It’s the NBA season, so it’s time for a return of the carefully reasoned rants!

most people don’t share my dislike of LeBron and the Cavs, but here are my issues:

1) I hate the way LeBron plays. he is a freak athlete who is bigger, stronger, and faster than anyone else out there, so all he needs to do (and all he does) in big games is clear out his teammates and charge recklessly into the lane, because he will get the call. if everyone in the lane just jumped out of the way, LeBron would just run out of bounds because he’s not in control enough to actually finish without trucking someone.

2) Mike Brown is a terrible coach, because he fosters and encourages this behavior by LeBron. they lost to the Magic, because the rest of the team can be shut down, and LeBron can’t win by himself. The Celts reinforced that idea in game 1 this year, and the Raptors did the same in game 2.

it’s the Wilt Chamberlain vs Bill Russell theory. Bill knew that if you let Wilt do what he wanted, but focused on stopping the rest of the team, then Wilt would lose. and what happened there? Bill won 11 rings, and Wilt won 2 (only 1 during the course of Russell’s career).

which leads to:
3) the supporting cast in Cleveland is infinitely underwhelming, and easily beatable. without LeBron, that team struggles to make the playoffs in the EAST. strip away KG, and the Celts still make round 2 of the playoffs, take away Kobe, and i’m willing to bet the Lakers make round 2 as well. the Magic played without Jameer Nelson for a long stretch and still made the championship game.

the only real scoring threats outside LeBron are two extremely undersized guards in Delonte West and Mo Williams. Shaq and big Z are too old and slow. Anthony Parker is good, but shouldn’t be more than an outside shot specialist. and Varejao is a streaky energy guy at best.

any of the elite level teams can shut down all of those threats when they need to, and no matter what LeBron puts on the board, it won’t be enough.

“The Girlfriend Experience” is fucking brilliant. It’s slow, but beautiful.

1) The cinematography is used beautifully. In general, the movie is shot in normal color, but with lots of silhouettes or shadowed faces on a bright background, except when the lead girl (no idea what her name is in the movie) and her boyfriend are together, when it shifts to a bright sepia color scheme.

And the framing of the shots is also fantastic. At the beginning of the movie, it is mostly mid-zoom two shots, almost no close-ups (perfect idea when your lead is a porn star, good way to hide her acting), and certainly no extreme close-ups. But, as the movie progresses and you get a more intimate knowledge of the characters, the camera actually pulls back to more long shots (again, perfectly obscuring your lead actress’ acting skills in long shot partial silhouettes during the most interesting emotional moments.)

2) The story is amazing, and the characters are wonderful. The transformation in the lead girl, and her relationship with her boyfriend is very intimate and moving. At first, because of the closer camera angles, we physically can’t see the situation the girl is living in, we really only see where she is on these “dates” she goes on, but as the camera pulls back, we see that she has quite an affluent lifestyle (especially when shown in contrast to her boyfriend). Suddenly, as we see her apartment, and her shopping trips, and where she goes to the gym, we can understand how well she is doing for herself. But, as we go we are also shown how, she is really just a lower level escort. She still can climb a long way.

This shift in how we see her lifestyle also changes how we see the clients she has. At first, it seems like these guys she is with are big time businessmen, in the upper levels of society. But, as we understand more the money level she is at, we understand more that these men are not social elites. These are just men who are looking for something in their lives. Again, she has a long way that she can climb in her profession.

The story is shot in a way that feels closer to life than most. Because the visuals are so spot on, I attribute this more to the sound design. The sound levels are such that you can hear a lot of the background noises (forks on plates, etc.) much more than in most movies. So, even though visually it is slick, the sound of the movie is closer to a home movie, and this makes it more intimate, but it also is another trick that helps you forgive some of the leading lady’s lack of acting skills.

Of course, by now I’ve taken a couple of jabs at Sasha Grey’s acting skills, but honestly, even taking out the camera and sound trickery, she did a pretty good job. She may not be an award winner, but she’s at least on par with “actresses” that just play themselves in every role (see: Lindsey Lohan, Tara Reid, et al.) and for a porn star, that’s pretty elite acting territory. I can’t imagine her straying to far from a subtle role of playing a high-class hooker, but she did well for herself.

The movie started slow, but it built its way up and ended up surprising me. I’d give it 3.5 stars.

(I need something better than stars, by which I can rate movies. (There must be a better way to make that sentence come out grammatically correct.)

Kotaku – In Defense Of The Classic Controller – Project Natal

Admittedly, I didn’t read this article, but based on the title, I assume that I agree. Here’s my thinking: making games accessible to everyone means that you also have to change the types of games you make. It’s the same reason why I will never own a Wii, or if I do buy a Wii, it won’t be for myself, it will be for my girlfriend or for when we have guests over. I would never play a Wii while at home alone. Never, ever. There is absolutely no fun in motion control unless it is a social situation, because it’s bad enough to look like a goofball when others are doing the same thing.

But really, it’s not even the waggle controls that get me, it’s the fact that the games created for the Wii are not fun games. Well, they are fun in extremely short bursts, when playing in a group, but I cannot imagine a situation where I would play any of those games for an extended period of time. The graphics, gameplay and story just aren’t there. Sure, there’s always Mario and Link and Metroid, but once you get past that, what do you have? Oh! Another game with Mario in it? Yippee! Fuck that. I have a PS3 because I want to play games that pull me in. Earlier today, I was playing Bioshock and I was totally immersed. When a freaky bitch threw a corpse at me to distract me as she pulled out a metal pipe and charged at me, I was honestly freaked the fuck out. If there were a similar situation on Wii, I would be pulled out of the moment, because my instinct with a Wiimote would be to swing it like a pipe to defend myself, but the game wouldn’t allow that, because as a first person shooter, the pointer would be mapped to my view, so the camera would just swing around wildly. Or alternatively, I wouldn’t be immersed in the first place, because a situation like that would NEVER FUCKING HAPPEN on the Wii. Did you read the description of what happened? A fucking crazy bitch THREW A CORPSE AT ME before she charged me with a pipe.

When you start making games “accessible” to everyone, that means the content becomes pop, which means anything truly artistic, controversial, thought-provoking or offensive (read: interesting) gets stripped out so it will be something everyone can enjoy.

Aside from that, one thing I love about classic controls is that with a simple press of a button, I can do amazing things that I could never do in real life. And this concept isn’t just limited to killing zombies, or running across walls, or throwing fireballs, but to things like hitting a golf ball properly, or pulling a sweet crossover to drive in for a layup. I have tried playing golf on the Wii and it is just as frustrating and annoying as real golf. That is not fun. Not even a little bit. And now with Wii Motion Plus, I can only imagine it would be even worse.

I play games for the same reason I watch movies or read books: it’s a form of escapism, and when done well it can be just as amazing an experience as any other well told story. Sure, sometimes I play just to have fun, but there still needs to be something interesting, and it is rare that I find anything pop to be interesting any more.

I had attempted to write this post on my iPhone right after posting that last blurb, but after getting about halfway through, I noticed that there was no “save” button and lost everything. Stupid glitch. Anyway, here’s take 2:

It all starts with Craigslist. A couple weeks ago I was glancing through the postings in the Writing/Editing section of job in Boston and I came across a listing looking for “7 writers to work on screenplays and novels”. It sounded interesting, and I’ve been wanting to get back into writing more, so I sent off my resume.

The following Sunday at 8:15AM, I get a call from a guy named Johnny. He begins the conversation, with no regard for the fact that I’m still mostly asleep, by telling me that he has just gotten out of prison. He had been in prison for 12 years, on charges that were not discussed, though he did admit to having been in the mafia and to being a mercenary. His voice does not lead me to doubt this information at all. He speaks with the oddly mixed accent of an Italian gangster who has grown up in Boston. He goes on to tell me about how he has all of these ideas for stories, but he is cursed with being a terrible writer, so he decided to post on Craigslist. He said, “I only expected to get about a dozen responses, but I’ve gotten hundreds!” Never underestimate the number of wannabe writers in the world.

At this point, I’m still half asleep and skeptical of the whole situation, but amused and interested in the ridiculousness of the situation. He starts to lay out the framework of about 4 different story ideas, and while a couple weren’t very original, the stories had heart. I got the undeniable sense that this guy was really serious about doing this thing. A couple of the stories sounded like things I could do, and he mentioned some children’s stories, which also piqued my interest. So, I set up a time to meet him. If for nothing else than to meet the guy and be able to tell that story.

I reserve a Zipcar, and head up to Wakefield on Wednesday two weeks ago. Knowing only that I’m meeting Johnny at a deli, there are a couple other writers scheduled to be there, and that the guy is “very tanned”. That last bit turned out to be somewhat of an understatement. Johnny looks like he is made out of the leather from cowboy boots that have been left in the Arizona sun for a few years. He smells like it too. He’s got white hair, and gold rings on each pinky, and seems to only wear button up shirts that are only buttoned about half way.

At first, it’s just me and a girl named Julie there to meet Johnny. Johnny starts out this meeting by saying, “The literary world is the hardest job I’ve ever tried to get into. People keep telling me, ‘These guys are cut-throat. It’s tough.’ But, I’m not scared of anything. When you have the blood of over a hundred men on your hands, you lose your fear. You lose your envy. Why envy the guy when you know, ‘I can kill him’?”

I’m not sure how he managed it, but Johnny was able to seamlessly segue into the story ideas from there. Again the ideas were good, some were pretty generic, but there were some really solid stories too. And in all there was a hint of old school racism, like “a black guy who stutters, but is hung like a horse,” or “a Chinaman that no one can understand what he’s saying.” It’s all harmless until the third writer shows up, a black guy named Will, who has been doing some work in film in the area (check out the site for a movie he worked on “Business is War“.)

Suddenly, the story ideas get subtly altered, and Johnny is now talking about “a Chinaman talking like ching chang chung,” and “a guy who stutters.” It got a little awkward because Johnny has no idea about the writing process and got down on Will for “being negative” simply because Will was asking questions on target audiences and such. A slightly confused and defensive ex-merc is an odd thing to see.

It did lead to another interesting bought as Johnny started to explain his start in the mafia (only tangentially related to one of the story ideas). He started doing favors for his grandfather and grandfather’s friends when he was 5 or 6. Just the tips from these favors was making him about 20 dollars a day, while his father, who worked in a factory, made about $22 a week. By the age of 14, he was being asked to beat kids up. By 16, he was asked to stab people, because it was still a juvenile offense and he wouldn’t go to jail. By 18, he was a killer. And in his 20s he was making about $4,000 a week.

Everything got pretty squared away, and we all thought things were just about done, when Johnny decides he needs to elaborate on one story about male divorcees. For some reason, Johnny felt the need to talk about the guys’ sexual exploits in the story, but somehow got sidetracked into saying, “I used to ask every girl I met, ‘Can I fuck you in the ass? Can I fuck you in the ass?’ Then, I went to the doctor and I had to get a prostate exam. The nurse takes this stick about this big (miming something a little thicker and longer than a drinking straw) and shoves it in my ass. And, that thing feels like it’s this big (miming something about the size of a tube of Pilsbury cookie dough.) I was like, Jesus! I never asked a girl to fuck in the ass ever again.”

This was the end of a two hour meeting. I was assigned to work on a story with Julie (though luckily that partnership was basically disbanded in our last meeting.) I can’t say why, but I just don’t like that girl. She seems like too much of a kiss ass. No good stories from the last meeting with Johnny, but I’m excited to write the story I’ve been given, and to see what other ridiculousness comes from having met this guy.

As tends to happen to me all of the time, I’ve fallen out of the habit of writing. I’m finding more and more that things I would want to put into a blog post end up being just emails to friends. Basically I just want to know that what I write is being read.

If I write a blog post, I have no idea who, if anyone reads it. This was slightly better back in the LiveJournal days because of commenting, but I got so few comments that it didn’t make much difference in the long run. With an email I can be almost 100% sure that my thoughts are at least being read (with the notible exception of anything I send to the Kid which will likely be read but not in a worthwhile time frame). And of course much of the time I will receive replies to the emails, this completing the social interaction and making he whole experience much more fulfilling than blogging.

Anyway, the bottom line is that I’m planning to occupy this space again and more often. The likelihood is that I’ll still send the emails so this space may be repetitive for certain people, but I plan to expand things here more than I might in an email. Because we all know that if the email is too long, it won’t get read.

I’m gonna end this one now because I have a story to tell so I want to start a new post for that.

I just pulled this from the e-mail conversation on ESPN between Bill Simmons and Malcolm Gladwell:

I think the only way around the problem is to put every team in the lottery. Every team’s name gets put in a hat, and you get assigned your draft position by chance. Does that, theoretically, make it harder for weaker teams to improve their chances against stronger teams? I don’t think so. First of all, the principal engine of parity in the modern era is the salary cap, not the draft. And in any case, if the reverse-order draft is such a great leveler, then why are the same teams at the bottom of both the NFL and NBA year after year? The current system perpetuates the myth that access to top picks is the primary determinant of competitiveness in pro sports, and that’s simply not true. Success is a function of the quality of the organization.

Another more radical idea is that you do a full lottery only every second year, or three out of four years, and in the off year make draft position in order of finish. Best teams pick first. How fun would that be? Every meaningless end-of-season game now becomes instantly meaningful. If you were the Minnesota Timberwolves, you would realize that unless you did something really drastic — like hire some random sports writer as your GM, or bring in Pitino to design a special-press squad — you would never climb out of the cellar again. And in a year with a can’t-miss No. 1 pick, having the best record in the regular season becomes hugely important. What do you think?”

———-

I don’ t know about pushing it to only having the lottery every other year, but full randomness in the lottery is actually pretty interesting.  Because I think he is right on the fact that the salary cap is the real determinant of success. The Lakers are always going to spend a lot, and they are always on top. The Knicks are starting to use their money wisely, and I like the way the future looks. The Spurs haven’t really bothered with the draft since Tim Duncan, and they are consistently a top level team. While on the other side, Toronto and Milwaukee, Minnesota, Memphis, the Clippers and Golden State don’t spend money, rely on the draft or spend their money unwisely and are consistently disappointing. I like how the future looks for Memphis and Toronto, but do we really expect them to be able to resign Gay, Mayo, or Bosh?

If teams aren’t willing to spend money on 3 key guys needed to win, why reward them for losing the most? Maybe a better idea than either that Gladwell proposes would be to rank the lottery chances in order not reverse order. Give the teams who are on the fringe of making the playoffs like Indiana, Charlotte and Phoenix the best chance at the top picks, so teams won’t routinely be stuck at the bottom with talent who don’t want to be there. Give all the teams incentive to win, and make the top picks worth more because it could really mean the difference between making the playoffs and not.

Sometimes I feel like I’m a bit of a dick to my “boss” or supervisor or whatever the hell he is. Just now, he came down to check in and see how I was doing, and towards the end of the conversation, I turned to my computer and started doing work. I didn’t specifically mean it to be a gesture of “I’m done with this conversation”, it was supposed to be more of a gesture like “My job is so fucking easy that I can do it while having a conversation, watching a movie, and rolling a blunt at the same time.” 

The reason I feel like a bit of a dick is because my boss is so socially awkward that I feel like it’s my job to put a difinitive period at the end of a conversation, because he will inevitably draw it out far too long with “ums” and “errrs” and other noises made by someone who has only truly learned to socialize with machinery involved. At one point in the conversation, he pulled out his iPhone under the pretext that he was checking the calendar, but really I was asking too many questions and he was feeling scared and in need of a techno-blanky. 

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no social phenom. I’m awful in big groups or loud spaces. I’m making slow progress, but still not the best with new people even in a small setting. But, I still understand the basics of human interaction and I can mimic the actions of a fully functioning cog of society. So, when confronted with someone who is so lost around other people, in a job where it is his job to manage a small number of people (I’m starting to think that I may be the only one,) I feel kind of bad for the guy. 

I should get back to work now.

No surprise but the iPhone is a phenomenon everywhere except in Japan. Of course, the great 3G network in Japan makes it the perfect place, but unfortunately there are four things that Apple needs to do to make the iPhone sell in Japan.

1) Add MMS and make the SMS more robust. Maybe MMS is unnecessary because all Japanese cell phones come standard with email, but it’s still a good feature that is missing. The real problem is the SMS. There are no options to forward messages or send messages to multiple people. This desperately needs a fix.

2) Upgrade the camera. A cell phone is the primary camera for most people in Japan, so 2 megapixels and no video just doesn’t cut it.

3) 1seg TV antenna support. TV on the cell is huge because of all the time people spend on the train. Sure, he iPhone has video playback and you can buy stuff on iTunes, but that’s no replacement for watching a live baseball game on your phone.

4) There needs to be a small notch cut into the side of the phone to accommodate cell phone bling. Everyone and their mothers puts danglies on their phones. The more the better.

That’s all the iPhone needs in my opinion. The apps, maps and other functions are miles ahead of anything you find on a “futuristic” Japanese phone and emoticons are coming this month, so Jgirls can be all fucking cutesy with their messaging.

Oh yeah and marketing. In the weeks leading up to launch I saw no iPhone ads. People won’t buy what they don’t know about.

every once in awhile, I get the feeling that I miss Osaka. But that’s not really true it’s more than I  just miss living in a big city. Of course living in a city is very convenient there’s stores everywhere and especially in Japan public transportation is fantastic. Now here in Waltham, the buses don’t run very often the training also doesn’t run very often and it takes a while to get anywhere good. So it’s just not as but it’s it’s a very beautiful place clients are apartment is very nice and of course it’s America everyone  well almost everyone speaks English so very no communication problems in the morning most of what I find that I miss is just simple conveniences of living in a city of course I’ll so do miss my friends from Japan’s I get to talk to them every once in a while end up meeting new well not really meeting new people here but I have no friends in the area and close in a the cellular telephone

I’m not going to edit this entry at all I’ve written this entire thing using a patient and software that I got. I just want to see how it works and what I need to do when speaking in order to make it works as best as it can just looking back so far I can see that I need to start saying my punctuation, so instead of saying I want to do this I need to say  “,”. Otherwise the accuracy of the program is very good so it should should be very good for different things and  I will give it to Nadja (have to teach it to understand her name) so that she can type out her or her well-known type puts a speak her dictate her papers.

The only problem with dictation from me is that I tend to repeat myself or stutter us a little bit which comes out awkwardly and dictation but it is faster so editing will be easier

NEW NEIL GAIMAN BOOK!! WOOOT!!