Geek at Play

Serenity, you please me

My friend Katherine once said to me while discussing Firefly that “Joss Whedon gives you what you want, but not necessarily in the way you thought you wanted it.” My movie experience tonight was very much like that. I loved every moment of Serenity. It gave me all that I wanted out of the story and characters. It satisfied my desire for justice and a win by the underdogs. But it gave it to me in a bitter-sweet way that sucked me deeper into the world. Serenity is a great damn movie.

I scored tickets to tonight’s special screening thanks to this blog, so I have to write at least something about the movie. The problem is that I’m nearly speechless. That was the best movie experience I’ve had in ages. Serenity is faithful to the TV series I loved, and tells a fantastically enjoyable story standing on its own. It delivers plenty of moments where the entire theater will laugh aloud, and moments where everyone feels the need to clap or cheer. It also will land a few emotional stomach punches that will leave you stunned only to lift you higher with yet another triumph.

Go see it. And buy the DVD set of Firefly. Then go see it again. I’m going to.

(Wow, this is really uncharacteristically glowing of me.)

ESPN the Magazine: You’re cut!

For a while I subscribed to ESPN the Magazine. It’s a pretty well written rag with decent stories and a nice touch of humor. Lately, though, I haven’t had time or desire to read magazines, so I let my subscription (and a few others) expire. As I expected, I got the little set of follow-up letters offering me special pricing if I renew right away. No big deal.

But the last few of their letters have gotten odd. In fact, they’re hostile. I know I paid for a 1-year subscription, up front. I let it expire, and they stopped sending me magazines. I owe them nothing. That’s pretty much how this whole economy thing works with the exchange of monies for goods.

But now they’ve gone too far. They sound hostile, like I actually owe them something. The latest notice includes the words “final notice”, “collect payment”, and “permanent ESPN the Magazine credit record”. So I decided to use their web form to drop them the following complaint/question:

I let my subscription expire on purpose. I paid up-front for a certain number of issues and there was (to my knowledge) no stipulation about renewing. I have been getting increasingly threatening letters from your “Collections Department” which I took to be a fairly rude/clever/harmless way to attempt to get me to re-up.

The tone of these letters has become unacceptable, with talk of some sort of permanent credit record. If this is marketing, it is deplorable.

If there is indeed some actual balance left on some account (I haven’t received the magazine for many months, after the 1 year I paid for), please respond to me via email and enclose a copy of the terms.

I can also be reached on my cell phone at 650-xxx-xxxx.

Thank you.

I think that is fair. I’m willing to play ball here. But you know what? Their fucking web form is broken! They apparently have some junior asshole programmer working on their site and can’t handle a single <textarea> and file it in a database or fire off an email! Apparently, there are “Invalid Characters In Request”. It’s text! Are quotation marks too much? Maybe it’s those nasty backslashes? Nice work, jackasses.

So, this is my open letter to the apparent fucktards in ESPN the Magazine collections. If I missed something or actually owe them money, then I’ll take this down. Otherwise it stays.

Update: I just submitted the URL to this entry to their form, and it succeeded.

Update 2: I just poked at their form a little more, attempting to put a few words in to explain the URL. Well, it seems that their form can’t handle me hitting “Enter”! That’s right, “\n” is an illegal character apparently. Genius. So no complaints in proper paragraph form.

Serenity!

I’m in! I just got notification that I have been selected as one of the people to see Serenity on the 27th. As a part of this, I’m obligated to provide you with the following synopsis:

Joss Whedon, the Oscar® - and Emmy - nominated writer/director responsible for the worldwide television phenomena of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE, ANGEL and FIREFLY, now applies his trademark compassion and wit to a small band of galactic outcasts 500 years in the future in his feature film directorial debut, Serenity. The film centers around Captain Malcolm Reynolds, a hardened veteran (on the losing side) of a galactic civil war, who now ekes out a living pulling off small crimes and transport-for-hire aboard his ship, Serenity. He leads a small, eclectic crew who are the closest thing he has left to family –squabbling, insubordinate and undyingly loyal.

I think this is a pretty shitty synopsis. I cut ‘n pasted it exactly, only putting a little markup in place. You’ll note that it was poorly proofed: Whedon never produced a television show named “Buffy the Vampire”. I didn’t watch it, but I’m pretty sure she was quite the opposite of a vampire… a slayer of some sort. It should also be noted that his feature-film debut is based on his TV show “Firefly”. That connection is worth noting. And referring to Mal as “hardened” seems pretty inaccurate. I’d put him in the “dissolusioned” category if any. But maybe this is why nobody has asked me to proof-read a movie synopsis.

Regardless, I think it is important to note that “Firefly” and, I assume, “Serenity” is character-centric sci-fi. Sure, they have spacecraft and super-cool computers, but the show was about the interesting people, society, political sides, and their interactions. The future is just a backdrop for a real story. I enjoyed the story as it was told on “Firefly” immensely, and I look forward to seeing the movie adaptation (and hopefully get some damn closure about several of the story arcs). If the movie is told in the same spirit as the show I suspect that it will be enjoyable to people that aren’t necessarily sci-fi fans (something “Star Trek” never did).

Crashing the Weakerthans

Yay! I just noticed that one of my favorite songs by The Weakerthans, “Aside”, is on a movie soundtrack. Granted, it’s the sountrack for the sophomoric “Wedding Crashers”, but it’s a major-lavel release. It makes me happy when cool bands get a good break. Guys: I hope you keep making music. I love it.

Serenity, I hope?

A friend dropped me the URL of what is supposedly going to be a pre-screen of the soon to be released film “Serenity“, a movie built from the ashes of the show Firefly. I filled out the relevant bits and mashed submit. As far as I can tell, I’m in: two tickets for 3 days before the official release. I can hardly wait.

I have managed to drum up workplace excitement for the movie by passing my copy of the Firefly DVD set around. Without exception, each person came back and said, “Why the hell did Fox cancel this show? It’s awesome!” Nice work Fox. Excelent market research. Just at my work, I can point you too about $500k worth of household income who (a) didn’t hear of your show due to sub-par marketing and (b) would’ve watched it and been exposed to your advertisers.

This all goes back to a point I’ve made many times. There is a fundamental problem with surveys and Neilson ratings: they only measure the portion of the populace that likes to do surveys! I don’t, and neither do my friends. But, man, are we worth marketing to. So figure out how to measure us.

Touch

Tonight I had my first “skin-on” contact of my massage class. It was kind of terrifying. I think I have a reasonable aptitude for touch, but my brain really wanted to “get it right” this first time. By the end of 20 minutes worth of some basic back massage strokes my legs were on fire, my brow was dripping, and my brain was shot. Not to sound too spacey, but there really is a lot more to this stuff than just touching. There is connection, care, and an empathic tendancy to this sort of work.

Granted, there is also homework. Ick.

OOo

Screw Microsoft. I’m done with their Office products. I’ve been using OpenOffice for a while, and have now given their 2.0 beta2 a good test drive. It’s simply great. Everything almost anyone could need (including DB connectivity and presentation software) in a 75 meg download. Don’t pay for MS Office when you buy a new computer: just get OOo.

Bad English

I was eating sushi with a friend the other day. We went to the little place that is right near my new house, which is really good. Honestly, there is nothing better than having a great sushi place less than a mile away. Anyhow, they are good at carving up tasty fish, but their publishing abilities leave something to be desired. Inside the little payment folio we got with our bill was one of the most wacked-out sentences I’ve ever read. After stating that they don’t do the debit-card-thing was printed: “We’re apologized for you inconveniences.”

Seriously, you almost have to try to make that many mistakes in one sentence.