Virtual Nostalgia & Hand Grenades

I'm Alex Hare, and I'm a Hunter.

I ride my Stormpike Charger through the worlds of Azeroth, Outland and Northrend with my trusted Raptor sidekick, Dexter. My aim is keen and my tracking senses are legendary. My traps make my enemies wish they'd never crossed my path.

What's your game?

Alright, I've never been featured in a World of Warcraft ad. I'm what Blizzard would generously refer to as a "casual player." I have played since open beta, and was one of those who experienced the server land-rush on launch. However, with the day-job having become all-consuming (translation: I'm not writing much for anything other than work) I often go for a few weeks at a time between log-ins. None of my characters are level 80 (the current maximum), and my "main" -- the Hunter -- is only level 70.

This past week Blizzard started airing new WoW ads with Mr. T, featuring the "Mohawk Grenade" -- a more-or-less inside joke tied to his first WoW spot. I had heard there were actual Night Elf Mohawks in-game outside each of the starting areas, and thought it might be fun to find one. When I logged in, I noticed I had mail from Blizzard. Attached was a present for their fifth anniversary. I had to re-read the message. I knew I'd subscribed for a few years, but didn't realize we'd hit the 5th anniversary already. It inspired a brief bit of reflection on my time in meatspace over the past five years; those things which had changed and those which had not. Moving on, I decided it was time to take my Hunter for a quick spin and score some grenades.

Returning to Ironforge, I was reminded just how much I enjoyed that city. It's a perfect fit and feel for what one might expect of a race of dwarves, with its massive halls, Great Forge and proud background music; which is amusing considering "dwarf" is a completely fictional concept. Riding out of Ironforge my ram galloped down toward Kharanos, a smaller nearby town. Past the Thunderbrew Distillery, my Hunter's first hearthstoned "home." Riding along the road that passed through Kharanos, on through the frozen mountains of Dun Morogh, I found myself getting a bit nostalgic about my Hunter's own history. Onward, past a mortar team I fondly remembered them cracking each other up as they blew up target dummies during my Hunter's earliest foray into the wider world.

As I neared the Coldridge Pass, I felt as though I was genuinely having a homecoming of sorts. I nailed a couple of Rockjaw Raider troggs as I went through, payback for the hassle they'd given a certain red-haired dwarf during his earlier days as a hunter. I emerged from the tunnel and found myself staring at my own birthplace: the starting area of Coldridge Pass where I'd taken my first few steps on launch day. It was like I'd come home, seventy levels and five years later, having seen the furthest reaches and depths of Azeroth and the other world of Outland.

What I appreciated most about this trip down a virtual memory lane was that these memories of myself, as the Hunter, were just as real as those reflections upon the real world when I saw the Fifth Anniversary note. It was amusing and ironic to feel as though I'd lead some kind of double-life. One in Southern California, and one in the World of Warcraft.

Thank you, Blizzard. My quest for hand grenades yielded a pleasant reward of a fond memory of my time as a Hunter.

Now, time to help Mr. T. make Azeroth look gooooood.

Color me stunned.

It's official. I am genuinely flabbergasted: Filmmakers demand Polanski's release.

If I'm reading this correctly they're crying foul over the fact that he was bagged in Switzerland on his way to a film festival to receive a lifetime achievement award, because he has previously been allowed to travel in and out of the country freely. He even owns a house there.

So, let me see if I've understood the logic being applied here: these same filmmakers are fine with Roman Polanski drugging, raping and sodomizing a 13 year old child, and with his having fled justice for the last thirty years. He's admitted it, and justified his pedophile desires at the time. The problem these signatories seem to have is that he finally got popped by a country willing to extradite him on an occasion to which they knew he'd show up? I call that fair play, kids. If you want to nail someone you time your arrest to get them at a time and place when you're pretty damn sure they'll be.

In the case of the filmmakers, it seems like they think film festivals should be sacred. The night you get an award should be sacrosanct. The law can't touch you on your award night at a film festival?

I call shenanigans.

I'm still very interested in working in the Industry, but I did actually decide years ago that if I had a chance to work with Roman Polanski I would pass out of general principle. What does it say about these folks that they're backing him on a formal petition?

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In other news, France passes tough anti-piracy measure. Ah, the French... soft on pedophiles, tough on illegal downloads.

Speaking of past lives...

Have you noticed that no one who believes they have had a previous life ever believes they were some anonymous random peon? Every one I've heard of imagines they were Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, Napoleon or another famous figure. Nobody ever says...

"Hey, I think I may have been a victim of the Black Death back in 1349."

"You know, I honestly believe I may have been one of those innocent bystanders slaughtered when the first Crusaders finally reached Jerusalem."

"Man, you know what really sucked? That day when our village was completely slaughtered by the ancient Israelites."

"I miss the old days tending the ziggurat in Ur. That was the life."


Why is that? If past lives were possible, we couldn't all have been someone famous. Of course, given the overall expansion of the global population over the last hundred years or so it would be statistically impossible for all 6.5 billion people now living to have been someone else in the past; there just aren't enough dead people to go around.

And this is how my mind wanders on a Saturday night when I should be working...

Ah, the Internet: bringer of new guilt

I'm developing "match guilt." It's like TiVO/DVR guilt or Netflix guilt: a mental state created when there's so much of something which requires your attention that you don't have time to properly address it all, which only serves to create a further backlog that requires your attention. It's a self-perpetuating, spiraling form of obligation that has no true impact on your daily life, yet causes occasional bouts of low-grade anxiety or guilt.

Now I'm finding it in online dating sites. I've been on a free one for a few years now, mainly because the tests are amusing, though if I stay away for an extended interval I have no guilt. It's free, and there's nobody expecting me to contact them. On a paid dating site, like the one I joined a couple months ago, things are different. They send you matches night after night. I was rather busy when I signed up, and so left a lot of these women in the queue. Now there are four "pages" worth. I've weeded out the ones with no photos (because you can tell a lot about personality from the face) and the ones that weren't going to work. But that's the catch: the majority of these women are interesting enough that I can't simply eradicate them all. I could, though that would defeat the purpose of the exercise.

Now, there are four pages of women. After joining a paid dating service with the intent of meeting women, I now have a backlog of them. The larger it gets, the more daunting the sorting becomes. It does not help that after reading a few profiles my brain begins to glaze over.

Hence, match guilt.

Which will now have to wait, as I've work to do.

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*(from DEFENDING YOUR LIFE, wherein Albert Brooks' character discusses his ex-wife with Meryl Streep: "I have a rule. You should be with someone who is just attractive enough to turn you on. Anything more than that is asking for trouble. She was much prettier than I needed.")

RIP: Blake Snyder

Everyone knows about John Hughes, because a lot of us grew up on his movies of teen life, angst, love and ditching school during the 1980's.

What has gotten considerably less press is the passing of another screenwriter: Blake Snyder. Most people probably haven't heard of him, but he made a fair living writing high concept scripts like BLANK CHECK and NUCLEAR FAMILY. More personally, he wrote a fabulous book on screenwriting called "Save The Cat." I found this book (and software) at a point in time where I needed a good mental boost to get my head back in the writing game. It's an outstanding read.

I recently helped an aspiring novelist friend out by buying them a set of books, which I described as the three I would pick if I could only have three books on screenwriting, story and most importantly structure. "Save The Cat" was one of those three books.

I saw Blake in person at CS Expo a couple years ago. He appeared to be a guy who was just happy to be where he was. He even published his personal e-mail address in his books, and personally answered hundreds if not thousands of e-mails from aspiring writers who were inspired by reading his guidance.

He's not as famous as John Hughes, of course. Writers never are, but this one did what all writers hope to: he touched my life in a very positive way for which I remain grateful.

Godspeed, Blake Snyder.

Coming soon-ish: Tales from the Script

Yeah, yeah. Been a while. Worst blogger ever. I know the drill. What can I say? I've been busy. It hasn't been with writing so much, lately, though I hope to change that. Work has been a time devouring exercise that pays well enough that I can't exactly turn my back on things like eating, making rent and clothing myself.

Excuses aside, I may be turning my attentions away from the still long-gestating-but-sure-to-kick-ass-someday feature and getting back into a project I developed with a friend a while ago. We hammered out the rough beats years ago and really liked the premise but life got in the way and nothing came of it. Outside events have now brought that project back to the foreground, and the distance I have on it thanks to the intervening years helps me more objectively analyze it as someone else's work.

This should be fun.

Until then, a recommendation to all of you writer-types out in the audience: sometime this winter, look for a DVD called Tales from the Script. I caught a screening tonight in LA and thought it was quite a useful, insightful and vaguely depressing look at the world of screenwriting from people who have had their "big break." Shane Black, Zak Penn, David Hayter, Bruce Joel Rubin and the ray of sunshine that is William Goldman (IMDB them, kids) and many others share their tales from the inside. It's not all depressing, of course, some of it is quite funny and totally relatable for anyone who is or has circled the Industry from the perch of the aspiring screenwriter.

The director hopes it will be out on DVD in January, along with a companion book that is scheduled for release then.

Check it out!

A brief open letter concerning WATCHMEN

To the studios: please don't short your future comic-based properties based on the drop-off in WATCHMEN grosses in the second week. Those of who you thought it would pull in $70M got caught up in the excitement and forgot to factor in that it's an R-rated picture with a 2:40 run-time whose core audience are the hard-core comic book fans. The fact it pulled in $55.2M on a non-holiday weekend with those strictures is pretty cool. Between the IMAX release pulling in second-time viewers (such as myself) and the inevitable waves of DVD releases this will likely make money.

(the Fox settlement and issues with certain producers aside.)

To the hater-fanboys: Please shut up about how the movie wasn't exactly like the comic book. You finally got the most faithful adaptation of a comic book you're ever going to get. Endless anonymous online whining about how it didn't capture every nuance of the comic is pointless and ultimately self-defeating. We all know how complex and involved the entirety of the original comic is, and we all should be grown-up enough to understand there's no way a movie can accomplish everything. I flipped through my copy of the trade-paperback when I got back home on opening night, and realized just how much of that comic is really in the screen story. It's amazing, really, particularly if you know anything about the Hollywood development process. If you care about future adaptations, please shut up.

Having said that: be sure to check out the inevitable super-extended DVD which will include the screen story from the theatrical release spliced in with Tales of the Black Freighter and Under The Hood. That will be as close as any movie will ever get to capturing the entirety of that seminal work.

To the fans that enjoyed WATCHMEN: tell your friends. Let them know this is based on a comic so well-written and complex it made TIME Magazine's list of 20 greatest novels of the 20th century. It's been a major influence across the world of comics and in turn the rest of the popular media ever since it debuted in 1986. Help get them interested enough to buy the trade-paperback so we can boost comic sales. Maybe get a few folks to give comics another try.

You should probably also warn them not to take their kids. This is an R-rated movie based on a comic book written for adults with adult-themes and mature subject matter. And a glowing blue man who runs around naked for most of the movie (wearing clothes far less often than he did in the comic, I noticed).

Roy Pearson needs a PR make-over

What could possibly make you a bigger *sshole than filing a $67 million suit against a dry cleaners over a pair of pants?

An appeal.

Roy Pearson, d*ckhead emeritus, returns. From CNN.com: The $54 million pants suit unravels again.

(the initial suit was for $67M, lowered to $54M during the previous fiasco)