MarkKawakami.com

Hold 'em, 3 foot waves and Blue Men

Categories: General, Just Plain Cool

So, I spent the weekend in Vegas. We were there for Jason's birthday, and stayed at the awesome Mandalay Bay. Man, that place is swanky.

Amongst the coolest things of the Mandalay Bay, besides the awesome room, expensive toiletries, fantastic buffet, shark-filled aquarium, etc., etc., was the wave pool. Their pool area is huge, including two restaurants, two bars, a club, a concert area and a, ahem, "European Pool". I'll leave you to figure out what that means, but suffice it to say I sadly didn't have a chance to check it out in person. However I did check out the coup de grace of the pool area, the 1.6 million gallon wave pool. Sand imported from California, three foot waves every couple of minutes, man, that's fun.

I also got to play some poker. I haven't really played any since Thanksgiving, which is a pretty long time, and i was worried that I would be rusty, but I won $63 all told, so I guess some of the skills are still there.

But the real highlight of the trip was seeing "Blue Man Group" at the Luxor. That was amazing. You might think you know what Blue Man Group is all about. I thought I did, I mean, I saw a tiny snippet of their show during a halftime at a Lakers game a couple of years ago, I've seen their Intel ads, seen them be hilariously misunderstood on "Arrested Development"... But the full show is something else entirely.

I hate to say this, because it sounds like such a cliché, but you don't watch the Blue Man Group, you experience it. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it's true. The show involves the audience in very creative ways. They do things so that you and the person sitting next to you can have totally different experiences. Plus, it's funny. It's hilarious in the absurdist way I totally dig. Oh, and did I mention the seats? Third row, center! We had to wear ponchos in that section of the theater. Jason got the tickets, so I really gotta congratulate (and thank) him for scoring such primo seats.

Now, as far as having a different experience, I had a more unique one than most. It's a little hard to explain unless I'm in person, but, well, three people in the audience at different points in the show are chosen for a little audience participation, and to make a long story short, I was one of them.

So, like all Vegas trips, as soon as I got back home I wanted to get on a plane and go back. That's gonna have to wait, but let me just say that I think the Mandalay Bay has spoiled me on other hotels (except maybe The Aladdin).

Aghhhh! Aghhhhh!

Categories: General, Technical

After close to seven years of faithful service, my DVD player has decided to call it quits. It happened right in the middle of an episode of NewsRadio, but a little experimentation with other discs show that apparently it has decided to give up the ghost.

There's a couple of other highly technical procedures I'll try to revive it. The first is the complicated "Smack the top of the device", and if that fails, I'll try "Smack the right side of the device". Of course, I won't try the "Smack the left side of the device" because it's manufactured by Toshiba and I'm not retarded.

Luckily, my laptop and my PS2 both play DVDs, so I'm not completely out of luck, but neither are ideal (ever try to control a DVD using a DualShock 2 Analog controller? It's like the most boring videogame ever). But nonetheless, it looks like a new DVD player is in my future. They're cheap now, hooray. I bought mine when $250 for a new DVD player was an amazing deal that I couldn't possibly pass up. Now a $250 DVD player better carry me to bed and tuck me in when I fall asleep in front of it.

NewsRadio Box Set

Categories: Television

I just got the newly released DVD of the first two seasons of NewsRadio. For any of you that don't remember, NewsRadio ran between 1995 and 1999 on NBC. It never really found the audience it should have, largely because NBC kept screwing around with its timeslot. During the five season run, it was on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Sundays and probably another night as well. Never, however, on Thursday night, which was a mistake on NBC's part.

However, despite that, NewsRadio was a brilliant, brilliant show. It's one of my favorite sitcoms, but that wasn't always the case. For the first several years of its existence, I assumed it was just another sitcom and didn't have anything special to offer. In fact, there were times I was almost downright hostile to it. This wasn't the first, nor last, time I'd judged a show without actually watching it. But this is the one I regret the most, because once I finally figured out that NewsRadio was something special, the show was ending it's second to last season.

But thank God for syndication. In syndication, I discovered what a hilarious show it was. The cast was a perfect ensemble that included Dave Foley, Maura Tierney, Phil Hartman, Stephen Root, Vicki Lewis, Joe Rogan, Khandi Alexander and Andy Dick. And for each of the names I just mentioned, NewsRadio was probably the best work they've ever done.

Dave Foley was who I first started watching the show for. He came to NewsRadio a year or two after the end of The Kids in the Hall, the brilliant Canadian sketch comedy show. I liked him on that show, but his acting on NewsRadio really reminded me of Dick Van Dyke's performances on "The Dick Van Dyke Show", with these very smooth deliveries that often didn't "sound" like jokes. Let me explain that one. Dick Van Dyke had this rare ability to deliver punchlines completely straight-faced. Not deadpan, exactly, but very naturally, without "hitting" the punchlines in ways that every other comedic actor does by instinct. It's not necessarily a better or worse way to deliver comedy, but it's very rare and surprisingly refreshing. I've never seen another actor able to do it until I saw Dave Foley on NewsRadio. Like Van Dyke, he didn't do it for every punchline, or even at all in a lot of episodes. But there it would be, ready to surprise you with how velvety the delivery was.

So, by the summer of 1998, I was watching it every night in syndication. In terms of actors, I started with Dave Foley, but came to appreciate the entire cast a lot. Obviously Phil Hartman was already a legend from "Saturday Night Live", but having a single character to play week after week really fit him, and luckily it was a character where he flex all sorts of comedic muscles. He could move so smoothly between broad, loud comedy to very subtle stuff all within the same characterization.

Maura Tierney was another revelation. She was a complete unknown prior to NewsRadio, but she has mad skillz when it comes to acting chops. Now she's Nurse Abby on "ER", and is easily the most talented member of that cast. The funny thing is, if you saw her on NewsRadio but not ER, you'd think she's great at comedy but probably couldn't do drama. If you've seen her on ER but not on NewsRadio, you'll think she's great at drama, but probably not so hot at comedy. but if you've seen her in both shows, you realize just how amazingly talented she really is. Plus she's hot in a very realistic sort of way.

And Stephen Root. You know Stephen Root without even knowing you do. He played Milton in the movie "Office Space", the weird mumbler on a quest to get back his red Swingline stapler. He also played the blind radio station owner in "Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou?". He's also the voice of the pathetically hilarious Bill Dautrieve on "King of the Hill". But his performance on NewsRadio is by far my favorite. Apparently (according to the commentary on the DVDs), he was cast as Jimmy James, eccentric billionaire owner of WNYX, the news radio station at the heart of NewsRadio, because the producers had like 200 people read for the part. 199 of them read it one way, Stephen Root read it another, and thus was he cast. And man he was good. Probably of the entire cast, he was the one who had his characterization most fully-formed in the pilot episode, and sort of had to wait for the writing to catch up to his performance, which it quickly did.

The rest of the cast really deserves a brief individual rundown, but I want to move on, so that means screwing over Andy Dick, Joe Rogan, Khandi Alexander and Vicki Lewis. Sorry guys.

There's another star of the show, though, and that's the writing staff. Damn, the writing was good. And fast, especially in the third and fourth seasons, but even in the first two seasons, the writing was hilarious. The best thing about the writing is how often they'd defy your expectations. In the episode "Station Sale", for instance, Jimmy James is selling the station and the staff is trying to talk him out of it:

Jimmy James: Look, I've got to call the Robertson Communications people by midnight, 

is anyone else going to try to talk me out of selling the station?



Matthew (Andy Dick): We don't have to.



Jimmy: What?



Matthew: You see, when you weren't looking, I took the liberty of setting the clock ten

minutes forward. It's now 12:05, which means you've missed your midnight 

deadline. Yes!



(Big applause break for this very sitcom-y denouement)



Jimmy: Matthew, that twelve o'clock deadline was more of a loose guideline. I'm 

dealing with a corporation here, not magical fairies.

I love that. So many shows would have been happy to let it end with that ridiculous trick, and the audience would say to themselves, "No, that's not how it works!". Not to mention, even if it did work, Matthew would surely have his ass fired for screwing the boss out of a multi-million dollar deal.

And there's plenty of other examples where the comedy comes from taking a hard left turn. And after that, the comedy comes from packing in three or four jokes in the time it takes most other shows to do the setup for one.

Anyhow, so now I have the DVDs, which includes commentary on 20 of the 29 episodes (the first season was only seven episodes long since it was a midseason replacement). Originally, it was just going to be released as a bare-bones package, with no extra features. Paul Simms, the creator and executive producer of NewsRadio, stepped in and delayed the release until they could record commentary and assemble some other extras, so thanks, Paul.

Dig that crazy Sith action!

Categories: Movies

OK, so I had time to digest Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, and I have to say I really liked it. This is gonna get ten kinds of nerdy, many of you will be embarrassed to know me. Hey it's in my blood. I built an Imperial Star Destroyer model once, and that was after I lost my virginity.

It's not perfect, George Lucas is, as it turns out, is completely horrible with dialogue, and especially bad at personal dialogue. And, well, he's not so hot directing actors either. But first the good: First of all, if you like lightsabers, this movie is for you, and I like lightsabers. There's some hot laser-on-laser action.* The fights are fast and complicated and numerous. Some (D) have quibbled over them, but I enjoyed them all, and totally disagree with the criticism that there were too many of them. There's no more Star Wars movies, and pretty much no one in the Star Wars universe is going to light one up until Obi-Wan gives Luke his father's lightsaber some eighteen years later. So, you really can't have too many in my opinion.

However, the direction of the fights isn't quite as good as it was in The Phantom Menace. There were two shots in the fight between Darth Maul and Kenobi (from TPM) that were just about perfect. Perfect angle, perfect distance from the actors to see the action, perfect length to appreciate the movements. American movies rarely have extremely well directed fights. Hong Kong movies do it right. but American movies do things like getting too close to the action, cutting on the hits to increase their impact, etc., etc. American movies shoot and edit fights to increase their sensory impact at the expense of the poetry, if that word applies, of the fight. Hong Kong directors tend to direct fights the same way American directors used to direct musical numbers: With an appreciation of the movement.

At any rate, the lightsaber battles here are very entertaining, but none of them get that "perfect shot" that happened twice in The Phantom Menace. And there ends the ways The Phantom Menace has a leg up on Revenge of the Sith.

Certainly in the story department, it's Sith by a mile. A bunch of very interesting things happen in Episode III that, while anticipated, manage to come as a surprise in their execution. There's the business of "Order 66" and the precise moment Anakin becomes Darth Vader. It's neat shit.

Now, we do have to talk about the acting. When you have a good cast all turning in less than stellar performances, you can usually safely blame the director. This is the same problem I had with "Sin City". Both movies also share a largely blue-screen set, which on the surface really does seem to detract from the performances, although I question how much is attributable to that. After all, the play "Our Town" is usually just a couple of benches and a lamppost or something, and that doesn't seem to stop actors from giving their all there, right? I think it comes down to reharsal, and probably Lucas not doing any. I think he thinks you can just have actors show up, stick them in front of the camera, and they'll go. But actors aren't wind up toys, they need time to work on the character, to experiment and make choices. I've said it before, and this is a lesson I think I've learned the hard way: Actors build character before you start rolling the cameras. After that, they lock in what they have and go with it. There's no experimentation after you start shooting so you better have it done before.

Now, the writing doesn't help. The best actor in the world can't do much with crap dialogue, and Lucas knows how to write some serious crap. There's two problems here. The first is that his dialogue just kinda sucks. I mean, it's clunky ("Hold my like you did by the beach on Naboo" ... ugh!). But there's a deeper problem and that's the lack of subtext. In these prequels, most characters just say what's on their minds. It seems counter-intuitive, but that's not good writing.

Think about your average conversation. Despite speaking with a friend or a relative or a co-worker, you're constantly editing yourself. You couch phrases to make them more easily accepted, soften some points to seem less aggressive, sharpening others to make them more persuasive. Probably you're not telling white lies, but you're in a gray zone. That separation between what you mean and what you say is the subtext to your own personal dialogue. And that subtext is what actors thrive on. That's the real art of acting: communicating what's not being said. But if the scene has no subtext, the character can't have any depth. That's part of the reason why Ian McDiarmand, in the role of Palpatine, is so entertaining. He doesn't say one completely truthful statement in the entire movie, and it's a joy to watch him, knowing he's lying his grinning face off.

Interestingly, one of the other really good performances is Yoda. Apparently the animators took a cue from Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies and went back and studies things like the work on facial expressions by Paul Ekman, and used that to craft a more compelling animation than in Attack of the Clones. Plus I noticed that he would rub his head in a manner similar to Kambei from Seven Samurai (my favorite movie, by the way). As it turns out, this was at the request of Lucas as an homage, and I totally dig homages to Kurosawa. It's just a shame that the homage wasn't to Kurosawa's good writing and excellent direction of actors.

In the end, though, I should reiterate that I enjoyed this movie a lot, warts and all. In fact, probably the best thing I can say about it is that they make the prior two prequels a little better. Not much, mind you, but I think I can watch them and apprecieate the broader vision more now that I've seen Revenge of the Sith. Although, as much as I enjoyed it, I really think that you have to consider the prequels as appendices to the original trilogy than a real organic extension of them. Well crafted, poorly written appendices... With some really kick-ass lightsaber action.

One final note: I really, really dug the last shot. At first I kinda thought it was cheesy, but I found myself surprisingly moved by it. I had a different idea about how I would have ended it if I were in charge, but in the end, I think Lucas' way was better. So, kudos, man.

* Technically, of course, they're not lasers, nor are the guns in the movies. There are three things lasers can't do and that's react like solid matter, extend to only a given length and move slower than the speed of light. So therefor lightsabers must not be lasers but some other fictitious form of energy.... if you were wondering.

Sexy, sexy

Categories: Technical

This is a great week for geekdom. Not only does "Revenge of the Sith" open today, but this week is E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the annual convention for the video games. And this year is a doozie because all three big console manufacturers, Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft, are unveiling their next generation consoles.

And they're incredibly sweet machines. I really don't know much about Nintendo's new system, the Nintendo Revolution. But Sony and Microsoft have created a couple of very cool new boxes with the Playstation 3 and XBox 360. I don't want to go into all the technical specs, but let's just say these machines have serious muscle. Both machines are based on the PowerPC line of processors. Technically savvy readers might know that the PowerPC is also the core of Macintosh computers. In fact, the development kits for the XBox 360 are Macintosh G5 machines. Hopefully this will mean that XBox (and possibly PS3 games) can be easily ported to the Macintosh, which unfortunately lags behind the PC in terms of quality games.

Both consoles also feature wireless controllers, which is great because it's 2005 and having to be tethered to the box is frankly pretty ghetto. While we're talking about controllers, I gotta say that the new PS3 controller looks... well... it looks like shit. It looks like it's the most intentionally uncomfortable controller ever made. But Sony is Sony and they're similar to Apple in terms of a commitment to polish and finishing touches, so I have hope that the controller is actually surprisingly usable. But God, it sure doesn't look that way.

Both boxes also have High-Definition built into the system very deeply. I don't have an HD TV, but one day I hope to have one, so I'm glad about this.

All right, I'm gonna cut this short because it's bedtime, and I need to be alert tomorrow because, you know, it's Star Wars day.

Hey, you can trust Fox with a good TV show

Categories: Television

... Well, sometimes anyway. The point is, Fox's brilliant comedy, "Arrested Development" has apparently been renewed for another season.

Thank God. Obviously it's great that we'll be able to watch at least one more season of the most original network comedy since "Seinfeld" debuted a decade and a half ago. That's great. But it's good news from a purely humanitarian point of view as well, because it means that Fox executives have been spared from the vengeful wrath of karma. As I've said before, the souls of network suits were at stake here, and generally Fox executives tend to be skating on thin ice as it is.

Incidentally, now's a good time to point out that if you haven't been watching "Arrested Development", boy, you've been missing out. Actually, since it won't be back on the tube until the Fall (and in Fox terms, that usually means November, because of the World Series prevents them from launching most shows in September and October, I suppose this isn't technically a good time to point this out, but nonetheless, this show is really far too funny to be passing up. Luckily the first season is available on DVD, and the second should be coming out sometime this Summer or early Fall.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Pretty good

Categories: Movies

The reviews of the Hollywood adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy haven't been mixed at best. Two thumbs down, an aggregate Google score of three stars out of five.

But I saw it and liked it a lot more than they did. I think it could have been funnier in some places, and it keeps the novel's lack of dedication to story, but overall it was funny in the absurdist way I like.

So, I have a theory about why the poor reviews. I think it's this: After appointing someone who failed to realize the importance of a National Security memo titled "Bin Laden determined to attack in the United States" to Secretary of State, and after appointing a man who wrote memos on ways the United States can intentionally thwart international laws against torture to the post of Attorney General, and finally, after nominating a man who doesn't believe in the U.N.'s right to exist to be the goddamn Ambassador to the the United Nations(!), it's possible that Bush has unintentionally lowered our collective tolerance of absurdity to dangerously low levels.

Thank God for The Daily Show.

Eye of the Tiger

Categories: Technical

I installed Mac OS X 10.4, Apple's latest operating system upgrade today. 10.4 is also known as "Tiger", Apple's code name for the project, which follows the feline-theme of the previous OS X upgrades (Puma, Cheetah, Panther).

All right, I had a fairly long post in mind about this, but let's be honest, it was gonna be boring. So here's the quick summary: For all the sexy new features, the biggest improvement for me is that it's faster in areas I use every day, like networking with Windows servers, and using email with Exchange servers.

Other sexy new features like Spotlight and Dashboard seem very useful (Spotlight in particular), but I think I'll probably use them less than some others will. Spotlight, Apple's new search technology that's integrated into the system at a very deep level, is an example of something that I think most people will find they can't live without, but I will probably only use once a week. The main reason for that is that most of my work is stored on servers external to my machine, rather than documents stored on my Mac. So I dig the ability to quickly search my hard drive, but the truth is, the bulk of what's on my hard drive isn't the documents I access on a day to day basis.

Now, that being said, I bet there will be one or two ways of using it that will really be helpful.

The other nice feature is that as far as I can tell Safari, Apple's excellent web browser, is not only faster, but more reliably as well. Safari has a habit of not always downloading all the files a webpage need, like graphics, CSS and javascript files. As far as I can tell, the new Safari doesn't have that problem. So, kick ass!

"I aim to misbehave"

Categories: Movies, Television

You can't trust Fox with a good TV show. I mean, "Arrested Development" is dangerously close to cancellation. Sure, its ratings aren't spectacular, but you really, every once in a while, have to make an exception for exceptional quality. Those bastards.

Before that, though, there was "Firefly", Joss Whedon's funny, smart, exciting and totally original sci-fi western which Fox cancelled after ten episodes, which they showed completely out of order (the two-part pilot was the last episode aired, and that's just the beginning of the wackiness). Joss Whedon, for those of you that don't know (hi, Mom), is the fella behind "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", "Angel" and the writer of "Toy Story". He's crazy talented.

But the silver lining is that Joss Whedon got a movie deal out of it to write and direct "Serenity", based on the show. It's coming out in September, but the trailer hit Apple's site today. Watch it here, it's a lot of fun. And if you're looking for some DVDs to watch during summer, check out the box set of the entire first (and only) season of "Firefly".

Fox sucks.

Good with voices

Categories: General

I've got a terrible memory for names. I'm only slightly better with faces. I ain't any good with dates and not so hot on numbers.

But I'm good with voices.

Example: Entertainment Weekly had a little quiz. Match up the commercials with the celebrities that do the voice-over. I scored 8-for-8. Although it helped that there were only two women, and that no one could mistake Queen Latifah for Julia Roberts.