To make this enterprise even better, it’s the thirtieth anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back, which, as everyone except my sister-in-law knows, is the best of the Star Wars films (she likes A New Hope, which isn’t a bad first choice, it’s just the wrong first choice). To honor the anniversary, almost everything having to do with the convention was related to Episode V. And who makes his first appearance in Episode V (without considering the Holiday Special, which you should never consider, unless you ever wanted to know what turns on Chewie’s dad)? Boba Fett. The official logo of the convention was Boba Fett pointing his blaster. How could I not go? The Four-Day adult badge was Boba Fett, the exhibitor badge was a Wampa and the Saturday-only badge was Lobot. Yeah, Lobot. Sorry Saturday-only people.

But before Orlando, there was Gainesville and my brother’s family. My nephew turned one the week before we arrived, so he was taking a few steps here and there, which was good to experience. Went hunting for shark’s teeth with my brother and my niece, and made baked macaroni and cheese for everyone. My brother grilled up chicken and corn, though the chicken was a little underdone, in the sense that it was still in the refrigerator when dinner was served. I bought my nephew a singing fire truck, and my brother swears he’ll make the song his ringtone. My nephew, of course, played with the box instead, and tried to put a bucket on my head. Then it was off to Orlando.

I drive a manual transmission Ford Focus hatchback. My brother lent us his automatic Dodge… giant pickup truck. I want to say it’s a Dakota, but I really don’t know. I could fit my Focus in the bed of the truck. So it’s a lot different than driving my car. But I had driven it from North Carolina to Florida on a previous trip, so I was more or less okay.

There were a lot of yo-yos in the hotel in Orlando. I don’t mean that as in “buffoons” but as in, actual yo-yos. Apparently there was a yo-yo competition. Oddly, other than by badge, hard to tell a yo-yo-thlete (is that a thing?) from a Star Wars fan. The Rosen Plaza is very close to the Orange County Convention Center and is a pretty decent hotel.

The first thing I did upon getting into the exhibit hall (there was a massive line before the show opened, go figure) was get in line for the Gentle Giant exclusive Boba Fett, which was, of course, sold out for the day. So was the Hallmark ornament, but thankfully that wasn’t too impressive. After wandering the dealer area for a while, I finally summoned the courage to go to the Celebration Store. At the last Star Wars Celebration I was in line for six hours to order from merchandise tucked safely away behind a counter. It was operated by people where if you said, “I’d like the black hat” they would ask, “This hat?” Hey Sagan, there are two hats: one is pink, one is black. You sell like fifteen items total and have been selling the same fifteen items for two days. So yes, that black hat, the only black hat there. I would have summoned sarcasm at that point at Celebration III, but hypothermia was setting in and only my crying was keeping me warm. With that memory, trepidation is what I would say was my dominant emotion heading into the CV store.

The Celebration Store at CV was a large open air space where you could go up to the merchandise and look at it directly like buying off the rack at a huge, spacious store. They were sold out of a few things, like a shirt I wanted and lanyards, but otherwise nothing was hard to find. When I went to pay, I waited in line behind exactly zero people. I visited that store four times while at the convention and my longest wait was behind one person. It was fantastic.

We checked out the R2 Builders room for there and no matter how many times I see that, I’m impressed. The fact that people make their own life-sized versions of R2 with intricate lights, mobile heads, etc., is amazing to me.

Seth Green had a panel for Robot Chicken and so we wandered over at 4:30 for a 5:30 panel. Foolish, I know. Perhaps I was riding the wave of elation from the super-efficient Celebration Store, but I saw no line outside the door, even in the designated line area, and so I asked the person, “Is this where the Seth Green panel will be?” “Yes,” he said, “but you line up upstairs.” “Has the line started yet?” I asked. He gave me a very quizzical look and said, “Oh yes, it started.” Upstairs there was a long line wrapped around the railing. Still we managed to get in with room to spare.

The “audience warm up” person was highly entertaining. He told a few jokes that he knew would be bad, and sang a song about Dagobah to the tune of “Daylight Come and Me Want to Go Home.” As he roamed through the audience he found a guy dressed as Darth Maul who happened to be a prison guard. He asked him if he ever went to work like that. Then he went up to interview a young kid. The host returned to the stage, got a Darth Maul action figure and had the prison guard give it to the kid, saying it was a form of scaring him straight. It was an amusing little moment. Then there was a Wookiee-Noise Off where two people competed to make the best Chewbacca sound.

The panel itself was pretty entertaining and Seth showed clips from the upcoming third Robot Chicken Star Wars special, which will air in December. Joey Fatone was also a guest on the panel, and he and Seth did a brief impromptu rendition of “Neither of Us Is an Elephant.” The new episode looks to be funny and focuses on the Emperor’s story from the Emperor’s point of view.

For dinner we went to the B-Line Diner in the Peabody hotel. The theory was to get dinner early, wake up and get in line early for the Main Event, which was John Stewart interviewing George Lucas. The B-Line Diner threw a wrench into that plan. The best thing I can say about the B-Line Diner is that it’s conveniently located near a lot of restaurants that you should go to instead. It took almost fifteen minutes just to place a beverage order and we placed our food order at the same time. Ten minutes later the server came back around and asked, “Have you placed a food order?” “Uh yes.” “Who is your server?” “Well, you are.” Should have left then, but instead, we marched on into futility. She had three or four tables and everyone seemed to be looking around or checking their watches. When our food finally arrived, after the promise of a complimentary dessert, it was scalding hot. Normally if I go to a restaurant and order steak, someone will warn me that the potato is hot, even if it’s just mildly warm. At the B-Line I ordered chicken pot pie, which is apparently baked right in the serving dish because after ten minutes, the food was still burning my mouth. Finally I wondered, “Why is it still so hot?” so the really dumb part of my brain told me to test the pie dish, which was still warm enough to turn Anakin into Vader. Thanks for the warning server, and thanks for the dumb idea, brain. Got dessert to go.

Woke up at two in the morning to go hop in line for George Lucas. We were not even close to first in line. We weren’t in the first thousand. Got to see some geek from Iowa hit on a geek from Illinois. He was working every kind of “magic” he had. Which reminds me that there was a “speed dating” event at Celebration V and apparently they had to put up a sign that read, “No more gentlemen.” At six in the morning the line started moving. Now as the George Lucas event was the big draw of the convention, for people that were unable to get into the actual room, the interview would be broadcast to three other rooms for a total audience of 7,500 or so. As we were about to pass through the doors to get our wristbands, the guy at the door said, “You’re still in the main room.” Of course once we had our wristbands, we just moved to another line for seats. The original plan was for me to try to hop in line for the Gentle Giant thing, but then it seemed like I could just do that Sunday (ha ha (note not a funny “ha ha” but rather a bittersweet, always contend for Murphy’s Law, ha ha)). By the time we actually got into the theater, I had been in a line for over eight hours.

The DJ pumped up the crowd with some 80s music and tried to get everyone to do “Shout.” Then he followed it up with “Jump On It” which is a song that I’m sure is playing in Hell. Ever see over two thousand nerds try to dance? It’s… amusing. Let’s just say it’s a good thing computer programming doesn’t require rhythm.

Then John Stewart came on stage and tried to bust out his Star Wars nerd cred. He also introduced George Lucas by saying, “And now the person who, let’s face it, is responsible for all of you not being at a Star Trek convention right now…”

Now, some people are down on George Lucas for the prequel trilogies and for changes made to the original trilogy. I’m not a fan of Episode I, and most of Episode II. Nor am I big on some of the changes made to the original trilogy. Han shot first, Sebastian Shaw’s ghost should be at the end of VI and I hate the Honeycombs guy dancing in Jabba’s palace… But regardless of those things, it doesn’t change the fact that George Lucas is responsible for creating Star Wars in the first place. Like some fans, when giving out a list of my favorite films, I am prone to begin with, “Other than Star Wars movies…” because I count those films separate from the rest. They have had a different impact on me than say Black Hawk Down or Heat. Without Star Wars, I wouldn’t know most of my friends in Wisconsin, and some friends in Missouri. Star Wars has provided me with hours or days of fun with games, opened my imagination as a kid and kept it open as an adult. I accept that not everything Star Wars related is targeted towards me. The Clone Wars cartoon is meant for a younger audience. I also accept the fact that I would have done something different with Episodes I-III, just as I don’t like all of the novels. Every universe I like is flooded with problems or things I don’t like. Zombie Marvel characters? Seems silly. Spider-man 3 is pretty bad. But that doesn’t take away from Stan Lee’s accomplishments. Transformers 2 is somewhat embarrassing, but I still have fond memories of my play time as a kid. If the only thing George Lucas ever did was create an opportunity to meet the friends I have, then I’m grateful for every dime I gave to his vast wealth. So I was excited when he made his entrance. The interview was interesting though it did not really add anything to my knowledge. He was a little less stiff than I’ve seen on television interviews and he admitted Jar Jar is annoying. He said when Episode IV came out, Threepio annoyed everyone and then when Episode VI came out people forgave Threepio as they were even more annoyed by the Ewoks and now the Ewoks are okay because of Jar Jar. Regardless of how I feel about some irritating characteristics of the prequels, or of some changes, I’d sincerely thank George for what he gave me. Towards the end of the interview John Stewart announced some surprised guests, namely Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher.

After that let out it was nap time and then back into the fray. The One-Man Star Wars Trilogy is very entertaining. I admit I was a little doubtful of the idea since the only one-man shows I’ve seen were on TV and the performer was explaining his relationship to his father, or about the loss of his mother, but this was amusing and I laughed out loud several times.

If you’re in Orlando and looking for a nice, upscale restaurant, try Jack’s in the Rosen Plaza. Despite being in a crowded hotel, we had dinner on a Saturday evening without problems and had great service. My guess is by that point most of the Star Wars and yo-yo crowd was poor from merchandise. The filet mignon and the lemon tart are quite good, as is the bread brought out before the meal. There was a caricature of Sloth from Goonies (Or Goopnies, as it is sometimes called) by the table. There were other caricatures as well, but that’s the one I focused on.

Sunday had one task, other than drive back to Gainesville, and that was the 12” Boba Fett. Got in line at a little after six in the morning after checking out of the hotel. I did not count but I would estimate I was less than 30^th in line. There were all sorts of, “Well I heard they were only selling <X> number per day” statements, but I was 64^th in line once allowed into the dealer hall and most estimates were over 80 per day, so I felt confident I would get one. By the way in case you’re wondering at the math on that, I was 30^th to get into the convention for the general public, but people that bought VIP passes were let in first, and so 64^th in line for Gentle Giant. So all went smoothly, right? Ha ha (See note about Ha ha above). No. After about six minutes of joy thinking I was just a little away from accomplishing my mission, convention center security came through saying, “No line for Gentle Giant right now” and dispersed the line. What followed was a fine example of taking a bad situation and making it worse. Apparently there was an incident earlier with unverified details. The closest I got to an explanation was, “someone wasn’t cooperating.” Then security said people could line up at 11 but couldn’t wait around the area until then. That meant that the person 200^th in line was now on equal footing with the person that was first in line, or say, 64^th in line. Arrive at 10:59 and you have the same chance as someone that arrived at 6:15. They set up a line area that was about as long as a bus, but narrower. At 11 when the line was opened up, there was a mad rush. Not quite Who concert in Cincinnati bad, or soccer hooligan bad, but still bad. So, no Boba. Of course some dealers were selling the Boba for a huge mark up. One was selling the $90 Boba for $240. Say “hi” to Virgil for me kid. I’m sure you’ll be on his next tour.

But we found the out of the way place selling mini donuts. It was the only thing we accomplished that final day.

All in all, despite the fatigue and the problem with the Fett, I had a fantastic time. But it was fantastic before I even left Gainesville for Orlando.

Cool things at the convention:

A giant AT-AT in the one lobby.

The Belgian 501^st Garrison brought a full-scale TIE Interceptor to set up on the floor.

Someone was dressed as Ephant Man.

George Lucas praised the 501^st for all of the work they do for charity.

Huge inflatable Death Star hanging in another lobby.

Large Lego mosaic. It was a “mystery” mosaic where attendees could help by completing one square of the picture. If they completed the square they got a white Lego Boba Fett and for every square completed, Lego donated 330 Lego pieces to a children’s hospital.

Let’s face it, the original Crackdown was the free game they included with the very expensive Halo 3 demo. People bought Crackdown for the same reason they went to see Wing Commander. They wanted a small preview of something else they were more excited about. Still there were some fun moments in Crackdown, and the good news is, they’re back in Crackdown 2… and pretty much exactly the same, except this time there are mutants. I did not get to the end of Crackdown 2 (is there an end?) but I assume the mutants are the result of a government-sponsored genetic experiment gone horribly wrong.

After the brief tutorial (do a melee combo by hitting B three times. If you want to do a different combo, switch it up by hitting B four times) you are unleashed into Pacific City, which is filled with criminals, police and civilians. All three of these groups have one thing in common: they do not move when bullets are fired in their direction.

“Hey Gary?”

“Yeah Bill?”

“That agent seems to firing at the dozen bad guys around us.”

“Sure seems to be.”

“Should we maybe move? The bullets are really close, and I think that car full of dynamite is on fire.”

“No, we’re good here.”

“But, the bad guys are firing at us too.”

“I figure maybe the evil bullets will hit the good bullets and we’ll be safe, plus the wind trails from all of the bullets, that should put out the fire. The cops don’t seem to be worried, why should we?”

“You’re sure smart Gary.”

“I sure am Bill. Look, cars are speeding by, let’s stand in the street and continue our conversation.”

They’re not afraid of cars either.

The game almost wants you to kill cops. Quite often I would hit the “target” button to try to target an enemy that was shooting at me, but instead it would target a police cruiser filled with friendly police. I’d release the target button, click it again and… same target. There did not seem to be a way to cycle between them because the cycle feature just changed what part of the car I was shooting at. Should I blow out the police car’s tires, or should I shoot the gas tank? I did not have long to decide because while I was trying not to shoot the police car, the bad guys were still shooting me.

Now, I’ve caused chaos. I have some experience with it. Throw a car at a group of pedestrians in Prototype and people scatter. Hook up a construction worker to an exploding barrel in Just Cause 2 and people run. Electrify a car and then TK it into a police station in Infamous and folks seek shelter. In Crackdown 2, there’s no sense of chaos and panic. It’s more like Last Action Hero when the bad guy shouts to the people in a neighborhood of New York, “I just shot a man” and people simply tell him to keep it down. Cities should seem alive and people should seem intent on breathing. But in Crackdown 2, they don’t. In Grand Theft Auto I’ll drive on the sidewalk for fun, because, why not. In Crackdown 2 I purposefully stayed on the road, and apparently every night is block party night, because despite my best efforts “blood flows red on the highway.”

So what do you do when chaos is no fun? Concentrate on the story. I don’t even know if there is a story in Crackdown 2. As far as I can tell the narrator/Agency director tells you to do various things in any order you choose. It’s like the developers said, “Hey, we gave you a mediocre, non-reactive world, now go have fun in it.”

Every time you start the game, even to continue an existing game, you pick your agent’s face and armor. It seems like a minor thing, but by taking away a consistency factor in my character’s face, it eliminates any sense of connection. Lead writer on this game has to be the easiest gig in the world. The lead writer on a reality show probably has a tougher job “and that’s when the Donald says, ‘you are fired.’” “Brilliant Patrick, you’ve done it again.” I don’t need a strong story in an open world game, but I do need some sense of urgency especially if the open world does not seem to provide excitement.

There is a cooperative mode but I never got around to it.

The best thing I can say about Crackdown 2 is that it was so unentertaining that I didn’t feel like finishing it, so I traded it into GameStop while it was still worth a decent amount and it helped me payoff Dead Rising 2. In a genre filled with better games, there’s no reason for Bungee to make this one, and no reason for you to buy it.

So I looked at doing the review from two possible directions. The first is the, “ah, you made a movie, so I’ll judge it like a student film or something I’d see on YouTube.” The second approach is to compare it to professional films, putting it against the likes of Stephen Spielberg and Jerry Bruckheimer. Please note that’s probably the only sentence where those two names will appear together. While the first one seems like the more fair route to Jonah, if the end goal of any review is to help people decide if they should spend their money or not, then only the second type of review is honest. After all, if I write a review of my mom’s art, and you don’t know my mom, you’re not going to buy it just because it’s hers.

With that in mind, I approached the music as if I did not know Jonah. I treated it like I would a review of anything else, like when I wrote a review of Juliana Hatfield back in college (didn’t like her album by the way). Or when I wrote a review of Clash of the Titans... which made Juliana Hatfield seem like a wise purchase in comparison. In other words I threw his music up against the likes of everything else in the music universe.

Also Jonah provided me with a link to the songs so I could download them, but fortunately or unfortunately, my iPod did not like the tracks because when I imported them it flagged them with those angry exclamation marks. Also it wasn’t copying over anything else, but that battle is well documented elsewhere on these pages.  In order to listen to the songs, I downloaded them from iTunes, which means I was back on footing with everyone that would be paying for them. In addition to removing the freedom from buyer’s remorse, this also meant I was contributing to an artist and encouraging him to continue with his art. I just like doing that when I can. Plus I’m one of those quirky people that pays for all of the music I have.

When I wrote the review, I wrote what I honestly believe. Some of you won’t like it, simply because it’s not your style of music. That’s not a knock on Jonah, it’s just how the universe works. I’m sure Niel Young is quite talented, but he doesn’t play my kind of music, so I don’t buy his stuff. Same with Bruce Springstein and any other number of artists. And I do like some tracks more than others on the album, but that’s fairly common.

Having spent the money for the album, I consider it a good purchase. Now that the review is done, I’ll still listen to both albums and some tracks more than others. A few have made it on to my various playlists. Also I wouldn’t steer you wrong when it comes to your money. There are a lot of things you could do with it.

Last, as an unrelated note to this review specifically, I’m not a music expert. I listen to a lot of music, but I don’t understand the various terms associated with it any more than I know what anti-aliasing is in a video game, or certain film terms for a movie. As someone once said, “I don’t understand art, but I know what I like.” So don’t expect my music review to be technical. Just expect it to be honest.

By listening to Singer/Songfighter a few times before trying Ghosts Don’t Disappear I wasn’t sure what to expect from the latter. After listening to Ghosts Don’t Disappear, I can say that if Singer/Songfighter is a series of experiments then Ghosts Don’t Disappear is a collection focused on a single style. Fortunately it’s the style that seems best suited for Knight. That style, when combined with a smoother recording method, makes Ghosts Don’t Disappear a far more polished album than his first endeavor in the same way that Nevermind is a smoother album than Bleach.

But that’s not to say it’s for everyone. The acoustic music scene is a niche market. Not everyone likes music boiled down to its basic components: unplugged instruments and the human voice. If you enjoy music from Jose Gonzalez, Jonathan Kingham, Maria Taylor, Jonatha Brooke, Jack Johnson and Glen Phillips, keep reading. If you don’t, this album probably isn’t for you any more than a country album, no matter how good, is meant for me.

Ghosts Don’t Disappear is a somewhat thematic album of six songs, much like the album Secrets of the New Explorers by Glen Phillips which is a collection of songs about the privatization of space exploration, except Secrets is weirder. Ghosts not only deals with apparitions of people, but also of events and even stars. Everything generates a ghost of some sort even if it only haunts an individual’s mind. The theme is not so overwhelming that the individual songs are lost to it.

The music is solid throughout, with a violin in “Elizabeth Feels Differently” and an accordion in “Some Day We’ll All Be Ghosts” to accompany the ever-present acoustic guitar.  At times the guitar will have you tapping your feet. It sets the mood well and is a joy to listen to, which is good because there aren’t many other instruments to mask it if it were bad.

Knight seems to have three styles of singing: normal, hushed and a hybrid. In “Someday We’ll All Be Ghosts” and “The Window Frames” he seems to be singing effortless with his usual tone. Given most of his songs are stories, I think this style works for him. It adds more realism to it. The hushed tone, used in “Far” is perhaps fitting to the song, but when compared to his normal way of singing I don’t think it works as well. A good way to put it is, his voice works better as a narrator than a character. He has a storyteller’s voice. For the song “Rhythm” there is a bit of the husky quality, but it’s far more relaxed and contrasts nicely to the female voice accompanying him. Also the song is a bit melancholy, so I think it’s appropriate. By far “Rhythm” is the standout song on the album.

The main way I judge an album is, “can I listen to it without having to skip some of the tracks?” The answer to that question is yes. I prefer some to others and I’m more likely to add “Someday We’ll All Be Ghosts” and “Rhythm” to a playlist than I am likely to add “Far” or “The Problem With Math” but that’s true of any album. When I’m generating a playlist for the day or to save I rarely add an entire album. I have a playlist specifically for sitting around a campfire with friends. It’s populated with mellow songs from the likes of Glen Phillips, Simon & Garfunkel, Luce, Guster, Willie Porter and many others. A few tracks from Ghosts Don’t Disappear will be added to that group. This is good “coffee house” music. If you heard Jonah Knight playing in a coffee house, you would probably stop and listen.

My advice, if you have iTunes take a listen. Start with “Rhythm.” If you like the thirty seconds, take the $.99 second risk and purchase it. At $5.94 it’s cheaper than a trip to Starbuck’s and you’ll get more enjoyment out of it. If the indie acoustic music scene is lucky, Jonah, just like the ghosts he sings about, won’t disappear.

You can read more about Jonah at www.JonahoftheSea.com, and listen to his music there.

My plan for the day was to go for my walk that I normally take on Sundays, get my donuts, walk back home, put my pajamas back on and then shoot things from the comfort of the couch. Mostly I was going to shoot cowboys. Well I did go for a walk and did get donuts, but that’s where the plan halted. I did play a round or two of Modern Warfare 2, which does not feature cowboys, and then I proceeded to clean.

By 11:30 I had cleaned both bathrooms, swept the kitchen, vacuumed upstairs and the living room, did a bit of dusting and had washed my linens and put them back on the bed. Not exactly the most exciting way to spend a birthday, or a day off of work. But the day took off from there and it was important to get the house in order because I was expecting company the next day.

On my 35^th birthday my dad was still alive. The signs of decline were there, but not very prominent, so I was full of hope. On my 36^th birthday I was largely full of confusion, still trying to dig out from under the previous years’ events. On my 37^th birthday I was full of joy.

Despite the first half of the day being occupied with less-than-adequate sleep and cleaning, the second half of the day held promise. I talked to my mom and brother on the phone, and also accidentally learned that my phone has a speaker-phone option. Don’t hold a speaker phone next to your ear, would be my advice. After that I relaxed for a bit, went out for a nice dinner and then went back to relaxing. If nothing else, I can now say I had wild Wahoo in public. Wahoo, in case you’re wondering, is a type of fish.

Saturday I had a migraine. There was no getting around just calling it a headache. It had all of the trappings of one of the more severe headaches I’ve had. If I didn’t have a jacket on I was freezing but if I put one on I was sweltering. My headache became a bit more subdued before the movie started, but all of the other side effects were still in play. Still, even with the headache, the movie and the company afterwards were enjoyable. I made Baked Alaska and so I could cross that off of my Life’s To-Do List. My to-do list is mostly baking projects so far. But I like that because it makes me tackle things. I think the only obstacle between me and a baking project should be cooking equipment. If I have everything I need, then I should try to make anything I fancy. If I don’t have everything I need, then what I want to make should be the inspiration for me to buy the right gear.

And that leads into something more important. I never took New Year’s resolutions seriously. While I think the changing of the year is a good time to make changes in our lives, it’s still an arbitrary date. January 1^st is no more significant to me than March 24^th in terms of what I should be doing with my life. But my birthday? That makes a specific thing. It means I’ve made it one more trip around the sun. Time is a non-renewable resource and celebrating our birth is a better marker than celebrating our calendar. So I think my birthday is a far better time for promising things to myself, which is what I’m doing. Unfortunately this year’s promise is a promise I’ve made before, but it’s also the promise that I need to satisfy more than any other promise. So in the year from 37 to 38, I’m going to try to do it.

In between working on that goal, I’m going to travel to Maryland to visit my mom, I’ll see Star Wars in Concert, try Kobe-style beef (which crosses another thing off my list), go to Florida to see Stormtroopers talk about cookies and see my nephew turn one. I’ll play nerdball with a dozen or so friends, dress up like a fool on Halloween, try not to get killed by a flaming tree on New Year’s Eve and if I’m lucky I’ll find a bit of my Christmas spirit again. I’ll laugh more than I’ll cry and hopefully help you do the same.

I glanced at her, as did my brother. My mother’s jaw clenched, trapping further words behind the wall of teeth. Maybe it was not a self-imposed mute, but rather a desire to keep the snarl from her mouth. Her lips quivered and her eyes took on a glistening sheen. They were cased in water that was still waiting to fall. Tiny hands balled into fists. Somehow her fists looked as if she were trying to grip something, some imaginary rail that would help support her. My brother’s fists, however, looked meant to swing, to do harm to a father four states away.

We shared a glance, but I had to look away. I could see the anger in his eyes as sure as he could probably see the concern in mine, or we could see the hurt in my mother’s. Perhaps he was looking for me to abate his anger, find an outlet for it for that was always my role; but in that moment I wanted him to swing, to be the wrath that I could never allow myself to be.

I looked down at my feet, twisting the front of my right foot into the floorboard. My big toe wiggled, pushing up at the top of my shoe and I watched the worn canvas roll about the early morning light. Threads stuck out in several direction, the light making them hazy, like an aura. It reminded me of light coming through the puffy buds of a dandelion still waiting to take flight. I imagined better days.

My eyes flicked towards the window. The lawn needed to be cut. It was a humid, insufferable day and my clothes were already heavy on me. Mowing the lawn would get me out of the house for a while, give me focus. I glanced back at my mother. I had been taller than her since middle school, but in that moment I felt small. Even as I remember it now, I imagine I was looking up at her, but I

wasn’t. I glanced down at her. My brother stood on her other side. Though we loomed close, neither of us reached for her.

The strongest woman we knew stood there, the impossible contradiction of fragile and invincible all at once. I wondered if my hand on her shoulder would cause the tears to liberate themselves from her eyes. Or would a touch break her from the solace of her own thoughts, push her anger out into the world in the form of a harsh tirade, an apostrophe to a man absent over a week? So my hand stayed at my side.

I became more aware of my hands in that moment, how they flexed, how they twitched. Were they trying to choke something or were they reaching to comfort despite my conscious thoughts? I pressed my palms to my legs and forced my fingers flat against the fabric of my shorts. The intent of my fingers troubled me. Their tiny, instinctive motions seemed to stem from my id’s quest for wish

fulfillment. There was a tremor to them, some physical manifestation of an un-confessed rage. I had to be steady, the Flexible Response to my brother’s Massive Retaliation.

Anger made me uncomfortable. It was as foreign to me as a different language. I did not know what to do with it, what to make of it. Sadness I understood. One could not have been counselor and consoler to my mother all those years without learning a thing or two about sadness. My own experiences up to that point added to my apprenticeship in the subject.

My mother stared out the window. The breeze was still, unwilling to interrupt our uncomfortable silence. The curtain only moved enough to suggest the world lived on outside of our house. She reached out to the window sill, scraping her colorless fingernail against a chip in the paint. That chip had been the object of my fascination for many dinners when the topic changed to my mom’s work, or my father’s students. I watched it as it lay there suspended, half-torn from the wall and half-attached, threatening to fall but never doing so.

She was wondering if we would be able to keep the house, or at least that’s what I imagined. Could she still send us to college in fall? My brother would be in his third year, I would be in my first. As her fingernail gave up against the unyielding chip, she scraped it against the band of her wedding ring. It was no accident. Marriage was at the forefront of her mind, or to be more accurate, the dissolving of one was resident in her thoughts. She had never said the word “divorce” to us. I think the concept was as foreign to her as anger was to me. She canonized my grandmother for putting up with my grandfather all those decades.

I caught a glimpse of my brother’s palm as he slipped it over the back of my mom’s hand. There were tiny red crescents dented into his flesh from where his nails had pressed too hard. Though his actions were soft and gentle I could see the profanities flying behind his eyes. The fact that his hand concealed her ring did not escape me.

Her eyes stayed on the window and the world beyond. Perhaps she was imagining my father’s car pulling up into the driveway at any moment, but it was a long drive back from Atlanta. Perhaps she was picturing the storm on the horizon. The day would not be over until there was a loud ruckus or until large drops of water stained the floorboards, even without meteorological influence. The loud squeak of the rusty gate would herald its arrival. Shouts would resonate off the walls. Tired promises with too many miles already upon them would echo again. They would slide past the family photos, the unfinished projects, the mantle of knickknacks and envelopes labeled “final notice.” Well-intended, but ultimately-feigned sincerity would drip from him. He would cry too as if that would save him from the punishment he earned. The acts had been written but not played out.

The denouement still had to be scripted. From the look on my mother’s face, she had writer’s block in that regard.

My anger started to bleed out of me and as I pressed my hands together they felt cold. Now they trembled for a different reason. I tried to imagine my future; my mind raced along the scenarios. I imagined myself working to support us, to pay bills that were not caused by any fault of the three of us, but were our burden now by association. School would become a thing of fantasy or perhaps a series of overpriced community college courses strung out over years, amounting to little academically but much financially. Two Christmases: one in a tiny apartment that I never wanted to visit and one with my mother. We’d bake cookies and roast a turkey breast. The table would no longer house a Norman Rockwell scene of overindulgence but instead a modest array, a subtle hint at Christmases past. At Thanksgiving we’d choke on our words, offering mumbled phrases of Thanks while trying to conceal our anger at the one not there. Even in his absence he would hold a palpable presence. The lack of a chair at the head of the table would be a more tangible reminder of him than he himself could ever be. We would glance towards an empty spot and then look back. The eight pack of rolls would no longer divide up evenly. There would be leftover pumpkin pie for one more day than in years past.

And in all of these imaginings there was an anger and as I contemplated it I realized the anger existed in that moment. It did not require any of these increate holiday dinners. It was already here, and had always been.

I turned just my eyes to look towards my mother as my body and head stayed forward. The words, “We support whatever you want to do” rolled around in my mouth like marbles. I could feel them there. “Want” was the wrong word. “Need” was the correct one. Some small selfish part of me which was not so small at all kept the words within me. I wanted to go to college, wanted to stay in the house. Still my brain screamed the words I should say.

As I shifted on my feet I felt the staple press into my heel. Weeks prior to that moment my brother had told me that my mom shopped for her own clothes at second-hand stores so that he and I could have new clothes. My shoes were falling apart so I had tried to repair them with a staple, not the kind for papers but the strong kind used to fasten Lost Dog signs to telephone poles. At the time it seemed like a good plan and the staple did not pierce the sole of the shoe, but with my weight on that foot, the staple came through and every day there were two bite marks in my flesh when I pulled off my shoe. Though the staple stung me then I let it. The physical reminder jarred me from my internal monologue and all of my imaginings; a self-imposed punishment for my selfishness.

My hand lifted up and I rested it on my mother’s shoulder.

“I just don’t know,” she said as if to answer all of the questions whirling through our minds. Her eyes were still on the window, so I was unclear if she was talking to us, to herself, or to him. Still she reached up and tapped my fingers. The first tear fell from her eyes. My hands regained their anger, but with one hand on my mother’s shoulder I could only allow the other to ball into a fist. With one hand I held my mother, with the other I held my rage. More than anything her tears could bring about my anger. Her tears could throw gravel into my voice. The soft, almost inaudible voice I normally used could become a growl. But as if ashamed of my anger I would only growl at third parties. The rants that should be reserved for him were instead made towards friends in monologues about him. They were never directed towards my mother.

To her I tried to only convey hope, even when that hope was a lie. “We’ll figure it out” and worse, “It will be all right” were the only lies I ever told her and they were the worst lies to tell. Perhaps they were the worst lies because they were the necessary ones; a placebo of words. Those words rolled around in my mouth like ping-pong balls, large and hollow.

She turned away from the window and slipped out from between us. “I don’t know what I’d do without you boys,” she said as she moved towards the stairs. My mother gripped the banister and paused as if the stairs she had climbed a thousand times were suddenly the wall of some great mountain. We watched her disappear and waited until the familiar creeks told us she was at the top of the stairs. I turned back to my brother. His eyes lowered from the ceiling towards me. The muscles around them contracted.

“Sometimes,” he said in a harsh tone. The unspoken wish was obvious. I knew what he wanted to, but could not, say.

I merely nodded, but wished I disagreed with him.

My mom would spend her day organizing coupons, putting them in order of usefulness and throwing out the ones that had expired. Everything expired eventually. It was the perfect task for keeping her mind occupied on simple things and allowed her to remain in the bedroom. The inevitable cycle of events had started. Though the routine would be familiar, the scale was new ground. My brother would assume his role of keeping my father in the house. I would stay out of the way, even so far as out of the room, only to appear after it was over. I’d touch my mother’s shoulders and release my mother’s tears. There would be more in the morning after, and an awkward apology from my father, followed by a promise I stopped believing years ago. Yet I would hope. I would always hope.

“You know we’ll be okay, right?” he asked me.

Another nod.

“I need to run to the comic store, did you want to come along?” he asked. I knew he was saying we needed to give our mother some time alone. We moved almost immediately towards the door. He opened it and I stepped out into the oppressive, heavy day. The staple chewed into my heel and I let it. By the time we would return, I would be ready to say what I needed to say.

The bid I was working on for Bacon World is for a company you’ve all heard of. It’s a gigantic company. As the bid was for a huge amount of business, it became my focus. It was a tedious monster and required all sorts of spreadsheet acrobatics. But I still knew I had a bid for Chuck’s Waffle Hut on the horizon so when I heard the name, I brought it up. I was told, “We already have that business for Bacon World and since we don’t want to irritate Bacon World, or bid against ourselves, just bid at ten percent worse. We’ll put in a bid just to submit something and open the door with Dengar’s Wicker Emporium.” Dengar’s Wicker Emporium is a new third party that no one at work had heard of.

Dengar’s Wicker Emporium is apparently run by that kid that had the days of the week written on his underpants because they are some very-seriously detail oriented people. They don’t just want, “Hey we’ll give you a 72% discount to Nebraska” they want, “We will charge you $215.17 on a 1234 pound shipment to Nebraska.” It was going to be a lot of work just to submit a token gesture. It would be like laying out the good cheese (the kind where it’s individually sliced, but not individually wrapped) to impress Micronesia when you’re thinking, “Wow, that’s a place? And Gargamel isn’t from there?” But whatever, I got time, I’m here 45 hours per week after all. So after wrapping up the seven-million-dollar bid, I’m prepared to work on Chuck’s Waffle Hut. That’s when I get a call that changes everything.

“Hey, we just spoke with Chuck’s Waffle Hut and Bacon World might be losing its agreement with Chuck’s Waffle Hut, which means we do have to bid on this seriously. Oh, since Chuck’s Waffle Hut is such huge business out of a place we don’t normally service, we hired two people and expect to hire one more to handle it all. If we lose this business, we’ll probably have to let those people go. One more thing, our first response is due tomorrow.” That entire paragraph is a précis of what happened. None of that is made up, it’s just in my own words. So we went from, “Just bid to be polite” to “bid to win and win to save jobs.” Great, no pressure.

I launched into a focused approach to this monster process which involved over 40,000 shipments. To add to the insanity, it would also be handled as an online auction. We had to enter a bid, under a certain number, in order to qualify. Without getting into the weird non-sensical aspects of trucking, I’ll explain what I had to do like this. Our current agreement is about kilograms on the Moon, and they wanted me to convert that to pounds on Jupiter 40,000 times. It’s actually more complicated than that because that would be a math formula applied 20,000 times, whereas this is a bit more complicated, but you get the idea. It’s a possible transition from one thing to another, but it’s still tricky. In my process I wipe out about 28,000 of the shipments because they were for places we don’t go, like Neverland to Narnia. It’s our standard practice. If we can’t handle it, we remove the data and focus on what we can handle.

Well we are told to bid on entire lots, which means every shipment. So the salespeople say, “Include Neverland to Narnia, even if we cannot do it.” Uh, what? We do have those rates, but we don’t have the ability to even apply a pretend cost to them, so now I have to put back in all of the old data, keep it identifiable from the data we can handle, and keep everything in perfect order so that when I put it into the bid spreadsheet, it synchs up properly. The “fun” part is that even sorting the spreadsheet takes time. It’s over 40,000 rows and goes from column A to column CP and I half of those are formulas that I cannot copy over with values because one number might change in column E and twenty columns do their calculations based on column E.

Still, I get an answer in by the deadline. The deadline was at 4 p.m. I did not get an answer from anyone that matters until 3:30 p.m. The only thing we had to answer was, “Yes we’re under the cap” and offer proof. It’s then that I’m told, “Oh by the way, we only want to handle one lot, so, just concentrate on these 6,000 shipments.” Grr. So my job got easier, but I wasted a lot of time, energy and hair worrying about keeping all my ducks in a row.

Now we have to prepare an actual bid plan. I took part in a practice auction with imaginary money. This is important later, so I’ll separate out the rules:

Winning amount is shown. No carrier information is provided alongside it. In fact carrier information is never divulged and even during the training web-conference carriers are identified only by number, such as “Carrier 4.”

You can decrease your total bid amount by .25% to 2%. If you want to lower it by more, you will have to make multiple changes.

Auction will last at least one hour. After that the auction ends when no bid has been placed for five minutes.

During the course of the “practice auction” I learned that if we cannot bid on Neverland to Narnia, we can be assigned an allowance to represent the lanes we cannot handle. This makes it so Chuck’s Waffle Hut can look at each bid and compare it apples to apples. Sounds fair. So I fix our bid information and get our Allowance figure.

At this point I get instructions from my mega-boss. In the case of very complicated bids, or ones with system-wide application, my mega-boss will decide our plan. He overrides every regional vice president. The theory is that on some bids, some terminals will have to take a hit so that the company can get the business. Terminals are concerned with their own revenue whereas the mega-boss is concerned with the company’s revenues. It would be like if the Wheats department of Crispy Wheats and Raisins was going to lose five cents per dollar but the Raisin division was going to make ten cents per dollar, you don’t let Wheats say no to the business. So mega-boss gave an answer and that means I don’t have to ask anyone jack. On I go about my business.

We come up with a plan and after a lot of mathematic and spreadsheet gymnastics we’re finally set to go. The day of the auction Dengar’s Wicker Emporium comes along and says, “Oh hey, we made an error on the one sheet, so the auction will be two days from now.” I wanted it over with, but whatever.

The first email I see when I arrive the day of the auction is from Dengar’s Wicker Emporium, and it says that due to carrier concerns about confidentiality, all of the rules are changing. Keep in mind, I have no idea which shippers are involved in the bid and not even “Carrier 5” is shown next to the winning bid.

The new rules are as follows:

Bid amount will drop 1% every four minutes.

The Allowance amount remains constant.

There is no indication of how many carriers remain.

Bid ends when no carriers remain. The last amount you accept will be the amount you bid.

Now there are numerous problems with this scheme. Let’s start with the first concerning the 1% drop. Instead of moving at dollar amounts we specify, so long as our moves are .25% to 2% in nature, we now drop at a fixed percentage which means we don’t control the final bid amount. This is important because when the dust clears I’ll have to find a way to get one math equation, repeated 5600 times with changing values for X, to all add up to a very specific number. So instead of adding up the answer for 5,600 equations, coming up with an answer and using that as our bid, we’ll end up with a number and then have to figure out how to force 5,6000 equations to arrive there. It would be like you’re given 5,600 Lego pieces and told, “Make whatever you want” and then someone destroys that and says, “Here’s a picture of a Lego version of Washington Crossing the Delaware, now make this exactly with these 5,600 pieces.”

Second problem is that the allowance does not change as our total goes down by 1%. If our initial bid is $4,500,000 which includes $4,000,000 for lanes we can handle and $500,000 in Allowance. After the amount drops by 1%, our bid total is $4,455,000 but as the allowance has stayed $500,000 for us, we’re actually bidding a revenue of $3,955,000. If the Allowance had changed by 1% (which would have made sense) our revenue would be $3,960,000. Only $5,000 difference at first, but after nine such drops, the difference is substantial. One equation is .99^N(X + C) whereas the other is .99^NX + C.

I point this out to everyone and so we decide to stop at drop nine instead of drop ten as we had originally planned. Basically the disparity between the equation that made sense and the equation they used is more than my yearly salary by step ten in the actual bid. In half an hour of work I pointed out something that if we won at step nine, will pay my salary. Of course, if we dropped out at step nine and would have won at step ten, I could have potentially cost us four million dollars in business. But, whatever. It’s my job to point out how things work, not to decide what to do with the information.

After waiting online for 45 minutes where my only function was to hit “Accept” nine times and “Withdraw” once, we were ready to figure out the giant problem of how to get 5,600 equations to come out to a number, let’s call it $4,117,587.00. Through the magic of spreadsheets and my various searches, lookups and such, after half an hour I get us to within $90, which we consider good enough. It creates a simple plan and we stay within all of the original guidelines mega-boss gave us. Everything is pre-approved, gift wrapped and ready to go. Right? If you think that, you clearly don’t understand all of the frustrations of my job.

Here we have to break down the numbers further. Without explaining operating ratios, we’ll say that for the entire piece of business, the O.R. was 106. Less than 100 is good, over 100 is bad. That means that no matter what we do with the 5,600 equations, our average will always be 106. One terminal, which had 4,700 of the shipments came along and said, “We know we were okay with 104 for us and all, but we’ve decided we want a 99.” Here’s the problem with that. If you have 4,700 shipments averaging out to a 99, but your average for 5,600 shipments will always be 106, you have 900 shipments that will average out to 142.6. A 106 O.R. is acceptable because it’s in that “plus or minus” zone where our costing might be off and it might operate at a profitable level, or even if it’s a slight loss, the profitable freight mixed in with these shipments should make it all come out ahead. Go us. But a 142 is more like, “We’re better off driving the truck into a lake and paying the customer the damages than we are actually hauling this.” This would be like, “Well, the 4,700 of us each want a Chicklet and we’re okay if the 900 of you have to be kicked in the genitals in order for us to get our Chicklets.” But, I went on with preparing a plan for that if someone approved it. Next day, the day this is all due, I come in and another terminal which had not been involved, but had 700 of the shipments, said, “Hey, we’d like a 96 O.R.” To keep with the previous analogy, this would be like someone saying, “The 700 of us want Gobstoppers, the 4,700 of them would like Chicklets, and I guess that means the 200 of you will get ‘Kaiser Soze-d.’ Your family and everyone that you ever loved will get machete. But, we’re down with that.”

Fortunately the Chicklet people said they’re willing to take bee stings, but the Gobstopper people still wanted Gobstoppers and were annoyed at not being told that they would get Purple Nurples. Keep in mind, I was operating at a deadline of four in the afternoon, it was currently eleven in the morning. The salesperson wanted to go with our original plan. But, I went through meticulously and found a way that the Purple Nurple was reduced to a rope burn and the bee sting was kicked up slightly to a wasp sting. Everyone still lost, but the one losing the most loss less now and the one losing the least would lose a tiny bit more. I also explained to the Nurples that I had an approval from Mega-Boss which is like a “Get out of jail free” card. Everyone was “happy” and I sent it out.

Oh, if we’re right about our estimates on commission, the salesperson could get over $20,000 when all is said and done if we get all of the business throughout the year. I, as you may have guessed by all of my hard work, will get an amount equal to what I paid you for reading this.

(That number would be zero, by the way)

Video Game

Best – Mass Effect 2 – If only modern science fictions movies had plots this entertaining. This game features character development (in terms of personality and statistics), giant space battles, good dialogue and a cover system. The Renegade choices are often filled with hard, almost too-evil choices, but the price of always doing the honorable thing is also high because not all of your crew members are honorable. It’s the first RPG that I’ve played through completely more than once. With your choices from Mass Effect one carrying over to Mass Effect 2, and 2 presumably affecting 3, this is the trilogy that should be used as a basis for RPGs in the future. There has been stiff competition for game of the year so far but Mass Effect 2 easily fended off Final Fantasy XIII (which I haven’t even finished) which I thought would be its biggest challenger.

Runner Up – Red Dead Redemption – Replace the cars from Grand Theft Auto with horses, take away the cell phone and keep all of the storytelling and you have Red Dead Redemption. First, it’s a beautiful game. I don’t mind riding through the night because sometimes I’m treated to a full moon rising over the plains. The sunsets will blind and amaze you. There’s a way to “fast travel” but I haven’t bothered with it because I like looking around. If you’re looking for a sandbox game that’s a little different than the normal urban setting, or just want a game with entertaining dialogue, this is your game. The execution moves for close-combat kills are a nice touch. Best “Western” game of all time? Probably.

Honorable Mention for Originality – Heavy Rain. The plot has a few holes, like obvious and unexplained red herrings, but the story is done well with a few nice twists thrown in. I replayed to get a better ending and even in just comparing notes with a friend, learned there are a lot of other things that could have gone wrong. It’s a “choose your own adventure” for grownups. At times the events are truly chilling.

Movie

Best – Iron Man 2 – If you could not see this pick coming, you’re probably dumb and living on a diet of crickets. I would have liked more of the Tony breakdown and the boss fight was a little short, but the action and character development were good. Don Cheadle took over the role of James Rhodes rather well. Mickey Rourke played a decent villain giving depth to what was basically a throw-away character in the comics. There’s plenty for fans of the character and then things blow up for everyone else. Please keep in mind, I am horribly biased and part of my enthusiasm for this film has to stem from the fact that I still find it amazing to see my guy flying around on the big screen.

Runner Up – The A-Team. Hands down this is the most fun I’ve had at a movie in a long time. This perfectly captured the old thrill I had as a kid when I would go to see a movie and wouldn’t worry about plausibility or physics. The entire main cast does well at capturing the feel of the original characters. It’s faithful to the original source while still making it something fresh. Not a great film, but it is a fantastic movie. There need to be more like it. Go, have fun.

Honorable Mention – Toy Story 3 – I think as Pixar has improved its animation abilities, it has also focused on telling more emotional stories and Toy Story 3 certainly continues that progression. It offers plenty of fun antics for the kids, but it’s also about what it means to grow older and leave childhood behind. I think that portion might be lost on kids who are still in the midst of childhood. The movie once again uses the “Buzz thinks he’s actually a space ranger” plotline, but when the toys try to reset him to normal, it has very amusing results. It’s definitely worth a watch and if you have a heart at all, this will pull at the strings.

Television

Best New Show – Parenthood ­– How good is this show? My runner-up pick is a show that features adult language, violence, good dialogue and the best theme song in years. This is better. Parenthood follows the lives of four siblings, their parents, and their children. It deals with almost all aspects of parenthood from raising a special needs kid to raising a trouble child and raising a gifted child. There are no bad guys, it’s a show where you want every character to succeed.

Runner Up – Justified – “I draw my weapon, it’s to kill. That’s what guns are for,” is how the main character approaches bad guys. He’ll let them draw first, but when they do, he’ll put them down. What impresses me most about the show is that while Raylan might go after a bad guy for an episode, there is a central antagonist throughout the season. Walter Goggins plays Boyd Crowder who is my favorite villain on television. Boyd gets shot early in the season and claims to go through a transformation. It’s not until the season finale that you learn if Boyd is being sincere. This is a crime drama for people who don’t want half of the scenes to take place in crime labs or watch detectives taking off sunglasses and saying things like, “guess it was time for the bellhop to ‘check out.’”

Best Sitcom – Modern Family – Funny, but not afraid to be poignant for a moment here and there. If the pigeon scene doesn’t make you laugh, there’s something wrong with you. Or maybe there’s something wrong with me for laughing. I like each of the individual families as well as the family as a whole.

Runner Up – Community – This is hardly the typical sitcom and if you turn on your TV for something profound, keep turning for something else. But Community is crazy. It’s a show where, like The A-Team, you have to let go and just have fun with it. The paint ball episode is outstanding. Ridiculous, but outstanding.

Music

Best Album – Brothers by the Black Keys – Though the cover art is simplistic as it just says, “This is an album by The Black Keys. The name of this album is Brothers” the music is anything but standard. I think it would be best described as blues for the electronic age. It’s not music for everyone, but for those looking to shake up their music library, you’ll find a fun new sound.

Runner Up – Pursuit by Jamie Cullum – Most of you have probably never heard of Jamie Cullum. Probably his most well-known song is “Gran Torino” which is the theme song to the movie of the same name. Jamie Cullum is a jazz, big band sound and in addition to his own music he does a cover of Michael Jackson’s, “Don’t Stop the Music” and the Cole Porter classic, “Just One of Those Things.” There are a few slower songs meant to woo the ladies, but most of the tracks are fast paced. It’s worth a listen. This is music for people who aren’t old enough to have to like Michael Buble yet.

Other

Biggest Disappointment – Pacific – It’s not that Pacific is bad, it’s just that it didn’t amaze me like I thought it would. Band of Brothers but done in the Pacific theater? Sign me up. Unfortunately the series spent too much time covering bond-selling drives back in the States, mental hospital stays and shore leave. One episode opened with a prologue about how hard the fighting was, but then spent half an hour following a medal winner as he tried to promote U.S. war bonds and slept with starlets. Largely the episodes followed two soldiers who seemed to never interact with one another. Band of Brothers moved from one soldier to another, but always came back to certain soldiers and always tied things in together. I just wasn’t wowed.

Runner Up – Clash of the Titans – You made a war between gods uninteresting and unexciting. Congratulations.

Least favorite trend – 3D. It worked well in Avatar, a movie shot to be in 3D. But otherwise I have been unimpressed. I saw Toy Story 3 in 3D and it felt tacked on. The thing I noticed most in 3D was when it said, “This preview approved for all audiences.” Otherwise it was a non factor. And I sure don’t want a 3D television where I have to pay $100 per pair of glasses. Want to have a viewing party for a 3D movie and invite nine friends? You get to spend $1000 on glasses. Also, I don’t want 3D games.

Penultimate trend – The second worst trend is motion controls in games. Hey Sony, making people swing snow-cone looking controllers isn’t going to sell consoles. Why are you trying to catch Nintendo when Microsoft is your real competitor? Build a real multiplayer network and maybe people will see your console as more than a Blu Ray Player. And Microsoft? I don’t want to wave my hands at the screen to control my movie, or block soccer balls. I want to hit B to throw a grenade at someone. If I wanted to make throwing motions, I’ll go outside and throw. That’s what outside is for. Inside is for hitting right trigger to fire a round into someone’s eye.

Well not really ‘nuff said because there are more paragraphs coming, and here they are.

Those of you expecting some sort of Matrix-inspired hypothesis about computers taking over the planet will be sorely disappointed. I’m not talking about some future scenario. I’m talking about hating what computers are doing now. Let’s start with my iPod, which I can only assume is A) now sentient and B) a complete jerk.

I’ve tried several combinations of options and check boxes through iTunes and still my iPod has taken it upon itself to decide what music I would like on it. Even when I had “manual selection” chosen, it would still delete and copy things every time I plugged it into my computer. Even though I selected the option to reserve absolutely no memory, my iPod insists on keeping 250 megabytes free at all times. I can only assume this is so that if I choose to, I can go on some Boggle-obsessed escapade where I must have every app related to colored-block games. My favorite deletion is when my iPod decided that I should no longer have music from artists that start with T. Maybe it got sick of listening to “All I Want.” Look iPod you’ll play my feel-good song and you’ll like it or I will choke your little… whatever parts are in you. Transistors? We still use those right? See what happens when I don’t get my Toad? Things get crazy. Papa needs his fix. My iPod’s latest gambit is letting me keep all of my artists, but it selects which albums I would like. It’s sort of stealth jerkery. “Look, see Dwayne, all of your artists are still there.” Like it decided I don’t need Born on a Pirate Ship but it kept Maroon. Also it won’t let me add new stuff from the computer. Why is it that the iPod which is synonymous with “MP3 Player” in the same way people use “Band-Aid” to describe any adhesive bandage regardless of brand, has the worst interface and makes it the most laborious to create playlists? And no, I don’t want to update or add Safari to my browser, thank you very much.

Whoever coded Microsoft Word should be summarily beaten with a giant pool noodle, especially if it’s the talking Paper Clip that did it. But if it’s the Paper Clip, replace “pool noodle” with “Conan the Barbarian style claymore sword.” I say this because Microsoft Word likes to insist on me formatting things its way. Hey Chinstrap, I don’t need you to indent for me. If I put weird parenthesis after random things that doesn’t mean put them all in a list. I should be able to number things as I please without you indenting them. I should not have to search to turn off this feature. Is there some sort of box that I need to check next to “I am not a moron and am in fact fully capable of operating a combination of the space bar and tab at will?” If I put asterisks somewhere that does not mean I want to create bullet points. Maybe I want to draw Abraham Lincoln, like so:

****

****

******

o o

O

V

(I assume that’s the face he had his final moments in the theater. “I went to see My American Cousin? I thought I was seeing My Cousin Vinnie. Dang! … Also that guy has a gun.”) (I apologize to Abe Lincoln’s family for that… not for the joke, but for the picture. I wanted it to be in color, for one thing. Sadly that is also better than I could do free hand.)

Also spell-check needs some serious work. I was working on something for a place called Cylicron, which I know sounds like the love child of the Gobot Renegades leader Cy-Kill and the planet-eating robot from Transformers: The Movie but that brings up a lot of questions I don’t have time for, like how do a robot planet and a robot motorcycle possibly have intercourse? My guess: carefully. Do they do it while listening to “Bad to the Bone” or would it be to “What a Wonderful World?” These are all very valid questions, but they have nothing to do with my point. Spell-check recommended the word “Celeron.” Yes, I can see how those would be close. Of course if I try to spell “onomatopoeia” and get just one letter wrong, it has no idea what I’m trying to spell. Seriously, how many words are close to that? I’m surprised it didn’t recommend “Mesopotamia.” Yet it recommend Celeron for Cylicron. I also object to whoever programmed some proper nouns but not others. It recognizes Skywalker but not Boba Fett? And it doesn’t recognize Leia. That’s sexism, and that’s wrong. We didn’t pass the ERA so that we can continue to keep people down. Actually we didn’t pass the ERA at all, despite Alex P. Keaton’s best efforts. It also recognizes “xbox” to suggest “Xbox” but it doesn’t recognize “Wii” or “Playstation.” That actually makes me laugh. Got to love a little jab at the competition.

Once you get past all of the little red Charlie-Brown’s-t-shirt lines under misspelled words, it starts in with the blue lines for its suggestions. It likes to throw apostrophes into everything, often suggesting the wrong thing. If I type, “You will like this apartment; Its wonderful windows provide great natural lighting” Microsoft Word will suggest “It’s.” Does the sentence “It is wonderful windows provide great natural lighting” make sense to you, because that’s the effective meaning it’s recommending. If you’re going to think for me, at least try to be correct. I can be a moron all by myself, I don’t need your help. It’s so irritating if I ever find the Paper Clip I’m going to grab it by its bendy throat and defenestrate it.

Do we really need Flash animation for everything? I was doing something for work and it involved downloading files from another company’s website. They were large spreadsheets and they downloaded rather quickly. Then I got to the part where I needed classification information. This required Flash, which I had to download and install. After that I went back to the website and went to the proper page where I was “treated” to an animated bar graph where I could watch the bars grow and then assume a static image. Of course the final image was almost completely useless to me and did not answer the question, but at least it was pretty for the two seconds it took. Hey website knuckleheads, I’ve seen the original Tron, your bar graph doesn’t impress me in terms of effects. Next time try more content and less “pizzazz.” You’ve made a pixilated Push-pop, congratulations. Sometimes I think website people just want to finally use that third semester class they took and so they’re more concerned with wowing me than they are with giving me useful information.

Which leads me back to Star Wars and that pear in Episode II. While computers make it possible to show amazing things, like say Iron Man blowing up a tank, that doesn’t mean they should be used to do something that can be accomplished by a string. In the scene Anakin floats a pear, or “space pear,” to Padme who apparently reaches out with the Force to eat the pear because there’s no way her teeth touched it. There’s something very wrong about the fact that AT-ATs, a fictional vehicle, walking across the tundra in a film from 1980 look more realistic than a pear, a very real fruit, being eaten in a film from 2002. Just because you can do something with a computer doesn’t mean you should. In the Michael Keaton movie Multiplicity, he plays clones. This is done with blue/green screens and some editing. In Episode III the clone troopers are replicated using computer graphics which just don’t do the job adequately. In a film universe populated with robots, lightsabers, space battles and giant monsters it shouldn’t be pears and people that remind me that I’m watching a movie. Computer graphics should portray our imagination, not hinder our realism. They should create the fantastic, not wreck the mundane.

It would be almost impossible for me to look at the film objectively like I would say The Losers or Clash of the Titans. It’s more like a Star Wars movie because it’s not just about the film being entertaining, it’s about the film being faithful to the universe it’s based upon. The casual fan of films can go watch Episode I, hear the word “midichlorians” and not want to shout angry words. Likewise a casual fan might not appreciate some tiny moments like Anthony Daniels appearing in the cantina in Episode II. Having a knowledge about the subject beyond what appears in film opens up greater avenues for appreciation and critique.

For instance in the first film, Tony Star confronts Obadiah Stane. In the movie Obadiah is wearing the Iron Monger suit and after a vicious battle, Iron Man wins. In the comic book Obadiah has assistance in controlling the armor. Tony realizes this, blows up the transmitter and then defeats Obadiah. Obadiah ends the fight by shooting himself in the head with the repulsor bolt from his palm. It’s a much darker ending and parallels how Obadiah’s father died in a game of Russian roulette. That’s a little dark for a summer blockbuster, so I can see why the fight was changed.

The problem with Iron Man is that he has lousy villains. His main nemesis is The Mandarin, who is not a small orange, but instead a powerful Chinese wizard. In much the way the Hulk faces against The Leader in a case of opposites, strong and dumb versus weak and intelligent, Iron man faces The Mandarin to have new technology versus ancient magic. Magic wouldn’t really fit in with the Marvel film universe which has so far stuck with mutation, genetic manipulation and technology. Iron Monger was also a long running villain, but he died in the first film, so barring some sort of zombie Iron Monger, that’s out as option. Truthfully I think Iron Man’s main opponent has always been Tony Stark. Tony Stark is a case of man versus himself. Iron Man 2 features a bit of that, but also focuses on Justin Hammer. For those not familiar with Justin Hammer, which would probably be most of you, I can sum up Justin Hammer by saying he’s Lex Luther. No special powers, just conniving and smart. In Justin Hammer’s case he’s not so much a mastermind of schemes as he is a genius at human resources. Justin Hammer uses his wealth to hire super-powered henchmen to deal with Iron Man.

Sam Rockwell plays Justin Hammer and I always pictured Justin Hammer more like Christopher Plummer. While Justin is still refined and classy in the film, he seems a little more comedic than his comic book counterpart. There are hints in the film that in some ways this is the origin of Justin Hammer for he’s not truly evil in Iron Man 2, just misguided and overly ambitious. Hopefully Rockwell has been cast for the third film. He’s good at playing the underestimated weasel type.

Don Cheadle takes over the role of James Rhodes, Tony Stark’s long time friend and advisor. Terrance Howard did a good job, but if you’re going to have to replace Terrance Howard, Don Cheadle makes for an excellent choice. Actually he’s probably the actor that should have been picked in the first place. James and Tony are supposed to have a complex relationship as James is the discipline to balance out Tony’s impulsiveness. As hinted in the first movie, James becomes War Machine in Iron Man 2. Without giving away how it happens, it’s safe to say the film took some liberties. In the comic books Tony can no longer function as Iron Man while battling his alcoholism. James takes his place, wearing the suit until Tony returns to being Iron Man in issue 200. But as James did a good job, Tony develops a modified suit for James and that suit is War Machine. The suits fit the man as Tony is refined and James is the consummate soldier. Iron Man has flash and style like a sports car; War Machine has firepower like a tank. The conflict in the film between Tony and James feels right. Tony gets out of control and James must choose between friendship and duty. Though the scene where Tony goes out of control might seem funny or out of place, it’s very fitting for the character. This is not a Spider-man 3 dance montage, thankfully.

Mickey Rourke was originally cast to play Crimson Dynamo, a Russian soldier who wears a suit of armor akin to Iron Man. As Crimson Dynamo was from the Cold War era, he’s everything you would expect. I didn’t read why changes were made, but it was decided that instead Rourke would play Whiplash, a virtually disposable villain from the Iron Man series. I have no idea if the history used for Whiplash in the movies matches Whiplash’s history from the comics because really who reads about the history of Whiplash? He was a guy often teamed with The Beetle and Blizzard. He did not wear power armor but instead he used a special whip and… that’s about it. Genius is not a word you would use to describe him in the comics. The portrayal on screen is more like an amalgamation of Crimson Dynamo and Whiplash from the comics. He’s smart, wears power armor and uses a whip. Mickey Rourke is believable as the result of that character combination. There’s a certain calm, detached sense of purpose. It’s the lack of rage that really makes the character seem evil and twisted. Since I don’t have much invested in the Whiplash character from the comics, this is a good switch. Maybe diehard Whiplash fans will be upset, but they’re probably also diehard Dengar fans.

There were some complaints that Iron Man 2 is a large ad for the Avengers movie. The film certainly does build towards the Avengers, especially with the inclusion of a few lines of dialogue and the small scene after the end credits, but I don’t think the parts that lead to the Avengers overwhelm the central story. Plus it’s fairly common in a comic book to ramp up to a larger story arch. Often comic covers will be splashed with, “Part of the Road to Civil War” or “Prologue to Acts of Vengeance.” Marvel started its own film company so it could do stuff like this and as a comic fan, I welcome this type of thing, especially since you still get a complete Iron Man story. In actuality the scenes in Iron Man 2 that lead way to the Avengers play into the story rather nicely because they’re about how Tony needs to stop being so… Tony Stark-ish and start being more responsible. He’s a powerful, intelligent man but hindered by his personal demons.

One of those personal demons is his relationship with his late father, Howard Stark. Howard Stark helped build the H-bomb, and tried to build a utopia. He’s equal parts Walt Disney and Oppenheimer. Unfortunately he’s more of an American Icon than a father, which is why Tony has some issues. The film covers some of these issues as Tony watches some old promotional videos featuring his father, played by John Slattery. This is perhaps the best casting choice in Iron Man 2. Slattery’s most recent role is that of Roger Sterling on TV’s Mad Men. It’s a role that probably helped Slattery play Howard Stark. They’re from the same era, have similar mannerisms and styles. The scenes where Tony watches the old movies are some of the best in the film because they point out Tony’s weaknesses as well as his strengths.

But what happens outside of the character development when it’s action or dialogue and can be judged on its merits? There are some good things and some bad. The scene at the race track could have been better. A segment of it is shown in the trailer so I feel safe talking about it without spoiling it. Tony’s dialogue seems a little too glib at times given the danger at hand. It’s one thing when he’s glib when his own life is in danger and quite another when his friends are in trouble. Still the scene is good overall because it shows how Tony can solve a problem even when outgunned (the armor he is wearing is for emergencies and not as high powered as his regular suit). But still it could have been smoother. Also one has to wonder why when combating a guy using a whip, Tony doesn’t just fly out of range and fire from there.

The climactic battle scene does a nice job of letting all of the characters come together to triumph, and lets everyone see how powerful Iron Man and War Machine are before taking on the final bad guy, who proves more difficult. Still I think the final fight ends too quickly. At least the few moments it lasts are entertaining. Apparently he never played an RTS so he never realized you never let infantry get in melee range of archers.

There is another element added that hasn’t been in previews, so I won’t describe it here even though it’s a major part of the central plot. I don’t remember that exact plot from the comic books, but similar themes were brought into play. It goes along with the common Marvel theme of balancing between power and consequences. Some might argue that the solution comes about too easily, but I would also say that how the solution comes about proves that even Tony Stark needs help sometime.

The movie clocks in at a little over two hours and the two hours go by quickly. You’ll get some good dialogue with Tony being appropriately smug, a nice action sequence with Scarlett Johansson beating up a lot of folks and if you stay past the credits a brief glimpse at things to come. Now I’m not a huge fan of the character they hint at, but even I thought, “that could be epic.” Or bad.

As it stands on its own, it’s a good, amusing superhero romp. Speaking as a fan of the character, it’s definitely worth seeing. Part of me is still amazed to see my guy flying around on the big screen and with his face on Dr. Pepper cans, beach towels and the toy aisle.

Last, if you missed the hard-to-spot Captain America’s shield in the first film, I’m sure you can spot it in this one.

Go see Iron Man 2, enjoy it, then buy lots of Iron Man merchandise. I don’t care if you jump on this bandwagon. In fact, I hope you enjoy what I always have.