director’s Cuts. Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Idris Elba, and Charlize Theron are some of my favorite actors working today. And science fiction is pet genre of mine, especially when it takes itself seriously and doesn’t go straight for space opera or overdoes the camp of the pulp sci-fi of yesteryear.
So why is my heart not jumping bloodily out of my chest with enthusiasm for Prometheus?
The year is 2094. The Weyland Corporation has sponsored a pair of dedicated archaeologists, Elizabeth Shaw and Charlie Holloway, to follow the evidence they’ve found that mankind was visited by alien beings in our ancient past. The starship Prometheus was built to find these aliens and discover what, if any, connection they have to our origins. Following star maps extrapolated from cave paintings, Prometheus sets down on an inhospitable moon and almost immediately finds evidence of the archaeologists’s fabled “Engineers”. They also find something that threatens all life as we know it, to say nothing of the crew of the ship.
Prometheus begins by introducing us to some very interesting themes, especially for a science fiction film involving starships and extra-terrestrials. The ‘chariot of the gods’ concept is becoming well-tread ground, from the Stargate series to recent things like Thor and Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. Rather than just focusing on the aliens themselves, Prometheus sets its sights on the questions inherent with such visitations. Why did they visit us? What role did they play in our development? If they had a hand in creating us, why did they do so? From my standpoint, the focus of the narrative could have been maintained on these questions rather than pushing towards familiar Alien territory.
Despite the breathtaking visuals, haunting score, and fantastic use of 3D (even in home theater settings), Prometheus suffers first and foremost from an identity crisis. It simply can’t decide what it wants to be. A serious sci-fi film asking questions about faith, creationism, and the origins of life would be fascinating, the Alien franchise is desperate for a high-quality entry to redeem its dalliances with those wacky Predators, and Ridley Scott wouldn’t mind starting a new film series. Prometheus tries to do all of these things, admirably so, but fails in hitting the mark with any of them. The questions it wants to ask fall by the wayside when body horrors begin cropping up, the answers we do get tend to beget more questions, and characters, for the most part, behave more for the sake of advancing the plot than they do from their own motivations and personalities.
Consider David. Michael Fassbender is giving probably the strongest performance of the ensemble here, carefully channeling David Bowie into a soft-spoken android obsessed with Lawrence of Arabia. He doesn’t seem to be interested in being more human, regarding those around him with a detached curiosity rather than any longing, and it soon becomes apparent the Prometheus is something of a personal laboratory for him. However, his motives for his experimentation are tenuous at best, his methods make little logical sense, and what reasoning we do get seems to come in the form of throw-away lines and vague conversations on the relationship between creator and created. It’s cool that he has his own agenda, and he pulls of being a creepy facsimile of human life very well, but he, like much of Prometheus, is simply poorly explained.
The biggest saving grace of the film is probably Elizabeth Shaw. Noomi Rapace is not just doing a send-up of Ripley. She’s also playing one of the few characters who acts in a consistent nature, uses their head on more than one occasion, and has an interesting arc complete with tangible loss, crises of faith, and a staggering amount of determination and survival instinct. It’s very difficult not to care about her after everything we see her going through, and like us, she’s still looking for the answers to her, and our, questions.
While Prometheus suffers from some pretty major problems, it’s still the best thing to happen to the series Ridley Scott started back in 1979 since Aliens. Scott does great work behind the camera and in terms of production, the actors I mentioned are all great, and the presentation is great, at times downright stunning. The problems with the plot and character motivations can’t be overlooked, though, so while it’s hard to classify it as a strictly bad movie, it’s also difficult to give an unqualified recommendation. Being a fan of this director, these actors, and this concept and its execution, I’d probably watch it again, as the parts I enjoyed outweighed those that left me perplexed or frustrated. Just be forewarned: I don’t think Prometheus is for everybody.
