Month: September 2004

Hot, Furry Death

So I’m entering hour 5 of NFL viewing (well, 5 hours of sports viewing, as I watched a bunch of the Yankees’ 11-1 victory against the Red Sox), when I see an ad for the Star Wars Battlefronts game (you can see the same ad by clicking “navigate,” “downloads” then “trailer”).

Evidently, this videogame consists of most of the combat scenes from the original three Star Wars movies. According to the trailer, “For years, you’ve watched the greatest Star Wars battles. What if you could actually live them?”

Sounds cool, right? Evidently, you can play from either side–Empire or rebels–which isn’t quite tantamount to guys who always play the Nazis in WWII simulations.

The trailer commenced with a series of quick cuts, including a few moments that I found REALLY perplexing. Fortunately, I have TiVo, so I was able to freeze the ad and go back to see what it was:

That’s right. In this game, you can actually blow away Ewoks. I picked up these captures from the internet version, but the TV version also includes the on-screen phrase, “Jim killed Ewok.”

All we need now is Jar Jar Binks: Shooting Gallery, and George Lucas can buy that private island he’s always wanted.

Fight Night

Watched the Hopkins/De La Hoya match last night at the home of a boxing family: two brothers of former light heavyweight champ Bobby Czyz were in attendance, and we watched a couple of Bobby’s old matches while the undercards were duking it out in Vegas.

It was pretty informative, watching boxing with people who’ve been in the ring, and who’ve watched so much of the sport. As with every other subject, the layman can learn a ton from listening to the vocabulary of people who are initiates. So, primed by listening to their commentary over a few other matches, I was able to see the main event last night with a different set of eyes.

It helped that, early in the night, one of the brothers made a comment about hitting a body shot right in the liver, and how it caused an opponent to crumple to the ground. When De La Hoya fell to the canvas, the whole sequence made sense, given that he didn’t appear to be that beaten up before he dropped.

Anyway, it was an interesting match to watch, from a chess-match standpoint. It didn’t have the exctiement and absolutely destructive slugfest-itude of, say, Gotti/Ward I, but De La Hoya’s change of strategy (coming out boxing, instead of moving back and dancing) and Hopkins’ ability to adapt to it, while enforcing his will in the later rounds, was pretty cool to watch.

According to the coroner, Rick James had nine different drugs in his system at the time of his death, inclduing coke, speed, valium and vicodin:

“None of the drugs or drug combinations were found to be at levels that were life-threatening in and of themselves,” the report said. It gave the cause of death as a heart attack and ruled the death accidental.

When it came to drug use, I don’t think anything Rick James did was that accidental.

Over at Slate, Jack Shafer critiques Harper’s editor Lewis Lapham’s new 7,700-word editorial about the Republican propaganda machine. It’s not as exciting as Bernard Hopkins and the beans-and-rice incident, but it still makes for good reading.

Meanwhile, the bigger media scandal involves CBS’s use of likely-forged documents to attack the president’s National Guard record. It’s interesting to me because — in addition to the ideological bias involved, and the fact that Dan Rather and a CBS news exec are now contending that the contents of the memos are accurate, even if false (which is tantamount to the police saying, “Sure, we faked the evidence, but he’s guilty of something“) — it illustrates the power of the internet.

A bunch of venues have picked up the story that certain bloggers were the first people to publicize the possibility (now high probability) that these documents were incredibly crude forgeries that couldn’t have been generated using available technology of the time. Sidestepping the politics of the case (the standard “Does Dan Rather have a grudge against Bush’s family?”), it’s this aspect of it that I find fascinating. In short order, a new form of media has emerged, bypassing traditional gatekeepers, making tons of mistakes, but also offering perspectives and expertise that Big Media simply can’t match.

It’s like emergent architecture, where a bazillion little units start gestalt-ifying into a mosaic that represents reality far better than the top-down model of Big Media.

The Executioner’s Song

As far as I know, boxing’s the only sport that can generate leads like this one:

In his last major title fight, middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins disparaged Felix Trinidad by twice throwing a Puerto Rican flag to the ground and tossing a bag of beans and rice in the direction of his opponent. But as Hopkins prepares to fight Oscar De La Hoya on Saturday night at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, he has had nothing but kind words for his more popular opponent.

I’d guess that ‘Nard’s going to wreck De La Hoya, but I still have memories of the whomping Oscar laid down on Fernando Vargas a couple of years ago . . .

Doubts

According to a magazine called Expatica (for American expatriots living in Europe), German intel denies Die Welt’s story about Syria testing chemical weapons in Darfur:

German intelligence sources said Wednesday they had no information which could confirm a report claiming Syria had tested chemical weapons in cooperation with the government of Sudan on black Africans in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region.

Agonistes

As a favor to a buddy of mine, I’m filling in as the online Agony Aunt at an Australian university. I’m not putting the URL up here, because I know that you maniacs will flood it with all sorts of dumb questions, as opposed to the dumb questions that I’m already fielding. To wit:

hi im 15, and have fallen for this guy who’s 20, but he doesnt know yet. Do you think the age gap is a bit OTT? Im really into him but the last thing i want is him turning me down because of my age! please help!!!

Your fill-in Agony Aunt (Uncle Joe) sez that, yes, you ARE too young at 15. It’s a fine line, but there’s a certain level of maturity (by which I mean, the ability to manipulate others) that this guy has probably reached, and that you just wouldn’t be aware of. So, I advise finding a crush a little closer to your age, so you don’t get hurt.

I’ve been going out with this guy for 3 weeks now. I met him a month ago in the internet. And the 2nd time we hang out, he holded my hand and from that moment on we became gf-bf. I told my parents about my boyfriend but they seem not to like this relationship. This is because Im an Asian girl and my bf is an Aussie. But I love my bf very much. He’s my first bf ever and he treats me very nice. I want to keep this relationship but I wanted my parents to be happy about us. What do you think I should do?

Uncle Joe sez: During my first trip to the Antipodes, I discovered that Australian men drink harder than any other human beings I have ever met. He probably seems cool now, but he’ll eventually begin piledriving Bundies-&-Cokes with a careerist determination that will absolutely horrify you.

You should probably play the field a little.

I want to die

What kind of an attitude is that? Uncle Joe sez you should face every day with joy, and live a life of blessings (even if yer an atheist).
If you can’t do that, let me know if you have any cool CDs.

A couple of weeks ago i was going out with this guy, we got on really well and we realyliked each other. Then i wenton holiday for a week and when i came back, one of my mates told me that he;d seen him getting off with another girl!i didnt know what to do! so in the end we sjust split up! After we’d split up i asked him about it and he said that he had’nt now i still really like him but he says he just wants to friends wasi right ti dump him just because one of my m8’s said he saw him? Who should i have trusted?

Trust yer mates. BUT make sure that one of THEM doesn’t start dating him. In that case, you got played out. Uncle Joe has spoken!

Hi. I have been friends with this boy for 5 yeasr now and at first he was the one guy that i could always talk to and just 5 months ago he told me he was gay which i was fine because the more i got to know him the more i thought me might be gay even thou for years he said he wasn’t but since he told me he was gay i have seen a big change in him and the way he acts towards me and my other friends many people have told him and i have sat down and talked to him about it i even wrote him a letter cause i was even finding it hard to talk to him but he didn’t even want to talk to me about it and just put the letter in his desk and didn’t say anything about it but also he is not caring about anybody anymore like he was no fellings and i no this some mad but he is one of my best friends and i dont want to lose but i dont know what to do anymore other people have tryed to talk to him but he wont talk to anybody please do you any way i could maybe talk to him so he will listen to me or anyway i could help him though this change.

Even though being gay is a lot more accepted now than in the old days, it’s still gotta be REALLY tough to come to terms with that. What you need to keep in mind is that yer friend is feeling his way around in a completely different world than the one that he was “prepared for” by our culture. So he’s probably going to adopt some different personae in hopes of finding himself as a sexual and social person. As part of that process, he’s probably going to be a real dick about things (and deny that that’s what he’s doing). If you’re a good friend, you’re going to need to be really patient with him, but also let him know that You Knew Him When, and that you’ll be there for him. But don’t phrase this in a Friends-like “I’ll be there for you” sorta way. Just try to talk to him to understand the world that he’s moving into (It’s a LOT different than yours). So sez Uncle Joe.

I’m dumb and useless

Yeah, but your spelling’s better than anyone else’s on this page, and Uncle Joe sez you should be commended for that.

Happy New Year!

Rosh Hashanah starts tonight: Happy new year to my family, and Jewish friends and readers!