Death before recliners!

So I went and saw a play the other night, and some things struck me. About the experience, that is. Like, nobody threw anything at me. Anyway, first, I want to make it clear that I'm not reviewing this play. I don't review things. You didn't ask me what I thought, and that's fine. I'm bringing this up because it's a thing I did, and we're friends. Right? ...right? I mean, at best we're friendly acquaintances? No? Wow...well, I appreciate you're honesty...I guess.

In fact, you'd be surprised by how disinterested everyone is in
my thoughts about the play. Or in theatre in general for that matter.

Someday I'll stop kicking it while
it's down. That day is not today.

Anyway, you probably don't know this about me (after all, we're sub-acquaintances), but I like theatre. Spelled "re," you know, the pretentious way? Like throwing a "u" into colour or favourite. Oh, and doughnut. Going to see theatre, yes, but also like, doing theatre. Community theatre. Yeah, I'm one of those. "But uh...why?" You might ask? I don't know, because it's a growth industry. Like newspapers and video rentals. And yes, I totally get that theatre, as a form of entertainment, is not exactly on fire right now. I'm fine with that.

To a point. So the show I saw, a production of James Goldman's The Lion in Winter, was good. I, in no way, want to suggest that this show or the theatre company that produced it, didn't put on a perfectly good production of one of my favorite plays.

Also, you've got to admire a regional theater company that takes on a play most
people know from a movie starring Katherine Hepburn and Peter O'Toole.

Above: this, but with old people.

That said, as I sat in my seat in row H (they went up to J) watching the audience file in, I was struck by the fact that until about five minutes before curtain, I was the youngest person seeing the show that night. And I'm not particularly young. The average age was, and I'm giving you my best estimate here, seventy? And with a hundred and eighty seats in the theatre, that works out to roughly twelve thousand, six hundred years of life experience in that room. An ice age of theatre goers would perhaps be the collective noun the for the audience that night. 

I wonder if DJ's would be surprised
to know how disinterested everyone
else is in what they do...

And that's great. I have no beef with the seventy-plus crowd. I'm delighting that they're attending live theatre, it was just a little disheartening to me that that was the overwhelming demographic last night. That's not to say young people didn't attend. A whole--what's the collective noun for zoomers? A rizz? Sure, let's say a rizz of zoomers sat next to me talking loudly about their DJ gigs and marveling that the show wasn't by Shakespeare. Which, fine. Not everyone has a bachelors in theatre, many people chose to get real degrees. 

Dank? Really kids?

Anyway, it was around the moment that the twenty-something--let's call him Aiden--next to me nodded off about ten minutes into act I that it occurred to me that not everybody is into it. Theatre, I mean. The youths just aren't theatre stans. They just don't find it...uh, dank. Am I using that right? Dank? Look, I'm sorry, I just can't with the internet list of Gen Z slang, my point is while me and the ice age were super into Henry and Eleanor sniping at each other for two and a half hours, the kids were not.

That's not to say all the youths, surely there are still theatre kids out there. But for some reason, it's mostly for the olds...huh? What? Oh, did it sound like I was setting up some kind of solution? Because I wasn't. I mean, I wish I knew how to fill seats, I just, don't. I'm open, you know, if you have any ideas.

Movie theatres have resorted to food service at your seat and chairs that recline
almost horizontally. But I think theatre, as an art form, would rather die before 
letting audiences lounge their way through Clybourne Park or whatever.

Mars Needs Data

I don't want to tell gross tech companies how to conduct their illegal, covert data collection, but I mean, rule one is maybe don't label the app "FacialRecognitionApp.exe." You know? 

C'mon, it's like big brother 101.

I'm having trouble thinking of a
non-sinister use of the technology. 

I mention this because a student at University of Waterloo was clued into the fact that the M&M vending machines on campus were secretly collecting facial recognition data when the machine glitched and displayed an error message referencing the application. "hey so why do the stupid m&m machines have facial recognition?" SquidKid47 asked. The unsatisfying answer? So they can sell you M&M's. You know, better.

Methinks something sinister lies behind
all the fondue and army knives...

Another undergrad who writes for the school student news site reached out to the Switzerland-based company that manufactures them, Invenda Group AG. They told them that the machines collect age and gender information without the customers consent of knowledge so as to better provide them with targeted ads. They also insist that the data is anonymous, that is, the machine knows someone whom it has identified as a particular gender and age bought a whatever. The data is collected locally and not shared with any centralized database. 

I certainly wouldn't want to be outed as one of
the weirdos who likes the peanut butter kind..

And why would they lie? Like, in fairness, the machines aren't secret. One wouldn't necessarily ask the question "what if my vending machine is spying on me?" but there is a website for the Mars Intelligent Vending Machines which advertises its "[d]irect, targeted marketing point of sale" which, it doesn't explicitly stat that it's snapping pictures of college kids without asking, but it does at least mention the feature. Although it does say that it can "recognize customers" in order to target ads and that sounds like the opposite of anonymous data collection.

Well, marketing people maybe.
But they're not like us.

But aside from the privacy concerns, I have other issues with this. First, I defy them to teach a machine to recognize the complexities and nuances of the human gender spectrum with any accuracy. Humans haven't figured that out yet, and I resent the suggestion that gender identity has any bearing on M&M buying habits or is any of Invenda's business. And secondly, how much data do they really need? Like, nobody's asking vending machines to advertise at them better. Nobody likes targeted ads. 

It's just a grim world we live in where something like this comes to light and rather than an immediate apology and promises to disable the machines, the company behind it just sort of shrugs and says don't worry, we're only violating your privacy and making bold assumptions about you as a person so we can better hone our ability to persuader you to buy things you don't need. I mean, they could at least act contrite and lie to us.

"Now settle down and keep consuming. I'll be here quietly observing
you and thinking of new ways to sell you things you don't need."

-Capitalism

Today in crushing disappointments:

Like a dagger in the heart you guys, a dagger in the heart. Once again--huh? Oh, sorry, you want context. Well, it's about a video game that is not making it to the U.S. anytime soon, so "crushing disappointment" might be a bit strong. Oh, and brace yourself, this is a nerdy one, so bail out now if you so choose. I won't take it personally. Well, I will but I don't want to make you feel bad, so I won't say anything.

Pictured: you, probably.

The fact that you're probably looking at
this and feeling nothing says a lot about
us, but it's ok, we can still be friends.

Sill there? Super. So, earlier this week, I watched all twenty-five minutes of Nintendo's Partner Direct presentation which, for the uninitiated, is essentially a commercial. A twenty-five minute ad for video games. And I can't stand commercials, but I was willing to watch this one because I was under the impression that Mother 3 was coming to Switch and that it would be announced during this thing. It was not, but why then was I, a grown ass adult, so frustrated this no-show-ery? Because Mother 3.

Although that is the face of the man who
who would have a localized copy of Mother 3
in his desk...I mean, look at that smirk.

Mother 3 is the sequel to Mother 2, or, as it's known to us United Statesians, Earthbound. A quirky, cult Super NES roleplaying game from the 90's. The third game in the series never got an official, translated release. Instead, it's become something of a white whale for Nintendo-fans. It was like running joke for years that former Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aimé kept it locked in his desk drawer or something. He didn't, but really nobody seems to know exactly what the deal was.

This was, after all, the era of things like 
I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.

It's possible that the hesitancy to release it outside Japan has to do with some characters called Magypsies...as in magic gypsies. Yikes. In addition to having a pretty offensive name, they're gender non-conforming, which in the less enlightened 2000's may not have been dealt with in a fashion we would be ok with now. But on the other hand, maybe it was? Or maybe the localization could fix it? Or maybe it's not about that at all and everyone's just speculating.

Although hiring that guy to come out
and do "sad trombone" at the end of
the presentation was a bit much.*

Anyway, it wasn't like the presentation was slapped with any kind of tease for the game, I just happened across some reactions online and one of them mentioned Mother 3, so I made an assumption that it was finally coming to the U.S. Disappointing? Sure, but that's on me. But what's really getting to me, apart from the fact that I, a grown-ass adult has been pining away for the release of a twenty year old video game, is that I've never played it. In fact, I never even finished Earthbound. People who've played the unofficial fan translation say it's good, but it's the principle.

It's an unknown quantity and therefore intriguing. And the sense that it's such an arbitrary move to not bring it over. Like, Nintendo was offered the fan translation patch for free, but was just like: naw, we're good. But then weird, baffling decisions are par for the course for that company. And yet I keep giving them my money, so again, a lot of this is on me.

"No, keep your money. We enjoy your frustrated suffering."

-Nintendo

*Ok, they didn't, but might as well have.

Go shower gross

No, really, what's up with YouTube algorithm? I ask because it keeps trying to get me to watch videos by this guy who complains about how the film industry is going woke and consequently broke. Gross, right? 

It rhymes, so they must be on to something, right?

You'd better listen up collective entity that
 is Hollywood, this guy's got your number.

Yes, super gross. Like go shower gross. And when a YouTuber's video is entitled "Madam Web FLOPPED SO BAD that Hollywood wants to BRING BACK the MALE AUDIENCE" one makes some assumptions about them. First, that the maker of the video isn't entirely clear on how capital letters work. Secondly, that the video is some incel screed about how movies starring women make them feel feelings. Thirdly, said YouTuber has opinions about how Hollywood can, nay must redeem themselves. 

At no point does--huh? I don't know how, I didn't watch the thing, but I glean from the titles and descriptions that he's suggesting that film makers try making movies for men for once. 

Men are, historically, an underserved demographic
when it comes to film and television.

(source: nonsense)

Above: this, but with the self-pitying rage of
fragile men and the anonymity of the internet.

I didn't see Madam Web, and sure, the critical reviews have been m'eh, though none of the ones I've read have cited "too many ladies" as a problem with the film. I suspect this YouTuber is coming from a place of insecurity. Like I said, I'm not going to watch his weird, misogynistic nerd videos but I am going to suggest that this is a part of a larger internet-based rage volcano on the part of grown-up man babies upset by the slight--like, barely a blip--uptick in the number of women-led genre movies. 

At this point, I'm beginning to suspect
that Citizen Kane is no Citizen Kane.

And while I don't want to dignify the misogynerds' argument, I am going to put it out there that comic book movies, as a thing, are maybe wearing a bit thin. The Marvels was another recent female super-hero movie that garnered an outsized dude-bro backlash for threatening their precious worldview. I watched it yesterday, and yeah, it was tepid, and no Citizen Kane, but I think the last Marvel movie I didn't nod off in was Thor Ragnorok. 

That was like seven years and thirteen movies ago. Yikes. You know my point was going to be that representation isn't the reason comic book movies are not drawing audiences but rather that the genre's a bit played out. But I think a much better point would be that instead of whinging online about how movies staring women are ruining one's life, one could, I don't know, read a book or maybe go outside? 

Touch grass, as the kids say.

Apple's Fetch

I don't want to say "I told you so," and I didn't actually tell you so, so where do I get off, anyway? But I do want to say that they should have seen this coming. 

I think I might know why they didn't see this coming...

Pictured: a former Apple Vision Pro owner,
seen here making a much better decision.

Huh? What's that? Who should have seen what coming? Ok, these are reasonable questions, and the answers are as follows: Apple, and that their dumb space goggles would be kind of a disaster. I say this because according to this article from The Verge, early adopters are taking advantage of Apple's "no questions asked" fourteen day return policy to get their $3,500 dollars back and--yeah--thirty-five hundred dollars. Of money, I know. Anyway, since it's a "no questions asked" policy, I guess we'll never--

Oh, wait, the internet exists and there's no shortage of analysts, customers, and randos like myself eager to supply theories as to why. Most complaints seem to be the $3,500 price tag, eyestrain it causes, the $3,500 price tag, the difficulty getting it to fit properly, the $3,500 price tag, and the idea that waving your hands around to control apps is not ideal. Oh, and the the $3,500 price tag. 

iPads are also overpriced, but they're not $3,500 and they don't make you throw up.

Pukers, or as they're less dismissively
known: humans with inner-ears.

The site appleinsider.com actually says that the return rate is over reported, and doesn't vary greatly from other Apple products. As an Apple-focused site, I'd take their opinion with a grain of salt, but they blame two groups for the majority of returns: "pukers," that is the people for whom a wearable display causes motion sickness, and tech reviewers who bought the thing with the intent of reviewing it for their social media or whatever, and never had any intention of keeping them. 

Pictured: a 1995 trade show attendee enjoying
motion sickness at the Nintendo Booth.

Ok, but why should they have known better? You might reasonably ask me. Again, great question. I kind of feel like they should have learned the lesson of Virtual Boy. Remember that thing? It was Nintendo's attempt to bring virtual reality video gaming to the home market and it suffered from a lot of the same issues: it was uncomfortable to use, caused eye strain, and because everybody's face is different, one size doesn't fit all. It was a colossal failure, and 8% of the internet now is retro gaming YouTubers ragging on it.

I guess what I'm saying is that virtual reality is the fetch of the consumer tech industry. We, as a civilization, have been trying to get it to catch on for decades now and it never seems to end well. Look, it was a lovely dream. A dream that we might one day be able to strap a computer screen to our face and feel like we're inside a virtual world of TikTok videos and pop-up ads, but maybe it's time to let that dream go.

Above: a future just beyond our reach... 

It's probably not a holodeck...

God help you if you were a Turbografx-16 kid.
It was the T-Mobile of video game systems.

I am, as you may be aware, of a certain age. That is to say, I was a first-hand witness to what we now refer to as the "console wars." That period of time were advertisers for video game console developers turned sibling against sibling, neighbor against neighbor, and vague grade school acquaintance against vague grade school acquaintance over which game system they preferred. Some people hung on to their Ataris and rich kids had Neo-Geos, but mostly you were in either the Nintendo camp or Sega camps, and never the two shall meet.

So it was super-weird when Sega stopped making consoles and started publishing games on Gamecube. I suppose it would be like if Warner Brothers gave up making DC movies and let Batman show up in the next Avengers. 

Show me a nerd who wouldn't see this and I'll show you someone who's dead inside.

"Yes, more of this please!"

-Xbox's shareholders on 

the subject of money

But those were different times. Sure, most gamers now have a Switch and then opt either for a Playstation 5 or whatever ludicrously named iteration of the Xbox is out there, but it's not the same. There are some exclusives, but for the most part if a game is on say, Xbox, there's probably a Playstion or PC version of it too. And now Xbox, coming to the twin realizations that they're a distant third to Nintendo and Sony and that they would like more money thank you very much, have announced that they'll be publishing games on the PS5. Which, ok. Super. 

"Cross-platform? I have the word as I
hate hell, Ken Kutaragi and thee."

-Xbox stans

After all, this is anno domini  MMXXIV, and we're all of us past all this Montegue vs. Capulet nonsense now, right? Like, ones particular gaming console of choice isn't a thing one needs to base an entire personality around anymore. In fact, it probably never was, that was just aggressive 90's marketing aimed at kids, telling us to tribe up over the dumbest things. But here we are and evidently some fans are upset that Microsoft is basically saying that they've lost the console wars (not a thing), which is weird because unless you own stock in Microsoft or something, what difference does it make if someone with a PlayStation gets to play Sea of Thieves? But whatever, that's not what I'm here to talk about. What I did find interesting was this article from IGN.

As they say in business: always overpromise.
It definitely works out every time.

It's about Xbox President Sarah Bond going on the company podcast and saying:

"A what we're focused on there is delivering the largest technical leap you will have ever seen in a hardware generation, which makes it better for players and better for creators and the visions they're building..." 

-Xbox's Sarah Bond maybe overpromising? A bit?

Pictured: I don't know. Like,
what even are we looking at? 

I am the first to admit that I don't know anything about hardware lifecycles, game development or CEO-ing, but I am a grown-ass adult who's played video games his whole life. And the last few generational leaps have been, you know, incremental. There's been nothing like the leap from the inscrutable squares and beeps of Atari, to entirely recognizable 8-bit and 16-bit pixel art. Or the leap from that to the--admittedly janky by today's standards--first 3-D games.

Above: ray tracing. Possibly, I can't
tell. And neither can you. No one can.

The difference between PS4 and PS5 is ray tracing, and I'm still not sure what that even is. My point is the largest technical leap we've ever seen in a hardware generation is a bold claim. And one that to my layman's ears sounds like Xbox trying to convince shareholders that they're not getting out of the hardware business, but instead are putting the finishing touches on totally amazing next gen console and it's totally going to blow everybody's mind and make all the money ever. 

I guess what I'm saying is that to live up to Bond's claims, this next Xbox would have to be what? A holodeck? Is she saying we're getting holodecks? I will 100% eat my words here if Xbox is working on a holodeck. Here, take my money now.

"I didn't say holodeck, you said holodeck. But I'm not denying it either so..."

-Sarah Bond, not saying no to holodeck

Humans just got on the board!

Wow, uh, chalk one up for the organics, I guess:

I'm suddenly feeling slightly better about our chances
in the upcoming War Against the Machines.

Yeah, my view's pretty lack-luster too, but 
almost certainly more interesting than a blog.

What you're looking at--ok, what I presume you're looking at, I mean, maybe something interesting just went buy the window--but if you're looking at the photo above, you're looking at the charred and melted remains of one of Bay Area Tech Company Waymo's autonomous cars. A robot-taxi, if you will. It was just minding its own business in San Francisco's Chinatown last night when an angry mob descended. First they spray painted it, and smashed the windows before ultimately setting a firework off inside of it. Because Lunar New Year. Can you believe it?

That's weird because while it runs on a slightly different cycle to the one we're used to, that is, 354.37 days as opposed to the 365.25 days of the calendar most of us are familiar with, it's still pretty regular, and I mean, they're celebrations all over the world. It's a pretty big--oh, you thought I meant the car thing.

This is the Year of the Wood Dragon. And while I'm not one to argue with 
thousands of years of tradition, but numbers seem a lot easier to keep track of.

Pictured: the victim, seen here creating value for
Waymo's shareholders at the expense of people
living in a city where the average rent is $3,200.

Right. And I did fail to mention that the business the car was minding was the systematic destruction of ride share jobs? And sure, ride share jobs are themselves the thing killing the taxi industry, but at least ride share drivers are, you know, people. People classified as independent contractors in order to ensure that companies Uber and Lyft can collect a cut of the drivers's earnings without taking on any of the responsibilities of being an employer, so exploited people. They basically just sell you an app and that little sign for your windshield for 25% of your fares.

"These robo-taxis are a menace, you hear me?!"

-J. Jonah Jameson, weighing in

Regardless, I'm sure the crowd wasn't just standing up for the gig economy like victims of some kind of collective Stockholm Syndrome, they were also upset about the dangers these things pose to pedestrians. Back in October, a pedestrian who'd been hit by another car and thrown into the path of one of Waymo's vehicles became pinned underneath when it stopped. Yeah, it basically parked on her. More recently, a cyclist was hit. They weren't seriously hurt, but I mean, the damn robot hit a person, so I can understand why people are upset.

Look, I'm not pro-vandalism. There should be better avenues for protesting something and there probably are. City officials don't think autonomous car technology is there yet, emergency services are concerned that they can block their vehicles from getting to calls, and clearly regular people on the street turn go V for Vendetta on sight and yet they're still rolling around hitting dogs. Yeah, one of them killed a dog. So again, I'm not defending the angry mob, but what did Waymo think was going to happen?

"Why do people hate our driverless cars so much? I mean, sure, we're rendering
workers obsolete, causing traffic jams in an already difficult to navigate city and
we killed that dog, but don't they realize how profitable this could be? For us?"

-Waymo's PR department

Today in ill-advised alliances:

I don't want to tell anyone how to sue Disney for firing them for making fun of people who voice their pronoun preferences, but is accepting help from Elon Musk really the best way to distance yourself from a reputation as "an alt right wing extremist?"

Because that's a little like teaming up with Chipotle to distance yourself from norovirus.

"The 2020 election was rigged!" 

-Carano, seen here 

ruining her own career

I ask because Gina Carano is accepting help from Elon Musk to sue Disney for firing her for making fun of people who voice their pronoun preferences. Oh, and I guess also she was spreading some dangerous bullshit about vaccines? I don't know, I didn't pay attention at the time. Sure, I was bummed that weren't going to get that Star Wars spin-off series, but holy shit, did she compare Jews during the Holocaust with Republicans? Yikes. Sorry, what was I talking about? Oh, right, the lawsuit.

For Carano's sake, I hope there are no
steep inclines along the way...

She's suing Disney because they didn't want to be associated with her.  You know, for all that nonsense she spouts. Anyway, like a knight in shining money, Elon Musk is now riding to Carano's rescue and to the rescue of anyone else who tweeted hateful vitriol on Twitter only to have people say: "hey, please stop with the hateful vitriol." Which is weird because he's this hyper-capitalist nutter who thinks that the ultimate arbiter of all things should be the free market, yet when Disney fired Carano for damaging their brand with the aforementioned nonsense, suddenly they're impinging on free speech. 

And I mean, I feel like we've been through this already. Free speech is free speech, and the First Amendment is the First Amendment, but Disney has no legal obligation to keep toxic people on their payroll and nobody forced Elon Musk to let the white nationalists back on Twitter. He chose to give them a platform. He bought it, gave the rabid foam lunatics their accounts back, and then gave it a dumb name that everybody hates. 

A dumb name that everybody hates and had to be taken off the building
because nobody at the company could be bothered to secure the
proper permits. But I'm sure their lawyers are top notch...

A veritable oroboros of mediocrity!

Wait, wait, to be clear, I'm not saying this movie will be mediocre. I've not seen it and I wouldn't want to judge Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire based it's trailer (although, that's kind of what they're for), but I do want to make a broader point about the perils of relying too heavily on nostalgia. Like, way too heavily.

Although if I were to judge it based on the trailer, I'd probably point
out that there are too many kids in it. That is to say, more than zero kids.

Above: a tautological analogy?

I don't know if you've seen the trailer, but it leans into the original 80's movie like the guy in Hang-On leans into a curve and--huh? Oh, sorry, it's an old arcade game. Yes, from the 1980's. My point is that there's virtually nothing in the trailer that's not there to remind us of a thing from the 1984 movie. There's Harold Ramis, and Annie Potts, and wow, Rick Moranis? And Slimer, and the lion statues outside of the New York Central Library, and the ghost from inside the library. 

They even got Walter Peck, the EPA guy who hates the Ghostbusters because in the 80's I guess it was cool to hate the environment? Which, I mean, how'd that work out?

Pictured: how that worked out.

In an absolutely controversial opinion, the
Melissa McCarthy remake was better than
the Paul Rudd remake. There, I said it.

Virtually everything in the trailer is there to make you go: I remember that from Ghostbusters. I'm italicizing that because I'm referring specifically to the 1984 movie which, in an absolutely uncontroversial opinion, was the best one. And I'm kind of wondering if that's just for the trailer or if it really is just two hours of references and callbacks. Because if it's the latter and not the former, I have a concern that maybe hewing too closely to the original might work against it. You know, by making us wish we were watching that instead of, you know, Paul Rudd ghost busting with a bunch of kids. Like, I get the instinct though.

Like some kind of adult vitamin for
nerds, with 200% of your daily nostalgia.

The studios that put the money up for movies like this do so because they're banking on a built in audience, which in turn is going to see movies like this because they know that the studios are going to do everything they can to please them. It's sort of a closed system where fan service is converted into box office returns which then go back into more fan service; an ouroboros of safe entertainment. And I'm exactly the kind of person that this sort of thing is specially formulated for: a nerd of a certain age.

I know this, and yet it's not going to stop me from handing over my twelve dollars and perpetuating the cycle of movie studios guaranteeing an audience by pandering to their lost youths as the world spins further out of control and everything if unfamiliar and frightening. 

I'll feel kind of bad about it, but I'll still--hey! Hey, it's Slimer!
Wow, I can't believe they got him back. I thought he retired...