ZOOOOOMMM!!!

John Winkelman

Scott is on vacation this week, so I am handling all of the development work at the studio . Rick and Behnje are on their honeymoon so I am teaching all of his tai chi classes, in addition to being the only full-time instructor (other than Master Lee) in Master Lee’s class .

In other words, I am freakin’ busy this week.

And of course this happens just when I spin off a subdomain for the flash adventure game. I can spend hours figuring out data models, noting and then discarding objects and sprites and tile engines and pathfinding algorithms, and never have time to write out a single line of code. It has been like this for a couple of weeks. At this rate I will have completed the game in my head, played it until it bored me, and given it up for something new – all before compiling a single Flash file.

I need a vacation.

A State of Grace

John Winkelman

I have a friend named Rick who I met the day I started studying with Master Lee . Rick is Master Lee’s senior instructor and has helped teach me most everything I know about martial arts. He is one of the hardest working, most diligent people I have ever met, and everything he does, he does with an air of grace and humility. He is one of the world’s truly brilliant souls.

Today Rick married his longtime girlfriend/fiance Behnje. It was a small ceremony, full of poetry and teachings from the faiths of the world. Perhaps twenty friends, and 150 immediate family members (they both come from BIG families). Potato Moon , whose muse shines like the sun, provided the music.

Now Rick and Behnje are off to Hawaii for a couple of weeks; the honeymoon is the first vacation they have had in many years.

Rick, Behnje… being your friend is the greatest of gifts.

Congratulations.

Rated ARRRRRR!!

John Winkelman

Just returned from watching Pirates of the CARRRRRibbean and I have to say, I very much enjoyed it. Good story, great acting, lots of action, and best of all (and most unexpected), it is an INTELLIGENT Disney movie. I didn’t feel talked down to.

It is also good to see that ARRRlando Bloom can play characters that aren’t elves.

I haven’t seen a good pirate movie in a long time. There was Yellowbeard , yea many years ago…pretty good Monty Python – ish flick. The Pirate Movie which was awful, Cutthroat Island , which was okay but not paticularly memorable. Yeah, this one is right up at the top of the genre.

Final rating: 4 out of 5 ARRRRRRs.

A Fairy Tale Ghost Story

John Winkelman

Once upon a time there was an unhappy woman named Ann C. who made a lot of money by screaming about the treachery of half of the United States. Ann had a friend, an unhappy man named Michael M. who made a lot of money by screaming about the stupidity of the other half of the United States.

Ann and Michael liked to pretend that they hated each other, and that they were nothing alike. Michael made some movies. Ann wrote for magazines and newspapers. They both wrote books. A lot of people listened to their speeches and read their books. Those people liked to argue about who was right and who was wrong. Sometimes they fought like cats and dogs.

Ann and Michael (who were nothing alike) were very intelligent and well-read, and knew a lot of United States history. They would use discrete examples of this history to make their own friends look good, and each others’ friends look bad.

Sometimes they would run into each other in the local library as they researched their books. They would compare notes to make sure that they never said the same things about the same people. Michael would look at people like Charlton Heston and Ronald Reagan and tell his friends how those two men were responsible for all of the ills of the country. Ann would talk about Bill Clinton and Russell Feingold, and tell her friends how those two men were responsible for all of the ills of the country.

Ann believed that Michael’s friends were letting outsiders hurt the USA. Michael believed Ann’s friends were hurting the USA by themselves.

They just couldn’t agree on anything.

One day some people, who were kind of fed up with both Ann and Michael, began to realize that although a coin has two sides there is also a middle, and sometimes that middle has a lot of stuff in it. They also realized that, with a history of 227 years and counting, the USA was not beholden to any one generation, or political party, or administration.

Some of them thought that maybe the world wasn’t quite as big as it once was, and maybe the USA ought to try getting along with its neighbors. Others realized that the USA was a lot bigger than it used to be, and maybe it ought to try getting its shit together and stop beating itself up.

And at least one person decided that the true traitors are the ones who profit from making Ann’s friends and Michael’s friends pick sides and fight, when they should be working harder at just being Americans.

To be continued…

A Concert and a Conspiracy

John Winkelman

Last night I saw Peter Gabriel in concert at DTE Energy Center Pine Knob. Pete puts on a hell of a show.

The set was an exercise in minimalism; just the band and equipment with a half-dozen screen behind, on which was projected different colored light. Overhead was a large circular screen. Everyone was dressed in black.

The concert covered pretty much all of Gabriel’s career from So to Up , with everything in between. My favorite bit was when Gabriel and his daughter wheeled themselves around the stage on Segways to Games Without Frontiers . I gotta get me one of those things!

Only microscopically less nifty was Growing Up , with PG inside a twelve-foot inflated sphere, bouncing in synch with the music. Actually, that might have been slightly cooler than the Segways. Other songs: The Tower (from Ovo ), Steam, Shock the Monkey, Digging in the Dirt – PG wearing a head-mounted camera focused in extreme close-up on different parts of his face, Sledgehammer – PG wearing the spotlight shirt, Salsbury Hill – in which PG and the band did a walkabout through the crowd, and a wondrous nifty encore of In Your Eyes , accompanied by opening singer Sevara Nazarkhan from Uzbeckistan, whose voice is without compare.

I apologize: My usually poetic tongue is dulled with fatigue and awe.

After listening to Peter Gabriel for over fifteen years, seeing him in concert was…extraordinary.

In other news…

A week ago I bought This is Spinal Tap . Great movie. During my post-movie shower I realized something: In Spinal Tap, Christopher Guest, as Nigel, has an amp that “goes to eleven” (watch the movie). In The Princess Bride , Christopher Guest plays Count Rugen, a.k.a. the Six Fingered Man. Six fingers plus five fingers equals (you guessed it!) ELEVEN! Coincidence? I don’t think so !

I’m on to something. I can feel it in my spleen.