Season 4

Alias, Season 4

Back when I was in high school, you couldn't find a bigger Smashing Pumpkins fan. I'm not sure quite what it was, but something about the songs from Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness connected with me. I got my first Pumpkins album for my 15th birthday (M.C.I.S.), which happened to coincide with the start of 9th grade. Most people that know me know that 9th grade was one of the most difficult school years of my life - emotionally and academically - but I'm not going to spend time discussing that, other than to say that Mellon Collie was my one emotional outlet during that time. It was something I was able to fall back on during the bad days. Then, at Christmas I got Siamese Dream. Together, those three discs accounted for 75% of the play time in my CD player. I identified with those songs. Those albums were a part of me. There wasn't a single song that I couldn't connect with on a deep, emotional level. I loved those albums that much.
Then, in 1998, the Pumpkins (minus Jimmy Chamberlain) released Adore. It arrived with a huge first single (Ava Adore) and a ton of expectations. I remember my first listening. "Hmm, it's a little different, a little darker, a little quieter, a little calmer, but still, it's the Pumpkins... I think?" For the longest time I listened to that album, convinced that it was just as good as the previous two, just in a different way. A couple years later I finally had to admit the truth - Adore sucked. There isn't a single great song on the album. There are a couple really good songs (Ava Adore and Perfect were the two big singles), a couple that are my personal favorites (Annie Dog and The Tale of Dusty and Pistol Pete), and everything else should have been left for a c-sides album. In 2000 they released their next (and final (official)) album, and somewhat redeemed themselves, but ultimately they never again achieved the level of Siamese Dream or Mellon Collie.
What's interesting (to me) about that experience was how I was able to enjoy the poor Adore and mediocre Machina because of how great the previous two albums were. Even today I'll admit that I will get a better listening experience from Machina than the casual, non-super-fan simply because anything Pumpkins is incredibly positively anchored... but that doesn't mean Machina is a good album.

On that note, I finished the fourth season of Alias last Thursday night.

I was introduced to Alias during my senior year at Caltech. We (being my housemates and I)started watching the first season off of good reviews and recommendations, and quickly went through that, blazed through the second season, and ultimately caught to the third season as it was being aired on TV. Alias is an amazingly addictive show. Seasons 1 and 2 wove and amazing number of plots and subplots throughout two years worth of shows. Season 3 took the series in a new direction, and although it wasn't quite up to the standards of seasons 1 and 2, it was still great. Then came season 4 - quite possibly the greatest disappointment in the history of television.

What was wrong with season 4? Well, quite simply, everything. I'm not just talking about the story, or the character development, or the dialog. Everything was wrong with this last season.

• There wasn't a main plot that drove the entire season. Most episodes were self-contained, and the ones that weren't were only two or three episodes long. Even the build to the finale was only four episodes long.
• The character development was horrible. At best a character wouldn't get any worse. Who got worse? Sloan. In seasons 1 and 2 Sloan was the biggest bad-ass on the planet. Dude was straight evil, and would stop at nothing to get what he wanted... and yet was willing to give it all up out of love for his wife. Season 4 turned Sloan into a pansy. Dude does not simply decide to go from being willing to inject weird green shit into his daughter to being all loving and kind. What's worse is that Nadia forgave him for all of that. "Just don't do it again, k?" No. Sloan was a strong person. He had a goal, a path for his life. He was the sort of person whose drive you could respect even if you didn't agree with his end-game... and they completely ruined him.
• The show got predictable. First five minutes: Sloan tells the team that some bad guys are doing something bad, so Sydney, Jack, Vaughn, Dixon, and Nadia are given their assignment to take them down. Second five minutes: Token character development, be it Sydney-Vaughn, Sydney-Jack, Sydney-Nadia, Weiss-Nadia, Sloan-Jack, Sloan-Sydney, etc. During this time, family relationships (my mother, my father, my sister, my daughter) must be referred to, in exactly those terms, no less than 47 times. Next 15 minutes: Go to meet the bad guys, start the op, fighting ensues, something goes wrong, whatever are we going to do? Next 10 minutes: Miraculously the team finds a way to save the day, and everything is happy. Final 5 minutes: Further character development (get the family terms up to 94), maybe throw out a few hints about future plot developments.
  So what was missing, specifically? The characters never had any real decisions to make, no tests to pass. Example from season 2: Vaughn gets some weird disease that he'll die from in 3 days. Sydney attempts to retrieve the cure (test 1), but unfortunately gets caught by Sark (who runs the facility that holds the cure) and is told she will only get the cure if she gives Sloan to Sark for the purpose of killing him. Sydney is conflicted because even though she hates Sloan she feels that killing him is ethically wrong (test 2). Ultimately she decides Vaughn's life is worth more and works a plan that ultimately gives Sloan to Sark. Though happy to have Vaughn alive and well, she feels bad for leading Sloan to his death. Then she comes into work the next day to find Sloan alive and well... and with Sark as his new partner in crime. What a twist! What makes this all that more ridiculous is when you watch through the entire season again and view all Sloan-Sark decisions and Sydney-Jack manipulations were engineered by Irena Derevko. Dance puppets, dance!!! Ridiculous. And season 4 had none of this. No tests of character. No plot twists. No strategic alliances or back-stabbing. No cliffhangers at the end of each episode. None of it.
• The Rambaldi story was dumped. Yeah, there was that bit red ball at the end of the season. That was kinda cool, but it fell short of how it was all built up over the first three seasons. Rambaldi was Sloan's driving force. Rambaldi prophecized Irena and her kids. Alias isn't a show about the CIA. It's about Rambaldi. Sloan scrapped the alliance in season 2 (and jacked $100 mil from them in the process) so that he could be free to pursue Rambaldi. Season 4 ruined the Rambaldi aspect of Alias.
• All of the little things that were once done so well weren't present. This includes, but is not limited to: The choice of popular music to reinforce the mood of the scene; The clever presentation of stories (ex: Swapping between an op being performed and the earlier meeting describing the plan and the op tech that will be used, effectively narrating an otherwise dialog-less scene); Starting an episode in some crazy situation, then cutting to "72 hours earlier." All of that attention to detail made the show great. Not in season 4.

So where does this leave me for Season 5? Simple - I'm not going to watch it. At least, not watch it as the episodes are broadcast. Maybe when it comes out on DVD I'll rent it and go through it over a weekend or something. But quite simply, Alias season 4 was a waste of my time. I stuck with it because the previous three seasons were so good, and I kept hoping that it would get better. Unfortunately, it never did. All I can do now is watch season 1, 2, and 3 and think about what could have been.

Moonshine

I had my first DJ gig on Saturday. It was awesome. No, really, awesome. It was so much fun. Well, if you take away the crazy butterflies and all-around nervousness I was feeling, it was fun. :-P I can't remember any time before that I've performed something solo. I've given a few speeches before large audiences before, but those are a little different in that you're just talking, not really performing. Man, last night was crazy.

• First of all, thanks to everyone that showed!!! The party wasn't promoted heavily, so there wasn't a huge crowd. Ok, so the party topped out at maybe 40 max. :-P If there's a silver lining to that it's that I didn't feel pressure to perform for a large audience.
• The DJ platform was elevated maybe 3-4 feet above the dance floor. That was so cool. I was able to feel like more than a bedroom DJ playing outside with that setup.
• During the few moments of rest when I had my tracks beatmatched well before it was time to cue them in I would stop and look down at the people dancing on the dance floor. And it would hit me that, "these people are dancing to the music I'm playing." Wow. For me, there are few better feelings than seeing people dig my music. I love it. I didn't talk with too many people during/after the party, but Bill did, and he said most people liked what I was playing. Awesome.
• Spinning in a large room, with large speakers pointed away from you and monitors used to beat match, is way more difficult than mixing in your bedroom. I'm going to to have to practice outdoors more. Hopefully we'll make it a habit of throwing impromptu parties at Caltech (Dabney?) over the summer.
• As it turned out, screwing up multiple transitions isn't catastrophic after all. :-P On of my transitions was so messed up that I literally had to drop the volume on the outgoing track and up the volume on the incoming track nearly a minute before the mix was done. That was horrible. And yet, ultimately it didn't matter that much. Huh. Still, not acceptable, and I definitely plan on perfecting my beat matching as a practice.
• Bill came on after me, spinning some crazy breaks. Bill's really great at beat matching - much better than I am at this point. He also spins his sets around 6-8 bpm faster than I do mine. As it turns out, breaks can be spun that fast. House, or at least the kind of house that I like, starts to sound a little rushed at that tempo, but it works for breaks. I liked most of the tracks he spun. A couple were a little... eccentric for my tastes. A few I'd even put in my collection.

Anyway, it was a great first experience overall. I'm looking forward to doing it all again soon.

Episode III (don't read if you don't want spoilers!!!)

Well then. Right now I'm about 75 minutes out of watching a 12:01 am viewing of Episode III, and all I can say is that the experience was really a mixed bag. I keep flipping between "I enjoyed it" and "Man, Lucas really messed up the prequel trilogy." Here are my thoughts on (possibly) the last Star Wars movie:

The Great:

• The graphics, especially the detail on the ships and the terrain. I literally let a "wow" slip out during the opening scene because I was amazed with how perfect the star cruisers looked. Keep in mind I saw the movie in a DLP theater, so that aided it some. Still, I think Lucas was finally able to achieve the level of detail and realism with computer graphics in this movie. He tried so hard in the remakes as well as Eps I & II, but technology just wasn't quite there yet. I'm particularly picky about fluid and realistic character animation - if it in any way doesn't look accurate it sticks out like a sore thumb - and in this movie I could barely tell what was CG and what was real. The dragon-thing that Obi-wan Kenobi rides - fucking awesome.
• Anakin's seduction to the dark side of the force out of love for his wife. I'm referring to the concept of it all, not how it was ultimately portrayed. I thought Lucas did a wonderful job of showing how a mature-yet-naive Anakin was willing to do anything to save his one love. How old is he supposed to be in this movie? I would have to guess early-20s. The decisions made by him are perfectly congruent with how a young adult male would act given the situation. I also liked how he was made out to be incredibly idealistic about life as a whole - it made is ultimate corruption that much more compelling, watching him try to hold onto his idealism while essentially destroying all good in the universe. Interesting side note: Palpatine reasoned to Anakin that in order to truly master the Force he needed to learn all sides of it (i.e. the dark side). Palpatine used the exact same reasoning to get Luke to become his pupil in Dark Force (the Dark Horse comic series). I can't help but wonder if Lucas borrowed from that...

The Good:

• Comic relief from Artoo. It took Lucas three movies, but he finally figured out how to do this one right. Well done.
• The consolidation power by (ultimately) the Emperor. It was cool to see this played out.
• The properly-done "tie-ins to Ep. IV." Some of my favorites: The use of Bail Organa's character, showing him helping Yoda escape (and thus foreshadowing him as one of the leaders of the rebellion). Also note the cruiser he used is the same type as the one that opens Ep. IV - clever touch. Owen & Beru watching the two suns of Tatooine setting while holding baby Luke. Tarkin as a bridge commander (seen w/ Vader and the Emperor observing the beginnings of the death star) - Cushing died in '94! How'd they do that?!? Excellent CG job - I recognized that character as Tarkin immediately, and I didn't realize it was a CG job until I read about it in an review later.

The Annoying

• The acting. For the most part, I thought the acting in this movie was sub-par. This must be due to the directing, as I consider most of the actors in this movie to be quite good - Natalie Portman, Samuel L., Ewan McGregor, among others. The dialog tended to come off a bit cheesy. I will say that Hayden Christensen did a much better job in this one.
• The rushing of the plot. What was annoying about this was that there were so many areas that deserved so much more time dedicated to their development. Unfortunately, there were so many plot-lines that Lucas had to rush through them in order to hit them all. Of course, that's his own damn fault for ending Ep. II with the start of the clone wars.
• The killing of the Jedi. They all fell way too easily. Notice that all (except Yoda) were taken by surprise. Bullshit. Jedi, especially not Jedi Masters, do NOT get taken by surprise. But this wasn't the real reason why I had a problem with this part. See Boba Fett below.
• The poorly done "tie-ins to Ep. IV." Chewbacca should not have been in Ep. III. Chewie was rescued from an imperial slave camp by Han Solo prior to Ep. IV. You're going to tell me he also just happened to be one of two wookies that helped Yoda escape? No way. They threw a couple other token original-trilogy characters as well - Wedge shouldn't have been in this movie either. The Death Star at the end of the movie shouldn't have been there. The second (larger) death star was built up to its point in ROTJ in less than five years. Ep. IV is around 20 years after Ep. III. Given that the Death Star was being tested for the first time in Ep. IV, there's no way construction on the Death Star started so soon.
• The reliance on lightsabers. Yeah, lightsabers are about the coolest weapon ever, but Lucas essentially made Jedis out to be swordsmen who happen to have some other minor powers. In reality, Jedis are closer to wizards than warriors, and Lucas didn't do justice to the rest of their powers. And while it was interesting, giving Yoda and Palpatine lightsabers ruined the mystique of their characters. In the original trilogy both came off as being so powerful as to be above their use. For those that read the Thrawn trilogy, C'Baoth was the same.

The Bad (and really bad):

• Vader's "Nooooo!!!!!" You know exactly what I'm talking about. That was straight-up low-class b-movie-esque. This may have been the single worst scene in the movie. If not, it was...
• Palpatine's "deforming." That was bullshit. Somehow his extended use of dark-side lightning led to his deforming? What's the explanation there, that he was so all-consumed with the dark-side at that moment that he deformed himself? No, that was poorly done. What should have been done would be to show subtle bits of "dark-side deforming" at the start of the movie, and ultimately show obvious signs of Palpatine's inner corruption by the end of the movie.
• "I love you!" "I love you more!" "No, I love you more." Lucas still can't write dialog...

The blatant disregard for the stories of the extended universe:

• I consider myself to be a huge Star Wars fan. I've watched the original trilogy countless times, mostly in middle school (when I could essentially recite the lines without much difficulty). I've read the Thrawn Trilogy, the Corillean Trilogy, and the Jedi Academy trilogy. Back in the day I regularly had conversations with friends about the history of the extended universe. What made the books I read so good was (among other things) they did such a good job of expanding the original trilogy characters, adding new characters, expanding and further explaining bits of the universe, and bit-by-bit revealing pieces of history of the Star Wars universe. On top of it all, they're all consistent with each other. Example: The Jedi Academy series goes into a good amount of detail about the history of the Sith. Knights of the Old Republic, which uses the history of the Sith largely in its story, stays consistent to that trilogy. It was well done in that sense (as well as many others). On that note, in order for the prequel trilogy to be considered "good" in my book, it has to remain consistent with the history and stories given in the expanded universe, and NOT rewrite the history. Yes Lucas does that in a couple of places. I'll list a few:
• Boba Fett. Where'd he go?!?! As the story goes, he's supposed to play a key role with Vader in exterminating the Jedi, yet he didn't appear at all in Ep. III. Weak.
• Anakin learning Padme was pregnant. This one can be debated some, but I'm pretty sure Anakin was never told that Padme was pregnant. And while we're on the topic, the "in your rage you killed Padme" solution was pretty poor.
• Kashyyyk's surface is inhabitable by wookies. There's all kinds of ridiculously killer animals down there, hence they live in tree villages. Yeah, this is a nit-picky thing (and the fact that I even know how to spell "Kashyyyk" shows how big of a Star Wars geek I am), but the fact is that any fan on my level (there are millions, if not tens-of-millions, guaranteed) could have told you that, and if Lucas had wanted to stay true to the current Star Wars universe all he would have had to have done would be to put together an advisory committee of 10 or so extended universe geeks and he could have stayed consistent without much difficulty. The problem, though, is that Lucas's ego about Star Wars gets in the way of this. What he refuses to accept is that the Star Wars universe is now much greater than his original vision. If he really cared about pleasing the fans he would have stayed consistent. But no, he had to do his thing.

Overall, I enjoyed the movie. It's definitely the best of the new three. However, all of these movie reviewers that are saying this is the best one since Empire Strikes Back (and some having the gall to say it's better than Empire) really need to cool their jets. Revenge of the Sith doesn't even come close to any of the original three.

First Post!

Intro
Man, it's been about 2 years since I last kept a blog. How long ago was that? That was back when they were still called "weblogs". Crazy.

So why did I decide to start up a blog?

• It's the new thing man. Everybody who's anybody keeps a blog. Right.
• It's an easy way for all of you to keep tabs on me. Keep in mind this doesn't give you an excuse to not talk to me. Friendships and relationships are a two-way thing.
• David Locke (http://www.lockedonsports.blogspot.com/) has been going on and on about how great the blog community is, and given my respect for his opinions the value of keeping a blog has been built up to the point such that I had to start one (again).
• My aim profile isn't nearly big enough to hold all of my random comments. And sub-profiles are worthless.
• I just have a bunch of random thoughts and this seems to be the best forum for them.

I plan on updating this maybe once a week or so, sometimes more often, sometimes less often. So, lets get this started.

New Music
I've been on a rap kick recently. Maybe a month ago or so I put on The Marshal Mathers LP and enjoyed it so much that I decided to expand my rap collection (which, at the time, consisted of the first three Eminem albums and The Chronic 2001). I'll take a moment to plug Amazon's Marketplace, my favorite place to buy books and music. It's wonderful; I get to use Amazon's standard search and browse utilities and then I buy the product for a quarter to a half of the listed Amazon price. Anyway, I picked up some new music, so here's a summary of the highlights.

• D12 - Devil's Night: Funny album. Pretty much standard Eminem with his crew. Nothing about this album was particularly ground breaking. The niche it fits for those that want more of the same of Eminem's past records. Highly entertaining. (7.5/10)
• Ludacris - Chicken 'n' Beer: Love the beats. The production on this album is enough to make this album great. Yeah, I grew up on g-funk and I still love it and all, but it is refreshing to hear something different... and different this album is. What I love about this album is how different each song is from each other, and how different the album as a whole is from anything else I've heard. To contrast, I got G-Unit's Beg For Mercy on the same day as Chicken 'n' Beer, and I listened to it twice and haven't put it on since. The songs on Beg For Mercy aren't necessarily bad, just that words like "formulaic" and "cookie-cutter" come to mind when describing the album's tracks. Now back on Chicken 'n' Beer, take Splash Waterfalls - it's fresh, unique, not revolutionary but still unlike anything else I've heard. Sure, Chicken 'n' Beer has the standard radio singles (Stand Up), but even those stand out because (1) Ludacris is hilarious; (2) Ludacris's flow is ridiculous; and (3) the tracks are great. Highly Recommended. (8.5/10)
• Kanye West - The College Dropout: I made the statement that this album was the best rap album I've heard since The Fugees' The Score. I'll explain that here. For those who haven't heard it, The Score is one of the best (if relatively uncelebrated) rap albums of all time. Given Wyclef Jean and Lauren Hill were members, it's not all that surprising that they put out great material. The lyrics are intelligent and insightful (see Zealots for an example), and that's something that's left to be desired from rap albums today. I mean, I love Snoop, but "But it ain’t no stoppin, I’m still poppin/Dre got some bitches from the city of Compton/To serve me, not with a cherry on top/Cause when I bust my nut, I’m raisin up off the cot" is at best sophomoric and is inherently limited when compared to "Problem with no man/Before black, I'm first human/Appetite to write like Frederick Douglass with a slave hand".
  The College Dropout is the first album I've heard that actually has something to say since The Score. Some artists produce a few songs that make a point (White America, for example), but when the rest of your album is about "homosexuals and vicotin" that message gets tainted. The College Dropout is solid throughout. Kanye West isn't the most amazing rapper; by the standards of today's top rappers, he's probably average at best. But the beats, the production, and the messages are more than enough to carry this album into the elite category. (9.5/10)