Pocket Protector

During my time at the Herald & News over in Klamath Falls – my first newsroom gig – my then-editor called me into his office.

I entered, we talked, I rose to leave. I spotted a copy of “Where the Wild Things Are” on the edge of his desk and picked it up.

“I love this book,” I said, flipping through the pages.

He smiled. Then he gave me a quick rundown on how I was one of several participants in an experiment he’d concocted. Basically, he wanted to see how many of his employees – people he paid to write, shoot photos and video, and produce as interesting a daily newspaper/website as possible – remembered loving the children’s book as young’uns.

It was to prove a very basic point: Reading as a kid is remarkably important. Frequently, it yields good students, readers and writers. More importantly, it makes for better critical thinkers, productive citizens, etc.

I guess I passed the test?

Either way, his point was a valid one. I really got to thinking about today following the announcement “Wild Things” author Maurice Sendak had passed away. He was 83.

The world just got a little less imaginative.

I’m completely serious about that, too. Sendak is partly responsible – directly or indirectly – for people like me. The only time we ever looked like adults as children was when we had books in our hands, books by people like Sendak who told tales of imaginary worlds and possibilities.

Their books were the highbrow alternative to Captain America and Green Lantern comics, the consistent preference over TV. They were visions of what we wanted to happen whenever we hopped in our cardboard box spaceships and jabbed at the glued-on, cottonball buttons.

Sendak, Silverstein, Seuss, Van Allsburg, etc. We may not have known each other personally, but they obviously knew we were out there. They wouldn’t have written so many illustrated, bestselling love letters had they not.

Now one of them is gone, and I have the perfect epitaph:

Here lies Maurice Sendak
He thought phrases like “Grounded” and “Down to Earth” were boring.

I want to talk a little bit about Same Team Conflict today, and it concerns two key milestones in comic book cinema to be released in the coming months.

What is Same Team Conflict? I’m glad you asked.

Consider the presidential primaries; a group of men and women with allegedly similar opinions and ideas on government size, scope and role who come together and…wait for it…trash everyone else’s ideas while ignoring just how similar they are. All so they can come out and top and say “My one or two minor differences make me superior. Our numerous affinities be damned. I win.”

It’s not to ween out the bad candidates so the strongest can advance. It’s a pissing contest. End of story. Don’t let the Hannitys and Olbermanns of the world tell you any different.

And it’s this way in every arena. It’s human nature. There’s always going to be an us versus them, even when we all start to look like ‘us.’

Success as a group just isn’t enough.

Which brings us to this week and the release of what could end up being the most successful comic book movie release in film history.

Marvel Entertainment’s “The Avengers,” the superhero team comprised of Captain America, Iron Man, Thor and the Incredible Hulk – opening May 5 – looks like it will be a slam dunk on every level. The reviews have been nothing short of glowing. Nerd Four-Star General Joss Whedon is on the front lines as writer/director. It’s got an all-star cast and brings numerous successful Marvel franchises together in an explosion-filled, alien-riddled family reunion.

There’ll be an equally explosive trailer before the movie concerning a different sort of superhero flick released in July. This one:

You’d think such a combination would yield nothing but the greatest symphonic slow clap in history. You’d be wrong. There’s always been a manufactured tension between Marvel and DC fans, but this Same Team Conflict between “Avengers” fanboys and “Dark Knight Rises” fanboys – or “Nolanites” in honor of director Christopher Nolan – is at a whole new level.

I’ll spare you examples, but they’re on just about every major geek forum I’ve been trolling recently. Even some of the grumblings around Iguana Comics here in Medford have been that way.

____________ will be better because ______________.

It reminds me of when we were kids and would have those “Superman-is-better-no-Hulk-is-better”-type fights, when we couldn’t see the forest for the trees and realize, personal opinions aside, both are just out-and-out awesome and we shouldn’t be this venomous about standing our ground.

Can’t we just agree that films about a fighting team of Marvel superheroes and the final chapter in a truly epic DC trilogy being released in the same summer is a good thing? We can actually attend these mind melters without feeling pigeonholed into some lonely, pathetic subset that doesn’t shower and plays Dungeons and Dragons during their lunch breaks!

Fighting about which one is “better” – Same Team Conflict – puts you there nowadays, anyway. Just – *pounds fist against table* – stop it.

So with that, here’s the popcorn fantasy/sci-fi awesomeness that will undoubtedly be “The Avengers” and the dark, timely epic that will undoubtedly be “The Dark Knight Rises.”

I’ll be at both. Just look for guy standing next to the woman shaking her head the hardest.

Here’s the thing: if you can’t grasp just how awesome it is that filmmaker James Cameron performed a solo dive seven miles down into the Mariana Trench, it’s very unlikely we’re going to be friends.

Cameron, whose visual blockbuster super-hits include “Avatar,” the first two Terminator movies and the high school relationship ender “Titanic,” took the trip Monday and returned safely from his trip – 36,756 feet down – in a special submarine called the Deepsea Challenger. He’s the first one to make the solo trip, claiming he did it for all the reasons you’d expect: pushing human boundaries, exploration, gaining new insights into our existence, etc. He also got some nifty footage.

There’s a line in Cameron’s 1986 sci-fi film “Aliens” where a space Marine describes one of their dropships as an express elevator to hell. Twenty-five years later, Cameron took one of his own, two and a half hours down, 70 minutes to come back.

Some context on just how deep 36,756 feet is:

According to an Associated Press story, the deepest SCUBA descent is 1,083 feet; the deepest recorded dive by a sperm whale is 9,800 feet; the RMS Titanic sits 12,506 feet below the surface; 29,035 feet is Mt. Everest’s peak.

On his return, Cameron described the dark world as “another planet.” He said the terrain looked like the moon’s surface, barren and devoid of life.

Why is this cool? Again, I shouldn’t have to explain it. But all the obvious stuff aside, I think I just really admire what I like to call practical dreamers, individuals who have big ideas and can harness them. Apple founder Steve Jobs was another one of those. I blogged about him when he passed. I admired his attempts to make user-friendly programs so novice dreamers with big ideas could have them fully realized.

Cameron’s a practical dreamer, too; he also encourages others to dream with him. One of the most encouraging quotes I’ve ever heard came out of his mouth:

“I think the most important thing if you’re an aspiring filmmaker is to get rid of the ‘aspiring’… You shoot it, you put your name on it, you’re a filmmaker. Everything after that, you’re just negotiating your budget.”

I wonder what he’ll have to say about deep sea dives.

There’s a bubbling undercurrent of insanity that’s been churning in Hollywood and bookstores across America.

Refreshingly, it has nothing to do with the Kardashians or teen vampires. It concerns something much more original and layered, a craze that’s been building for 15 years and counting.

Fantasy and science fiction writer George R.R. Martin started it all. He pulled the cork out of his brain and let his imagination come spilling out. It splashed out onto thousands of pages and became a tale of power, sex, war, deceit and everything else the world’s most prominent religions warned us about.

I only just completed “A Game of Thrones,” the first book in the five-part story arc, “A Song of Ice and Fire,” and basis for HBO’s “Game of Thrones” TV series, but color me hooked. I’ve got four books to go and can’t wait to get started.

The story drew me in for two reasons, originality being the first.

Hard truth: 75 percent of fantasy stories are crap. Trust me on that, I’ve been reading them since I was 7. They’re the Mexican food of literature. Not that Mexican food is bad, but really, when you break it down, every dish has the same seven ingredients dressed up with different names.

Wizards, dwarves, elves, warriors, prophecies, castles, magic. Put in blender. Frappe. Ship to publisher.

Fantasy story.

And with that formula, characters and their development are often left behind. A recent conversation with someone at Iguana Comics – yes, we were nerdy enough to be talking about ‘Game of Thrones’ in a comic shop – summed it up nicely.

ME: “With fantasy stories, it’s rarely ‘Invest in my characters and how they develop.’ It’s more…”

OTHER GUY: “‘Look at this world I’ve created.’”

ME: “Exactly.”

“A Game of Thrones” was different. I’ve been describing it as Lord of the Rings + King Arthur – any in-your-face supernatural references. It’s like King Arthur and his knights if they were all transported from Great Britain to the fictional world of Westeros and given different names. And not just that. Martin took care to include everything else important to a society: religion, culture, tradition, economics, environment.

But even with all that, the dozens of key characters and their personalities, flaws and vulnerabilities are not lost in the fray.

Which leads me to the second reason ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ yielded its 10 millionth fan or so: it’s clearly a personal story, one that matters to Martin.

I found myself drawn to a couple key characters, especially Jon Snow, a child born of an extramarital affair who joins the Night’s Watch, a dark military group that’s tasked with guarding the north lands at the base of a great wall of ice. There were several moments during the story where I found myself nodding at his decisions, statements he made. They were familiar and right. Every so often, they were something I’d do or say

I think characters that can hold a mirror up to readers are the best kinds. They’re tougher to forget, almost impossible.

Martin draws not just one character, but several with the same brilliant execution.

So, all that said, Mr. Martin, congratulations; on having ideas and sharing them with fervor. Also, on making me almost give up on fiction writing altogether.

Your book was that good.

We’re trying something new. And it has little to do with news.

This attempt at said something new could be viewed in a variety of ways: desperate, innovative, charming, unnecessary. I choose to look at it in a much more tone-neutral way: experimental, maybe. Speculative.

This is only a test.

We – i.e. myself, Mail Tribune web team members Mandy Valencia and Anita Burke, sports reporter Dan Jones and copy editor Dave Sager – call this experiment, a video experiment at that, Dan and Dave Do Stuff.

And it’s literally just like it sounds; not a purposely fallacious or lazy title by any means. It’s two blokes from the Mail Tribune getting filmed doing a bunch of random things in the community.

Ms. Valencia and I film it, chop it up and distribute the results, three so far and still counting. Ms. Burke serves as executive producer, the head honcho that oversees everything, nods at the edited footage and gives the green light for when videos are ready to go live. I told her yesterday it’s a role that suits her, that she needed a big cigar and stacks of money to count while she kicked her feet up on her desk like a backroom loan shark.

Secretly, I think she dug that.

Dave and Dan are the talent, the reason this show exists. The idea started with Dan. He used to star in little videos back in the day called “Hey Dan, Try This!” Plates of food got put in front of him. He ate them. Cut and print.

He wanted to do that again. Can’t blame him. Who doesn’t like free food? We wanted to expand on that, though, make it about more than just eating.

We decided to make the Rogue Valley the focus, visit niches this beautiful area has and try to shine some light on them in an entertaining way. If a restaurant has a challenge to eat 30 tacos in 30 minutes, Dan and Dave try it.

Er, do it. Do or do not. There is no try.

This applies to anything. So far it’s included said taco challenge (Dave was able to gulp down 15.5, Dan 20), an eyebrow wax and, most recently, firefighter physical fitness testing at Jackson County Fire District No. 3.

You can view that video here.

And just what are we hoping to get out of this?

Er, nothing? If you wanted a rehearsed answer, something I could read off a teleprompter with Walter Cronkite-esque poise, I suppose I could tell you there are times I just get sick of hearing about sex assaults and child abuse and dogs being put down and how we’re all going to fall into a deep dark chasm if timber payments don’t pick back up. Sometimes I just need something different, that’ll make me laugh, that’s fun.

But off the cuff, I’ll just say I like making videos with good people I consider friends and sharing them with you.

Sound good? Good. Then we’ll go with that.

My wife said she wanted to see “Contagion” when we first saw the preview a few months ago. She nudged me at the trailer’s conclusion, gave me that typical moviegoer nod and thumbs-up that’s supposed to mean “That looks good.”

It’s a movie about a full-blown epidemic disease that strikes without mercy at an all-star cast and everyone around them. My wife’s a nurse. If a movie has anything to do with psychology or itty-bitty disease inducers, she’s in.

I shrugged and gave her a “meh” look back. I hoped that would be enough to sway her, that I thought it looked like a Dullsville insomnia cure we should avoid, dare I say it, like the plague.

Which was all a bunch of crap when you get down to brass tacks. The trailer frightened me, and damned if I was going to see it in full, germy splendor.

Don’t misunderstand. I’m not a germ-a-phobe by any stretch. I don’t have a sanitation fanny pack emergency kit complete with Lysol, Clorox wipes and Purell.

I’m worse than that. I’m a hypochondriac. If I have a cold, I’m dying. If I have the flu, I’m patient zero in a yet-to-kickstart zombie apocalypse. I whine and complain. I say “Why me?” and curse whatever jungle, standing pool or public shower floor spawned this microscopic killer into existence.

Thankfully, we avoided seeing it in the theater, which is super duper. I’m pretty sure any coughs or sneezes in the audience would have caused a mass panic I started.

Then last week rolled around. I made a mistake. I did something selfless for my medical care professional of a wife and rented “Contagion” as a surprise to go along with this nifty Cajun chicken banquet I threw together.

Stupid.

Forty minutes in, it became apparent “Contagion” was the most unsettling movie I’d ever seen. Not just because of the disease, but the environment where it’s allowed to thrive. Director Steven Soderbergh does an incredible job of making almost every scene feel cold, thanks to the blue-gray hue he seems to favor. Every line of dialogue, even the calm ones, contained an undercurrent of ready-to-burst panic. Cliff Martinez’s electronic score conjures images of viruses slithering through blood vessels undetected, wreaking silent havoc. If mutation had a sound, Martinez’s music would be it.

It was a well-made film – not sure why it received zero Oscar nods – but it left me with an iced spine. We didn’t finish it because it was late and we both had to work in a few hours, opting to conclude it the next day.

That didn’t happen.

Instead, I woke up sick hours later and spent the day thinking I was dying. I felt too awful to do anything, even watch TV. I just stared at the ceiling and wondered if today was the day I’d end up in a lab where Center for Disease Control officials did experiments on my soon-to-be lifeless body and tried to find a vaccine for this new superbug.

Either “Contagion” was divine intervention warning me about what was coming, or irony just has a nasty sense of humor.

My wife got home that night and asked if I wanted to watch the rest of “Contagion” with her downstairs.

I told her no thanks.

Hey. You.

The person who treats Wikipedia’s content as Gospel.

This is for you.

I’m assuming you’ve heard about the encyclopedic service going dark today to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act, a bill making its way through Congress intended to wholly remove websites that are viewed as circumventing copyright law in one way or another.

I blogged about a similar bill, SB 978, a few months back. That bill sought to make it a felony to have copyrighted content in YouTube and other streaming videos.

If passed, SOPA and its ugly sister PIPA (the Protect IP Act), would make it so owners of creative content, or “intellectual property” if you fancy legal-ese, can demand Internet service providers like Google pull sites that have pirated their content from search results.

That comes with its own set of issues. It’s legislation meant to target off-shore piracy websites. But it’s pretty broad, and ISPs can pretty much block content based on “good faith belief.”

In addition, if you link to this content that’s questionable based on “good faith belief”, via Twitter, WordPress, Blogspot, Facebook, etc., those sites get pulled into the maelstrom, too.

This would affect and severely limit the information we all have access to. And it can, at its base level, all be traced back to avarice.The loopholes to shut down non-offenders would multiply like Jackson County stray cats, believe you me.

Very limited judicial oversight. Site blacklists. Digital McCarthyism.

Freedom of speech only as long as the fat cats at Comcast and Warner Brothers deem it appropriate.

George Orwell and Aldous Huxley are high-fiving somewhere.

P.S. – Agencies like the MPAA and RIAA already police the heck out of shared content sites like YouTube already. If a record company doesn’t want its song broadcast via YouTube video, it eventually gets taken down. See for yourself right here.

Idiocy and Redundancy really are the best of friends most days.

Here’s the thing: piracy is wrong. Wrong in all capitals, 72-font Wide Latin. But there are other ways to make it go away. Why not, you know, go after the individual sites? Why not figure out a way to cut off their advertising lifeblood?

This is comparable to attacking the circulatory system when we should be attacking the clots.

Oh, by the way, if you need to use Wikipedia today, hit the Escape key right after you type in your search query before the site completely loads.  Then soak up all the information you can, just be wary of the accuracy. Wink.

Hopefully we escape this legislation.

I never wanted to be any of the following:

-A Greek god
-A vigilante cowboy
-A Crusades knight damned to Hell
-A space miner who can’t catch a break from space zombies
-A gun-crazed widower with a chip on his shoulder
-Batman

OK, so I lied on that last one.

The above list is simply vague descriptions of Kratos, John Marsden, Isaac Clarke, Max Payne, Dante and, well, Batman; characters from some of my favorite interactive digital adventures.

And while I’d never want to actually be most of the individuals on that list, they’re pretty fun to control via video game console.

Fun to play as; not be. When the going gets tough, you can save, try again or flip the switch to “off.”

Not so in real life. Not so in my career.

That got me thinking. Where are the journalist video games?

Stay with me on this.

I blame the website Mashable for putting the idea in my head. Mashable reporters are in the final stretch of covering the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, an annual event showcasing thousands of new products from thousands of electronics companies.

In this Mashable story, reporters showcased five technology items journalists would find useful, a Journalist’s Utility Belt if you will. It included items like an iPhone tracking system, remote control flying vehicles with onboard video cameras and a Bluetooth camera remote.

These gadgets got me thinking about games like Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, games with open world format where you’re tasked with a variety of missions, where skill sets, equipment and abilities are developed along the way; where the adversity toward your very existence is, most days, considerable.

Of course it sounds just like journalism. Duh.

I’m kind of serious about this; serious enough to have run the idea by a few co-workers. The two I ran it by even gave me feedback and started pitching their own ideas.

Here are some of the missions to make it on the list:

-You have to interview a top political official and try to keep them from getting up and leaving because of too many hard questions. But you also can’t toss them too many softballs and risk ruining your watchdog credibility.

-You have to cut through all the red tape necessary to access public documents before deadline.

-You need to deal with numerous computer freezes and crashes if only to get video of a warehouse fire uploaded to your newspaper’s website before midnight.

And along the way, you get cooler toys. Instead of the pistols traded in for automatics or developed magical abilities, you start out with a notepad and pen. Then you work your way up. Tape recorder. Digital recorder. Impeccable photographic memory boosts. Video equipment.

A word processing program that actually works.

Coffee out of styrofoam cups and Five Hour Energies would boost your health.

Beast Mode would be activated during pessimistic rants.

And how do you die? Not when you get fired. GAME OVER only flashes when you decide to take a public relations job.

On second thought, I’d never play this. Too close to home.

I started today off a little bit heartbroken.

Just a smidgen. Not the waking-up-hours-after-a-break-up type.

The band-you-love-most-in-the-world-said-farewell-to-its-lead-singer type.

Killswitch Engage, a Boston, Mass., based metalcore band has parted ways with its lead singer, Howard Jones, after seven years, according to an article on the Roadrunner Records website.

A statement from the band read thusly: “We love Howard and are thankful for the nine years that we’ve had him in the band. Out of respect for everyone involved we will not be discussing the specific reasons behind this decision. Howard is a part of our family and always will be, and we wish him well.”

I guess I should have been prepared for such a sad announcement. In early 2010 the band announced Jones would be sitting out the rest of their tour.

They released this statement at the time: “It became overwhelmingly obvious to all of us around Howard that he is in no condition to be on tour right now and that he needed to get off the road and get himself better. It’s a personal matter and while we understand everyone’s curiosity and concern for Howard and the band, we appreciate everyone respecting Howard’s privacy at this time.”

Then, two years later, he’s left completely. Fans like me are only left to speculate why and spend the day quite sad.

Now don’t misunderstand, my love for this group is not on par with the Justin Bieber superfans of the world. None of my cellphone’s ringtones are Killswitch songs. I don’t have a montage of posters and magazine cutouts in my home. There isn’t a Killswitch mural lyrical selections pasted in diorama-style splendor in my home office.

Mostly cuz my wife wouldn’t let me.

But I am a fan. I have a few shirts, all their albums. I have a documentary on their founding called “Set This World Ablaze,” which, incidentally, would make a great tattoo phrase for the Joker. For the last six years or so, my response to the favorite band question has been “Killswitch Engage.”

We were acquainted during my short stint in a hardcore band back in 2005. They stuck out from the slew of others I started listening to. Yes, like all other hardcore/metal/screamo acts, they were loud. Many might have thought of their sound as obnoxious. There’s screaming, guitar screeches that sound like they’re emanating from a horde of digital wild boars and savage drumming. They belong on a Ultimate Fighting Championship soundtrack.

A high school friend once labeled their stylings as “I-wanna-die music.”

Still, they stood out for me. It’s a band that’s had its fair share of obstacles to overcome on its way up. Before Howard, the band’s original lead singer Jesse Leach also left the band. Recently, lead guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz had to get surgery on his back.

Then there was their lyrical content. It’s some pretty incredible stuff, filled with positivity and encouragement, though those messages may not be entirely evident because of their delivery methodology.

My wife and I saw them in Medford a number of years ago at the building that now houses Kids Unlimited. We probably lost 12 pounds between us because of how much we sweat that night, but it was a blast. Howard waved at us, too. We still get close to swooning when we talk about it.

I hope in a few years this incident will be something Killswitch-ites can look back on and sigh with relief, either because of a new lead singer that was able to fill Jones’ shoes, or because he himself returned.

Until then, be well, Howard. You’ll be missed.

Each year at Christmas, the North American Aerospace Defense Command tracks an unusual airborne target around the world.

And now you can, too.

Using Google Earth, the Colorado Springs-based military operation posts Santa Claus’s activity here. There are also highlights from the Jolly Old Elf’s 2010 run, games, videos and historical information about NORAD’s yearly special operation.

You can also watch those 2010 highlights in the video below.

Have fun, and Merry Christmas.