Geek Speaking the Game of Rimming the Pacific

Geek Speak: The Game

The first time we played this game is lost in the winding, trackless, uncharted recesses of my memory. How it works is this: I will grab the bottom edge of my shirt and walk into a room where my wife is on the computer, reading, or doing something on her phone. I'll cock an eyebrow and wait patiently for her to notice me, like a cat stalking that spot on the floor, you know the one, the spot only cats can see. When she sees me I wait a moment then I lift up my shirt and I give her my best big, goofy smile.

She will then cock an eyebrow at me as if to say, "Is that how it is, then? I accept your challenge." Then my wife will lift her shirt and we'll stand there grinning at each other for a moment. Just before it starts to feel awkward the shirts get dropped back into place and we go back to what we were doing as though it never happened.

I have no idea how this got started. It doesn't matter really. This game always works. It's always fun.

Pacific Rim: Weeks Later and I'm Still Smiling

Mildly Sensational and I have a hard time getting out to see movies, which is a well established fact of parenthood. Any set of parents will testify that getting out of the house for time together for a movie and dinner is really damn difficult after you have a kid, much less kids. Now that we are expecting our second we're put in kind of a funny place in that we have to arrange for someone to watch our daughter so that we can go out. This is to get her accustomed to being watched by other people so it's less of a shock when someone other than her parents is watching her overnight. 

The first time we arranged for someone to sit our daughter so we could go to a movie and out to dinner we went to see Star Trek: Into Darkness. That was in June around the same time as Father's day. Last month we arranged for our friends Gibbergeist and his wife to stay with Veronica and we took in Pacific Rim.

It's over a month later and I still smile when I think about it. Let's just say this up front, this movie is not American Beauty, nor is it any other Best Picture recipient you can name. This movie is one thing: giant sea monsters versus giant robots, and it is owns that shamelessly, even proudly! 

Honesty time, I freaking loved this movie. It has its flaws, and it has a couple of moments that were truly unnecessary, but the overall film was a fantastic and enjoyable surge of cinematic adrenaline. 

The thrust of the story is a war that is being fought with enormous extra-dimensional monsters who attack us from a rift deep beneath the Pacific Ocean. The giant monsters are called Kaiju, which is a Japanese word for "monster." To battle the Kaiju humanity pools its resources and develop Jagers, which is German for "hunters." The Jagers make use of a neural link between the machine and the pilot. The neural load is too much for a single pilot, so all Jagers have two whose minds are electronically linked. Through the link they move and fight as one person, and their movements drive those of the Jager. 

When the movie starts humanity is at a turning point in the war. After initial victories they've started to lose, and it's up to a small group of remaining Jagers from all over the world and their pilots to make humanities final stand, end the war, or die trying.

It's a simple plot, but the actors embrace it with gusto. The cast is an impressive grouping of international film and television stars including Charlie Hunnam (Sons of Anarchy), Idris Elba (Thor and Luther), Rinko Kikuchi, and Ron Perlman (Sons of Anarchy and Hellboy...oh, and he's the voice of the narrator at the beginning of all of the Fallout video games). 

Charlie Hunnam does a solid job carrying the film, but does seem at times to be out of his depth in scenes with Idris Elba. That's understandable. Idris Elba is an amazing actor, and he makes would could be a boring archetypal role something engaging and worthwhile. He delivers the movie's "Cripsian's Day Speech" (from Henry V) and he does so gloriously. Every one who's seen the trailers has seen a piece of this speech, "...today we are cancelling the apocalypse." There's more to it than that...see the movie...it's worth it. 

Rinko Kikuchi is charming as an eager rookie Jager pilot. She also serves as the movie's nominal love interest, but there's not much romance to be had in the film. In a way that's kind of refreshing. The filmmakers didn't bolt on some bullshit love story in a craven maneuver calculated to rope in female viewers. Rinko's character is unapologeticly tough, resourceful, and intelligent. She does play second fiddle to Charlie Hunnam which is a little unsatisfying as I would have liked to see this character given some more room to develop. 

The supporting cast is filled out with charming character actors who at times steal the movie, even from the great Idris Elba. 

There are some flaws with the movie. There are several plot holes that allow our heroes to escape an otherwise certain doom. Some scenes feel a little like filler between giant monster and robot battles. There are moments where performances come across a little flat. Again the cast does a solid job, so there aren't a lot of flat moments. 

My biggest complaints are in some unnecessary touches that completely removed me from the film. The biggest of which was the appearance of Ron Perlman as Hannibal Chau. When his character is introduced it's on the eve of a major battle with Kaiju in the streets of...I think Shanghai. Hannibal Chau is built up as this major Chinese underworld figure dealing in black market merchandise. When the character is introduced Ron Perlman gets this major reveal with a fancy camera angle intended to accentuate how physically large he really is. The moment falls laughably flat. It should work. All of the elements are there, and yet, somehow, when we meet Hannibal Chau for the first time and it's Ron Perlman it just...fizzles. 

Perlman for his part delivers a fine performance, but seems uncomfortable in the role from time to time. Given how the character was built up and placed in a very specific setting I would have loved to see the role go to one of that region's major stars. It would have been great to  have Hannibal Chau turn around and it's Sammo Hung, or Sonny Chiba, or (best of all) Chow Yun Fat. 

The action of the movie is intense and it is underscored by a muscular soundtrack. Since seeing the movie the theme from Pacific Rim (covered here by LittleVMills) has become one of my favorite things to pull up in Spotify when I want to buckle down and focus on some menial task, like tracking my hours. From the first moment a Jager engages with a Kaiju the soundtrack thunders, and hammers, and plugs into your nervous system to keep you on the edge of your seat. It's great. I love it. 

On the whole Pacific Rim is a great action movie playing the part of a war movie where the combatants are monsters and robots. Not only would I watch this movie again, I'd pay the extortionist ticket prices to see it in the theater at least one, if not two or three, times. 

Verdict: Highly Recommended

Sketch Dumping on Ten Weeks to Baby 2

Work-a-Doodle: Sketch Dump Friday Edition

Work has been really difficult lately. With one thing and another August is shaping up to be the most stressful month I've had in a while. To try and preserve the last battered remains of my sanity I've been doing a little more doodling in my notebook than usual. Out of the pages of drawings filling a notebook that, honestly, should be full of notes here are a few of my favorites. 

  

T-Minus Ten Weeks

In just a little over two short months everything in my life is going to change for the second time. Mildly Sensational and I are expecting our second child in mid-October. The baby'll be a boy this time around, so we'll have one of each. 

As I sit here typing this, Mildly Sensational is asleep on the sofa behind me. Sometimes it's surprising to me that she can sleep through the vigorous pounding my martial arts strengthened fingers deliver on our innocent keyboard. It's somewhat less surprising when she's pregnant. Her first pregnancy with our daughter wore my wife out on a more or less daily basis. This time around I can tell she's fighting to stay awake by the time I get home from work.

Part of that is being pregnant while taking care of a two-year-old and all the demands she can unleash on a daily basis. The other part of that is this pregnancy is just different. 

Our daughter was always a quiet baby, even before she was born. She moved and squirmed, but didn't ever really fidget or kick. Our son subjects my wife's internal organs to a rigorous daily pounding. As she snoozes quietly on the couch I can see him moving around, kicking, and squirming. I watch and wonder, is he bored and just repositioning because staying in one place gets old, is he demanding attention form his mommy, or is it something else entirely? Some pre-natal struggle known only to babies still in the womb that they will forget immediately on being born? 

At some point during every pregnancy you get to a point where you start wondering what the new little person is going to be like. Are they going to be a happy, quiet, mild child, or a dervish of cries and poop who won't let anyone in the house get a wink of sleep? It's a short hop from there to more frightening questions like, "will I be a good father to this new little person? I think I'm doing all right with the first, but what if I can't handle two and I screw them both up?"

On moments like that I take a deep breath and assure myself that I'm doing everything I can. I'm doing the very best to ensure I screw up my kids just enough to be interesting, but not so much that they spend their lives living in a dumpster with eighteen cats and negotiating peace treaties between the banana peel pixies and the discarded fast food gnomes. 

I'm looking forward to meeting my son in October, but not without a certain degree of apprehension.

I take some small comfort in knowing that probably means I have some common sense. 

Geek Speaking the Thirteenth Anniversary Bus

Geek Speak: Another one rides the bus

This one was so long delayed because I've been working with learning my Wacom tablet, and it's slow going, but so far I'm pleased with the results. One thing I have found is that I'm working way too hard on these. If you look at the full-sized version you'll see some effort went into shading and lighting. I finally had to decide between getting the cartoon exactly where I wanted it, or to just go with as much of it as I had done. The latter seemed like the best prospect for actually publishing. 

I looked at some other black and white comics out there, and I went back through my big book of Bloom County strips. For the most part comic strip artists seem to do pretty minimal shading. Most don't go much further than the pretty minimal shading in the big panel. To find that balance between getting something I can be proud of and publishing on some kind of schedule I'm going to have to tinker with how much shading I do for each. 

For the next strip I think I will take a break from the grocery store. I want to draw some other things for a couple of strips before we come back and visit these characters again. 

Big Thirteen

I can't let this day pass without writing something about how important July 15th is to me. On that day thirteen years ago Mildly Sensational and I stood on the shore of a mountain lake high above Denver and pledged to love, honor, and cherish each other for the rest of our lives. Our ceremony didn't actually include those words, but that was the meaning regardless of the actual prose. 

At the time we were both twenty-three, and I was just barely out of college. Mildly Sensational would still be in school for another semester. We were two kids just starting out, and making the biggest step either of us had ever tried up to that point. It was funny, scary, and joyous. The most important thing, though, is that we were taking it together. 

People in love say they've married their best friend. In our case I don't think it's true, because it doesn't go deep enough. I don't know if even my best friends will come to know me as deeply as my wife. She has seen me at my very best, and at my very lowest. She's laughed at my bad jokes, been angry with me when I've done something stupid, weathered my mistakes, held me on the few occasions when I couldn't contain anymore feeling and had to break down and cry, and been proud of me the rare occasions I break away and do something amazing. 

Did I marry my best friend? No. I found a missing piece of my own being. One who was searching for a fragment of her own self. We held each other and didn't let go, and thus made ourselves whole. 

That is what my wife makes me feel. The other emotions are there, too; the love, the anger, the joy, the sadness, and the silliness. All of that is great, but the important thing is that when I am with Mildly Sensational I am most myself. I am complete.

After thirteen years of marriage I can still say I've found the love of my life. You complete me, Amanda. 

I love you.

Tiny Heroes Doing What They Have To

Tiny Heroes: Batman and Robin
Every so often I end up on a conference call or in a meeting where the purpose of the meeting or the issues being discussed have little to do with me, or leave me limited room to contribute. If that sounds like it might be boring, let me tell you it absolutely is every bit as dull as it sounds. That said it's also an opportunity. On those occasions when I'm in a meeting or on a call where I don't need to be very involved I pull out my notebook and pencil and draw whatever comes to mind. Today this is what came of listening to one of the developers on my team walk a client through a fairly technical process.

I've always thought it was odd that Batman is dressed in head-to-toe black, with a cape to break up the contours of his body and a mask that covers his entire face, but Robin jumping around in brightly colored underroos was hilariously unfair. I have to assume this conversation was a fairly regular thing, especially when Dick Grasyon was younger. 

Is this Selling Out, Giving Up, or Moving On?

To understand where this post is coming from it's necessary to have the proper context. The picture on the right should pretty clearly sum up my motivation for the decisions I've made in the last couple of weeks.

This is a sonogram image of the baby my wife and I are expecting in October. We found out Mildly Sensational is pregnant at the end of January. As soon as we found out she was pregnant I started giving some serious thought to my priorities and what they should be. 

For a while now some of the people in the company I work for have made it clear that my pursuit of some kind of acting career outside the boundaries of their organization wasn't working for them. It wouldn't be untrue to say there were some very oblique threats to my job related to the time I sometimes had to take for auditions. 

Right now my job is the only income, and my insurance is the only thing guaranteeing that my wife can work with the awesome obstetrician who delivered our first. After many years of struggling I had to put responsibility and ambition on the scales opposing each other. Responsibility far out-weighted my ambition. 

Almost two weeks ago I contacted my manager, my commercial agent, and my theatrical agent and asked them to remove me from their rosters. In essence I took any hope of an acting career and set it aside. 

This has been the most difficult two weeks I've had in a while. Acting is something I've wanted to do for a long, long time, and I'd had some minor successes. Nothing that would propel me into being able to do it full-time, but some positive steps. But I recognized that it was time to, as my Granddad Randels would put it, "do what I have to."

It's been painful. I can't watch Actor's Studio and listen to great actors talk about what a wonderful thing it is that they get to act for a living. There's a pang in my heart when I drive past trucks lined up on the side of the road and lights and "flags" have been set up for a film shoot. There's a little piece of my mind that says, "this is the closest I'm ever going to get; staring wistfully at a film crew at work as I drive by." 

It has to be done. It's the right decision, for right now. Maybe it's something I'll be able to get back to. For now I'm grateful that I have this as an outlet for my creativity. I'm grateful for my wife and our daughter who give me all the reason I need to say I'm doing the right thing. I'm grateful for my friends who support me. 

For now I just hang on, do what I have to, and hope there are bigger and better things on the horizon.