A Nitrous Crouton

I rarely watch ‘live’ TV anymore. Sometimes, however, I need some brainless background noise while I do something repetitive and intellectually non-stimulating. There was nothing on this weekend, nothing. The only, and I mean only thing I could find to turn on was a rerun of 10.5, a truly abysmal made-for-TV disaster movie.

My theory is that it was an adapted script for a Lifetime for Women movie that got elevated to a bigger budget. Our heroine is plucky, and of course her grizzled gruff male boss doesn’t listen to her recommendations. What amused me was her boss was basically the director of FEMA. Of course, this was filmed pre-Katrina, so him making a bad call that cost lots of lives results in the president (casting director: oh crap, we don’t have a President cast yet, quick, pencil in Beau Bridges!) more or less telling him to shake it off. Yeah. Of course the gruff director has a handsome son, who is a doctor, in the danger zone. They are estranged. If you thought it would end up with our gruff director sacrificing himself 300 feet underground while being pinned down by a nuclear bomb while telling his son on the phone that he loves him and he’s sorry he loved their dead mother so much and the son reminded him of her too much and he’s sorry he loves you son. And later the son has to grab and carry a little girl out of the way of an oncoming and fissure and oh please make the pain stop I’m ovulating right here.

And the real disaster was it was a rebroadcast to lead up to…the sequel: 10.5: The Apocalypse. Couldn’t watch it. I have limits.

And today was birth milestone number thirty.

To be fair, I've had worse birthdays. However, there is a hell of a lot of room for improvement.

I had intended to write a blog entry marveling at the fact it had already reached the advanced date of May 1st. Obviously, it is now substantially later than that.

May is a hectic month, and yet not hectic enough. Being in the process of finalizing a project has consumed the usual immense amount of time and energy. On top of that I'm struggling with some general battle fatigue that could best be summed up as a case of the blahs. Or perhaps, the desperate need of an extended vacation. For everything I'm getting done, there is more nagging at me or dogging my steps. This too shall pass, but all in all this is a trying month. Sometimes you hit points where it's just too much work to maintain a positive attitude for a bit, I think I'm in one of those now. I know what I want to be doing, I'm just not there and progress seems to be at a standstill. For now.

I attended my ninth E3 trade show this month. Yes, ninth. The majority of my professional career, not by intent and somewhat to my chagrin has involved the computer and videogame industry. E3 is the show du jour of that realm. And I, as the self-proclaimed Sheena Easton of Interactive Entertainment must do my duty and attend.

As the years go by my tolerance for the sensory overload of the show floor gets smaller and smaller. It is currently about 90 minutes. The rest of my time at the show is an exercise in trying to network and meet up with people amid the hustle and bustle.

At this point, I am every bit as jaded when it comes to games as say, anyone involved with film is about movies. This does not however stop me from feeling a sense of glee at the Nintendo Wii. I still do not own a PSP, or a 360 and it is doubtful I will acquire a PS3. I'm getting a dang Wii.

Now that we are, once again, in the 'next-gen' cycle, it is interesting and depressing to see the results. The potential of the 360 and PS3 require ever greater resources, level of detail and technical expertise. Of course, merely spending gobs of money (which next-gen titles take in ever increasing amounts) doesn't mean you're going to wow me. With this crop of consoles more than ever, execution counts for a lot. The talent, especially on a team level, required to excel is going to be few and far between. I saw so many things at E3 that just left me going 'meh' for all their production values.

A bit exception and hat tip to certain teams at Ubisoft. I don't know what's in the water over there, but well done. Splinter Cell: Double Agent has the best real-time character model I've seen on just about all fronts: rendering, animation, lighting. Very impressive. Rainbow Six Vegas also had stellar environments. And the games themselves look interesting, of course I've always enjoyed those genres.

Next up, I critique Google!