The Hypocrisy and Star Wars

You know what I think.

Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith is an R Rated movie.

I’ve argued with countless people about the rating system. They say blah blah blah: “if other people think the movie is bad enough for an R, you should too.” Flawless logic. These are the same people who will see Episode III and not notice the violence.

It’s not that simple really. Ratings are based on politics.

The MPAA was created around 40 years ago to protect the financial interests of the movie industry. It grew out of the crumbling of the fascist movie content standards of the 30s. The industry created the rating system to deal with the controversy over the content of some of the great movies of the 60s and early 70s.

It wasn’t created out of good intentions. The studios wanted to keep the government from getting too involved – no highly political ratings or content management committee within the beltway – and retain a level of freedom.

So when the entire point of the rating system is to keep people pacified. That means rated movies based on public perception and the political climate.

Example: the last movie I know of with as the swordplay and decapitations of Episode III, well. The movie wasn’t rated PG-13. It was rated R – and then only because of a black-and-white sequence in the middle of the big action scene the allowed it to avoid the NC-17.

What I’m trying to say is that everyone who trusts the MPAA to make a decision about what is appropriate or inappropriate for them -- is stupid.

The Only Reporters You Can Trust

After Newsweek retracted a story because of pressure from the Whitehouse or because it wasn’t true (I say Whitehouse).

After the whole Jeff Gannon slash James Guckert thing.

After those other reporters who have been found on the Whitehouse’s payroll.

I’ve made a decision.

From now on I will only trust three types of reporters:

1) Video game and technology reporters.

2) Sports Reporters.

3) The British Press.

This life changing decision suddenly seems so damn obvious.

See the British are smarter than us or, at least, less media savvy. And sports and video games just don’t matter at all.

Most important, though, none of them are afraid to ask difficult questions. Or ask for a response to outright criticism during an interview.

This means Tony Blair agreeing to a televised interview with a reporter who unequivocally loathes him.

This means Barry Bonds – unfortunately guilty until proven innocent – avoiding the media because he knows he won’t be able to avoid questions about steroids. And it means some of the most entertaining press conferences you can imagine. (You almost feel sorry for the athletes... you have reporters willing to ask anything and many athletes who aren’t shrewd enough to not answer everything.)

This means Reggie Fils-Aime being asked why Nintendo didn’t reveal anything substantial about the Revolution, and if they can do anything to fix the perception problem core gamers have of the big N.

I’m not, of course, saying that all video game, sports and British journalists are great.

They all have their little controversies.

And there are a lot of terrible sports writers.

What I’m saying is that if the political equivalent of Peter Rojas, Kevin Pereira, Marc Stein or that British reporter sat in front of George W. Bush, someone may actually ask:

“Mr. President... why did you knowingly deceive the United States in order to gain support for a military action against Saddam Hussein and Iraq.”

How To Be A Core Gamer When You Work 8 to 5

I’m not sure about tomorrow, but today worked out perfectly.

Since I’m still a core gamer and I still am willing to watch a stream of Nintendo’s pre-E3 press conference. Needless to say… this isn’t easy with an 8 to 5 job. I had to take a special type of break, and also write a killer ad copy while watching Aonuma-san talk about how revolutionary the Revolution will be.

Oh yes. Something you may not know about me: I’m a core gamer.

That’s means that – in far too many ways – I’d be in the top 5% of customer segments for the three major video game companies.

I buy more video games a year than I’m willing to admit. Although, in my defense, a high proportion go unopened, or opened and rarely played (if I do take a peak at the instruction manual and marketing materials).

It’s kind of a hobby that’s become more about collection and an eventual career objective anymore. I’ve never grown out of wanting to work in the industry.

I went to E3 last year. For those who aren’t in the core gamer club… that’s the industry trade show that’s held annually in L.A. The Electronic Entertainment Exposition as organized by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA). The industry lobby group/watch dog; the MPAA of games.

I went during my unemployed week. The random nine days between when MGIS “let me go” and I started my short-lived career as a computer tech. I was there as a reporter for Nintendojo.com.

E3 was a mixture the thrill and the biggest letdown of my life.

Why it was the thrill of a lifetime: I was able to be there in person.

I saw first hands the neon lights. Felt the awful techno music. Walked through the randomness of Kentia Hall. Played games before any normal, average person had the chance. All and all… I was able to be part of this interesting – and overwhelming business-based – trade show that I’d read about since I was six years old.

Why it was the biggest letdown of my life:

I was with Zack – an awful, brainless automaton who is one of the most ignorant, unlikable people on earth – 90% of the trip. Zack is the kind of person who asked me to chip on a pizza I didn’t order and didn’t eat five minutes after I met him. He greedily took any freebie that was available at the trade show. Had substandard personal hygience. Too much body hair. And was an average Arkansas Republican (to be?) from a small town who, traveling on his parents’ buck.

There isn’t enough I can say about why he made my trip awful. I’ll summarize saying his presence made me regret going to something I’d wanted to see my whole life.

It wasn’t completely awful socially, though. Everyone else from the site I met was awesome. And then the other two guys I roomed with… both wrote for the UNLV Rebel Yell and were interesting, normal people.

It was another big part of my “the world is simply the people in it” epiphany of the last four years. So I don’t need to go on any further on the subject.

More important though, E3 made me realize that games didn’t mean the same thing to me anymore.

They used to be something that I played and thought about constantly. By the time I went to E3, that wasn’t true any longer. By May of last year, all I thought about and did was write. My whole life was about fiction and grammar and word choices and characters and narratives and all of that.

Games had just become my casual hobby, and the industry I knew best. Mostly the way I keep branding, oligopolies and game theory in my head while I try to make a Big Lebowski style detective narrative.

Being in the huge L.A. convention center made me realize playing the games wasn’t why the industry appealed to me. It had become more about how video game narratives create an impact on a player. How the free market affects this new creative medium. One that’s still in its infancy.

End of story.

But enough about me. About video games.

This is a huge year for the industry. The big three – Microsoft, Nintendo and SONY – are all releasing or announcing their new hardware. Billions of dollars are riding on this week.

Here’s my impressions and my ranking of where the money will go: most to least.

1) Xbox 360 looks amazing to me. It does the sorts of things I want to do right now with my electronic devices. It supports High Def. You can plug in an iPod and listen to your music during an online Perfect Dark Zero game. Microsoft didn’t screw up the controller by trying to make too many changes for the sake of avoiding “inertia”. And you’ll still be able to play Halo online and with four people – the controllers will just be wireless now.



2) PS3 confounds me. It looks slick and amazing, but it has two many ports in the back, too many bizarre features and the worst controller evar!!!1!

Seriously. Why would any normal person ever want to hook up a video game system to two – that’s right TWO – HDTV’s at one time? I don’t even know anyone who owns two HDTV’s. (Well… one guy… but he’s superficial and writes for an ad agency, so…)



And the controller. Not only is it ugly, but it’s useless. Try to imagine holding it in your hand and playing it. The triangle button is like half an inch from the shoulder buttons. It looks like it’d fall out of your hands if you actually tried to play games with it. You might leave fingerprints on it too.



3) Nintendo Revolution is uninspiring. The machine is small and beautiful, but as per usual, Nintendo didn’t really give out any of the good details. Although being able to play classic Nintendo games from the last two decades is reason enough for me to buy one.



4) Then the weirdest hardware announcement so far: the Gameboy Micro. Apparently, Nintendo thought we’d all want to buy a system hardly anyone is making games for anymore just because they made it super tiny. They could be right about me, but I doubt they’ll sell it to the rest of the world.



There could be more for me to say. But I’m too tired to think about it right now.

Oh yes. My sister recently had a baby. An adorable thing called Sofia. After the Coppola perhaps. Anyway:



She’s cute.

Wright is Wrong! Set Love Free!

My brother asked me to post the banner to the left. I would have to say I'm for the appeal of the Wright Amendment.

I think the story is great. Back in the day, the big airlines pushed the Wright Amendment through to law in Texas in order to stick it to Southwest and protect their business. All under the guise of protecting a new airport.

It's even more ironic since Dallas/Fort Worth is no longer a Delta hub.

And now that Southwest finally has the power to lobby against the arbitrary and unfair law.

More power to them.

I personally love Southwest airlines. It's about as close as you can come to a classless structure in the free market system.

On a Southwest plane, we're all equal. I feel that there's a valuable lesson in that...

The thing about people is

I don’t trust them.

In a way I can count the number of people I trust on one hand. But that isn’t true. Just something I’d like to believe sometimes.

Mostly, I trust everyone. Why is a cliché.

I tell myself I’m good at predicting what people do. (For the most part it’s true. Although, as
I’m aware, I just remember when I’m right.) Therefore I trust everyone to act in the way they’re capable. And to do what I expect.

Like I said, cliché.

But not more or less like you’d hear from any reasonably intelligent teenager. Which I’m not.

I’m over that anyway. Mostly. I’ve been trying to “branch out”. Which means make new friends with new people and do new things in new ways with new thoughts and new ideas and new hopes and optimism and, and.

And it’s been interesting at least. I’ve conceptually gone from being somewhat of an introvert to somewhat of an extrovert. Which is like going from being somewhat tipsy to slightly drunk. Or Gucci to Prada. (Labels is what I’m saying, sort of.)

I’m not so much sure if it was my concept or other people’s. But I’ve always had some difficulty distinguishing between the two.

The purpose. Well. Networking for starters. You meet a few people, or make a casual acquaintance with someone you hit it off with. Though they only have the same interests as you on a general level, they know other people. Who are theoretically more interesting.

And then stories. This is the most important thing. I don’t tell use this as an introduction. But
I’m always looking for stories I can use. Directly or indirectly.

Take this for indirect:

The conflict in a story I’m working on: the main character – a mild bastard – goes against his type and decides to stand up for some friends in a hospital. Their son had climbed a tree, fallen and impaled himself on a broken branch. Don’t worry. It isn’t fatal.

At the hospital, the parents are having trouble with the insurance company. A case worker stops by the room while the protagonist is visiting and tells the family that the emergency surgery isn’t going to be rated an emergency, and thus their plan will only cover 80% and only after they hit their $7,500 deductible.

My protagonist sticks out his neck. Says what he can. Gives the case worker his lawyer’s business card. Tells her to eat shit and die. She goes silent. Leaves the room and...
...everyone attacks him for overstepping his social boundaries. It wasn’t his place and he had no right to say anything. In the end, he still pays for the lawyer. But that isn’t part of the story.

Indirect.

A friend’s son accidentally slipped and fell on a broken branch. His skin somehow kept the branch from puncturing any organs. He’s fine now.

My boss had a strangulated hernia. A case worker told him his surgery wasn’t an emergency. Although after an hour without blood, a strangulated intestine is dead. The body follows soon after.

And that last part. One of the people I branched out to has a younger sister that lives in another state. The younger sister has an interesting archetypical background (I’ll say). The older sister (the one I’d already known) has this interesting personal conflict between some vague wildness and a desire to be – let’s say – a Judeo-Christian stereotypical ideal.

So I started to email the younger sister when she went home.

Why? To be nice. To try to move out another level on the social network. And, well. Stories. To learn her stories and to refine my own.

See, she was 16. (17 now.) And she fits the type for the girls I liked in High School. A Clementine. Not to sound misogynistic, but (two points to anyone who knows the French expression for that) she has issues with men.

Her Father skipped out on her family when she was old enough to notice and young enough to feel responsible. Now she seems to crave attention from men in that way. Or, more precisely, she will. She doesn’t yet have the confidence to make those demands. (She’s from a small town.)

I wanted to follow the younger sister’s story to see if I could figure out how she would evolve into my prediction. (I only would remember her were she to do so.)

One day the older sister accused me of having inappropriate... um... intentions for the younger sister. She told me not to talk to her ever again. Then offered to give me a better explanation what the hell she was talking about later.

From the older sisters point-of-view, I guess I can see where the confusion would come in.

How could I not want her aged 16 sister that has lived in a small town and been home schooled her whole life? My age, my education or my complete distrust of people from small towns? No way. A rational adult would know those things don’t matter. I must have wanted from her sister.

This was, by the way, completely unexpected. I didn’t see it coming at all. So I didn’t even try to defend myself.

I just apologized.

And I wish I hadn’t apologized. Because a day later, I realized I would resent her for that forever. Shocking me enough that I was willing to apologize for something that was outside of my character. And validate her paranoia. And her presumptuousness. And her stupidity. I feel so disgusted with myself for letting someone think they’re right when they should tattoo crazy on her pupils.

I did just want to be nice. I did just want the stories.

Instead I feel burned for trying to be social. Trying to be nice.

And trying to be a writer.

The three fundamental aspects of the identity I’ve had of myself for the last six years. Probably why this sounds bitter.

A quick follow up. The older sister never offered more explanation. Or any apology. Now she’s making shallow network invitations to me to go bowling and do other safe, Christian group activities. And she can’t make eye contact with me.

And the moral of my story: I’m labeling myself somewhat of an introvert again.

But I expect that to go away soon.