I thought I was OK with being single until all this chaos for Valentines Day got up in my flow. What can I do to avoid becoming more depressed about being an alone loser than I already am?

Sincerely,
Juan Is the Loneliest Number

Dear JITLM,

First of all, there is no shame in being alone. In fact, it is a great place to be to truly understand yourself. You are certainly valid in your feelings about having Valentine’s Day shoved down the masses’ throats. Honestly, even those entrenched in couple-dom get a bit uncomfortable with the pressures of having to prove their love on this one particular day. From my research, it is not really even understood who this St. Valentine was! (Seemingly a conglomerate of about fourteen different martyred fellows all with the same name. Although, one in particular tried to convert someone he should not have and ended up, well, quite uncomfortably martyred.) But back to your question…

Keep in mind that this is a Hallmark Holiday with little to no relevance to the rest of the world. Try to hang out with your (single) friends and just have a good time. There is also the fabulous option of taking the time to honor your self. Give some love to you! That can mean different things to different people. Some manners to do this may include getting a massage, splurging on that new techno gadget you have had your eyes on and some good old fashioned self pleasuring! Avoid restaurants as they will be filled to over flowing with folk attempting to make romantic memories. Keep in mind that being single is not a sign of being a loser. I know it can be tough when it feels like everyone around you is happily submerged in partnered bliss but know that is simply how it feels. It is not the actual reality. Break free of this preordained societal nonsense and enjoy being the man you are. No matter what our ‘status’ we all come into and out of this world alone and that is something in which to take pride. You can be a stronger person by not succumbing to what you ‘should’ be and celebrating who you ARE.

Lust & Happiness,
Dr. Miro

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featured image credit: stefanvds(.com)

The indirect benefits/drawbacks of the Apple model had me thinking that a great place to start is the “common misconceptions” of what happens when you make a game. Stuff that’s not obvious from the outside. A lot of time it is also the dirty work. The un-fun stuff.

So You’re Gonna Make a WHOLE game?

You film dudes are gonna here something familiar. “Everyone’s a director.”  That’s the film saying, right?  Well in games, everyone is a designer.

Here are all the people who think they are better designers than the best designers:

• Programmers
• Pimple faced 17 year olds
• That kid fresh out of school in his first design job
• The dude bagging groceries at the store
• Dogs
• Cats
• Single-Celled Organisms
• Aliens that are spying on us and pirating our games from another galaxy

So that’s everyone right?  If you’re gonna be a designer, you have to really learn to accept that. The misconception is that designers make game ideas, characters and stories.

Well some of that is true. We do that stuff. The misconception is that outsiders, even people in the game industry who haven’t designed an entire game, think that’s all we do. If that were the case, then yes, it would be all kitties and happiness and GREAT GAME IDEAS.

In real life, game design is less Lara Croft models, and more excel charts. Shrug.

Here are other things we do:

• Make huge complicated Excel charts for weeks that detail mechanics of games. Lots of numbers.
• Write large sets of documents called ‘Specs’ that serve as designs for subsystems.
• Sketch out interfaces for menus.
• Meetings, meetings, meetings.
• Knowing deep down inside what will work and won’t work in a game. Which brings me to:

Experience doesn’t matter, right?

Experience really DOES matter in game design. Not because your ideas get better over time for big, high-level concepts and stories. That stuff is inspiration and it’s part of creativity. Experience matters more when we discuss the CRAFT of the game.

I thought it was gonna revolve around me, and now I gotta lift it?!

Same thing is true for game designers. And that’s the stuff that experience gives you: it allows you to see a big, pretty idea about a game and identify the pitfalls in actually making it, including all the tiny boring things. The things that otherwise, you’d miss, and halfway into the production they’d bite you in the ass, causing you a lot of wasted time!

After years and years of seeing people play your games, you start to make better first guesses. You start to get an idea of what frustrates people, and you build a database in your head of all the bad decision you’ve made or others have made.

That’s why it’s good to listen to people. By hearing tales of where other people messed up, you just got a mental database entry of what not to do without making the mistake yourself.

I didn’t think THAT would happen!

You definitely get really humble when you see people play your game. With our current game Zig Zag Zombie, we are starting beta tests. You know how I said “you make better first guesses” above?  Notice that I said the word better and I said the word guesses. Because I’ve come to beleive that you never make perfect first decisions on the interface of a game. But you try to get the major stuff right, and then you TEST TEST TEST.

The Progression chart for Zig Zag Zombie. A lot of unfun charts make a casual puzzle game phun!

Ok phew I’m done

So those are a few misconceptions. We could go on forever. But the root of this post is that, if you want to design games, the tiny little boring decisions, the details are what makes it good. I had a post before on how important execution is vs. ideas. I still believe it!  Everyone has ideas, and your ideas are good. I like almost every idea people tell me when I meet them and they say “hey I have a good game idea.”  But how many people are willing to sit alone in the wee hours, not thinking of ideas, but obsessing over tuning, over progression charts in excel, or over whether or not a button should disappear. I think the film guys can chime in, but I’ll venture a guess that they’ll say the same things about film. You gotta do the dirty work.

If you just have ideas, there isn’t a job in games where you just sell the idea for a game. Unless you count “rich dude who pays a bunch of people to make his game.”  But being that dude is a fun job no matter how you spin it. Oh and Ferraris are prob fun too. Goodnight.

As always, give me a holler on twitter @MattUdvari.

Image Credits: cloneofsnake, Svadilfari

Til then, here’s a big batch of procrastination to get you through the work day.

1. What’s up with young folks these days??? As it turns out, not too much. According to one study, today’s teen’s are way more upstanding than their parents were at the same age. Take that, old man! And thanks to the Anonymous Smithie for the link. [NYT]

Amy Robinson and I have been going back and forth re this breading cats meme. She thinks it's "so wrong." I'll admit to snorting the first time I saw it. What say you?

2. This “Hierarchy of Publishing” List will either make you laugh or cry. In any case, thanks to Gudrun Cram-Drach from “Secret Life of an Expat” for sending it along. I’m going to go somewhere dark and curl up into a fetal ball now.  [On Public Relations]

3. A bunch of authors (including moi) are weighing on the best writing advice we ever got. [Girlfriends Book Club]

4. Former FaN blogger, Kelli Bielema, has a post up at her party-planning blog about how to make your Super Bowl party pop. I especially love the referee whistle cupcakes. [The Shindiggery]

5. LeVar Burton himself is now in charge of the @ReadingRainbow handle. It’s actually a pretty heartwarming story about how he achieved this feat: He simply asked the person that owned it nicely if he could have it, and the person gave it to him because he’s frickin’ LeVar Burton. Nerds really are the best — especially the ones that read. [The GalleyCat]

6. 10 pro-Planned Parenthood companies you can support if you’re pissed off about the Susan G. Komen defunding. Biggest surprise: Darden Restaurants, which owns Olive Garden and Red Lobster. Mmm, cheesy biscuits! [xoJane]

7. I’m saving this in-depth RuPaul profile for when I’m in a bad mood and need a pick me up. But you should totally feel free to read it now. [The Daily] 

8. Fascinating post on three pieces of technology we’ve lost: Greek Fire, Damascus Steel, and the Apollo missions schematics. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go and do a computer back up right quick. [i09]

9. MARIAN KEYES IS BACK!!!! And if her first post in two years is any indication, just as funny as ever. Can’t wait for the next book. This seriously made my entire week. — Oh, and I’m also really proud of her for overcoming her crippling depression. [Marian Keyes]

10. And last but not least, the latest GAME OF THRONES trailer. Seriously, why can’t it be April NOW???? Also, I don’t think I’ve even cheered so hard for the death of a minor. Die, Joffrey, die!!!

Oh, and here’s the much less interesting Madonna football-themed music video, featuring MIA and Nicki Minaj (who I’m assuming did it for the nostalgic love of 80s/90s Madonna)

 

mood pic photo credit: danielmoyle

Fiercely Anticipating – God Bless America

Bobcat Goldthwait’s widely ignored gem, World’s Greatest Dad, was a scalpel-precise dissection of postmortem celebrity. Robin Williams plays a struggling English teacher who, after discovering the accidental auto-erotic suffocation of his misanthropic son, authors a bogus diary in his progeny’s name. Believing the pseudepigripha to be genuine, the school (and subsequently the media) turns him into a martyred prophet. Students who didn’t know his name are now wearing shirts with his picture on it – quoting his diary like scripture. As the meme spreads out of control, Williams has to decide whether to keep feeding the lie or admit the falsehood and destroy his newly attained writing career. Poignant, ironic and hilarious, World’s Greatest Dad was probably the best comedy, as well as one of the best films of 2009. That Old Dogs, another Robin Williams’ starring vehicle from that year, out-grossed it $96M to $221K (or 436 to 1 according to Boxofficemojo) while posting an abysmal Tomatometer rating of 5% to WGD’s 89% is, as *Ghandi so succinctly put it, “A Goddamn, motherfucking shame.” Viewing the trailer for his new endeavor, I can’t help but think this disparity wasn’t lost on Goldthwait.

Enlisting the acting services of Bill Murray’s second most famous brother, God Bless America follows Frank, an ordinary schlub with a malignant growth, a loaded .45 and an intense disdain for the spiraling standards of the culture around him. Equal parts Falling Down, Idiocracy and Natural Born Killers, this looks like a cathartic release for anyone with an agitated disposition toward the distraction mentality surrounding us. That is not to say that simply unloading a few clips in Kim Kardashian’s direction is in and of itself worthy of praise (Seltzer & Friedberg have been doing this lazy routine for a decade), just that given his track record, I have faith that Goldthwait will find a satisfying context for such mayhem.

Speaking of faith: For the hell of it, here’s his brass balls 1994 performance on Comic Relief as The Amazing Christo – a magician from Bethlehem, PA:

Kinda Wanna See – **The Super Bowl The Big Game

Hey Tebow, Jesus gave me three Super Bowl rings, a super model wife and the flowing locks of Samson, maybe you're not praying hard enough.

I’m an out-of-the-closet Seattle Seahawks fan so, outside of one bitter winter afternoon in 2006, week 22 of the NFL season has nothing to do with me. And really, anyone not residing in Boston or New York (or Los Angeles where half the former population of both states live) care about whether or not Tom Brady once again proves he’s better than you in every way. No, this February 5th is all about reaffirming the pigskin classic as the defining moment of our cultural zeitgeist. I submit that, although this weekend’s bread in the Madonna sandwich isn’t an official holiday, it sure as hell should be. Let’s take a look at the authorized, so-called national holidays and see how they stack up:

New Year’s Eve/Day – December 31st has the reckless drinking covered but what about the reckless gambling? You can bet on everything from the coin toss to the color of the Gatorade this Sunday, what comes after 11:59:59 is hardly in dispute. Other than which resolution you’ll break first or who’s paying for the morning after pill, there really isn’t much to wager on. WINNER – The Big Game.

Martin Luther King’s Birthday – How many African Americans in congress? How many African Americans on the Giants/Patriots? WINNER – White America (trick question).

Presidents Day – Are you the president? WINNER – The President.

Easter – Being plastered before kick-off is fine. Being plastered while hiding eggs in the morning means you, a wicked hangover and disgruntled children searching the backyard all afternoon for Grade A prizes you hid in your neighbor’s yard. WINNER – Your Neighbor.

Memorial Day – Ugh. This is the day my grandfather wears that stupid hat with the stars on it. He looks like such a weirdo. Embaaaaaaaarrassing. Whatever that day is for I get to sleep in so…WINNER – Me.

Independence Day – July 4th, 1776 was the day an infant nation declared independence from an imperialist overlord. July 4th 2012 is the day we will celebrate being an imperialist overlord. WINNER – Historical Irony.

Labor Day – WINNER – China.

Veteran’s Day – See Memorial Day + more hats. Really grandpa, you look silly. Knock it off.

Thanksgiving – Long before Vince Lombardi was a spasm in his father’s junk, the Puritans and the Native Americans put aside their petty differences to slaughter a turkey and watch Detroit play football on television. They lived happily ever after. WINNER – Whoever Plays the Lions.

Christmas – Oh boy, this is close. Gathering of friends and family? Check. Drinking? Depending on which family gathers – Check. Grating songs you’ve heard a hundred times? Check. Commercialism out the wazoo? Double Check. Straight up it’s a push but unfortunately Christmas is disqualified on constitutional grounds. It seems the Establishment Clause clearly states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” and December 25th is the birth date of the Persian God Mithra. Exalting the birth of a religious icon to the level of federal observance is unfair to the millions of non-Mithraists in this country. Nice try Christmas. WINNER – Freedom.

But what are the chances of that?

Tallying up the points I see that The Big Game is the winner with a decisive score of 1 to 0 (margin of error +/- 9). Judging by soccer standards this is a crushing defeat for any non-NFL related holiday. In fact, the only way these results aren’t definitive is if you could find a better representation for America than two diametrically opposed combatants sponsored by the same corporation, fighting over arbitrary rules to complete an ultimately pointless task?

Wouldn’t Go If You Paid Me – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off Remake

I was watching We Need To Talk About Kevin (go see it now) and I realized just how prevalent product integration is in cinema today. Two cans of soda are pulled from a refrigerator and I didn’t recognize the label. What the hell? An actress was holding a can of generic root beer. Not A&W or Barq’s but plain old root beer. Product placement has become so ubiquitous that when I’m not being sold something I do a double take. What does that have to do with a Honda commercial starring Matthew Broderick kinda, sorta reprising his iconic role from the 80′s? It occurred to me that this highly anticipated ***Super Bowl Big Game spot might as well be the trailer for a Ferris Bueller’s Day Off remake.

Honda’s multi-million dollar snooze has all the ingredients of a modern comedy. It panders cynically to our collective memory, delivers no laughs, includes context-free quips about how cool a product is and comes complete with close ups of the logo. Throw in a trip to Wendy’s to cure a particularly gnarly craving for a Frosty and you’ve got a Happy Madison “comedy” right there. I know this is a commercial, and as such, was produced with the sole intention of selling SUV’s but we’re getting closer and closer to the point where the distinction between advertisement and film is almost non-existent. Are we not? Is the glue I’m sniffing too potent? I hear Crayola provides a smooth high with minimal delusional side effects.

The Ferrari featured in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is product placement for sure, but unless you were an executive with a minimal member and a mid-life crisis, you couldn’t afford it. More than that though, it served a narrative purpose. Cameron’s father’s Ferrari was the physical representation of his disconnect with his son. In the end, when Cameron destroys it, he’s effectively destroying the distance between them. The Ferrari 250 was necessary. Modern movies, in an effort to integrate as many products as possible, have seemingly lost the ability to advertise and tell a story. The ending of the remake would go something like this:

INT. GARAGE – DAY
Cameron rears his leg back, ready to strike the hood.

CAMERON’S FATHER
Cam?
Cameron turns to the garage door. Cameron’s Father, the spitting image of Cameron in twenty-five years, nervously fiddles with the bill of his Ferrari baseball cap.

CAMERON
Dad? I…I…

CAMERON’S FATHER
…it’s okay, son. I just wanted to say I realize I’ve
put this car before you. In my defense, can you
blame me? Zero to sixty in two point three seconds,
purrs like a tiger. And the pussy I get. Never the less,
it’s wrong. I’m sorry.

CAMERON
You mean it?

CAMERON’S FATHER
Why don’t you and I go for a spin? Together.

CAMERON
I’d love that. Can we go by Wendy’s on the way,
I need a Frosty stat.

*Source unavailable.
**Sorry NFL lawyers, it won’t happen again.
***Fuck, I’m getting sued.

featured image credit: 8 Eyes Photography

On day one he didn’t see it coming. We’d visited the school a few times and every time we did he managed to find something to play with. He was happy to be there. New toys. New kids. New people. I’m pretty sure he just thought this was another outing we were taking together. I said goodbye, told him I would pick him up later, and left. It was hard not to look back, but when I left him he was more interested in Legos than anything else. I have no idea when it occurred to him that I wasn’t coming back, but at some point on that first day he got sad. When I picked him up he was so relieved to see me that he attempted to run up a small set of stairs two at a time. His little legs couldn’t quite keep up, and he crawled the last couple of steps until I picked him up. He was ready to go home and never come back.

On day four he slept through nap/quiet time. This was a good sign. He’d adjusted to his new surroundings and felt relaxed enough in his new routine to sleep. His teacher even said that he took his little socks off and nicely put them next to his cot. He participated fully in the day’s activities including the creation of some sweet refrigerator art involving the letters Q and R and the number 7. He still didn’t want to be dropped off and he still loved to be picked up, but maybe preschool wasn’t so bad after all.

My son’s temperature hit 101.4 on the first Sunday after that first week of preschool. My wife was out of town and I woke up almost every hour on the hour to check on him. 101.4 is not an alarming number, but it is only the second fever he’s run in his limited existence on this planet. His doctor affectionately referred to preschool as a “community of diseases” and told us to expect him to get sick 6 times in the first 3 months, 9 times in the first 6 months and 12 times in the first year of school. It doesn’t matter if that first year of school is preschool or kindergarten. As soon as we release our children into the wild we can expect them to return home covered in germs. He also said that if kids didn’t go to school with runny noses there would be no schools. If there were no schools, then I wouldn’t also be sick while I write this.

He’s been in school for three weeks now. Even though he was sick the second week, his fever was gone in a day and he wasn’t communicable after Martin Luther King day so we let him tough it out. It seems to have worked. He still doesn’t like being dropped off and he loves being picked up, but he knows his teachers and he likes them. Even when he cries in the morning he reaches for them with the knowledge that he is in fact going to school that day. He’s doing well during the day and his language skills have exploded. New words and phrases pop up every day. He knows a good chunk of the alphabet. Since he’s only two he’s the youngest in his class and doesn’t really acknowledge the existence of other kids, but they know him and they say “Hi, Grady” in the morning and “Bye, Grady” when he leaves at night. It’s only a matter of time before he has a little friend. He blows kisses to his teachers.

I remember thinking as I neared my High School graduation that I would never again have to deal with back-to-school sales, school supplies, textbooks, new back packs, school clothes and the like — that I would somehow be free of this yearly event for the rest of my life. When I think about dropping my kid off at preschool now, it occurs to me that he will be in school five days a week for most of the year for quite possibly the next twenty plus years of his life, which means I will be dealing with back-to-school sales, school supplies, textbooks, new back packs, old back packs, parent/teacher conferences, report cards, school clothes, gym clothes, school holidays, pick ups, drop offs, bag lunches, hot lunches, open lunches, bullies, teachers, principals, reading lists, camps, after school activities, testing, placement, teams, clubs, musical instruments, art, and more for the next twenty plus years of my life. And I can’t wait.

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In Bayou Billionaires we meet the Dowdens of Shreveport, Louisiana. They are a hardworking family of modest means who recently discovered that their home sits on the fourth largest deposit of natural gas in the United States, and the “mailbox money” checks keep rolling in to prove it! If you have ever wondered what a real life Beverly Hillbillies would look like, the Dowdens are as close as you could get. With all their children and a very horny grandfather living with them on their compound, you can see they like to keep their family close. All around them are modest homes and belongings, sprinkled with the occasional pool, jet-ski and other nouveaux riche items. They are simple folks that happened into some big dumb luck and even though the redneck aspect is hilarious to watch and laugh at, they seem to be some genuinely nice people.

Here is the trailer for Bayou Billionaires on CMT:

The children in this show are what I found fascinating. Parents Kitty and Gerald, have one daughter Chantel who seems like a brain dead shopaholic with her burnout crusty boyfriend Albert hanging on, they also have son Gerald Jr. who seems to try too hard to maintain his position as top dog in the family, and their other son Thomas who my gaydar picks as a potential friend of Dorothy. Thomas enjoys wrestling his man-ish wife Mallory to solve arguments, when he is not busy being momma’s boy or trying so hard to show up his older brother in some ridiculous show of machismo. Me thinks the lady doth protest too much. All in all the show is strangely enjoyable to watch as we see this smiley family spend away their “mailbox money” and experience their newfound good life. You can’t help but feel these people are way more deserving of their fortune than any of those orange skinned OC housewives.

Paired with the show Bayou Billionaires I also discovered CMT’s newest offering My Big Redneck Vacation. CMT has taken 4 families out of rural Louisiana and put them up for an all expenses paid vacation in a 4 million dollar home in the Hamptons. This show is bizarre and if it didn’t have little asides from Tom Arnold inserted every five seconds it might be much more watchable. Regardless, check out the trailer for My Big Redneck Vacation on CMT:

In the most recent episode one couple has decided to throw their wedding at the house and has hired a gay wedding planner couple to help them, homophobia and hilarity ensue. Not sure I can sit through many more episodes of this show but who knows, maybe for the cameras everyone learns to be one big happy family in the end. If the trailers alone for these two new redneck fun-fests aren’t enough for you I have found you the best little video I could nab off the interwebs. I give you the Redneck Fail Compilation… you must see some of these to believe them! Happy trashy TV watching everybody!

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As mentioned two weeks ago in Part One, I was in favor of staying in, but it came down to this: 2 couples wanted to go out, 2 couples voted for staying in.

Alright, I thought. Forget my cozy New Year’s Eve idea; away with the Cranium, Scattergories and Taboo. Put away the Wii. Maybe those in favor of going out had a point. After all, there are only a couple of years left where a carefree night on the town is even a viable option before the whole evening holiday devolves into a night of Pampers, pizza delivery and a completely different version of a midnight toast – one that involves an infant’s latched firmly onto my nipple.

Heck, it’s already starting – one of the couples staying with us was in early pregnancy, due in April. And, really – how much longer would any of us even have the slightest desire to live it up on New Year’s? Time, I realized, was short. The dropping of the ball marked one me one full year closer to parenthood or death. We’d better, the hell, go out! Gather ye rosebuds while ye may!

Thanks to my clinical OCD, I expertly began obsessing for perfect New Year’s Eve venue/party on mind-numbing sites like Go Los Angeles, Digital City, Club Zone, and the L.A. Times “best NYE events Los Angeles” section. There were a dizzying array of interesting-sounding options: Maxim hosts a NYE bash at Graumann’s Chinese Theatre! Cleopatra’s Ball held at The Egyptian! The “W” is proud to host the hottest NYE party in L.A.!

Press releases promised things like:

-“A Giant LED light show that will dazzle 21century Hieroglyphics animations all night! (read: migraines!)

-”We recommend early arrival and “bottle service to make this party a memorable occasion. (read: debt!)

-State-of-the-art dance floors (read: lower back pain!) and DJ spinning the mash-ups until 2 am (read: possible hearing damage!)

As death-defying and appealing as this option sounded, the clencher for abandonment was the small type at the bottom of the press release: “$3,000 minimum, includes 8 General Admittance entries.”

So, with apologies to the Entourage-seekers, the club scene was out. With that realization came the acceptance that an evening like that is impossible to accomplish unless you a) have your own reality show b) are a trust fund baby c) wish to max out your (or, better yet- someone else’s) Master Card.

Besides, club parties always sound so much better than they are.

Case in point: Two years ago I went with my husband and another couple to New Year’s Eve at a club called “Wonderland,” which promised cool “Alice in Wonderland themed cocktails, rose garden, chess piece shaped bushes; you will feel like you’ve been dropped straight onto the movie set. With all that and the inaccurate clocks everywhere, and playing cards littering the walls and windows.”

I later realized that the club’s own description actually bragged that ”Wonderland does a good job of not going overboard with the Disney theme.”

Not going overboard with the Disney theme? I thought that was the whole fun of it! I had anticipated a quirky trip to the other side of the looking glass; instead, I got the reality of awful, brain-killing music combined with bad lighting, a collection of “dancers” in short red dresses popping champagne in would-be unison (as if this were some kind of grandly rehearsed dance. There may have been sparklers. All I could think is as I struggled to grab a glass of bubbly in time for the stroke of midnight was, “This sucks. I wish we were at Disneyland watching the fireworks.”

Like Cinderella at the stroke of midnight, I hit my club-atmosphere tolerance limit. I, my teetering stilettos, were ready to skedaddle. After maneuvering through a near confrontation when a bouncer put his hand on my husband’s chest (dude: not a good idea) together my husband and I abandoned our friends and fled, capes and coats flapping in the Hollywood alleyway wind, out of the rabbit hole and into the night.

On foot, we wandered to into nearby Miceli’s, a kitschy yet intimate Italian restaurant decorated with the requisite red checked tablecloths. Rows of Chianti bottles were strung up like Chinese lanterns. In the middle of it all: a man wearing a black turtleneck and 1992 facelift sat playing at the piano, crooning Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin tunes.

It was bliss.

Ah! New Year’s is saved! I realized, sinking my teeth into a seven layer lasagna. This is where I belong. This kind of place, where families were drinking wine and laughing, sleepy four-year olds falling asleep in their spaghetti, elderly couples who had been patrons for years. Maybe Joe the manager always did his best to get them seated at ‘their’ table, the one in the corner with a best view of the pianist.

This is where I belong. This is the kind of girl I am.

But, what of THIS New Year’s Eve? What happened then? Had I forgotten the lesson of the year before so quickly? What of our guests? What of the THRILLING NEW YEAR’S EVE in L.A. I had promised them?

Find out in next time in Part 3 of this series!

featured image credit: besighyawn

Have an Ecosystem (Or Join One)

Apple makes beautiful devices.  Simple, elegant, and highly functional. However, pristine as the iPad might be, it wouldn’t be very drool worthy if not for the variety of content available on it.

I’m directing this point particularly toward Nintendo. For years they’ve hamstrung themselves with lackluster online experiences and clunky marketplace offerings. Making matters worse is that the bulk of their content consists of rehashed first party titles from years past that we’ve already purchased on another system

Microsoft and Sony had a little more foresight here.  Both offer the ability to purchase movies, music, and games.  The meteoric rise of indie games is at least partially thanks to Microsoft’s outstanding support of 3rd party developers on its system. The difference between Apple and Nintendo is that while they’re similar in their pursuit of end-to-end integration, Apple’s model is more adept at leveraging the creativity of self-starters with its lush support of iOS development.

Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication

While motion controls were novel at their debut, Sony and Nintendo’s offerings looked archaic next to Microsoft’s Kinect. It had largely the same capabilities, but the package was more enticing without multiple accessories, batteries, and add-ons being required to make the experience fun.

The same can be said of game design to a degree. Angry Birds is an astoundingly simple premise — slingshot birds to eliminate pigs. Five words. Done. In an age where developers scramble to cram as much content as possible into a title to entice gamers to open their wallets, less really is more.

Another example of this is when Capcom released the most excellent Mega Man 9 to the Xbox Live marketplace some years back. They could’ve gone crazy with hyper-realistic graphics, online multiplayer, and tons of downloadable content to customize Mega Man’s appearance. Instead, they got to the core of what the game was about when it first made its debut in the 80s- diabolical challenge. They kept the same graphics from nearly 30 years earlier, but more than relying on nostalgia for success they also copied the central idea of the popular series in its purest form.

Figure Out What We Want Before We Know We Want It

Granted, I can’t explain how this is done but Apple seems to be killing it on this front. Unfortunately, I can see how the big three game companies have scrambled to play catch up with each other year after year instead of innovating.

Sony tried to get motion control to market just to compete with Nintendo instead of taking Microsoft’s approach of learning from Nintendo’s mistakes. Microsoft’s first Xbox was powerful, but clunky it its design as they just took a PC and shoehorned it into a hideous box with an even more hideous controller. Nintendo tried to jump on the the 3D bandwagon with its headache-inducing Nintendo 3DS last year.

That’s not innovation. That’s a knee-jerk reaction to what’s trendy and trying to turn people’s heads. Innovation happens when you introduce an entirely new way of delivering content or announce a feature that answers a problem that has been there forever right in front of consumers’ faces but no one thought to address.

Simply put, it might behoove the big three to Think Different.

What innovations do you foresee in console gaming? While you do that I’m going to get back to playing my 99 cent, four-button copy of NBA Jam on my iPhone.

featured image credit: wicker_man

My boyfriend always wants to have sex right as we wake up but I’m really embarrassed of my morning breath. When I go to brush, he gets annoyed. That’s the main time we have to get it on and I don’t feel sexy so then I’m all pressured. What am I supposed to do?

Sincerely,
Hallie Tosis

Dear HT,

It is pretty difficult to feel sexy when worried about how you are smelling let alone feeling pressured. Here are a few super simple ways to combat Dragon Mouth. One is to leave a small cup of mouthwash on your bedside table before you go to bed. When you start to gain consciousness the next day, swirl that stuff around in your maw and spit back into the cup. A second easy breezy method is to have a tin of Altoids waiting for you upon first morning jab. Another suggestion that does not directly address the Dawn Death Breath is to have your morning intimacy from behind. This provides incredible closeness while avoiding any exchange of oral cavity odors!

Lust & Happiness,
Dr. Miro

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featured image credit: Mike Rohde

Many years ago as an undergrad at UCLA, I hosted an Oscar viewing party in my apartment in West LA. After the show was over I said to my guests “Hey we are minutes from the Beverly Hilton where the Oscar party is!” There was a collective “So?” “Well let’s go and watch the stars come in. It will be a great memory, trust me.”

Though I was entirely directionless personally and professionally in college, I knew it was important to rack up memories.

I got my friend Laurette on my side by promising that she would see Jack Nicholson walk in. The others just followed. East on Wilshire Boulevard we went, got parked and stood behind the velvet cord to watch the stars make their way into the Grand Ballroom. It was exhilarating seeing major stars like Ginger Rogers and Daryl Hannah walk by all smiles and dyed feathers. Then the whole thing turned on me. I hated being behind that velvet cord. I wanted to be one of the people at the party. I was so talented at something; I needed to be part of this glitterati parade.

I could take it no longer and conjured up my greatest power, the power of “What Would Lucy Do?” This was my last straw cry when I ran out of all other ideas. Lucy Ricardo got over William Holden’s fence; she dressed up as an agent to get Ricky work, she did everything she wanted through scheming and bravado. I would draw on this power a few years later to get into the private stalls at La Scala in Milan or into seats in St. Peter’s Square to hear the pope say Merry Christmas in 100 languages. But today my answer was “Lucy would go through all the DO NOT ENTER doors.” She probably would have dressed up as waiter, but no matter, I was going to try my best.

I coaxed my friend Tom into joining me. We left the others standing on the wrong side of the ropes and went though our first side door into the hotel. Easy. Then we made it down the hallway and through another door. Breeze. This was turning into a piece of Lucy McGillicudy cake. Finally we made it into the kitchen where the swinging doors into the ballroom were just five paces away. Hotel security nabbed us right next to the desserts being assembled. They wanted to know what we were doing there. I told them we were guests at the hotel and got lost. That was the best I could think of? He asked me for me room number and I told him it was 332. He told me that we could either get arrested or go out the back door of the hotel and not return. We chose the back door.

In almost western-film-kicked-in-the butt-through-the-swinging-saloon-doors fashion we were sent packing out of the back door of the Beverly Hilton. It was the thrust from security that caused me to quite literally body-check Jack Nicholson sneaking in the back entry holding his Oscar for Terms of Endearment whilst Angelica Houston held his arm. Tom and I were gobsmacked. An audience with two major stars and an Oscar. Jack just beamed from behind his dark sunglasses and I said “Way to go, Jack!” and he told us “Thanks, guys.”

We joined the others still watching for celebs on the front lines. I told Laurette that she would probably not be seeing her idol Jack after all.

Perhaps next year I will write about how this guy I used to date broke up with me and I did not want to think about him, but there he was on the TV screen in a tux at the Oscars with the cast of “Precious.” And he wasn’t a seat filler.

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featured image credit: Dave_B_